Mobile Publishing is a necessary pivot for many titles. For some titles, it is the first medium for entering the market. In this article you will find out which arguments to choose, and how to present them in order to get your boss to like mobile publishing. After all, going mobile is a great way to reach new readers.
Mobile Publishing is a very strong trend, which is supported by changes in the business model of many publications. We have already witnessed the change of the distribution model and the transition to digital platforms, such great titles as Life or the NYT. Earlier this year, eMarketer made a prediction that “This Year, All Publishers Go Mobile”. To convince your boss to come onto the App Store platform, present the information, which you will find below, in anf appropriate form, relevant for your organization.
1. Provide Market Brief
More and more magazines discover mobile publishing. Smartphone and tablet users willingly use their devices to read the titles, which could be read in print until recently or which were never printed. According to a research conducted by “Alliance for Audited Media”, the year 2013 is a breakthrough because every American publisher plans to appear on mobile platforms, and by 2014 four out of ten publishers expect to generate at least 10% of their revenue from mobile publications.
Mobile reading opens up new business opportunities, which is why more and more companies, that have no publishing experience, try to fill this huge niche more boldly by publishing magazines, specialized business content, and even books, which are a paid subscription of following chapters. The development and popularization of mobile technology (post PC era), and above all, the increasingly great popularity of Apple mobile devices have a huge influence on this strengthening trend. iPad and iPhone users are at the top readers and customers when it comes to mobile content.
Almost 500 million of iPad and iPhone users have their credit cards linked to their accounts in App Store and they are used to payments.
According to the research conducted by ‘Alliance for Audited Media’ iPad stays at the top of the devices, for which digital publications with paid access are published. What is interesting is that iPad and iPhone come in the first two positions, what classifies Apple users as the largest group, at which mobile publishing is targeted.
Publishers now want to, first of all, appear on mobile devices, and eventually, move completely into the mobile reality.
Key takeaways:
- 100% of publishers will format their content for mobile in 2013.
- The iPad saw the greatest percentage of publishers charging for content across publication categories.
- Apple remains a primary device-maker for media consumers.
- Download full AAM raport.
2. Highlight Advantages
Mobile publishing is an attractive market, in terms of the possibility of generating revenue. One of the most interesting methods of monetizing the content is renewable subscription in App Store. In addition, users of Apple hardware more willingly make micropayments on a platform they know, where their payment details are preconfigured. As a result, it lowers the barrier of entering the process of buying, which is, in itself, frictionless sales.
Subscription model of digital magazines distribution combined with the increasing number of iPad/iPhone users let you reach the consumption-oriented client, who is used to micropayments in the App Store ecosystem, which he knows well.
Apple sales raport for the second quarter of 2013 (Q2’2013) confirms that there was a huge increase in mobile users:
Key takeaways:
- Growing Sales
Building customer loyalty through a subscription model in the App Store. It is easier to sell subscriptions across a large and well-targeted number of iPad and iPhone users.
- Growing Sales
- A low barrier of entering mobile publishing with PressPad
Publishing printed content you can, easily and at small expense, start publishing your magazine in App Store – without any technical abilities. From a PDF file you receive, you can create in PressPad a mobile app, which we publish in App Store for you. We take care of every technical aspect, including managing and maintaining the application in App Store.
- A low barrier of entering mobile publishing with PressPad
- Effective promotion by Push Notifications
We offer our publishers the ability to send up to 5 Push Notifications in a month to the readers, informing them about, new releases or placing other promotional content.
3. Show Opportunities
There are many possibilities. If you are a publisher of a magazine, you can easily prepare a digital edition in PDF file, which we will transform into a native iOS application and put it into the App Store. Thanks to our new business model, we do it for free – you can read more about it here.
However, if the company is not a publishing house, then with the involvement of minimum resources, you can prepare a couple of specialist articles and enclose the whole thing in one PDF file with a designed cover.
Anyone who will start now with mobile publishing, will reach a competitive advantage in the future (in the future there will be much more mobile publications, so the publishers will have to put more effort in order to be recognized by readers). If a customer downloads your application with a magazine now, he/she will not have to download it in the future and the next issue will download itself automatically directly on his/her iPad thanks to our application.
Key takeaways:
- Publish magazines about business
- Topical consumer magazines
- Comic books are a great niche, thanks to a unique user experience regarding rotating and zooming pictures.
4. Enter the decision-making process
Now, the most important thing. In order to convince your management to enter the world of mobile publishing, you have to speak about advantages, which are evident to every decision making division and implement your message in the decision-making process in the company. This is important especially if the organization has a well-developed structure of competence and your boss might have several superiors above him/her.
- Prepare a document that comes into company workflow
- In the headline, introduce the flow of decision-making people, who should get to know with a document e.g.: VP =>COO =>GM =>M =>You
- Establish a clear goal: “Enter a billion-dollar market”
- Emphasize the greatest benefit with one sentence, for example: “Revenue growth by 10% per annum”
- In a tabular form introduce the advantages of implementing mobile publishing (the last column should contain a statement of expenses)
- Organize a meeting or make the document you have prepared enter the workflow
- Follow up
We have prepared an example of an outline of such document for you for free. 
Click here to download.
Click here to download.If you have any questions click “chat with us” on our website, and if you would like to take the opportunity to publish your magazine in App Store now, just fill out the registration form.