PressPad celebrates its 10th birthday this year. It is an opportunity to take a trip down memory lane: summarize achievements we got, mention key moments we experienced, talk about challenges we faced. Therefore, we’d like to invite you to read this article, which will allow you to get to know our story better, find out what motivates us, and maybe make you want to create a digital publishing future with us.
Have you ever experienced a moment of suspension when someone asks you what you were doing yesterday and you don’t remember it? It is a strange phenomenon in which we can’t recall what happened literally moments ago. What’s more interesting, sometimes we keep in mind what happened a few years ago better than a day before.
Let’s go back in time… 10 years.
It’s 2011. What does the world talk about?
After 25 years, The Oprah Winfrey Show ends. Many people will miss its sense of humor and wisdom or tens of millions of dollars worth of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” giveaways. The whole world sings “Rolling in the Deep” together with a singer who is a revelation of the music scene – Adele. The word “blockchain” is used in print for the first time. The same year Steve Jobs dies, and Apple Inc. becomes the most valuable company in the world.
This year our story begins. It is the starting point of a series of events that we hadn’t even dreamed of then.
We’d like to invite you to accompany us on our sentimental journey. Hop in!
PressPad – the digital publishing journey starts
For ten years we have consistently created and developed digital publishing platforms to enable publishers to enter the world of mobile apps and online kiosks in a simple and enjoyable way, taking care of increasing their readership and profit. We expand our solutions in accordance with our customers’ feedback, observing trends in technological and business markets.
We’ve helped more than a thousand publishers from around the world reach over two million readers thanks to mobile apps published on the biggest app stores: Google Play and Apple App Store.
Over time, inspired by the publishers’ real needs, we have expanded our offer to include digital publishing courses, free consultations, and a library full of unpaid marketing knowledge and graphic sources. Never, not even for a moment, have we lost the idea which has guided us from the beginning – make publishing easier.
– Did everything always go smoothly? – you may ask.
Well, it didn’t. We experienced a critical moment and it was like someone poured cold water on us. However, we got out of that victoriously. That situation made us stronger and wiser, which resulted in the change of our business strategy and, in effect, brought us a multiplication of orders.
Even though 10 years sounds like a lot of time, for us, it’s like a blink of an eye. When you do what you love, time flies, and you don’t count the days. A strange feeling – so long ago, as if yesterday.
Let’s experience it once again.
PressPad’s history milestones
2011, Cracow, Poland
A few ambitious people with open heads and IT knowledge have plans to revolutionize the world of publishing. How? They want to put a publication on mobile devices making the process of creating magazine apps fast and easy. The plan is to offer publishers a product that allows moving content on the mobile level, and makes it available for readers from all over the world.
The prototype digital publishing solution for magazine publishers is created, based on HTML5 technology.
Time to show publishers what possibilities they have.
2012
With the prototype ready and the investor on board, PressPad starts to reach out to dozens of publishers, looking for ways to help them with the ongoing mobile devices’ revolution.
They actively ask publishers about their expectations of mobile technology. The answer’s always the same — make PDF mobile friendly and allow us to distribute magazines’ digital replica on mobile apps.
Publishers’ wish becomes PressPad’s command.
That’s how the first version of PressPad Magz, a quick way to get your magazine to the Apple Store app, is born. Moving publication to a mobile level becomes easy and enjoyable, bringing a beautiful experience of the 1-to-1 digital replica on mobile devices while the publisher only has to deliver the PDF file to PressPad.
The wheels are in motion.
2013
In order to accelerate growth, PressPad starts an innovative strategy for magazine publishers based on the risk-free, revenue share model. The publishers can publish their own magazines on the iPad for free. In exchange, PressPad keeps the first 199 dollars the magazine earns each month while passing the rest to the publisher, free of any commission. It becomes a huge success, with more than 100 new publishers on board until the end of the year.
In the meantime, questions arise about apps for the Android system. PressPad rises to the challenge. The new platform is created, which will allow the company’s customers to put their titles into Google Play.
2014
PressPad continues its products development implementing new features such as video and audio support, the integration with Youtube, Vimeo, and Soundcloud.
