Digital Magazine Publishing Handbook

(1)

DIGITAL

MAGAZINE

PUBLISHING

Nicholas, Coburn, Van Doren, MacArthur

Digital Publishing Tips

for Creating Digital

Magazines in a Tablet

Publishing World

(2)

Mequoda Team Advisory Board

Report Authors:

Don Nicholas Ed Coburn Mary Van Doren Amanda MacArthur

Terms of Use

All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, faxing, emailing, posting online or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the Publisher.

All trademarks and brands referred to herein are the property of their respective owners. All references to Mequoda™ and the seven Mequoda Website Publishing Models™ are trademarks of the Mequoda Group, LLC.

Legal Notices

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for error, omissions or contrary interpretations of the subject matter contained herein.

The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes responsibility for the use of these materials and information. Adherence to all applicable laws and regulations, both referral and state and local, governing professional licensing, business practices, advertising and all other aspects of doing business in the United States or any other jurisdiction, is the sole responsibility of the purchaser or reader. The author and publisher assume no responsibility or liability whatsoever on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of these materials. Any perceived slights of specific people or organizations are unintentional.

For More Free White Papers:

http://www.MequodaFree.com

Don Nicholas

CEO & Lead Consultant Ed Coburn

Chief Content Officer Aimee Graeber

Chief Technology Officer Laura Pittman

Chief Operating Officer Amanda MacArthur Managing Editor Mary Van Doren Lead Copywriter Norann Oleson Analytics Manager Nancy Horan Systems Director Michael Phillips

Senior Information Architect Lowell Allen

Senior Information Architect Ann-Marie Trebendis Operations Manager Contributing Editors: Kim Mateus Christopher Sturk Jane Zarem Peter A. Schaible Patrick Hughes Michelle L. Rodriguez Jeanne S. Jennings Roxanne O’Connell

Active Interest Media American Lantern Press American Quarter Horse Association

American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries Biblical Archaeology Society Business & Legal Resources Capitol Information Group Center for Science in the Public Interest

Ebner Publishing International Inc.

Farm Progress Companies Hoffman Media

Natural Health Advisory Institute

Oxford Media Group Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School Prime Publishing Psychotherapy Networker Retirement Capital Strategies Revolution Golf

The Successful Investor The Motley Fool

Vida y Salud Media Group

Contact Information

Mequoda Group, LLC Customer Service

(617) 217-2559

225 Franklin Street, 26th Floor

Boston, MA 02110

(3)

Introduction

(5)

Digital Magazines Will Dominate

Tablet users will prefer digital to print in the next seven years

Did you ever think that consumers would prefer digital magazines over print magazines? We do, and we think it’ll happen within the next seven years. And that judgment isn’t even based on speculation.

The 2013 Mequoda Tablet Study1 revealed that in 2013, 55% of Internet users own or have access to a tablet.

If growth occurs at the same rapid pace we’ve been witnessing thus far, we predict that market penetration will be at 85% by 2020.

Our study, which surveyed over 1,200 tablet users, showed 26% prefer digital magazines to print magazines. Keep in mind that the iPad (the leading tablet in our study) was released barely three years ago. 0 to 26% in three years? Remarkable!

(6)

At the same rate of growth, we predict that number will rise quickly to 77% by 2020 as digital magazines get better and conform to the user experience that subscribers expect.

We predict that by 2020, 65% of adult US Internet users will prefer digital

magazines to print magazines. To get this number, we calculate that the percent of consumers who prefer digital magazine over print magazines is equal to the

percent who have access to a tablet (85% by 2020), times the percent who prefer the digital editions (77% by 2020). In 2020, that calculation is 77% x 85% = 65%. And how can we make such a bold statement when people still claim to like the feel of paper?

Digital magazines are better in at least seven ways:

• Timely – When the issue is released, it can be viewed and downloaded instantly. For news-based magazines especially, this is crucial. It’s even important for those who look forward to reading the latest celebrity gossip as it hits the newsstands.

• Portable – When given the choice to bring seven magazines on a 12-hour flight, or an iPad mini, which takes up the least amount of space?

(7)

• Collectible – Just as tablet users collect apps, they can collect magazines. Magazine apps are increasingly allowing subscribers to clip and save certain articles of the magazine too, which makes it even easier to replace print. And again, apps take up a lot less space than print magazines! • Searchable – Usability of print magazines has never been optimal.

Sometimes it’s hard even find the index amongst the pages of ads. Searchable (and tapable) magazines reduce the barrier to engagement. • Shareable – App publishers are getting savvy about allowing subscribers to

share content. In a social media driven world, customers want to share everything with everyone, a feature of print that simply doesn’t exist naturally.

• Video enhanced – Thirty years ago, science fiction films predicted that we’d be watching video news clips in our print magazines. That was just silly. Digital magazines with video tutorials, interviews, and even video advertisements make much more sense!

• Audio enhanced – Along the same lines, subscribers enjoy listening to sound clips, interviews and advertorials, something not even possible in the print medium.

Tablets have bridged the gap between magazines and magazine websites. They’ve created a complete hybrid of information. Once tablet users actually see and engage with a digital magazine, they’re more likely to subscribe.

The rapid consumer adoption of tablets, and an early preference for digital magazines over print magazines by their users, leads us to conclude that a long-range digital publishing strategy is imperative to the survival and prosperity of every magazine publisher.

That strategy should consider format, partners, and a premium subscription website to be used as a home base for all paid magazine subscribers. Mequoda advises and guides its clients on achieving these goals, and you must begin to chart your course, too.

While it’s certain that format and platforms will shift, it seems clear that the web will remain a nexus for all consumer activity and the number one application for tablet users.

(8)

Digital Magazine

Fundamentals

(9)

The Perfect Digital Magazine

Nine characteristics of a digital magazine that are defined by the user experience, and dictate the future requirements of what will become the template for digital magazine publishing

success

We have seen the future of magazine publishing, and it’s paperless. It’s not only we publishers who think so.

Today, many consumers have begun predicting the demise of print publications. Pay-for-access online content is gaining newfound acceptance, and e-readers and computer tablets are enjoying soaring popularity. Many of the publishers we work with generate more than 10 percent of their new subscription sales from digital channels.

So, is it possible? Will all magazines be digital in the not-too-distant future? Whether that “not-too-distant future” is three years, five years or 10 years away, we see the inevitable metamorphosis. The 10 percent of the literate population that consumes the lion’s share of all written information has begun to devour digital content on new, intriguing and attractive platforms that are convenient, portable and — there’s no denying it — fun!

