For The People

There's a great article on Time's digital magazine plans on Advertising Age.

In particular, it looks at the attempts by Time Inc, to switch readers of its flagship People Magazine onto a digital format. They are producing a unique issue called "Best Summer Ever".

Interestingly, there is overt blue chip advertiser support - Unilever, which has nine ad pages in "Best Summer Ever" and is its exclusive sponsor, got involved for the experience. "Is it a risk?" asked Irene Grieco, the Unilever senior U.S. lead print manager. "It might be. But we've always challenged our partners to come to us with new and innovative and unique opportunities."

Digital Magazines go Hollywood!

The Hollywood Reporter this week introduced The Hollywood Reporter, Digital Edition, an electronic replica of its daily publication.

In addition to English the e-magazine is available in 12 languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. “The global entertainment economy is a $54 billion market with a significant portion of that coming from outside the U.S. and with a need for news, data and analysis,” said Eric Mika, senior VP-publishing director at The Hollywood Reporter, in a news release.

Interestingly, the Reporter has used digital subscriptions to raise the base price of its print offering, thus gaining subscribers and margin at the same time.

NatMags floats Jellyfish

NatMags have now uploaded the first issue of Jellyfish Magazine, a digital ezine aimed at teen girls. Naturally enough, its is heavily "celeb" orientated (if Danielle Lloyd can legitimately be termed a celebrity that is) with a healthy dose of music - including download samples - fashion, TV, gossip and of course boys.

Like Monkey, its is based on the Ceros system, with lots of video, audio content and web links. Among the things I liked were the "click to rotate" feature on the shopping pages, and the fact that it links directly to a number of social media sites like Bebo and MySpace. Additionally, the magazine has marketed itself by producing behind the scenes videos for YouTube.

Only problem is the advertising - on which this publication will stand or fall. Only Garnier have supported the launch issue, and for the magazine to gain any traction, they will need more support from big name brands.

Texterity survey shows decline in print

About 44% of digital readers have decreased their use of print in the last year, according to a survey by Texterity, which produces digital publications. The BPA Worldwide-certified digital magazine reader survey was distributed online and generated about 12,000 responses. The survey found that 89% of respondents read the digital edition the same week they receive it while 42% read it immediately. It also found that 44% of digital readers have decreased their use of print in the last year.

Why digital magazines are bollocks

Now I’m never one to pick an argument…

Particularly not with someone who normally talks a good deal of sense; in this case Peter Kirwan and the excellent Fullrunner.

In the latest edition, Pete leaps to the defence of one of Future’s chief executives, Stevie Spring. At a recent magazine conference Ms Spring attacked Dennis Publishing for “talking bollocks” about digital magazines – and in particular Monkey.

Of course, this would have nothing to do with the paucity of Future’s own digital offerings – so far behind the curve they make Tom Moloney look like Bill Gates – or the fact that Sony chose Dennis ahead of Future to mail a million Playstation 3 promotional “digimags” to their database.

No, evidently she’s piqued at Felix Dennis and his ability to make a magazine “out of not very much”.

I’m intrigued. What would Ms Spring provide advertisers and readers instead?

The path to surfing goes green

The Surfer’s Path, the first truly ‘green’ surfing magazine, today launched a digital web edition of its magazine using the Exact Editions platform for delivery. This is the first time the full contents and some of the back issues have been made available online.

The current issue and archive are obtainable for subscribers to browse and search online.They are replicas of the print edition. A trial issue of the magazine in the Exact Editions service is available for testing and free reading from the site at http://www.exacteditions.com.

BLU for you

Another recent recruit to the growing "Web first Print later" fraternity is BLU Magazine, which launched in the US last month.

Its mission statement reads as follows -


Blu is the social, fashion and lifestyles sourcebook for the United States’ most discriminating single adults. Male and female single, confident, professional, affluent adults aged 30 years and older are the most underserved demographic in the consumer magazine community. Through utilization of a sophisticated, sleek format and sharp editorialization and reporting, Blu satisfies the intellectual side of educated, professional adults, while also catering to the whimsical, spontaneous personalities typical of unmarried affluents.

Er.... whatever that means. All I can say is that if you are thinking of launching on the Internet first then make sure that you design for the web rather than the page. BLU is full of text, reversed out and otherwise, and too many pictures are hard to read.

Must try harder...

