3D Issue Blog, digital magazine and publishing news

29 July 2010

The iPad news just keeps on coming. It’s been well documented that getting an iPad App approved by Apple is not the quickest or easiest process…… this week we hear how that frustration is now felt by Times Inc. and this could pose a problem for many other publishers in the near future.

It is reported that Apple has banned Times’ Inc from selling and managing subscriptions for its Sports Illustrated iPad apps. According to a recent article on All things Digital the publisher had planned to launch a subscription version of its Sports Illustrated iPad app, where consumers would download the magazines via Apple’s iTunes but pay Time Inc. directly not through the iTunes store.

The subscriptions area is a huge deal for publishers. Not only do subscriptions give publishers recurring revenue, but perhaps more importantly they give the publisher invaluable readership and customer data that enable them to keep track of their subscribers.

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28 July 2010

After concerns were raised that publishers were excessively promoting the use of their digital editions to fatten up their circulation figures, ABC have decided to further define their definition of a digital newspaper edition.

While the digital editions phenomenon has been around for a number of years, the arrival of the iPad has catapulted digital editions into the limelight. What is concerning advertisers is that some newspapers are showing increases of 70% over a one year period.

Under the new regulations if a newspaper has a paid for print edition, in order to have the circulation figures from their digital editions added to their overall circulation figure then the publisher will have to provide proof that digital readers paid to read the digital edition.

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27 July 2010

In any gold rush, there are always ones that knocked over or forgotten about in the rush. And in the race to monopolize the ebook sales channels it looks like traditional publishers will be pushed to the side.  This was highlighted last week by the Wylie Agency’s announcement that they are to sell eBook editions of its modern classics exclusively through Amazons kindle store.

The Announcement (which was made at the launch of Odyssey , a new  digital-only imprint set up to publish beautiful and digitally native eBook editions of some of the modern literary classics that TWA represent) has drawn severe criticism from their peers, no more so than Random House who also publish titles by the same authors. Upon hearing the news they forwarded a letter to the Amazon challenging their right to even sell the titles which are meant to be “subject to active Random House publishing agreements”.

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26 July 2010

Last week it was announced that there are now more than 500 million Facebook  users! As Publishers and Marketers it is important to understand how people are using social networking sites so we can get the most out of them.

We recently came across two great infographics which visually demonstrated the rise and make up and growth of the two largest social networks – Twitter and Facebook. The first is by the team at Facebakers.com for Mashable showing what makes up Facebook’s 500 million users. The second is from blogherald ‘Twitter’s Meteoric Rise [infographic]’  which highlights some really interesting facts and figures about the growth and usage of Facebook and Twitter.

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22 July 2010

Earlier this week we wrote an article about the future of newspapers and where the future was heading. Two days after we wrote that article another new iPad app has entered the market (and gone straight to the No.1 spot in the app store) which further develops the idea of ‘personalized news’.

We stated in the post that until apps allowed users to customize what content they wish to appear in their digital publications apps, only then would we see a new channel to market emerge for digital newspapers. And then….. Wednesday arrives, enter Flipboard.

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21 July 2010

This week it was announced that Amazon is now selling more e-books via the kindle than traditional hardcover books.

During the second quarter of the year Amazon has sold 143 e-books for every 100 hardcover.  An impressive ratio, however when you take a look at just the last month the growth rate is even more impressive – for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.

Although some of this success must be attributed to the change in reading trends, the huge surge in growth over the last month seems to be a direct result of June’s price war between key players in the  e-reader market. Earlier in June, Barnes & Noble reduced the price of the 3G Nook to $199 and then launched their  Wi-Fi model at just  $149.  In response Amazon then slashed the price of the Kindle by $70 bringing it to sub $200 at $189.

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20 July 2010

In June the British newspaper The Times launched a pay wall where it would
charge readers £2 for a weeks subscription or £1 for a one day pass to their two main websites www.thetimes.co.uk and www.sundaytimes.co.uk. These websites on average receive 1.2 million visitors daily. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation (its parent company) called  it a “defining moment for Journalism”. To launch this they provided visitors with a free trial to test it out the digital edition versions of their print counterparts.

Now these figures have come in so we can see for the first time if their pay-wall strategy paid off.
(Figures obtained by BeehiveCity)

• 150,000 people  registered for The Times and Sunday Times websites
  during the free trial period
• 15,000 signed up for the payment plan after the trial had expired
• 12,500 people paid for the iPad version of the times app

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19 July 2010

Yet another news reader app has hit the app store this week, Apollo News, offering the next step in what they call the ‘future of newspapers’ or personalized digital editions.   This company was founded and is run by some heavyweight coders from Google and Microsoft.  It seems that everyone is rushing to crack the personalized news market. But is it really personalized news ?

The ‘Apollo News’ app  is similar to  existing iPad apps such as  Pulse, the Huffington Post new app and early edition and they all seem to be similar in functionality to that of the BBC app.

The BBC app was one of the first apps that I downloaded and, forgiving the odd crash, I was hooked on it. While the BBC app doesn’t allow you the ability to personalize the news categories as yet, I would imagine that this is something that will appear in future releases.   What it does offer you is the complete article without distraction or causing you to lose focus. You do not have to leave the app or load in the webpage to a viewer integrated inside the app like all of the above mentioned readers.

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16 July 2010

In March we wrote a blog article about the future devices that will compete with the iPad - several other devices were due to hit the market in 2010. So now we are in the second half of 2010 we thought a review of the situation would be useful. Were the early reports of 2010 with predictions of huge changes in the form of new competition right and have they come to fruition?

A recent report from Forrester projected that tablets will start outselling netbooks by 2012. This graph shows how where Forrester research sees the market heading:

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14 July 2010

Anyone who has read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow book will be familiar with the idea of ‘making things remarkable’, in essence the book states the key to success is to stand out from the crowd, it is the unique and remarkable products and services that become successful.

The iPad’s success has been largely due it’s remarkable nature – Apple did something different, they bucked the trend. iPad users do not seem to be too bothered over the fact that there is no keyboard, webcam, or usb ports that other tablet devices have – the fact that this device is so intuitive and easy to use, it has a ‘natural’ feel for consuming media makes the overall experience more beneficial and a better experience than they could hope to find elsewhere.

So how can publishers create remarkable experiences? Publishers need to apply Seth Godin’s advice and create ‘purple cows’ -  there are hundreds of publications on lifestyle  for example, so what would make a new publication on the same subject create a different experience? What would make this publication remarkable that readers would choose this particular edition over the other 500+ similar titles?

Some of your audience may not be familiar with digital publications, so getting the usability right is paramount. If a reader finds it difficult to navigate then that could be it, no second chances, there are plenty of other choices. The interface of the digital publication needs to be clutter free yet intuitive to lead the reader to key navigation/action areas should they need a function. We wrote an article recently on lessons in lean content, and how some publishers are claiming that their iPad readers are spending over 1 hour reading their magazines on the iPad digital edition platform.

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