Will the digital magazine template required for tablet publishing success redefine the medium we now call magazines?

What characterizes a magazine in the future, as many publications transform from print to digital and deliver content on a tablet computer that’s part netbook, part phone, part personal digital assistant, and part mobile Internet device?

What is the true essence of a magazine in the digital delivery world of today and beyond?

What is a magazine? Our criteria may surprise you.

The magazine is a reading experience like no other.

What has made the medium so successful over the past 100+ years? What brought it to its initial success?

(10)

How has the magazine survived as initially radio, and later television challenged the medium for readers’ time and attention?

What differentiates a magazine from a book, or a website, or any other collection of written content?

I have always loved magazines! But frankly, over the years, I’ve wondered if the magazine, as a medium would survive. And now, with the advent of the digital

tablet — the perfect platform for digital magazines — I am no longer worried that the magazine medium will disappear.

In fact, I believe it will evolve and thrive. Here’s why.

The essential core characteristics of a magazine are those that define the user experience.

The attributes that define a magazine are not necessarily better or worse than those that define other media — websites, movies, books, etc. They are simply different

in terms of the user experience.

The combination of a magazine’s attributes make it desirable and “survivable” for some part of the reading population, for certain topics.

The magazine will survive because magazine lovers will continue to demand this magazine user experience, which transcends its physicality.

Paper or tablet, the essential attributes of a magazine will not change. Consumers are not going to let publishers change the characteristics of a magazine that have made the medium so successful over the years.

That it has traditionally been printed on paper is not an essential characteristic of a magazine. Some publishers will inevitably disagree, but they are mistaking

physical appearance for user experience.

Here’s what I believe is the core of a magazine. As your publication is

transformed from print to tablet, make certain it doesn’t lose even one of these essential attributes, which define the user experience.

#1: Magazines are linear.

Magazines are designed to be read from front to back. Magazines have covers and a table of contents. Magazines are arranged in a series of articles.

(11)

Magazines are not meant to be read in their entirety. For the three decades that I’ve been a publisher, the average time spent with the average issue of a magazine — whether a weekly, monthly or quarterly — is about an hour.

Compare that with other media, where the articles constitute hundreds of pages, are arranged with taxonomies and hyperlinks, and are not linear.

Hyperlinking is not linear. Any medium that enables or encourages the reader to bounce around among hundreds or thousands of articles is not a linear medium.

#2: Magazines are finite.

Magazines share this characteristic with books, movies and other media, but not Internet websites. The web is an infinite medium, with no beginning or end. You can never finish it.

Humans desire closure, which magazines provide. A reader can say, “I have read the April issue of Vanity Fair. I finished it on Sunday.”

And that doesn’t mean the reader has read every word and studied every photo. It means he started at the cover, read the table of contents, read the articles that were of interest (usually a combination of reading and skimming), and eventually put the magazine down and declared, “I’m done with that. And now I’m looking forward to the next issue.”

But no one has ever said she has finished the Vanity Fair website. And no one ever will finish it.

#3: Magazines are periodic.

Weekly, monthly or quarterly, magazines are periodic, based on how often the user wants to consume content, and how often the content is needed and changing. If you’re a knitter, and you need six new knitting projects each year, a knitting magazine that’s delivered six times annually is ideal for you.

If you’re a political news junkie and you love to catch up on the politics of the week on rainy Sunday afternoons, then a weekly subscription to The American

Spectator or The Nation is your ideal.

(12)

publishers to lower frequency. When publishers complete the switch from print to digital, we’ll pay greater attention to the natural organic frequency of magazines, rather than the economic frequency that has been imposed by postal delivery. Some users will wish there were a new issue of Vanity Fair published every Friday afternoon instead of monthly. Or published with 75 pages every week instead of 300 pages once a month.

Such a publishing schedule might capture an hour of the user’s time each week instead of an hour monthly. And if a publication meets the users’ frequency needs, they will be more engaged with both the editorial content and advertisements in the medium, and more inclined to buy more affiliated publications and products. Overall, customer satisfaction and subscriber retention rates will increase.

#4: Magazines are cohesive.

Part of the appeal of a magazine is that it’s been edited and curated. Its editors have culled out the most interesting and most relevant content for the reader. The content is not an isolated collection of articles or stories. Instead, the editorial content is connected and cohesive. Frequently there’s an introductory letter from the editor that creates context for the content that follows.

The whole (the collection of curated articles) is greater than the sum of the parts. The cohesive property of its editorial content is core to great magazine publishing.

#5: Magazines are portable.

Users can fully experience a magazine on the beach or on the toilet. Tablet computers do not diminish this experience.

But laptops, desktops, e-readers and smart phones were not adequate media for the digitization of magazines. Going forward, tablets will do for magazines what e-readers have done for books; they will kick-start a resurgence of reading among literate people who consume elite media.

#6: Magazines are textual.

(13)

Most Americans are not regular readers and are appallingly ignorant of anything even remotely resembling enlightened thought. Unfortunately, this condition will not change with new delivery platforms. Television will continue to be the mass medium.

Newspapers, magazines and books are all elite media as compared with television because they are textual. Magazines and magazine articles are “text first;”

photographs are ancillary. This will not change as magazines are delivered on tablets.

Editorial content, the art of storytelling, and the ability to write a paragraph that paints a picture with words and enables the user to close her eyes and visualize what the writer is describing, is not going away.

Readers live in the world of ideas. The written word is their raison d’être.

Magazines are an elite experience, with the written word what readers enjoy most. But what 70 percent of Americans don’t have is the magazine experience on a regular basis.

#7: Magazines are collectible.

People like to own magazines.

As a child, I lived in a household that collected and displayed every issue of

National Geographic and Reader’s Digest magazines.

Steve Jobs said that while there’s a small group of consumers that wants to own television shows, most want to rent.

But many magazine subscribers collect their back issues. For some specialty magazines such as Sunset and Interweave Knits, as many as 70-80 percent of subscribers keep their back issues for future reference.

At a magazine website, users must be able to download an issue of the magazine. If not, it’s not a magazine website.

Going forward, magazines will be universal and searchable

In the future, magazines will not be limited by platform. Readers (subscribers) will expect to be able to access the content of your magazine on any platform that

(14)

delivers four-color-saturated, editorial content. Currently, that means desktops, laptops and tablets.

