No monkeying around with Dennis

Against the trend of men's lifestyle print magazines, digital men's magazine Monkey, the first of its kind, recorded a debut audit of 209,612 for January, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic figures released today.

The results for Monkey, launched in November by Dennis Publishing, are not directly comparable to the measurement for print editions. Dennis Publishing said the ABCe result was twice its original target of 100,000 and meant the magazine had a rapidly growing audience of 18- to 30-year-old males.

Project Celia is just for girls..

NatMags is to become the second magazine publisher to produce a stand-alone digital magazine with the launch of a weekly fashion and entertainment e-zine for teenage girls, developed under the name Project Celia.

The as-yet unnamed magazine, which could adopt CosmoGirl! branding, will launch by the end of March.The publisher has teamed up with Ceros, the software company behind Dennis’ digital men’s magazine Monkey, to produce the magazine, which is currently in test phase.

Each issue will run to at least 35 pages and will target 13 to 19-year-old girls with fashion, music, film and TV content with a humorous tone, rounding up content from websites such as YouTube and inviting readers to send in clips.As with Monkey, it will be e-mailed for free each week and will have a variety of rich media ad formats, including display ads with embedded content, advertorials, sponsorships and bumper ads that bookend video clips.

Cosmo Girl! will be one of several teen magazines posting a drop in the latest ABC figures, out this week, and the new format aims to extend NatMags’ reach among an audience that spends increasingly more time online.Jan Adcock, Cosmopolitan and Cosmo Girl! group publishing director, said it would sit alongside the print and web editions of Cosmo Girl! to offer a variety of ways to reach teenage girls.

“Teenagers are restricted by their parents to how much time they can spend online each week, so we want to offer them a filter of the best of the web,” said Adcock.Celia Duncan, editor of Cosmo Girl!, is developing the project, which will have a seven-strong editorial team. An acting editor for Cosmo Girl! is being sought.A publisher for Cosmo Girl!, cosmogirl.co.uk and Project Celia is also being recruited to replace Di Roach, who left at the end of last year to study for an MBA.

Cosmogirl.co.uk will relaunch at the end of this month.

Zinio to be acquired by equity company

INVESTMENT COMPANY GILVEST LP HAS acquired electronic publisher Zinio Systems, the companies will announce today. Financial terms aren't disclosed; Richard Maggiotto, CEO and president of Zinio, will continue to head the company.
Zinio, which offers a downloadable electronic reader, currently distributes more than 1,200 digital magazine titles, including TV Guide, Men's Health, Black Enterprise and Penthouse.
Maggiotto said that later this year, Zinio intends to roll out a new version of its downloadable electronic reader as well as a browser-based reader. The new product will make content "much more accessible and much more discoverable" by consumers, he said. For instance, with the upcoming reader, consumers will more easily be able to preview magazines and browse through their pages before purchasing them. The new reader also will be compatible with both Macs and PCs, said Doug Carlson, who manages Gilvest.

Playboy on CD

Playboy is digitising every piece of its content.

Every story, every picture, that has been in the magazine since it was launched by Hugh Hefner in 1953 – including the famous nude picture of Marilyn Monroe that ran on the cover of the first issue – will be accessible on DVD later this year.

All 630 issues of the magazine are to be transferred on to six discs – one for each decade – which will be available for $100 each. It is believed to be the first time that a magazine known for its sex and nudity has been digitalized.

Just after the announcement, Playboy’s website was inundated for stories and pix of Anna Nicole Smith, the sexy pin -up girl, who died mysteriously in Florida last week and has been making headlines every since.

Playboy has for some time had a website, but no archival system. Old copies of the magazine, if anyone wanted to look up an article or picture, were until now only accessible in bound volumes.
From now on anyone who wants information on say Norman Mailer has only to type in his name and pull up every reference to the American writer in the magazine since Playboy was launched.

World's oldest newspaper goes digital

For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer.

The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace. The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals. ``We think it's a cultural disaster,'' said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years. ``It is sad when you have worked with it for so long and it has been around for so long.''

Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her subjects informed of the affairs of state, Holm said, and the first editions, which were more like pamphlets, were carried by courier and posted on note boards in cities and towns throughout the kingdom. Today, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which means mail and domestic tidings, runs legal announcements by corporations, courts and certain government agencies - about 1,500 a day according to Olov Vikstrom, the current editor. The paper edition was certainly not some mass- market tabloid.

It had a meager circulation of only 1,000 or so, although the Web site is expected to attract more readers, Vikstrom said. The newspaper is owned by the Swedish Academy, known for awarding the annual Nobel Prize in Literature. But it recently sold the publishing rights to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, a government agency.

Despite its online transformation, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar remains No. 1 on a ranking of the oldest newspapers still in circulation compiled by the Paris- based World Association of Newspapers. ``An online newspaper is still a newspaper, so we'll leave it on the list,'' WAN spokesman Larry Kilman said.

Perooz this...

Read magazines on your iPod.....

For some people, this will be too much work. But for young men, interested in hot cars or hot women, this may be useful. Perooz.com offers free downloads of magazines, movie and video game trailers, and new music for hand held devices including the iPod , Sony PSP, and Zune as well as Palm Treo and Blackberry models. The magazine pages (they're actually images which, on the video iPod, are transferred to "Photos" folders) are certainly readable if you’ve got nothing else to do while standing in line at the post office. Content offerings include GQ, Car & Driver, Maxim and Stuff. The site says tech, news, and business content are "coming soon."

