The Flipping Pages Blog

While I was stuck, delayed, at Newark airport Wednesday night, the shining stars of the digital magazine industry enjoyed a gala evening at the London College of Communication to hear Wired UK announced Digital Magazine of the Year 2011.

In its second year, the competition attracted entries from 31 countries and the advances in such a short space of time has been quite remarkable, proof positive of the phenomenal change that is taking place in the digital magazine space. The most notable shift has been the move away from flash publications – more than half of the titles I judged this year were on the iPad.

You can see a full list of the winners over at DigitalMagazineAwards.com with the winning lineup including Wired UK, The New Yorker, BBC Focus, TRVL and British Vogue.

I’ll review the category winners here over the next couple of weeks. First up, launch of the year Astronaut.

I was just catching up with the #specmedia Twitter feed from the Specialist Media Show. Clicking off to a blog post I was surprised to read this on the Concentric Dots blog:

From the moment I arrived at the show in Peterborough, I recognised the ossification I’ve experienced before when viewing production in the special interest publishing sector. Somehow the sector seems to suffer more than others and seems blinkered to the opportunities of digital innovation and partnership.

What Specialist Media Show were you at Mr Bateman? It clearly wasn’t the one where the audience got quite giddy when Ashley Friedlein of eConsultancy profiled the digital revenue potential of visitors to his website in real-time. It wasn’t the one where Ben Greenish talked about publishing his 183-year old title on the Kindle and stated that the world is changing so fast strategy is not an option, only action will do.

At the event I was at, the talk was all about embracing digital, from iPad editions to hyper-local communities and electronic site licensing.  I heard about newsletter companies reinventing themselves as data analysts, a Christian-ministries magazine selling sermons online and a former dog trainer gaming the search engines like a binary publishing Rin-Tin-Tin.  At the editorial roundtable I hosted, all we spoke about was CMS functionality, digital content syndication and how to reward old-school journalists for pushing the digital envelope.

No question that the delegates I spoke to had more questions than answers, but everyone recognised the changes taking place and all had experienced the painful truth of Joseph Schumpeter’s analysis, “hardly any ‘ways of doing things’ which have been optimal before remain so…”.

Casually casting “the media”, specialist or mainstream, as apathetic luddites is flat-earth thinking. The media has moved on Mr Bateman.We are well aware that we need to move online with our communities – we are doing it – and your analysis of the Specialist Media Show reminds me of what might have been one Joe Schumpeter’s lesser known quotations, “Ossification my arse…”.

Disclosure | I have spoken at the Specialist Media Show two years running (and would delightedly do so again if invited back).

The runaway reality of a new day job has a terrible way of crushing the best intentions for extracurricular blogging. Witness the gap in postings on Flipping Pages (what do you mean you didn’t notice?).

What finally spurred me into action was an email from Carolyn Morgan at the Specialist Media show asking for an updated bio ahead of this year’s event – taking place in 56 days, 21 hours, 20 minutes and 56… 55… 54 seconds according to Carolyn’s countdown clock. I enjoyed the show and conference last year and will be making the journey to Peterborough again May 25th.

Ahead of the event, Carolyn has been running a survey looking at the future for Specialist Media. Unfortunately, I’ve only just got round to filling it in and it’s closed. Never mind, I’ll get to see the results in May and next year’s survey will be here before you know it.

Audience Development Magazine Webinar: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 2pm EST (7pm GMT)

I’m speaking in a webinar organised by Audience Development magazine along with George Otto of Publishing Transitions. George has direct experience of successfully migrating print magazines to digital. As Production Director for PassageMaker magazine, he led the move into digital publishing, developing and managing the editorial, advertising, and circulation strategies for the digital publications. He also introduced iPhone/iPad apps for the PassageMaker products.

What will we be talking about? Maximizing the value of digital editions. You can use a digital edition to provide a simple digital alternative to your readership (and you know what some people think of that), or you can push the platform into more strategic uses to drive real revenue and circulation growth. Hopefully we can share some specific tactics to transform your digital editions into money-making audience growers.

You can register for the webinar right here.

Penmaen Media’s Carolyn Morgan advises media owners on profiting from digital media and marketing. You might also know her as the brains behind the Specialist Media Show. Focused on helping media brands grow in the digital space, Carolyn recently posted some good practical advice on making digital magazines effective. I asked if she would share her top-10 digital magazine tips on Flipping Pages and she has graciously agreed.