Publishers will make their magazines available on the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, Kindle Fire and all other lightweight, portable, touchscreen, tablet-sized, personal computers, regardless of operating system.

Users will expect their subscription content to be available to them everywhere. Publishers will not risk disappointing them by making exclusive platform alliances. Additionally, in the future, a magazine delivered on a digital platform must be searchable.

Whether he previously read an article in Sunset and is now actively planning a Hawaii vacation, or previously read an article in Consumer Reports and is now preparing to buy a kitchen appliance, the user wants to be able to revisit and find specific information.

Why every publisher will need a subscription website

In 2013, every publisher must build a subscription website that is the nexus for all the other platforms.

Of course, the subscription website must enable the user to experience their magazine using all these criteria.

With a companion website, publishers will disaggregate all the magazine content and create a searchable content database.

While the traditional print magazine could only be searchable in a linear review of past issues, a companion magazine website enables the publisher to offer

subscribers a searchable HTML database of editorial content.

In 1997, we advised Consumer Reports magazine to publish on two platforms and offer two separate subscriptions. One is the print magazine, for a linear, one-hour, once-a-month experience. The other is an online database — call it a reference book or even an encyclopedia, if you like — for researching previously published editorial content in preparation for making a purchase.

We would offer the same advice today. And we would recommend the launch of a second website — a truly subscription website — that would enable subscribers the nine magazine user experiences we have described above.

(15)

Note the difference between a subscription to the reference book website and a subscription to the magazine content website. The magazine website would enable users to buy and download individual issues or a 12-month subscription.

The magazine website would power the digital issues, viewable on the iPad and other tablet platforms, and would have a searchable archive of all the editorial content that appeared in the magazine as a subset of the reference book website. The subscription magazine website and the subscription online reference book are different products with different uses. These differences are detailed in our

handbook on subscription website strategy.

The Consumer Reports reference website is used exactly like a book. The average subscriber accesses it 2.7 times annually for 5-10 minutes each time.

In contrast, the average Consumer Reports magazine subscriber spends 50-60 minutes per month with each new issue.

Subscribers access the online reference book for solutions. They read the magazine for mastery.

Users can buy either the subscription magazine, or the subscription reference book, or both.

What do you think are the essential elements of the perfect magazine template?

As we prepare our digital publishing strategy, it’s clear that our digital editions will climb from a single-digit percentage of revenue into double-digit numbers. Understanding the core modality of our digital magazines along with the need to create magazine templates that display text, photos, and video in a format

appropriate to the leading caplets is essential to powering that growth rate. As readers become more familiar with digital magazines, their expectations will rise above what can be met with a simple replica digital magazine template. The need to resize our magazine pages for these smaller formats will become required “table stakes” for success.

(16)

The History and Future of Digital Magazines

Mainz, Germany, 1439: Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith, invents movable type

technology. This launches the information age, and the use of the printing press all over Europe even leads to a name for the new information media, the press.

Germany, 1663: The Western world’s first magazine, Edifying Monthly

Discussions, is published. The magazine industry is born.

It took 224 years for an entrepreneur to harness the printing press for

generating what we now know as magazines, and create an entire new industry.

London, England, June 20, 1981: The Economist mentions the World Wide Web

in an article about CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

United States, Aug. 12, 1981: IBM releases its first personal computer.

United States, Oct. 27, 1994: The first commercial magazine website, HotWired,

is launched by Wired magazine. The digital magazine publishing industry is born.

It took 13 years for the magazine industry to jump on the computer

bandwagon.

California, United States, April 3, 2010: Apple releases the iPad.

United States, May 26, 2010: Wired magazine’s iPad edition goes live and sells

24,000 copies in the first 24 hours. Condé Nast is only slightly behind Wired. The digital magazine publishing industry is born again.

It took 53 days for the magazine industry to begin leveraging the iPad.

United States, Jan. 17, 2013: Forrester announces that in the three years since the

iPad was released, 200 million tablets have been sold worldwide. By contrast, they note, it took the laptop 10 years to sell 27 million units. And today the laptop is being abandoned for tablets.

United States, April 9, 2013: The iPad newsstand includes 8,419 magazine apps.

Amazon, creator of the Kindle tablet, has 609 magazine apps.

(17)

readily available as any other product on the market today. Anyone who doubts that the iPad is the most important media-related

technological innovation in all of human history should re-read those dates. If speed of adoption indicates affection, then consumers and the magazine industry are truly, madly, deeply in love with tablets.

And the exciting thing for those of us who live and breathe magazines is that we get to live through this incredible era!

The other exciting, but also sobering, thought is that the iPad has clearly become the savior of our industry, once on the verge of extinction. The iPad and its competitor tablets are perfect for lean-back consumption of content, in a way that computers never could be – who wants to sit at a desk to relax with their favorite magazine? – and consumers are increasingly demanding rich digital content that print obviously cannot deliver. Finally, tablets are more portable than laptops, but have a large enough screen to make reading content comfortable.

Tablets, led by the iPad, are hotter in the marketplace than anyone ever imagined. Forrester has projected that 112.5 million US adults, or 34.3%, will own a tablet by 2016. In Europe, that number is 105.7 million, or 30.4%. And that’s small potatoes: Forrester also believes that the Asian Pacific region is growing in tablet ownership so fast that it will be the home of 34% of all tablet owners worldwide by 2017.

Caution: iPad ownership in Asia, Eastern Europe and South America is currently lagging behind to the extent that magazines trying to reach the digital audience there may have to rely on iPhones for the time being. And reading magazines on iPhones is problematic.

At the same time, the Alliance for Audited Media reported in February 2013 that the number of US magazines sold on tablets and other mobile platforms in the second half of 2012, while still small as a percentage of overall magazine sales, more than doubled from the same period in 2011. There are 289 titles with digital editions audited by AAM, which saw 7.9 million sales, up from 3.2 million in the same period a year earlier.

(18)

Consumers quicker to adapt than digital publishing industry itself

Oddly, many of the publishers we talk to regularly still haven’t recognized the significance of the tablet to their own survival. Today’s tablets are not the boring black-and-white experience of the early Kindle, which was designed for a book reading experience. These tablets deliver a user-friendly, four-color publishing platform.