Book publisher buys digital

HarperCollins has bought a stake in NewsStand, whose LibreDigital unit creates digital versions of books. Brian Murray, group persident of News Corp's HarperCollins, will join NewsStand's board of directors.

TV Guide goes digital

TV Guide has joined the majority of television shows it writes about--and gone digital.
The digital edition of TV Guide was launched earlier this week by electronic publisher Zinio Systems, adding the title to a list of more than 400 magazines that the company now sells and distributes worldwide.
TV Guide's digital version contains all of the magazine's print elements, including celebrity coverage, program reviews and recommendations. The magazine also covers trends in the TV landscape and gives readers behind-the-scenes looks at broadcast, cable and syndicated shows, and new DVDs.
Since switching its format from digest-form to full-size and cutting its base ad rate by two-thirds, TV Guide has seen its circulation tumble almost 60% to roughly 3.8 million. But Zinio's president and CEO Rich Maggiotto says the digital version's immediacy will please the magazine's readers. "I believe our readers will love the features and functionality that are available in this new medium," adds Ian Birch, editor in chief of TV Guide and chief content officer of Gemstar-TV Guide International.
"With TV Guide's digital edition, readers will be able to have a truly interactive experience with the magazine," Maggiotto says. "The availability of this insightful content in a digital format will allow for up-to-date information and news about the shows and stars covered in their articles."

Gathering pace...

US digital publisher NXTbook Media reported a 254 percent increase in sales and 359 percent more traffic to its digital magazines in 2006. Additionally, the number of pages viewed per NXTbook increased nearly 10 percent.

NXTbook CEO Michael Biggerstaff said in a statement that the amount of video streamed from the company’s digital magazine editions increased to hundreds of gigabytes per month. “We're streaming the amount of video each week that we saw in the entire year of 2005," he said.

Interesting. Particularly the amount of video being served - which is undoubtedly down to broadband usage increasing worldwide.

In your dreams

Every now and then, I get a press release that is really worth sharing with the outside world. And this one really takes the biscuit.

Its from a company called MTomic, who have patented.... wait for it.... a marketplace for content and digital collectibles where users can buy, sell, trade, swap and resell digital items at 'buy it now' prices or auction.

And how does digital content become "collectable" ? Well, MTomic have evidently developed a system that "wears" the relevant content.

Why bother ? Listen to this gem from the company's CEO.

"If your ringtone is this week's No.1 hit it's old news by next Monday - unless it has a unique feature or is a key item in a Collectible Series. Then it's cool and sought after. It lives on as a Digital Collectible that can be traded or treasured!"

Nurse, the screens !!

Dazed. And Confused ?

The dear old Grauniad is finally on the case with digital magazines.

In this week's "Organ Grinder" piece, Jemima Kiss admits "Actually though, I confess I'm warming a little to the concept of digital editions, at least for fashion mags."

God loves a sinner...

Find the piece here.

Electronic Ink

Design News has an interesting piece on electronic ink - and how it could possibly save newspapers.

Have a look here

Cosmetic Surgery Answers issue 2 free to download

Excite Publishing has today released issue 2 of Cosmetic Surgery Answers, the first magazine in the UK to deliver independent and trusted advice on cosmetic enhancement – absolutely free.

Available from http://www.cosmeticsurgeryanswers.co.uk/, the magazine offers a range of features, advice and expert opinion. This issue contains ; a definitive guide to fillers (including Botox and Restylane), all you need to know about liposuction, rhinoplasty and nasal surgery, surgery in Prague, and the latest information on trends and pricing.

The content of the magazine has been written by a number of leading experts in cosmetic treatment as well as a team of respected newspaper and magazine journalists. The interactive abilities of the magazine means that readers can quickly navigate to the section of their choice and in future issues will be able to view streaming video and audio clips.

John Weir, Cosmetic Surgery Answer’s publisher, says “The fantastic response to our first issue has seen over 15,000 readers download the magazine. This demonstrates not only the latent demand for an independent, authorative publication on cosmetic surgery, but also the potential of digital magazines.”

Cosmetic Surgery Answers is available to download from the website, http://www.cosmeticsurgeryanswers.co.uk/

VIV is Live !!

A new women's magazine has launched in the US. Whilst this is not at all unusaual - at least 30 were launched in 2005 - this one is different in the sense that it is digital ONLY.

Hurrah. At long last someone has had the balls to put out a digital only magazine in the women's sector and it looks absolutely great. It contains rich media files, including flash demos, provided by Zinio, but perhaps the best thing is the little "Viv" button on every page, which allows you to set up the pages as interactive.

Great vision, and I hope it does well.

Hot Prospect

Current affairs magazine Prospect has unveiled a digital edition through Exact Editions.

A trial issue of the current affairs magazine is available to read on exacteditions.com, and those who subscribe will be able to read back copies from January 2005 onwards.It will be available on the same day the magazine is published in print and is an exact replica of the offline version.

Dennis Monkey about

Dennis has confirmed its next venture in the lads' mags arena will be Monkey, a free weekly e-mag aimed at 16 – 30 year men.

