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Digital Publishing Blog by PressPad Posts

Journalism.co.uk on Newsstand Approach

Journalism’s Sarah Marshall gathered in one article opinions about publishing with Apple’s iOS Newsstand. If you are interested what Future, Vogue, The Week and others think about Newsstand, introduced by Apple little over a year ago, go ahead and read Sarah posts.

This piece cought our eye:
“The most important thing is that we got on there quick,” he [Mike Goldsmith, editor-in-chief of digital editions at Future Publishing  – Paul] told Journalism.co.uk, explaining that Future decided the best approach was to be ready for the launch of Newsstand by creating PDF page-turner apps of its titles.

“Some people didn’t see this as a particularly elegant solution or the most futuristic solution to what a digital edition should be on something as gorgeous as the iPad, but it enabled us to get on there, learn, get some analytics back, talk to customers and find out what they want,” Goldsmith added.

10 Simple Rules for Letting Readers Know About Your Mobile Magazine

Publishers face this problem when launching a mobile version: how to let existing readers know about e.g. iOS Newsstand app.

Here are few examples that we find working. Some of them require you to sign in for Apple Developer Account. You can do that without paying $99 annual membership and still download those materials. We could just copy those materials for you but they change from time to time and it is better that you have always the newest one. If you wish we can always email you the newest one.

We have covered only technical issues here but will write another post about best business practices when launching on mobile.

Rebekah Billingsley on Mobile Publishing: Start Really Basic with PDFs

Few days ago at Mobile Media Strategies 2012 in London Jasper Jackson from TheMediaBriefing did a short video interview with Immediate Media’s Rebekah Billingsley. What caught our attention is part about advice for publishers who just start in mobile publishing:

Why Self-Publishing is So Important for Us (and Should Be for You Too)

Update: since this post was created we have changed our pricing. Now Newsstand apps are free for magazines publishers. Read more about our new offer.

When we first started thinking about PressPad we had plenty of ideas how it can work and what features it might have. But whatever level of advancement we were talking about one thing didn’t change: we wanted PressPad to be a self-service publishing tool.

You may ask why self-service is so important for us. When we first did research about publishing industry lots of products (not just mobile publishing, but all range of services) worked in old-school model: they let you contact a sales representative, next prepare a written quotation for you and get back to you when it is done.

What App Store Newsstand Really Is All About

We are often asked if Newsstand is somehow competitive to PressPad. It is in fact complementary, but it is not obvious so we decided to write down everything “Newsstand” really is:

Newsstand as a special folder on iOS devices where all newsspapers and magazines are stored. Easy.

Now to more complicated stuff: magazines utilizing Newsstand has to have subscriptions.
That means that user can choose from several different periods in whitch new issues will be delivered to their devices automatically. Available subscription periods are: 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months and one year.

Don’t Ruin Your App Marketing Efforts By… App Name

When it comes to app names most obvious guess is your Magazine name, right? That is what we thought as well, but short look back at our previous experience with apps tells a different story.

We’ve been developing games, utilities, and spent some time with mobile book publishing. There’re few things we’ve learnt and they are all aplicable to Magazines as well. For one on the Apple’s App Store there are in fact two different names: the one that’s displayed below your icon/cover on the device, and the one that is being used on the App Store itself.

First one should be short, sharp and easy to remember. There’s no character limit, but here’s what happen when you use to many characters (in this case „This App Name is Way to Long”):