The iPad has taken off well beyond Apple’s expectations, and I suspect Steve Jobs – who initially considered content consumption a minor “hobby” use for the Apple tablet – will go down in history not for the Mac or even the iPhone, but for the iPad, in exactly the same way Johannes Gutenberg did almost 600 years before him.

For awhile there, it was touch and go for digital magazine publishing. Some of us feared that the industry would collapse before the right technology came along. But today we’re thrilled that both the reading public and the digital publishing industry have so quickly adopted the tablet as the lifeline it is today.

Indeed, the data starting to flow indicates that consumers might even love reading magazines on tablets more than they do in print. As reported in FOLIO:, Time Inc. has been researching its subscribers since it launched its app, and those readers say they return to view the same issue close to five times, and spend about 40 minutes with each tablet edition, comparable to the average for print.

Better still, reports Condé Nast, their tablet subscribers (including those who are tablet-plus-print subscribers) are renewing their subscriptions at a higher rate than print-only subscribers – and they’re also paying higher prices for their renewal subscriptions.

Certainly, some publishers are farther along than others in riding the tablet train. Generally speaking, FOLIO: notes in Digital Magazines 2013, the larger the company, the faster and farther the tablet adoption has come. The MPA Swipe 2.0 conference (their poorly-named conference on digital magazines) speaker list was filled with Hearst, Condé Nast, and other large-circulation publishers discussing their latest app launches, or even relaunches.

But that doesn’t mean smaller niche publishers shouldn’t get in on the action. While Forbes magazine has an absolutely awesome, technology-rich app, let’s not forget the comparatively tiny Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR), whose digital

(19)

magazine publishing strategy has powered revenues unimagined by the publisher before the advent of the tablet.

BAR is the publication of a nonprofit organization, and has roughly 50,000 unique

visitors monthly. Its digital edition drove 6.4% of the organization’s revenues in 2012, even though digital wasn’t launched until October of that year, and that rate doubled in the first two months of 2013.

Digital magazine publishing and you

Obviously, Mequoda urges every publisher to get going with a digital edition, whether you’re BAR or Forbes, or something in between. The monetization of your content will go through the roof for a plethora of reasons.

First, as FOLIO: notes, tablet editions open you up to younger and more affluent readers. Usually you can get one or the other in your audience, but not both: This is the best of both worlds. In addition, with the cost of printing and mailing print issues eliminated, your content can be “delivered” and read all over the world. Then there’s advertising. You probably already know that advertisers are fleeing print for digital in droves, but did you know that you can charge more for those digital ads? Rich content enhanced with extra photos, slideshows, videos and audio content such as that seen in Forbes and The New Yorker is worth more to readers, keeps them engaged longer, and of course, builds a bigger audience base. Not only that, but many platforms allow for interactive buying from within an ad. At Wired, 2012 saw digital ad revenues hit 50% of its total, and The Atlantic hit 59%. Some observers are cautious, but with the rapid and enthusiastic adoption of mobile magazine reading by consumers, we’re optimistic here at Mequoda.

There are dozens of companies out there looking for your business in translating your print product to a mobile edition. BAR, our modest-sized client, partnered with BlueToad, and Forbes went with MAZ for its fancier version.

Of course, if you can do it in-house, the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is the industry standard, although arguably not the best tool. We’re big fans and partners of Mag+ which offers comparable functionality to Adobe DPS at a price that’s much more comfortable for most small and mid-size publishers. (See the next section for more on digital magazine publishing software.)

(20)

Digital Magazine Publishing Software

Publishers have been trying digital magazine publishing software during the last few years in hopes of creating the best digital products for their audiences. And like everything else in digital magazine land, digital magazine software has evolved at light speed since we made our initial recommendations.

Here’s our latest look at the magazine software landscape.

Major digital magazine publishing software options

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite: The Adobe Publishing Suite

is one digital magazine publishing software option that offers a complete digital publishing solution. It allows users to publish for print, the web, and tablets seamlessly. Whether selling digital products or using digital products to develop larger audiences, Adobe has created an option that brings content layout, graphics, illustrations, and distribution to digital publishers.

However, getting into DPS Enterprise requires an upfront cost of more than $50,000, and Adobe also charges $.35 per download. This makes DPS best suited for large, multi-title publishers – 10 publications or more. Some of our earliest clients to jump into the digital space, such as Interweave, were such multi-title operations. But because Mequoda tends to champion the little guy – that is, small, independent niche publishers – we’ve identified another provider as the best choice for them.

But because Mequoda tends to champion the little guy – that is, small, independent niche publishers – we’ve identified another provider as the best choice for them – Mag+.

Mag+: A spin-out company derived from Bonnier Corp.’s very early Popular

Science app, Mag+ is our new go-to provider. Full disclosure: We’ve signed a

partnership agreement with them and direct our niche clients with one to three titles their way.

We find that Mag+’s feature set and functionality are similar to Adobe, and also support our best practices such as content reflow, including HTML links and other

(21)

interactive features. But Mag+ is simply more affordable for small publishers, both the base price and the entitlement price for downloading issues to clients’ subscribers.

You’ll pay just $599 per month to publish to all devices, and about $.04 per download, depending on the size of the issue. And unlike Adobe, Mag+ allows publishers – including our clients who use Haven Gate, our comprehensive premium subscription management program – to host their digital magazines themselves. So you don’t even have to pay that entitlement cost.

This also allows you to eliminate the newsstand middleman and keep the cut you’d normally owe them for each issue sold. Another benefit: You also control your own subscription offers, including copy, price and incentive testing, not to mention offer tracking and data harvesting.

Another benefit of Mag+, in our experience, is that the culture there is more compatible with ours as champions of the independent publisher. Their executive team is open and very willing to answer questions and work with small publishers. At Adobe, not surprisingly, you’ll find a closed culture where you’re routed to resellers who often know less than you do about digital magazine publishing, and little if any support comes from Adobe itself.

Frankly, we expect that Mag+ will eventually pass Adobe and take over the #1 slot, because there are simply more independent small titles than there are companies like Hearst, Meredith and Time Inc.

GTxcel: Texterity has merged with Godengo – and created a mystifying new brand name – to both provide websites for magazines and create digital editions and mobile magazine apps. Their multi-channel approach is available to audiences in digital, on the web, and through mobile, providing readers and advertisers a modern experience.

BlueToad: Similar to GTxcel’s offerings, BlueToad provides digital magazine publishing software for digital editions and mobile apps. BlueToad takes PDFs and turns them into viewable formats online. We have some clients who jumped into digital publishing before Mag+ arrived and found BlueToad fit their needs satisfactorily.