The publisher has had an online holding site monkeymag.co.uk, promising "sex, fun, sport, gear and cars" since August but had declined to speculate on the exact nature of the product.

Dennis has now revealed that Monkey will be delivered in a weekly email to on-line subscribers from November 1 and its format, will according to its makers, "bridges the gap between familiar print products, online sites and newsletters, with the advantages of all three".

Monkey will have a conventional magazine layout, with approximately 50 turning pages and the traditional cover girl front page but also video clips of girls, jokes and film trailers in its digital format, produced in conjunction with e-edition publishers, Applecart. It can be viewed online or saved as a PDF.

Monkey's launch has been trailed via Maxim's website, maximonline.co.uk James Carter, Director of Dennis NPD said: "Monkey will be a cheeky, sexy mix of girls, sport, cars and humour with around 50 pages of content making it ideal for consumption at home or in the workplace.

"We'll have the best viral videos, the latest music videos and movie trailers, games which you can actually play, sexy girl shoots – all the things which you get flat and static in traditional magazine brought to life on a platform men are using more and more as their primary source of entertainment and information."

Clarkson wants emagazines !!

Great piece in the Sunday Times today. Petrolhead and friend of environmentalists everywhere, Jeremy Clarkson, has backed reading magazines in digital format.

Bemoaning the fall in magazine sales on the newsstand, he said "Surely its possible to download a copy of Country Life via my wireless internet connection"

Soon, Jeremy, soon.

Students of Digital

The MPA - thats the Magazine Publishers of America for the uninitiated - have launched a pilot programme to deliver digital magazines to students. The publishers involved, including Business Week and Hearst, hope to get around 4 to 5,000 subscribers via this test.

Will the PPA here follow suit ?

Top of the (digital) Pops

A warm welcome to digital publishing for BBC Magazines, who announced today that their teen magazine, Top Of The Pops, is going digital next month.

The magazine, like its eponymous TV show, had been consigned to the dustbin in print, so this marks a seismic change for the corporation.

Details of the new offering are sketchy, except to say that subscriptions will be pegged at £9.99 a year - substantially cheaper than the £2.10 that readers were previously expected to pay.

The Long Tail

Folio Magazine has a really interesting piece on "the long tail" - Chris Anderson's theory on economic demand.

It should be required reading for ANY senior magazine executive.

Find it here

Welcome Aboard !!

The latest addition to the digital fraternity are Cosmetic Surgery Answers Magazine

Best of luck !!

Over the moon

A nice addition to the growing portfolio of digital magazines is Mercury Moon Music, which you can find here.

Its a bit folksy, but encouragingly, they are proposing to do it regularly, and even charge for it.

Best of luck guys !

Grauniad leads the way

I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but well done The Guardian !! they've announced today that readers will be able to download a small 12 page version of the newspaper called G24, which they can then print out and read.

Targetted at commuters,its a big step forward in personalising content for users.

Provided they sub it of course.

Wiped clean

I was amused to see that America's favourite housewife and ex felon, the blessed Martha, has adopted downloadable PDF's on her website

Ironically, amongst the many useful household tips ("removing steak kives from your child" etc) there is a one page guide to expunging those nasty stains.

Personal as well perhaps ?

Undercover Agents

In a bizarre move, reminiscent of the newsstand, Zinio have created a separate business unit called (wait for it) Undercover Mags. Effectively, this is a "top shelf" site which is only open to 18 year olds and contains um.. "adult material".

Not unreasonable you might think, but get this - Penthouse is being flogged through the new site, but Playboy remains on Zinio.

Eh ? Is Playboy more consumer friendly or is it a contract issue.

I think we should be told.

The Times (they are a changin')

Times Online is this week soft-launching its first e-magazine, called Select, using repurposed content from the paper's weekend magazine and the Sunday Times.
Designed by Tomaso Capuano, the man behind the FT's luxury monthly colour magazine How to Spend It, the "e-zine" allows viewers to "turn" pages and interact with articles via the paper's website.

Select will include travel pieces and interviews with the likes of Frank Lampard and Gordon Ramsay. Times Online has signed up Jaguar as its sponsor and partner.

Digital readers "highly engaging" shocker !

Texterity, which offers digital magazines, has released the results of a BPA Worldwide-certified survey showing that 91% of readers take action after reading an ad in a digital edition. The survey was sent to 31,596 digital magazine readers of 45 different publications, both b-to-b and consumer. More than 20% of recipients completed the survey. According to the results, 83% of digital readers looked at an advertiser’s Web site; 41% forwarded information about an advertiser to a friend or colleague; 37% contacted an advertiser for more information; and 32% recommended a product or service. Perhaps most important, 24% of recipients said they purchased a product based on the ad in a digital edition.

FreE Books

Celebrate the 35th anniversary of free eBooks and the Project Gutenberg. For its birthday month of July, Gutenberg plans to offer free, permanent download access to over 1/3 million books.

So, save yourself about £10 a pop and get literate !!

Google goes Olive ?

From John Battelle's excellent Searchblog...


Despite rumors the past few weeks that Google was going to buy Olive for $75 million, after looking the software company up and down in a week of intensive interviews Google then walked away. Olive software converts various data files (like PDFs, microfilm) into xml, accessible to search.