Carolyn Morgan: 10 tips for effective digital magazines

Digital magazines are beginning to move up the priority list of many publishers.  This is partly a backlash against free-content model of the web, but largely driven by the growth of mobile devices, not least the iPad – most suppliers are soon going to find a cost-effective solution to the flash vs html5 apple device issues. Traditional print publishers are also exploring digital editions as options for international subscribers or simply readers who want instant access.

There a special quality to a carefully designed and packaged magazine, a curated, guided experience rather than the random meandering on a typical web-site. However, a simple facsimile of a print edition misses the point – they are hard to read on screen, and impossible on mobile devices.  I’ve been working with a niche b2b publisher and researching some examples of best practice in digital magazines on a limited budget. Here are my top 10 tips for an effective digital edition:

1. Create compelling covers
The lost art of great covers can be rediscovered in digital magazines – creating a package custom-designed for the audience, and teasing them with great cover lines.  Covers can be designed as an opening spread rather than a lonely portrait page (see point #2).  See this Pharmaceutical digital mag for a great example of a cover spread.

2. Design for landscape
Computer screens are landscape and readers will view a spread at a time.  Don’t organise your content in single vertical pages.  Run headlines or graphics across the spread, and even consider columns that run across the (now defunct) centrefold.

3. Make navigation easy
Let readers click through from teasers to stories, or even have a permanent contents page that sits outside the main editorial content, as in this chromatography mag.  Design buttons to take readers through to related stories in the same edition.

4. Reading should be easy

Break up stories and include bold subheads so readers can quickly scan to understand the topics.  Stick to shorter articles, at a type size that means readers don’t need to zoom.  Some publishers, such as K9 Media create internal scrolling bars to display longer stories.

5. Link to your website
If a story needs 1000 words, put a summary in your digital magazine and add a link back to your website for the full version.  You can also provide background on related articles from your online archive.

6. Differentiate with video
Video sets digital magazines apart from print, and can be invaluable for interviews, demonstrations or to communicate the flavour of a place or event.  K9 Media uses video in its digital magazines to show dog behaviour.  Just take care that videos don’t autostart with sound in case your reader is browsing in a public place or office at lunchtime.

7. Add value with audio
World music magazine Songlines includes snippets of tracks from its featured artists in its free sampler edition.  You can even buy them via Amazon (see #8 bel0w).

8. Enable ecommerce
Include links on product reviews that take the reader directly to a special offer to buy or to find out more.

9. Provide opportunities for interaction
Ask for feedback, run surveys, polls and competitions to get instant information on your readers.

10. Keep file sizes manageable
Don’t get carried away with techno-trickery.  Some readers may be viewing on old machines with slow internet access.  If your pages take ages to load, they are likely to lose patience.  Wired mag gets lots of praise for its iPad edition in techie circles, but it’s 500MB and can take an hour to download.

I’m in the throes of planning my own digital magazine for the Specialist Media Show, so I’m going to adopt these tips myself.  This article on the Zmags blog by Russell Clark also includes some useful design hints and watch out also for the winners of the Digital Magazine Awards this autumn for some more inspiration.

If you have any feedback on digital magazine best practice,  why not join the debate on the Specialist Media Network at LinkedIn? There are over 350 specialist media people there already swapping ideas and contacts.

Disclosure: Peter Houston is Editorial Director for the examples used in points 1 & 3

What have head banging, the England football team, parsnip ice cream and digital magazines got in common? Strangely, they all feature in the career of Bruce Hudson, Editor of Retro magazine and founder of the Digital Magazine Awards 2010.

Bruce started out as a heavy metal reviewer in the late 80s, which he admits was never going to work for him, as he wasn’t a fan. Fast forward to the 90s and Bruce had switched to sports journalism as the editor of the London football magazine where, as a fan this time, he managed to interview seven members of the England team on the pitch.

In the noughties, Bruce was Communications Director for food company Fresh Daisy Organic and this is where he figured out the importance of industry awards. Fresh Daisy bagged 18 national awards – including the UK’s best organic ice cream for the ‘rather delicious’ Parsnip and Pear. “The impact on the public and buyers was massive,” he explains.