As the magazine and newsletter industries continue down the path of digital evolution, new product solutions will reach the market.

(22)

Launching a Digital Magazine

Some industry insiders are still skeptical about the power of digital magazines. And they’re still ignoring them. At Mequoda, we urge our clients to begin the process of launching a digital publication yesterday, because, as you know if you follow our posts on Mequoda Daily, we firmly believe the future of our industry lies in mobile publishing.

I know some publishers feel paralyzed by the idea of a new process. After all, this isn’t like launching a direct mail campaign, or selling advertising, or redesigning your magazine, or any of the things publishers have done for decades.

But it’s not as complicated as it seems. Because we’re always here to help, here are the five steps you must take to launch your first digital magazine, whether you’re starting with a legacy product or you have a brand new digital only publication in mind.

If you read through this list, you’ll know exactly what to expect launching your digital publication. This is exactly what we do with our clients, and it’s true whether you’re starting with a legacy product or you have a brand new digital-only publication in mind. In fact, about a third of our clients don’t have a legacy publication at all and exist only online. That means that while they don’t have print material to draw on, they do have their portal, blog or video content they can use to create a digital-only magazine.

So fear not. Let us walk you through the process and hopefully propel you into action.

Launching digital magazines: Step 1

The very first thing a budding digital publisher must do is decide on the format of the magazine. Will the magazine be a simple replica, or offer enhanced features (replica-plus)? If you follow Mequoda best practices, you’ll choose to reflow your print content for maximum readability. That means redesigning each page in a vertical format, so long articles flow into bottomless pages and the reader swipes vertically to read the full articles.

You’ll also include as many live hyperlinks as possible for additional resources – both the links included in your print product and new ones that you’ve added just for the digital product. Consumers tell us they love having extra information and content that they can’t get in the print product. If you just upload PDFs of your print pages, you’re not taking advantage of the technology.

(23)

As we’ve noted already, Mequoda has a partnership agreement with Mag+, a company we’ve chosen because of its wide range of options for publishers and its accessibility and affordability to smaller operations like those of our clients. We urge you to check them out, along with other options such as Adobe, GTxcel and BlueToad.

Adding interactive elements to your digital magazine is essential. And the thing consumers love most about tablets is video. This may sound daunting, but don’t assume this is out of your reach. Existing DVD or downloadable video content can be repurposed. You can start producing video content of your own, or at least dip your toes in the water by reaching out to bloggers and others in your niche who might have videos they’d be willing to share with you.

One of our clients began just that way, and soon found that demand outpaced the supply of existing video content. That gave them the motivation and confidence in the market to start creating their own videos.

In addition to video, you could at least deliver photo galleries of images that didn’t make it into the print product, or behind-the-scenes shots or similar material. Finally, you should be prepared to have at least one bonus article, with interactive elements, in every digital issue to enhance value.

Two words: Subscription website. If you don’t have one, create one. Mequoda clients use our comprehensive premium subscription management program called Haven Gate to launch a premium subscription website as part of their product lineup.

There are a number of advantages to having a subscription website related to your print and digital magazines. First, it helps you develop a relationship with your readers and keeps them engaged with your brand. And since you have other products to promote (you do, don’t you?), it gives you the perfect platform to do just that.

Having a subscription website associated with your print or digital products also allows you to sell subscriptions and back issues yourself, instead of relying on Apple and other newsstands – which in turn means you get to keep the cut you’d have to give those third parties.

(24)

You also control your subscription offers, including copy, price and incentive testing, not to mention offer tracking and data harvesting.

Above all, having that premium subscription website means you can bundle your products – website, digital and print – in a way that drives an increase of 30-40% in per-customer revenue.

What’s more, because the average customer stays with you for about three years, you’ll be getting $90 from that customer instead of $60 over that lifetime.

Choose your pricing strategy. Take this example from the Biblical Archaelogy Society (BAS) to heart:

• Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) digital at $19.95

• BAS digital library on the premium subscription website at $29.95 • BAR digital + BAS library at $34.95

• More than half of BAS’ sales are for the highest priced product – $15 more than the lowest priced product.

• The second highest sale price point is the middle price. Few consumers bother with the cheapest product!

Determine your marketing strategy. This means establishing a schedule to integrate digital magazine promotions into daily, weekend and spotlight emails that you send out to email subscribers from your portal. (You do have a portal, don’t you? Right there associated with that premium subscription website you should also have, right?)

You should plan to promote your digital product once every six weeks or so. We have plenty of advice for using email to market your products, in case you’re unsure.

That wasn’t so bad, was it? Mequoda has already worked out the process, so you don’t have to stress over it. Whatever choices you make, at least now you know the outline of the process.

(25)

Digital Magazine Design

(26)

The Short + Sweet of Magazine Apps

Six best practices in digital magazine publishing, plus five definitions from the new digital age

Now it’s time to take a look around and quantify some best practices that we’ve noted in researching apps and digital magazines.

First, some definitions. Terminology is changing daily, as it always does with new technology and new products, but for now we should at least attempt to clarify a few things. Some of these definitions come from outside Mequoda, but others are our own preferred definitions that serve to clarify some of the confusion in the industry right now.

Digital magazine

The Alliance for Audited Media (formerly ABC) defines a digital edition as distribution of a magazine’s content via electronic means. The digital edition must maintain the same identity of the host publication by maintaining the same brand characteristics. Mequoda agrees with this definition.

Replica

At Mequoda, we consider a replica edition to be one that’s fairly simple, with print content digitized on pages exactly as the print edition does it. The user swipes right to left in order to read left to right, and the pages are exactly as they appear in the print version, only downsized to fit on a tablet screen.

Replica-plus

This is the most advanced version of a digital magazine currently available. Now the publisher is adding the interactive bells and whistles to a nicely reflowed magazine. This gives you everything that readers are looking for in digital magazines. In practice we have never found an example of a simple reflow edition. Apparently, if publishers are going to invest in a reflow edition, they’re also enhancing it with additional features.

Reflow

A Mequoda Best Practice, reflowing your magazine so that the pages and type aren’t downsized and unreadable makes your magazine much more reader-friendly. In this version, the page is redesigned to fit the screen without shrinking the type. Additionally, it can be designed so that the page fits horizontally, but not vertically. The user swipes up to scroll through what is essentially one very long page.