Is it a coincidence that a large portion of Olive's employes are based in Israel and Google is opening new offices in Israel? Silicon Beat muses: Is Google turning into a Microsoft? Checking out the goods, and then going back and building it themselves? Or hiring away the better employees? Here's what one person said: "Google learned a LOT about Olive... everything."

Catalogue the future

A good report on eMarketer here, which demonstrates the rapid pace of catalogues moving online.

Last year in the US, emarketer estimates that online - only catalogues more than doubled from 2004.

The reason ?

Well print costs would be one, but the response from online catalogues is now outstripping their print cousins.

Over the past ten years, the three catalog categories showing the strongest growth were Automotive, which grew from 270 to 542 titles; Education, growing from 334 to 513 titles; and Apparel & Accessories, up from 677 to 750 catalogs.

De Tijd is turning

Well the Belgian newspaper of the same name is anyway...

This month, De Tijd, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges.

This is only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos,and the Guardian here in the UK.

While it is still very nascent technology - at this point, the e-paper cannot display color, offering just 16 shades of gray, and the screens are rigid - there is no doubt we are moving toward the type of accessible device outlined in Minority Report.

Oh well, enough dreaming, back to the 18th century broadband...

E by Gum

There's a interesting piece on e-book adoption from the BBC here.

Well worth a read, but its findings could well have been published 2/3/4/5 years ago, namely..

"But the biggest barrier to e-book world domination surely has to be the screen. An LCD display has much lower resolution than paper."

Polarisation

I came across a great new counter culture magazine today - www.polarinertia.com.

Some great pictures.

Keeping Counsel

ALM, has just announced the launch of digital editions of Corporate Counsel and Law Technology News. Access to the sites is free to qualified subscribers. Corporate Counsel, with a print circulation of 43,000, targets general counsel and in-house attorneys. Law Technology News, with a print circulation of 40,000, covers legal technologies, products and services.

Should stop them chasing ambulances anyway.

In Exact

In a move to have erstwhile editor Boris Johnson spinning in his grave (when he eventually reaches it), The Spectator has gone digital.

Using the Exact Editions platform, The Speccie hopes to provide overseas readers with a wb based solution to keep them in touch with whats happening here in Blair's Britain.

Expect a lot of expats in the Algarve will now be apoplectic over their screens instead of their Telegraph.

Join The Q

Its been a while since I looked at Q Mags site, but a recent conversation with Scott Johnson, their VP of sales made me check back with them (as my American cousins would say).

Its small steps, but they seem to have a few specialist titles on board - Armchair General, Tennis Magazine and Top Pair - which I was disappointed was actually a gambling magazine - to name but a few.

It'll be interesting to see how they manage to build on this toe hold against Zinio in coming months.

Penthouse View

Good news for the vertically challenged - those fruitless trips to newsagents, only to find the top shelf is out of reach, will soon be a thing of the past.

Penthouse Magazine is going digital.

Now styling itself as a "men's lifestyle magazine", Penthouse will use the digital platform of Zinio who already handle both Playboy and Mystique.

Who is going to be first to try the ultimate online/offline co - promotion ? A packet of screen wipes is the obvious thing....

Military Intelligence ?

Yes, yes I know - its an oxymoron.

However, Penton have found a use for it in their latest digital magazine,
Military Electronics.

Now I warn you ; this isn't at the cutting edge deisgn wise. But it is packed with useful information.

If you happen to be in a cave in Afghanistan for instance, with er "limited" access to a library, finding out about the capabilities of the latest American listening devices via a downloadable magazine could be very useful.

Just a thought.

Reading with Sony

I'm in Las Vegas for the annual techfest that is CES. Some interesting stuff in amongst all the usual parties, boozing and ahem "distractions"

In particular, I'm very interested in the Sony Reader. For years now, companies like Microsoft have been trying to get people to read content on a proprietary reader - with little success. Sony have tried before, but the difference this time is that the device is small, (about the size of a paperback), avoids backlighting (and hence eyestrain) and critically, they have a number of major publishers on board - specifically Random House and Penguin.

It'll be interesting to see how this does..

Happy Christmas

I'd like to wish all readers a very happy Christmas. Hope you can keep away from your screens for a few days !!

Back online in January.

Hard to Digest

Friend of the terminally unemployed and perennial draft excluder Readers Digest is going digital.

Zinio will be producing the digital copies, but before you get too excited, remember that once you are on the list, you'll never get off !!

Every page tells a story

Talk about revolutionary.

CNET, the website that talks tech (at shuddering length) has developed a new feature called - wait for it- "page turn".

This new feature allows users to, yes, turn the page of catalogues direct on the site.

Now if only Zinio had thought of that...

Get into the Grooves

Its enough to put the industry into a spin...

In December, Grooves Magazine, which is now 6 years old, is going digital only. It is of course being driven by ever increasing print costs, but like many of the turntablists the magazine covers, its editor is spinning the move to both fans and advertisers as a positive.

They are offering full colour pages to advertisers at a fraction of the cost of print pages, and readers of course will get a nice shiny new digital magazine on their desktops, courtesy of Texterity.

Now where's my copy of Dark Side of The Moon....

Can we go to the Zoo ?

Thats what all the kids will be asking once they get their hands on a digital copy of lads mag Zoo, EMAP's leading mens weekly here in the UK.

