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 ?