(27)

This is the most advanced version of a digital magazine currently available. Now the publisher is adding the interactive bells and whistles to a nicely reflowed magazine. This gives you everything that readers are looking for in digital magazines.

Magazine app

For the publishing industry, Mequoda considers a magazine app – or just “app” – to be the program that allows users to access their digital editions on a mobile device. Readers download the app from a digital newsstand, and most apps are currently nothing more than a sales outlet for subscriptions and single copies. More creative apps, such as those of New York and Forbes, offer free content of some kind that’s updated every day, in order to keep readers coming back for more. Others at least include a free issue or free sample content, in addition to selling subscriptions.

Gadget app

At Mequoda we use this term to distinguish certain kinds of apps from the ones that most publishers are familiar with – the app that sells the magazine – and to avoid confusion. A gadget app doesn’t sell the magazine, but it provides some other function that’s related to the magazine’s content. For instance, Farm

Progress has an app called “Growing Degree Days” for use on smartphones,

which “measures the maturity of your crop by viewing current and past growing degree days data for your farm’s location.”

Another example would be Martha Stewart’s “Martha’s Everyday Food: Fresh & Easy Recipes.”

Unfortunately, gadget apps often seem to have serious usability problems that annoy users, and few publishers are actually making any money with them yet, and most of those that do are doing so through sponsorships. That’s why we’re careful to distinguish between magazine apps – good! – and gadget apps – generally not so great yet.

Tablet

When writers refer to tablets, they’re often talking about mobile computers such as iPads and all competitors such as the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook, products from Microsoft and Blackberry, and the Google Nexus. Others only consider tablets to be the iPad and similar larger devices that have multiple functions, while the smaller Kindle and Nook devices are referred to as e-readers, being largely limited to reading functions.

(28)

What Is a Digital Replica?

Publications like New York, Forbes and The Atlantic have become leaders in what we consider the second phase of mobile publishing development – the technology is dependable, early jumpers are releasing their all-new versions upgraded from their 2010 efforts, and standards for what consumers are willing to pay for are establishing themselves.

But there are hundreds of smaller publishers out there bravely forging ahead without the expensive bells and whistles of the big boys. These companies are only on their first app iteration, not their second or third, and have substantially fewer resources to throw at a digital magazine.

These are the publishers for whom the digital replica was made. No one says you have to start out like New York, with a spectacularly innovative digital magazine platform. Nope, you can ease into the mobile publishing age with a simple digital replica magazine, and still satisfy your readers, your advertisers and your bottom line.

A replica edition is fairly simple, with print content digitized on pages exactly as the print edition does it. Usually this means simply uploading PDFs of your pages into software of some kind, or having someone else do it for you. The layout, advertising and content are exactly the same as the print version, no more or less, and each page, accessed by swiping horizontally, is identical to the print original. (Note: If you currently create your magazine pages as PNGs, please resist the temptation to upload those. The iPad’s technology makes those pages look fuzzy and pixelated. That’s definitely a no-no.)

Producing a digital replica is a fairly simple process now, with dozens of providers offering software and even hosting, marketing and analytics services.

And if you’re concerned that you’ll look like a publishing dinosaur by putting out a simple replica, fear not. At least not yet. These days, many perfectly respectable publishers are opting for the replica because of the lower price points for design (none) and production.

Among the simple replica brethren are the brand-new Atlantic Weekly, Black Belt and other magazines from Active Interest Media, Fine Gardening and other Taunton Press publications, Sound + Vision and other Bonnier magazines; even a

(29)

brand-new digital-only science magazine called Brain Dump. You’re certainly in good company if you choose to go replica only.

Digital replica: The cons

Obviously the biggest downside to creating a digital replica of your magazine is that it’s an entirely new expense, requiring more manpower and technology that you never needed before Steve Jobs and his iPad came along. We’ll get into the actual costs later.

In addition, many publishers find that their sales staffers have trouble selling advertising now that it’s so much more complicated in the digital world. The metrics are complex and not standardized, and explaining the benefits to a new advertiser may take more knowledge than your print ad salespeople have. From the consumer point of view, one of the biggest complaints we hear about replicas is that the page, being simply minimized to fit into a tablet screen, delivers type that’s too small for many people to read. Enlarging the view then expands the page beyond the confines of the tablet screen, so the reader has to move the page around with a finger to read all of it.

Another problem that no one seems to be measuring is that a replica edition, if done sloppily, can generate animosity and drive consumers away from your brand – even long-time readers. In the iPad newsstand, I see dozens of complaints about the technology of every app I’ve ever reviewed here, and many I haven’t – and I mean 1-star ratings out of 5.

An example from TIME magazine, which should have the money to do these things right:

(1 star)

No longer interested

I have not been able to download the last three issues, even thought they appear on the library shelf, and I have downloaded the upgrade. This is a waste of time, and I am going to write my subscription off.

(30)

Digital replica: The pros

So why should you trust your brand to a digital replica? Most importantly, because consumers now expect and even demand a mobile version of your magazine. The longer publishers wait to jump on the bandwagon, the more they risk losing their audience to rivals who already have a mobile version.

On top of that, consumers are starting to actually prefer digital magazines to print, partly because of the convenience and, especially in the case of millennials, partly because of the green factor: A full 37% of respondents in a 2011 MPA survey said that digital media’s lighter environmental impact was one of the reasons they buy digital media.

And while I mentioned above our consumer research showing that the small type of a replica can be a pain for readers, there is an alternative to the basic replica that we call the “vertical swipe reflow,” which allows a larger font size as each article is then reflowed into a long single page that’s accessed by swiping vertically. We’ll get into this option more deeply in another chapter. It’s something most publishers could choose at a minimal expense – at Mequoda, for instance, we charge $35 per page to redesign a magazine to reflow – to overcome the replica “con” of small type.

Besides, consumers are increasingly willing to spend serious cash on mobile media, unlike expectations of website content back in the early Internet days when everyone demanded that all content be free. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has even

predicted that consumer spending on digital magazines will top $80.2B by 2016. You certainly want to be getting in on that action, even with a plain replica!

By the way, tablet magazine readers are also younger and more affluent, according to numerous studies – a two-fer that’s rare for any commodity – making them a tempting audience for both publishers and advertisers.

That’s one reason why you may also be able to charge higher prices for

advertising. Another reason is that readers have been shown to be more engaged with, and spend more time on, digital content than on print. Although as I’ve noted, advertising rates appear to be lagging behind, others report higher prices being charged successfully.