Its packed with fun features, giveaways and....

Oh alright then, yes its got lots of naked girls....

Oh well.

Zinio to quit UK ?

Rumours reach me that after just 8 months, Zinio are looking to reduce their presence in the UK to just a franchising operation. While this is not entirely unsurprising, given that sign ups to new ventures have been scarce, its not welcome news for the long term health of the industry.

Eeee Diets

As they say in Lancashire.

Well actually this is the website eDiets, which has a really nifty magazine which you can scroll though on its site.

Free to view as well.

Now all you have to deal with is the guilt of Xmas...

Not Exactly

Got a prototype version of a new service - Exact Editions - today.

Nothing out of the ordinary ; a fairly standard PDF layout, zoom functions etc, but the pages loaded slowly and by the look of things this is just a beta version, so no clue yet as to the payment mechanism.

More later.

Digital in Vogue

The doyenne of the British glamour press, Vogue magazine is teaming up with O2 to provide pages from the magazine straight to users mobile phones.

The initiative, which promises readers an "exclusive peak into the glamorous world of fashion", will form part of O2's new section, cunningly called "Style".

I, Pages

Canadian digital firm iPagez is entering the US market this month, claiming to have a raft of innovative features.

One of them had better be a bullet proof business plan.

The Future ? I think not

Much puff from Future USA on the launch of their new magazine Future Snowboarding.

To create a "groundbreaking digital magazine", they have used Magwerks' technology, which I wouldn't have predicted.

What I would have predicted (had they asked) is that it wouldn't work.

Which it doesn't.

Hey ho.

Creative accounting

"The floodgates will open."

That's the opinion of the editor of Accountancy Age, after his title announced they were going to include digital; subscribers in the audit figure.

The Press Gazette has the details

Digital Information

CMP owned Information Week is claiming that it will add 60,000 digital subscribers to its ratebase.

The more cynical observer might think this has something to do with a falling print base. Perish the thought.

Interestingly, they have opted for Olive Software's XML platform, due to its capacity for animating both editorial and advertising content.

American Accent

There's a new kid on the block - Accent Magazine. Targetted at college students, it claims to be a better alternative than existing print news magazines.

We shall see.

The premiere issue is downloadable as a Flash file - some 20mB, so you may need to be patient.

Publish for Profit

Folio Magazine, the trade journal of record for the magazine indutsry in the US, have put a Digital Magazine channel on their website.

While this in itself is worthy of celebration, the content is a good introduction to the benefits of "going digital" and although its skewed toward the BtoB market, there are a load of applications there for consumer publishers as well.

Free Magazines !!

To celebrate the launch of their new global network, Zinio are giving away sample copies of their new worldwide partners products. Lots to choose from including the intriguingly named
Baan Lae Suan.

Go here for the site

Enjoy

Habla Digital ?

Seems the war for foreign language readers on digital platforms is hotting up. This week, both Texterity and Zinio announced initiatives designed to attract overseas readers to their respective newsstands.

Zinio have cobbled together a "global network", encompassing titles from Spain, France, Sweden and a number of other countries. Meanwhile, Texterity yesterday announced that it will roll out what it is calling the first Spanish language interface for digital magazines.

The interface, designed to allow readers to “browse, navigate, save and search” Spanish magazines in the same language they are published, launches with a pair of b-to-b publishers—Stagnito Communications’ Industria Alimentcia and Watt Publishing’s Industria Avicola—and Meredith’s recently-launched Siempre Mujer getting the full-on digital treatment.

Let battle commence.

Online gamble

Future have copied the idea they tried first in 2003 to create a "pioneering new digital version" (sic) of Online Gambler.

No doubt in response to Dennis Publishing activity (with their Total Gambler product), the interactive version will be available to, and ignored by, readers of over a million other Future magazines, via CD and DVD covermounts.

Strikes me the only gamble being taken here is by advertisers pouring more and more money chasing ever more elusive players...

Miss Digital ?

As mentioned previously, Playboy are spending more and more time building their digital presence. There are now six different products available via Zinio, as the magazine continues to pioneer new routes to market in an attempt to tackle a Maxim - led market.

It may also have a good deal to do with Playboy missing its ratebase last month and dropping ad pages.

Must stop now, my wrist is getting tired........

Join the Q

Regular readers of this site (you know who you are) will know my fascination with the Q Mags site and its collection of industry ephemera.

The latest titles to join the list are Desktop Engineering, Embedded Systems and the improbably named Policy Today, which thinks that "principled decision making lies at the heart of republican democracy."

Hmm. One for Mr Bush's desktop methinks

Top Shelf

Looks like the floodgates have opened. Zinio have agonised over the placement of er "specialist" men's titles on their site for some while, so its interesting to note that there are now over 15 titles in this sector, with adult content much to the fore.

Indeed, Playboy's Lingerie Special is now number one in terms of sales, compared with a year ago, when it was PC Magazine.

Hope those Tablet PC's are wipeable.

Make Do !

O'Reilly's excellent Make Magazine have an excellent digital version. You need to be a subscriber to get the full version, but you can still download some samples as a PDF.

The make blog attracts around 100,000 page views a day ; which is by my calculation around 100,000 more than this blog.

Digital in growth shocker !!