Now the editor of Brighton-based Retro magazine, focusing on the design and fashion movement surrounding classic clothing and accessories from the past, Bruce has taken his belief in the benefits of winning peer recognition into the world of digital magazines and launched the DMAs.

“I was looking for awards for inspiration, and possibly to enter Retro magazine. I realised there weren’t any and now we have the DMAs,” he says.

Diplomatically, Bruce avoids naming any favourite digital magazines just at the moment, but he expects the DMA winners to exhibit innovative design, exciting writing, groundbreaking and exclusive content and the ability to show that a magazine is influencing the sector they’re in. “I also want to take into account the resources the entrant has and how much they’ve achieved with that. In the individual sectors, I like people who push the boundaries of their craft, take risks, but with an understanding of classic influences.”

“I am really excited by the interactive possibilities of the medium, from click through to moving images… and this is just the start. The evolving phone and tablet formats enable digital magazines to push the boundaries even further,” he says.

As someone who always enters awards on the very last day of the competition, Bruce is surprised that he’s already had more than 50 entries from around the globe. “At the moment it’s a steady trickle, hopefully ending in a deluge in the weeks up to the cut-off date.”

Bruce’s big hope is that the awards will help the digital magazine come of age and explode the myth that they are a poor relation to the printed word. Amen to that.

For more information on entering your digital magazine, go to http://www.digitalmagazineawards.com

This time last week I was headed along the interminable A14 towards Peterborough to speak at the Specialist Media Show. I have to confess I was quietly dubious about the whole venture; It seemed like a very long way to go for a brand new publishing event.

I needn’t have worried. It was excellent.

The show artfully managed a strong mix of exhibition, presentations, roundtables and workshops covering everything from postage to profiting from digital media. If you missed it, and I can understand why you did, keep an eye out for next year’s event. I promise, it will be well worth the journey. Follow @specmediashow on Twitter or join the Specialist Media Network on LinkedIn for updates.

You can catch up with tweets from this year’s event on the #specmedia hashtag or take a look at feedback for the event on the LinkedIn group. The workshop presentations are on Slideshare – I recommend eConsultancy’s Digital Business Models slides. Lots for digital magazine publishers to think about in there, especially on expanding your revenue streams.

Congratulations to organiser Carolyn Morgan and her wonderful staff for a superb first event. And sorry about my secret Peterborough scepticism.  I’ll have no doubts about the next one, A14 or not.

I am fortunate enough to have been invited join the panel of one of the Great Print Debates at IPEX 2010. The burning question under discussion is the threat to print magazines posed by e-readers, Apple’s iPad in particular.

This is clearly a huge issue for the publishing industry and as editorial director for a group of B2B titles in print aswell as digital, I care deeply about where my brands and my career are headed. I spend a lot of time thinking about digital magazines. The stated mission of this blog is to look for a future for digital magazines, not print magazines. However, that doesn’t mean that I think print has no future.

Right now, with or without the iPad, most magazine publishers could barely afford to turn the lights on if it wasn’t for print advertising revenue. There is no doubt that we are seeing a decline in print revenues, but we are certainly not in the death spiral that iPad evangelists are predicting. This is because print still serves a purpose; readers read it and advertisers advertise in it, and this will be the case for years to come. Print is an appropriate technology. It is accessible, affordable and easy to use – that’s why it’s been around for 500 years.

I have no idea what the next 500 years will bring, but over the next 5 or 10 years, there can be no doubt that publishers will need to adapt to the inevitable proliferation of electronic content-distribution formats.

Publishers and printers will need to work hard to adapt their workflows to accommodate both print and electronic output, but with a real effort to manage publishing cost structures and develop a premium print offering, rumours of print’s death will prove to have been greatly exaggerated.

| UPDATE | I came across a couple of things last week that add weight to my belief that that the iPad, or any other e-reader, will not kill print.

Andrew Lowosky advises everyone to calm down, giving a series of reasons why he believes that iPad publishing might not be quite as easy or effective as the hype would suggest. He even warns that iPad overspend could “critically damage what might otherwise be a moderately successful print product.” Read his thoughts here.

BBC Radio Four’s In Business broadcast a show focussing on the pressures that digital media is putting on print publishers. Presenter Peter Day talks to the Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine and the big print success story of the moment, The Economist, to learn how they are integrating their print and digital operations. You can listen to the  In Business programme here.