Furthermore, by going electronic and taking delivery costs out of the equation, you can afford to expand your reach globally for the first time. And as some publishers have proven, adding a digital magazine to your product line might allow you to

(31)

actually raise subscription rates without substantial pushback from your readers. Finally, data is starting to trickle in showing that digital subscribers, including those who get the digital edition as part of their print subscription, renew at higher rates and at higher price points. That’s not too bad, either.

So … is it worth your time and expense to publish a replica?

While you’re weighing the above pros and cons, you’ll also need to consider cost. The best thing about the replica is that uploading PDFs is pretty much all there is to it: No need to redesign around fancy options like interactive ads, videos, or interactive content. If you want to move beyond the simple replica, most providers will happily do so for you, but let’s consider the basics of producing a plain replica. When it comes to providers in this space, Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite is the granddaddy of them all. However, getting into DPS Enterprise requires an upfront cost of more than $50,000, and Adobe also charges $.35 per download. This makes DPS best suited for large, multi-title publishers.

Number 2 in the field is Mag+, which Mequoda generally recommends for its clients. For Mag+, you’re going to pay $599 per month to publish to all devices, and about $.04 per download. (And unlike Adobe, Mag+ allows publishers to host their digital magazines themselves, eliminating the download cost.) This package is much friendlier to smaller publishers.

There are so many other factors and options that I’ll be revisiting this issue in an entire blog post later, but for now I’ll just mention that you can also get software only and do all the rest yourself, or even use free, open-source software such as Treesaver.

How much should you charge?

Pricing for digital magazines is as chaotic right now as your average Macy’s sale. No two pricing policies are alike! However, we’ve determined that the average single-copy price is $4.97, while the average 1-year subscription rate is $19.97. Some folks bundle their digital subscriptions with print for an extra $5-$10. Others maintain completely separate subscription options.

If you’re feeling bold you can add bundle your digital subscription with your print subscription, and take that opportunity to raise your print price.

(32)

money after investing in your digital edition. And as I said, the cost of going digital is complex enough to merit its own spreadsheet.

But here’s the bottom line based on Mequoda’s research so far:

To launch a simple replica, you can expect to pay about $7200 per year for Mag+, plus another $2000-$3000 in labor. If you have a $30 subscription, with the

average 70% remit, you’ll need to sell 500 subscriptions to break even. And even

the smallest of publishers we’ve heard from are selling 10,000 or more in their first year. If that’s not enough to get you on the digital bandwagon, we don’t know

what is.

There are dozens of replica editions already out there, and there are enough advantages to mobile publishing that Mequoda believes no one should hesitate.

(33)

What is a Replica Plus?

When we first saw the Forbes app, we were wowed. Ah, how quickly things change in mobile publishing.

In that brief time, we’ve discovered newer, better apps that give us second thoughts about Forbes. I think we’ll start adding a disclaimer to our case studies along the lines of “This is awesome … today. Tomorrow, who knows?”

The digital replica is the most basic version of a digital magazine you can create. Upload a PDF of your publication to the Internet and voila! You’re a mobile publisher.

A digital replica is, as we explained before, a version in which print content appears on the tablet screen exactly as it appears on a print page. The layout, advertising and content are exactly the same as the print version, no more or less, and the pages are accessed by swiping horizontally.

Forbes delivers what we call a replica-plus. And normally

you’d think that doing as Forbes has done in adding bells and whistles to a plain old replica, such as video, audio,

HTML links and other technology-rich features, would be an improvement to the simple replica. We’re not so sure that it’s a good enough upgrade, and here’s why. The problem with adding bells and whistles to a simple replica to create a replica-plus lies in one of the disadvantages of the replica mentioned in that previous chapter. But first, let’s look at the pros and cons of the replica plus.

Replica-plus digital magazine: Pros

The advantages of the replica-plus are similar to the replica, in that consumers increasingly expect digital versions of their favorite magazines, either because of convenience or because of the “green” factor. What’s more, consumers are also becoming more willing than ever to pay for digital content.

And the replica-plus model creates an even more audience-engaging environment for advertisers than even the simple replica, with all those interactive features. Finally, renewal rates are gradually showing themselves to be higher for mobile editions.

(34)

Replica-plus digital magazine: Cons

You probably remember from a few pages ago that the major drawback to the replica is the small type necessary to shrink a print page down to tablet size. You can pinch out to enlarge the type, but then the page no longer fits in a tablet screen. This is more than just an inconvenience; it’s a major source of complaint for many consumers we’ve talked to. And it makes your mobile magazine basically

inaccessible to anyone over the age of 40.

So here’s why we believe the replica-plus is not enough of an improvement over a basic replica: It doesn’t solve the type size problem. It just increases the user’s frustration by creating more things he can’t see. And when you’re in enlarged mode with part of each page missing, you’re that much more likely to overlook the links and tappable buttons that lead to the videos, audio and other fancy features anyway.

In short, the replica-plus is akin to adding fancy whipped cream, chocolate syrup and cherries to a bowl of dirt. It costs more to create, yet does very little to make the dirt more appealing.

Solution to the digital magazine replica dilemma

Instead of dressing up a plain replica with whipped cream, Mequoda advocates for something we call a reflow version. The reflow allows the type to resize and reflow around ads and images in order to fit on a tablet screen while still being readable. Nothing shrinks. Your readers over are happy.

Best of all, the reflow isn’t as costly or time-consuming as you might think. As we noted already, Mequoda redesigns digital magazines for clients for $35 per page.

A visual difference

So let’s take another look at Forbes, which admittedly has some truly awesome bells and whistles. I’m looking at a page on which a full-page opinion piece is squeezed onto a tablet screen. Even in real life it’s hard to read, especially the eye exam at the bottom in all caps, listing the contributors to the piece.

(35)

Now check out a page from the nicely reflowed Bon Appétit. Does the original page fit into the tablet screen? Nope. It fits horizontally, so there’s no need to push the content around with a finger to find the beginning and end of sentences. But vertically, the content runs off bottom of the tablet screen, and, as the arrows at the bottom indicate, you scroll down to read the entire piece. And, blessedly, even a 50-something can read the type.

(36)

If you want to improve your basic digital replica, we do not advise going with the next step that so many publishers seem to believe is logical, the replica plus. Instead, invest your money in a reflow. Your lovely, user-friendly mobile

magazine is going to increase revenues, after all, and it won’t be long before you can afford to add the bells and whistles you long for.