A report from Zinio has outlined the fact that digital magazines are increasing their penetration of the media mix (or something like that).

Key facts from the survey, grandly entitled "The Digital Publishing Report" include -

• 33.7% growth in number of titles
• 25.9% growth in circulation
• 38.4% growth in deliveries

Consumer publications have higher average digital circulation, though more business publications have gone digital.

Use of rich media in digital publications grew 188% from Q1 2004 to Q1 2005, based on the report.

Digital providers control the lion's share of digital magazine distribution. 85.6% of all digital circulation was executed with a digital provider rather than by the publisher using PDF.

The Digital Alternative

Nxt Books have announced that they are working with a firm called Digital Alternatives (posts passim) in the UK.

Alternatives will be targetting the B to B sector and have announced that they have already digitised BRAD, the bible of magazines, newspapers and periodicals.

What a service to humanity.

Paper ? Pah

Nice piece by Seana Mulcahy on how digital is changing the way that people read their news.

Go here

IT's 100

Business Week are producing a special digital version of their IT 100 supplement.

This special issue covers the world’s top 100 technology companies. The digital version of the magazine is intended to showcase multimedia audio and video, including interactive executions of both rich editorial and advertising.

Sounds good.

Better late than never

Zinio has announced the signing of agreements with AccesoGroup in Spain, Zinio Systems Norden AS in Scandinavia and Taurus in Poland. Zinio said the companies will sell its products and services to magazine publishers locally and maintain online newsstands for direct consumer subscriptions.

Go digital - or your money back

Texterity are offering clients their money back if they are not satisfied with their move to the digital platform. Too good to be true ? Well, according to their spokesperson (the splendidly named Cimarron Buser - an anagram if I've ever seen one) the offer means "Within six months we will contractually agree to bring the digital magazine to a break-even point."

In English that means that Texterity agree to either a refund or that they will continue to work with the publisher free of charge to achieve success.

Of course there are caveats - the offer only applies to BtoB publications - but I think this is a good move. Texterity should be applauded for trying to kick start the market and it will be interesting to see how the other vendors respond.

Revenews

One of my favourite magazines - Revenue - is going digital with Zinio. This is great news for those of us outside the US, hungry for an affiliate marketing magazine that isn't full of smug self serving imbeciles telling you the blatantly obvious.

Like er Revolution for instance.

NXT Up

NXT Books has announced version 2.0 of its browser based interface. Promised improvements include a slicker interface, better graphics resolution and improved linking.

We shall see.

Citizen Caned

Citizen Culture, which apparently is a "magazine for the young intellectual" - an oxymoron if I've ever heard one - is aiming to go digital in September.

Good news you might think ; but no, this is yet another example of publishers reaching for the digital opportunity as a last resort. Evidently the New York based publisher is in "hiatus" following a disastrous debut on the newsstand, so naturally enough they are looking to a digital version to give them a more sensible cost base and a wider readership.

Which of course begs the question - why didn't they do this in the first place ?

Future Imperfect

Unbelievably, Future have decided their new magazine "Click4More" (sic) should be published on the NXTBook platform.

Having tried (unsuccessfully) to woo readers with a downloadable magazine on Zinio for 99p, they are now evidently changing tack and going for an online product with yet another propietary system.

Have these people never heard of open source ?

April Fools

Zinio's attitude to the UK publishing fraternity lurches from the ridiculous to the absurd.

According to sources, in the early days of dealing with Zinio in the US, you had to basically get on a plane at your own expense and then present yourself at their offices if you wanted to use the system - the ultimate in self referral.

Now, having puffed the launch of a UK office, it appears that they are using a third party to approach smaller publishers.

Which is particularly ironic considering that their agents appear to have handled no one smaller than Associated Newspapers.

Click2Bore

Hot on the heels of the demise of Broadband Now! comes the exciting news that Future are once again to turn their hands to publishing on the digital - only platform.

The project is imaginatively titled "Click4More" and is rumoured to be helmed by the former editor of .net, Paul Douglas.

Expect a design rich, content lite execution..

3.0 good reasons to try

Zinio have updated their reader to 3.0, and being somehwat of a purist in these matters, I was tempted to stick with the tried and trusted 2.0.

However, I'm delighted to say that the new version speeds up page viewing considerably, and although the shiny new toolbar is triumph of design over function, it is much more uer firendly.

Now all we need is some decent content..

New appointee for Zinio

Zinio have pulled in the former publisher of Popworld, Sarah Clegg, to head up their UK operations.

What's NXT for Advanstar

Advanstar selected NXTbook Media as its digital publishing vendor for its business publications, the company announced today.

Advanstar has had a working relationship with NXTBook since 2002, using its digital technology to help promote Advanstar’s trade shows.

The ones that haven't closed that is...................

Education, education, eduction

Good news for college professors in the US. Zinio are offering a sample issue of new magazine "Co Ed" (yes really), a campus oriented product that promises girls, sports, drink and more girls.

Miss Bryce, see me after class.

Time for a change

Folio has a great piece on Time Warners digital strategy here. Of particular interest is the fact that Time are using digital magazines as testers for possible print products - for example they have tested Your Diet as a digital offshoot of People and may launch this next year.

Pity other people aren't so bold.

Yes Dennis, I am talking to you.