What’s more, PressPad signs an agreement to create a partnership with D&E Corporation that introduces their platform to the Japanese market. With the agreement, D&E Corporation becomes the sole distributor of the PressPad digital publishing technology in Japan.
2015
PressPad implements iBeacons technology and creates a “free reading zone” in Radisson BLU in Cracow. This initiative becomes the main topic of many articles published in branch magazines around the world. Encouraged by this success, PressPad releases a new product for venues called PressPad Lounge.
PressPad introduce new marketing tools for the clients including Facebook Newsstand, App Store Optimization, and WebStore, to help them promote their mobile apps. With that they switch back to subscription-based pricing, replacing revenue share plans.
At the same time, PressPad in Japan works hard with JTB Printec to craft the best digital publishing corporate offer.
2016
With the growing position of the online-only publishers, PressPad works on a new product called PressPad News, to give them a new marketing tool together with the best mobile reading experience for their customers. It’s an exclusive bonus for readers and a useful tool for bloggers to increase mobile readership by enabling another distribution channel for existing content.
2017
PressPad News is live, supporting WordPress publishers at the Apple Store. Soon after, PressPad adds Android devices integration, including Amazon Kindle Fire. They also start working on a new product, to be released in 2018.
2018
A major update of the PressPad News platform is introduced, including improved content analytics, Google Analytics integration, and Mobile Ads support. First test integrations of the e-commerce tool for publishers take place. This is an exciting year of new product releases.
A flexible paywall in the iOS News Apps appears. PressPad’s proposal is an innovation to the news publishing industry, because this flexible mechanism combines what is best in the metered model. The starting point to this paywall model has become publishers’ need to stand out from the crowd and connect with readers in a more natural way to turn them into loyal subscribers.
2019
PressPad wants to improve the paid digital distribution of magazines and books. Early this year they release a new product for PDF publishers to give them freedom of selling online access to their digital magazines or books. It’s called the PressPad Store. The goal is to enable publishers to sell content with lower commissions than on the App Store.
Simultaneously, they improve news apps solution, PressPad News, by adding beautiful new skins and improving the control panel.
2020
It’s a special year for the entire world.
PressPad supports publishers affected by the pandemic situation. They create a special offer of online distribution which is a great opportunity to make the jump from print to digital publishing. Online distribution during the unique time of nations’ quarantine has advantages and is easy to adopt and cost-effective.
For some publishers moving to mobile apps is life-saver in a crisis time without access to print.
It is also a year with product updates that included a better paywall and the search function in News apps. Also, PressPad rolls out the new class of magazine apps on Android — this is a completely new option, written from scratch for PDF publishers. The back-end side also got refreshed along with the refreshed GUI.
Where are we now?
2021
Today we are an experienced company creating digital publishing solutions for customers from the entire world.
We offer three types of complementary products which expand content distribution and monetizes digital publications. All of them are based on PDF files which publishers upload for their PressPad accounts. Our main products are:
- PressPad Magz — mobile magazine replica apps
- PressPad Store — an online kiosk for PDF issues
- PressPad News — news apps for online magazines
What makes our solution stand alone is the lack of costly integrations and the simplicity of the workflow that allows small and medium publishers to use PressPad by themselves.
Our clients come from every corner of the earth, they have different needs and direct their content to different target groups. We approach each of them individually, choosing from our offer what is best for them. That’s why we organize a free consultation. Publishers can tell us about the challenges they face and together we find the best strategies to respond to them, without any commitments.
The secret ingredient of PressPad’s awesomeness – relations between people
This passing decade was not only a time of product development and hard work for us.
PressPad is created by people. We participated in plenty of internal events to grow the soul of the team and to develop strong bonds among the group. Some of us got married, and some of us welcomed babies into the world, while others adopted animals. We changed our office a few times, each time putting our heart into its decor to create a comfortable place to work. We are staying solid as a team and so diverse as its individuals. All of this not only united us as workmates but also made us friends.
10 years is no small feat in the company’s history.
We would like to thank everyone who trusted us; without you, we wouldn’t be here. Over the past years, you have given us so much strength that it will be enough for another decade.
You don’t have to worry about the future of publishing – we’ll always come up with something. You are in good hands.