As the landscape of publishing is quickly moving toward the digital age, it seems more and more relevant to seek education about publishing trends. This year several publishing summits including the Folio magazine Publishing Summit are important to add to your calendar. The Folio summit conference this year in Miami on February 20-22 will be an exciting event.

The Magazine Publishers of America has also scheduled the 4th Digital Conference with their “Magazines 24/7″ theme. This magazine publishing conference will be held in New York on February 27th, and a second day (the 28th) has been added.

It’s becoming quite clear that the fragmentation of business and consumers traditional mainstream media consumption is a clear opportunity for print media magazine publishers.

Print magazines offer advertisers a direct connection to a qualified and targeted audience. The key is extending the brand to digital media where perspective advertising targets can be converted into a tangible buyer or prospect for the print magazine advertiser.

Digital ads are taking on many forms and formats for web presentations.

Digital publications have many more capabilities as their screen real estate is much larger than a traditional banner ad zone size. A full page magazine ad can be presented online in full page format and can run various dynamic and interactive elements. (more…)

Just out of Adobe Labs is Adobe® Digital Editions 1.0 which provides publishers a new tool for presenting ebook content.
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CMP Technology recently announced that they will be eliminating 200 jobs and according to Steve Weitzner, CMP’s President & CEO will be making changes to focus on their strong growth and more balanced magazine brands portfolio. Newsday.com reports that the company will fold some publications and reduce the number of times certain publications are published.

In my opinion, Mr. Weitzners comments about the reduction in print revenue provides continued evidence that magazine publishers must seek to re-align their publications online. Magazine publishers must begin to look at their brands as business and social communities centered on content and not as paper magazine publishers. These brands should facilitate the exchange of information over all mediums possible especially on the mediums that are more conducive to the way consumers are migrating to receive their content and media: websites, digital editions, blogs, podcasts, rss feeds, video, mobile, web communities, social networking platforms, and online interactive events. (more…)

An excellent direction for magazines as they confirm niche dominance is the addition of a magazine wiki.

“By offering users the opportunity to work collaboratively on a matter of common interest to them and the magazine, the sites extend the magazine’s brand and value to readers.”

MediaPost tells how reference wiki pages will be the hot trend for publishers for late 2007. MediaDailyNews (more…)

Are you using your web reports? Magazine publishers should always be promoting their online web communities. Along with this task is the responsibility of moderating participant interactions. In this competitive publishing world you’ll want to make sure the few bad participants don’t spoil the fun. Keep your logs and IP tracking analytics active so you can investigate visitors with bad intensions. Your magazine website privacy policy can clearly state that you use cookies and visitor statistics to improve the online experience for your readers. Advanced monitoring can also be setup for those visitors (or competitors) who are attacking your brand.

Magazine publishing software is getting more innovative in this digital publishing age. Some new online digital software tools are giving innovative options to publishers for electronic online digital editions. Publishers are learning how their paid circulation or trade publications can benefit from digital delivery and instand conversion or results for advertisers.

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Why not let users generate ad content? The service is expected to provide teen girls a method of social scrapbooking online with flip-book type presentations. Advertiser sponsors provide non-branded content and the teen members take it from there with their own creativity.

What I love about this MediaWeek Article and concept is seeing a publishing organization leverage new and valuable content from advertisers. Magazine advertisers have tremendous high value content and it’s time for publishers to start asking for it to use in innovative web and digital presentations.

While publishers sometimes feel like they are pulling teeth to get their advertisers to hit deadlines for print media creative, it’s worth asking for other digital media advertising creatives. Why you ask? Didn’t we just admit it’s tough enough already just to get this issues print ad? Here’s my magazine advertising tip of the month.

By asking your media buyers about other creatives, you are forcing your publishing team to open the door to alternate forms of advertising. If your advertisers DO have other creatives your now able to ask about those media formats and placements. You’ve opened the door to discuss how your magazine brand can also offer website, digital edition, event, streaming, etc… placement for this advertising. (more…)