Nexterity

Texterity have just released the latest version of their browser based viewer. And that's all I'm writing about it. It sucks.

The Stage 

All luvvied up

A surprise entrant (but welcome nontheless) to the world of digital magazines is The Stage, which intends ot put every issue published into digital format. The showbusiness trade title, which was launched in 1880, has so far only seen its back issues available on microfilm in London and New York.

Current owner and managing director, Catherine Comerford, the great grand-daughter of the co-founder, said "2005 will see the launch of the complete back issues of The Stage in digital format, making it available to everyone, wherever they live".

Gosh, thanks.

20 years before the Mast

Friday's news that Charles Mast, Ziff Davis' Director of Circulation, has left the company, should encourage some healthy speculation that he is on his way to join his erstwhile colleagues at Zinio.

Well if there wasn't any speculation before, I've just started it.

So there.

Domino ready to fall

Well on Americans anyway.

Conde Nast's new shopping magazine, Domino, has a really nice flash preview available for potential readers and advertisers alike here.

Digital Magazines

Digital Magazines

Get Active !!

Looks like VNU are testing Computer Active with the Zinio system.

Run on over to their site and you can get a free copy of the June 04 issue

Ch ch ch changes

BPA Worldwide’s board of directors announced several rule changes regarding digital versions of print business and consumer magazines and newspapers.

The board ruled that "publishers have the option of reporting e-mail alerts that a digital version has been delivered to the subscriber’s computer, actual downloads of the digital file by the subscriber or both." Those who report downloaded copies must do so throughout the report.

This rule change provides greater visibility for downloaded information.

A second rule change is that reporting nonqualified digital copies is "expressly disallowed."

Tough stuff. Wonder who they could be aiming at ?

The Great Adventure

Adventure Sports has signed on Texterity to be its digital delivery partner. The magazine will begin using Texterity's Published Web Format, making the magazine accessible electronically the same day the publication is distributed.

The publisher promises that advertisers will be able to receive direct feedback from their advertising via print ads which are multi-linked to advertisers' Web sites.

The magazine's digital subs will total 20,000 to start, pushing total distribution to over 50,000.

Well that's the first resolution of the new year broken at Adventure Sports then - no bullshitting indeed.

Let's (not) party like its 1999 again

With the year drawing to a close, a few new year's wishes ; well perhaps resolutions really, for the digital magazine industry.

1. Give it up

Well, for free anyway. The success of Home Computer Magazine has demonstrated what can be achieved if the product is unregistered, unlocked, and best of all free.

Do you really need that $1.99 Mr Ziff ? Well actually in your case....

2. Dress for success

Looking at the current crop of magazines in the digital format, its heartening to see how many products are designed specifically for the format. My favourites are the Magwerks titles, but there are many others using clever, innovative design that will get their readers attention. If you want to see what not to do, have a look at the drudgery of Business 2.0 online.

They'll be lucky to make it to 3.0 if they keep that up.

3. We all need standards

In this case just one will do. One of the biggest problems the industry faces is that we have around a dozen companes making fuck all each. And everyone with their own "reader".

Great.

What happens when Microsoft roll their own reader into Longhorn, and Adobe finally decide to concentrate on Acrobat that much more ?

4. Go local

For a major magazine publishing country like the UK not to have its own digital company is er "strange" to say the least. Let's hope someone takes the bull by the horns and gets there before the US..

It's the Law

Will the excitement never end ?

After last week's piece about Advertising Age comes the news that Newsstand have snapped up the National Law Journal to publish digitally.

With all those lawyers reading it, let's hope their DRM is up to scratch...

Digital comes of Age

Zinio today announced that they have secured the contract to distribute Ad Age, the magazine of record for yes, you guessed it, the advertising industry.

Cue dancing in the streets in San Francisco if not on Madison Avenue. Perhaps this will presage a boom in advertising in digital magazines.

However, you can't escape the delicious irony of the industry bible of advertising appearing on the desktops of hundreds of people who won't have a clue how to open it.

Call off the search

Some interesting news this week about Google. Buried in a list of patent applications by co founder Larry Page is one on a "Method for searching media". Innocuous enough, but a sign of things to come ?

Possibly. Because the most notable element of the application is the proposed ability of the search engine to search scanned printed media, or even digital magazines.

There are two key elements of the patent: a method for executing a permission protocol so that the publisher could authorize Google to display more text from the relevant publication; and storing scanned versions of printed documents along with data sets representing the ads that went with them.

What's driving this is that Google is finding it difficult to monetise news (quite possibly the only thing they share with the BBC) and is looking to CD, DVD and even audio book content to find other revenue streams.

The biggest drawback would appear to be getting permissions from publishers to get at their content, but if they (Google) do manage to get a subscription revenue stream going, that has got to be good news in pushing publishers (and their products) digital.

The Bard Of Boston

Yes he’s at it again. Pat Kenealy, CEO of IDG, shocked organisers at last week’s Digital Magazine Forum with a “warts’n all” appraisal of the progress (or lack of it) of digital magazines.

They can’t say they weren’t warned – three months ago he laid into the major search engines at a similar conference – and is rapidly acquiring a reputation for er “speaking his mind”.

The Register has some good coverage of what he had to say, but in their analysis they miss a fundamental point.