(37)

What Is a Reflow Plus?

So now we’ve covered the simple replica and the replica plus. The other two digital options are the reflow plus and the digital-only magazine, which has no legacy print publication to compare it to or to hold back its designers.

You might wonder how I skipped from replica plus to reflow plus, without considering the reflow by itself. That’s because we haven’t found anyone doing just a reflowed version of their magazine. Everyone who’s invested the time and money into reflowing their publication seems to have also added the bells and whistles that make their magazines “pluses.”

What’s a reflow?

A reflowed magazine has been designed so that the text and images are enlarged but still fit onto a mobile device screen horizontally, instead of forcing a magazine page-full of content onto the smaller screen by shrinking everything, as the replica does. Content that doesn’t fit on one page is simply flowed onto the next.

This means the reflowed version is vastly superior to a simple replica where a magazine page-full of content is shrunk down enough to fit as one page on a

mobile device screen, especially to folks whose eyes aren’t quite what they used to be.

And there are two ways to reflow your content: Keep it flowing horizontally, so that the reader simply reads your entire magazine horizontally from newly-flowed page to newly-flowed page as she would a print magazine.

Then there’s the vertical reflow, also known as vertical swipe. In this version, the content in each article, if it doesn’t fit on one page, flows downward, and is accessed by swiping up. Consumer Reports’ navigation section gives us the big picture:

(38)

The reader swipes horizontally to navigate from article to article, and vertically to read articles longer than one tablet-sized page. Note that when you reach the bottom of a vertically-swiped page, you don’t have to scroll back to the top to swipe horizontally to the next article. That can be done from anywhere within the long vertical page. Magic!

(39)

Reflow-plus: Pros

As I’ve been saying all along, having a digital version of your magazine is a basic advantage, given the light-speed adoption of mobile devices by the reading public. And the reflow-plus is superior to both a simple replica and to the replica-plus. The most obvious benefit is, of course, readability. Increasing access to your content is always a good idea.

And we’re definitely not fans of the replica-plus, a simple PDF with added bells and whistles. Why spend your money on extras when readers have to squint to see them?

Compare a page from Forbes, left, which is a replica, to a reflowed page from The

Economist, right, for readability:

In addition, a reflow is also an excellent use of the technology that digital natives seem to want in digital products. Users accustomed to digital media become impatient with low-tech PDF replicas.

Finally, the “plus” part of Mequoda’s name for this version tells you that the magazine uses technology to enhance the reading experience with video, additional popup content, audio and more. That means more engaged readers, happier advertisers and a more profitable magazine.

Reflow-plus: Cons

Yes, a reflow-plus costs more than a simple replica. I can’t share provider prices with you because they’re usually negotiated with a sales rep, but Mequoda partner Mag+ says that on average it take about 10 minutes per page to reflow the content

(40)

– five minutes for a short piece such as a letter from the editor, and a few hours for an eight-page feature.

And Mag+ tells me that many of their customers who start out with the simple replica move to custom design, including reflow, after only a few issues. The only other disadvantage we can come up with for the reflow is potential confusion for readers of vertical reflow magazines – but that’s easily remedied by explaining how it works in your user’s guide (which of course you have, because it’s a Mequoda Best Practice) and by including visual cues or icons, such as arrows, in vertical articles to tell readers how to find the rest of the content.

Best examples of reflow-plus

An example we often cite of reflow is The Economist, which offers horizontal reflow. It tells readers where they are in each article with small dots at the bottom of each page.

(41)

Vertical reflow is illustrated by Bon Appetit, which uses nice big arrows to help the inexperienced reader find the rest of the reflowed articles.

You can reflow sections of your content within a reflowed page, too. This interesting twist is employed

Scientific American, for one.

The reflow-plus is one of our preferred design styles. We certainly believe that it’s worth the extra cost if you can swing it, and certainly a better way to spend your money than tacking fancy features onto a simple replica.

(42)

What Do People Want in a Free App?

As the first wave of digital magazine apps has passed, we’ve discovered one thing: People hate apps with nothing in them.

And yet, the vast majority of digital magazine apps available today are nothing more than a retail outlet for single copies and subscriptions!

They are labeled as free, but have nothing to offer unless a purchase is made within the app. This practice is the reason why so many magazine apps have low ratings, as can be witnessed by reading the reviews.

While we often talk about prices and opining on the dire need to raise them, at the same time, magazine readers are like many other digital consumers in expecting

something free on their tablets. And disappointing them right out of the gate when

they first download your app is not exactly a marketing Best Practice.

In case you hadn’t noticed, your competition and peers are starting to solve this problem. So it behooves publishers to rethink their app strategy pronto, if not sooner! But fear not, we have some solutions to the app customer service nightmare, courtesy of some very savvy publishers.

(43)

What kind of apps do people want, #1: The magalog

Condé Nast, as we’ve mentioned before, is on the leading edge in digital magazine publishing. So it’s no surprise that they’ve developed an app for SELF (Motto:

Tap into your best self!) that combines free content – enhanced with videos and

(44)

If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like the magalog of old – a carefully crafted blend of free content and marketing messages. SELF does it with a back issue from 2011. On a page titled Let’s Get Physical, featuring two

exercises that are illustrated with video, SELF proclaims, “Buy it now! Get the new issue of SELF and let us be your personal trainer!”

There are variations of this message on every page, from beauty to fashion to healthy eating. One quibble: You can’t get to the “Subscribe” page by tapping on these messages. You have to know enough about apps to tap on the Home icon. At least one of them includes instructions: “Go to the home screen of this app to buy the newest issue! You’ll find tons of easy ways to eat better today.”

All in all, a clever approach that combines the best of free content with marketing. Watching someone actually do an exercise is roughly 2,376 times more useful than looking at a static image.

(45)

What kind of apps do people want, #2: The free issue

Interestingly, the publisher who perfected the magalog in the olden days,

Consumer Reports, doesn’t do an app magalog. Instead, it delivers free issues.

This is the most common style of content-rich app, and you can choose to offer either a free back issue, or a special issue you’ve put together for this purpose.

Consumer Reports does the latter, although I suspect it’s actually an existing back

issue. Why do I only “suspect?” Because there isn’t a single date in this free issue, not even in the car reviews. The reader has no idea which model year is being