Shopping for a Digital Editions Solution?

With the Internet becoming a greater part of our lives, it seems that the digital underground has quickly become mainstream for publishing companies. It’s only natural that we’d want our print publications to be available digitally. Just as naturally, we might even want a few of the bells and whistles that can come with a product containing audio and video capabilities. Here, Publishing Executive shares some tips from publishing executives on finding the right digital edition solution for your publications and how it can affect your bottom line.Tom Boyles, editor of PMQ (www.PizzaMagazine.com), a pizza industry publication based out of Oxford, Miss., believes it all starts with making sure the digital version looks as much like the print magazine as possible. “We can put the text in there and the photos on the site, but if it doesn’t look like the magazine, it’s a bad product,” Boyles says. In shopping for the best digital editions solution for PMQ, he says, “We had to find something that could [make] photos and articles interactive while allowing the ads to [meet] our advertisers’ standards.” Using a company called Full Screen Publications, based in Miami, allowed Boyles to not only have a strong reproduction, but also to add extras. “If we wanted to have Hawaiian ukulele music play while you read an article on making Hawaiian pizza, we could do that,” he says. “Readers expect more from technology than print, even if the main focus is to recreate print.”Dan Woods, associate publisher of Make (www.MakeZine.com), a technology DIY title, says your digital product should be brought up in other entities such as blogs and in Google searches to promote subscriptions to the digital edition and take advantage of the subscription savings. “Opening up a digital magazine to our Web site of more than a million unique [visitors] a month has been the key,” he says. “On our blog, too. If we’re talking about a model rocket, we’ll make a thumbnail for the magazine, similar to a Google AdSense … and with just a click, there’s an article the reader can go to.” If they don’t currently subscribe, this method invites them to sign up. “Even subscribers who are loyal don’t respond to renewal notices, and tons of paper notices to a reader can add up to $7 or $8 to keep their business,” Wood says. “We entice them to do auto renewal by offering them complete digital access to our magazine going back to the first issue. It has had good results.” Woods, who selected Southborough, Mass.-based Texterity as its digital editions provider, also likes the flexibility in passing along articles. “The reader can share the information with a friend, and we can control the amount of days they can share it. Obviously we want a shot at a new subscriber, but don’t want to just give away everything for free.”Options in Cost StructureBoyles says you have to discern your digital needs early to get the best deal. “You can license the software for $10,000 and learn how to use it in-house. Or you can send [the provider] your files and tell them what audio and video you want, and they'll do it for $20 a page,” he says. “No matter what, you’re paying that initial $10,000. It’s similar to buying Excel and learning it yourself, or buying it and having an accountant come in for a fee to help you.” PMQ decided to license software because it didn’t want only one template from which to choose. The company was taking into count that it might have panoramic-scroll images or need space for a full-page or a half-page ad. Those all require different templates. “We received 20 templates for $20 apiece as part of our deal. But then every template after that is $500 apiece. You want to think really hard on what your template needs are going to be or they could get you on the back end,” says Boyles.Maury Kauffman, vice president/general manager of Von Publishing in Melville, N.Y., which owns communications industry title VON Magazine (www.VonMag.com), puzzled over a spreadsheet of all of the options and finally decided to just put his foot down. “We had an idea of what we wanted, and in the end went back to the vendors we narrowed it down to and just said what we would pay and left it at that,” he says. “We finally came to agreement on a set amount of money without being charged more if we added more subscribers to the magazine. They invoice me for x amount of dollars, and it means no variable cost.”Woods, on the other hand, liked the cost structure that hinged on the number of digital edition subscribers. “Why pay a fixed fee for a few readers when you can roll it out and see how it does and what it requires? That way you truly find out how many people will use it.”Kauffman adds that print errors will cost you. “Every time we find a spelling error, it’s a fee to ask Texterity to fix it on the digital edition,” he says. “But it also makes us pay better attention.”What You Can’t Put a Price OnBeyond cost, Kauffman says you have to look at what your digital provider doesn’t do as much as what it does to find the right company. “Many vendors have an advertisement for their company on the digital content when you open it up,” he says. “I don’t want my readers subjected to what they didn’t pay for.” Woods also has seen this happen, particularly with advertising for other magazines the digital provider might represent. “We have to make this as convenient for the reader as possible,” says Kauffman. “It’s why they buy digital to begin with. You can’t allow vendors to hide these ‘features,’ like requiring readers to download software to view digital. … We have many technology companies as readers who wouldn’t do it because of their corporate culture. If they have to download, they’ll feel I’m out of touch with their needs.”Woods says that by far the most important thing when deciding to go digital is to see it as a long-term strategy, not just an immediate cost. “This is an investment I’m making in my readers and how they’ll want to view our publication in the future,” he says. “You shouldn’t wait until you lose subscriptions to make a change.”Eric Butterman is a New York-based writer and creator of the seminar “Better Business Writing: From E-mails To Everything That Makes You Money.” He can be contacted at EricButterman@Yahoo.com.

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Shopping for a Digital Editions Solution?

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