Namely, that Kenealy’s comments were aimed squarely at competitors ; and Ziff Davis in particular.

"The technology is being over-used by a few”, he opined, no doubt aware that his audience included several Ziff staffers and of course top brass from Zinio.

IDG’s relationship with Zinio is interesting, given that so many of its (Zinio’s) top management are ex- Ziff. And Kenealy hasn’t been slow in the past to point this out –for instance this from Mediapost…

“Kenealy, whose company publishes IT-professional-targeted titles like
Computerworld and Macworld, has been telling anyone who will listen that rival
publisher Ziff Davis is misleadingly pumping up its rate base for PC Magazine by
giving away free digital subscriptions. Kenealy even claims that Ziff Davis is
taking advantage of a cozy relationship with former employees to facilitate the
process.

IDG's gripe is that Ziff Davis is using sponsored or partner-paid
subscriptions, a common, though often criticized practice in the print world, to
provide consumers free subscriptions as part of larger purchases or in exchange
for personal data. Kenealy has a problem with Ziff's giving away digital
subscriptions in this manner because of they way they are tracked. “

Still, there is one area of his speech that was spot on, when he was talking about standards, and in particular the danger to the industry if there wasn’t some agreement.
He compared the fledgling digital magazine sector to the state of the laser printer market some years ago.

I’d go further – the industry is in some ways more like the automotive market, if every make of car ran on different types of petrol. Vendors need to sit down and agree some basic standards for auditing, advertising sizes etc, or the whole thing runs the risk of presenting as united a front as the current DVD debacle.

These mags work !!!

Just when I'd begun to despair of the industry, on the back of the latest round of "I'm tallest dwarf" discussions (of which more anon), along comes a company from Norway that has blown my socks off !!

Magwerks is the brainchild of Joakim Nilsen, a Norwegian, whose aforementioned company is producing three glorious digital products.

Music magazine, PlayMusic, Encore, for designers and a games magazine Probe are all produced on a platform designed by the company themselves.

Our regular reader will know that I'm not a massive fans of the "read once" type of approach favoured by Texterity and Olive, but these magazines are absolutely fabulous.

Scroll over the graphics and pictures expand ; click on the corners and the pages move.

Fabulous, ground breaking stuff.

Normal service resumed tomorrow.

Its a Digital World

IDG are giving PC World subscribers the opportunity to get a free copy of Digital World, their new quarterly supplement in the US.

IDG claim to have around 150,000 downloads of their PDF using the PC World list.

www.pcworld.com

BPA's hit parade

BPA Worldwide has unveilved its list of the top 25 BPA-audited business and consumer magazines, ranked by number of digital-only subscribers, for the first half of 2004. Previously, BPA only tracked digital versions of b-to-b magazines.

No real surprises - tech magazines like Ziff's EWeek are some way ahead of the competition, with 65,000 digital subscribers.

Although the audit supposedly covers "consumer" publications, I personally wouldn't put Java Developers Journal into my all time consumer list.

You can find the complete list at http://www.bpaa.com

A funny thing happened

On the way to the Digital Magazine Forum here in windy NYC.

Well, not to me specifically, but it does make for an enticing intro, wouldn't you agree ?

Because all I have to report from day 1 is on the interminable debate between circulation luminaries on "how to classify digital downloads" (See all media passim).

To give you some flavour of the quality of debate, try this from Mediapost's coverage..

"While the subject of downloads of digital magazine editions may have seemed messy, what actually constitutes a digital magazine appeared to be equally confusing during the audit bureau panel discussion, as well as throughout the day-long digital magazine forum. "

Promising, wouldn't you agree. In principle, everyone seems agreed that digital magazines are a "good thing". However, rival circulation monitors BPA and ABC have very different takes on how to best register digital circulations for their media buying clients.

Judging by the apathy and indifference most media agencies display toward anything innovative, I wouldn't say they are being rushed into finding a compromise...

House Calls

Some good news from the digital market - a conversation with the publisher of Home Computer Magazine reveals they have over 30,000 copies downloaded in the first week ! Creaking servers aside this is a good start.

Some good news then to offset the apparent cessation of Future's Broadband Now ! ; or rather Broadband Then.

The complete package

For all of you pondering what to buy a loved one for Christmas - the wait is over. In January, Summit Electronic Media, publishers of that august journal Packaging World, are launching a companion title.

Imaginatively titled Shelf Impact! (love the exclamation mark) it promises its 10,000 readers a wealth of information on integrating packaging into the overall media mix.

Book early.

Moving mainstream

Mediapost reports that the latest survey from Newsstand Inc shows a marked increase in mainstream acceptance of electronic editions.

While this is great news, there are two big caveats.

Firstly, the sample size is small ; only 762 respondents, which considering the size of some of the Newsstand products reach (national and international publications) is disappointing.

The second is that according to the survey, the majority of respondents haven't changed their media consumption as a result of digital editions. This isn't exactly what the majority of publishing partners will want to hear if they want advertisers to get excited about the new formats.

As to the revelation that Newsstand's audience is "particularly news hungry", well er "duh" - they are getting newspapers.....

A new start to the Week(ly)

Computer Weekly has added to the growing interest in the digital platform by publishing its latest audit via BPA.

Of its 112,000 subscribers, more than a quarter now receive their copy via digital delivery.