Take a Load off

A new magazine (well for me anyway) out for the PSP and PC. Load Magazine covers film, music and games and best of all, is completely free to download.

E-Paper edging toward reality

Have a look at this report from Reuters which talks about the way that electronic paper is gathering hold in the R&D departments of several major tech manufacturers.

BBC Magazines goes digital with music mag

BBC Magazines Bristol is to launch its first digital magazine in a one-off promotion for the BBC Music Magazine Awards.

The specialist publisher is to mail a free 16-page digital magazine showcasing this year's winners of the annual awards, featuring video footage of performances and acceptance speeches from the event and streamed recordings of nominated artists. The editor's letter will appear as a video message.

The magazine will also offer links to HMV.co.uk, where readers will be able to buy the featured discs.

BBC Worldwide already publishes a digital version of Top Of The Pops with Zinio, but the one off will be published on the Ceros platform, which already hosts Dennis and IPC products

Gamerzines launch PS3Zine

Cranberry Publishing have just launched the latest in their excellent series of free games magazines - PS3zine. Each issue will contain games reviews, previews and of course lots of interactive elements.

They are fantastic products - being free - and in a demo less world, why pay £6 for a print version when everything you want is free ?

A measure of their popularity is that they have over 50,000 subscribers signed up to their existing products, so they have obviously tapped a vein with gaming consumers.

Sony teams with Dennis for PS3 promo

Sony is promoting the launch of its PlayStation 3 console by sending a bespoke digital magazine to more than 1 million of its target consumers.

Sony's media agency, Manning Gottlieb OMD, has teamed up with Dennis Publishing to produce a Formula One Championship Edition e-zine on the Ceros platform used to produce Dennis' digital men's magazine Monkey.

The 12-page e-zine contains 360 degree views of the Playstation 3, links to additional Formula One content, behind the scenes footage and video clips of the game.

Interestingly, Sony are not doing this through the publishers of the Official Playstation Magazine, Future PLC.

Missed opportunity there chaps.

New digital magazine course

I'm running a new course for the PPA designed for anyone interested in implementing digital magazines.

Lots of interesting stuff and hopefully the sign of growing interest

Contract magazines go digital

River Publishing have launched a digital magazine version of their Honda contract magazine, Dream.

The online edition, hosted at www.honda.co.uk/dreamonline, is sent to Honda's email database.
As well as replicating the edition, the Flash-based format also hosts videos and enables users to book test drives. Future issues of the electronic magazine will use bespoke content filmed by River's new digital division.

The department recently launched electronic projects for American Golf and Co-op Travel Group plans to roll out digital magazines for more of River's clients.
Advertisers will be encouraged to supply rich media copy, including Flash animation and TV adverts, to fit into the magazine's look and feel and encourage better response.

Hearst to test download products

Hearst Corporation, the magazines to radio US giant, has announced plans to test a downloadable version of its Seattle Post- Intelligencer newspaper. Unsurprisingly, (given the newspapers location) it has chosen to use Microsoft software for the pilot project.

Once the content is received, readers can view the material without being connected to the Web, Hearst said it may use the software to provide downloads of its other newspapers and magazines. It claims that the download will "take no more than two minutes".

Earlier this month, Hearst announced a partnership with Verizon Wireless to provide a mobile version of its "Jusr Seventeen" magazine for wireless subscribers.

Hello, Hello

Hello Magazine has opted for Zinio as its digital publisher and has announced that the new version will be available online as soon as the weekly magazine is published in print. This version is searchable, saveable and can be bought by the issue or through an annual subscription.

How quickly will OK! follow suit ?

Its a World of Property

Outbound Publishing's flagship title "World of Property", has launched a digital version, using parent company Johnston Press proprietary reader.

Called ePaper, the reader is obviously optimized for newspaper print rather than glossy magazines, and hence the effect is somewhat grainy and hard to read. I also found the zoom in and out feature clumsy and some of the links were dead.

More work needed.

Sony gets emagazine from Dennis

Sony is rolling out an email marketing campaign in conjunction with Dennis Publishing as part of a wider push for its Sony Vaio laptop.

The campaign centres around a digital magazine which has been created for the purpose of promoting the Sony Vaio laptop to 400,000 readers on Dennis Publishing's subscription database.

The digital magazine includes voxpops, demos, an interview with David Weeks, the UK marketing manager for Windows Vista, and editorial content from PC Pro magazine.

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.