12 Apps of Christmas: November – publishers struggle to keep the doors open as print ad pages continue to decline

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night.  TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began last week, looks at the significant media events and new media apps of 2012. Today we have reached November. The last segment will appear New Year's Eve day.

As we moved into November we could finally see an end to the dreadful Presidential election cycle. Locally, I awoke the day after the election to find that my representative, a darling of the Tea Party movement, had been soundly defeated – replaced with a war veteran whose patriotism had been questioned during the campaign, despite her having lost both her legs in the war. At least some sanity seemed to have returned to the world. (It didn't last.)

A really nice new tablet edition was released in the month by the Denver Post, their Colorado Ski Guide. Created using the Adobe DPS, the app comes from the MediaNews Group division of Digital First Media, a newspaper company that, despite its name, it would be safe to consider the most backwards digitally in the industry. (There is more to being a digital company than redesigning the newsroom – real digital first companies like revenue and profits, as well.)

But even as it seemed as if the industry was beginning to consolidate its thinking about publishing platforms, new ones were being announced, such as PRSS, the platform from the publishers of the travel tablet magazine TRVL. As I am writing this, the publishers are out showing off their platform to publishers in hopes of encouraging early adopters.

Mag+, which has been around as long as the iPad, released its own SDK in November in hopes of getting developers to expand the platform even further. It was a good move, as one of the mistakes publishing vendors make is not constantly changing and growing the capabilities of their publishing solutions. We live now in an age where if a product does not frequently change and improve quickly finds itself left behind.

Early in the month, TNM reported on the latest B2B ad page report released by the ABM. It showed that business was slowing for B2B publishers as the latest time period – July with that November report – was filled with bad news.

In fact, things are getting worse for the B2B sector, not better. The August report, released in December, show no improvement – and more of the same means things are getting worse for publishers who had hoped 2012 would end the string of bad years.

BÜZE Magazine: Celebrate the coming New Year by downloading this new independent tablet-only magazine

Just sneaking into the App Store before Apple shut down iTunes Connect, Buze Magazine is a new tablet-only magazine from the Toronto publishing team of Vaughn Joseph and Cary Hyodo. Created using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, the magazine is scheduled to be published inside the Newsstand six times a year.

"Büze Magazine focuses on the global craft beer, artisanal spirits, mixology and foodie movements which when combined, create an enhanced drinks lifestyle – a lifestyle that embraces natural, organic and eco-friendly while producing a dizzying array of amazing drinks to accompany our most memorable moments," the app announcement states.

The new tablet magazine contains just one issue at this time, the premiere issue, which weighs in at just over 600 MB (pretty typical of a digital magazine made with the Adobe DPS).

Designed and edited by Cary Hyodo in InDesign, the magazine is meant to be read in portrait orientation, and, of course, features layouts and typography specifically designed for the iPad.

Hyodo, who says be comes from the print side of the publishing business – "to tell you the truth, I'm kind of old school" he told me – had previously worked on a magazine with roughly the same editorial subject, but that magazine has become more B2B, while the vision for Buze Magazine is to be an international drinks magazine, thanks to distribution through the Newsstand. The publishing team also plans an edition that can be read through the Kindle Fire.

The new app features a preview that can be downloaded for free to give the reader an idea of what to expect. Single editions are priced at $3.99, while an annual subscription costs $19.99.

Hyodo says that his partner in the venture, Vaughn Joseph, was the catalyst for launching a tablet magazine. "To be honest with you," Hyodo told me today, "he talked me into this."

"When I started I had not a lot of knowledge of what a truly digital magazine was. I had seen a few digital entries into the field, and most of them I had seen were basically just print magazines with the funky page turning function," Hyodo said.

"But when my partner showed me the true breadth... and what was possible with the fully interactive magazine I was kind of hooked."

Because of the publisher's background in the traditional magazine industry, the start-up tablet magazine is avoiding a lot of the mistakes made by newbies. Buze Magazine, for instance, already has a nicely designed website which can support the digital magazine's marketing. A press release has been issued (today, as a matter of fact), and there is already a full 2013 media kit available, complete with rates and specs.

"BÜZE Magazine will be attractively priced and sold through the iTunes Store/ Newsstand," the media kit proclaims. "The same place you would find the digital GQ or Wired Magazines. As such, our reach is not limited by the cost and imperfections of CMYK printing and we totally bypass the messy carbon footprinting of tree destruction and truck deliveries. The subject is international in scope, and our reach is global. BÜZE Magazine is an idea whose time has arrived."

"We're just a tap away."

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The first issue of Buze Magazine contains advertising, just as you would expect of any commercial publications, Hyodo made sure of that.

A common mistake made by new tablet magazine not originating from a team of print publishers, is the lack of advertising-centric thinking seen in the first issues. As any print publisher with launch experience will tell you, you have to think advertising from Day One. Launch issues are usually seen as the main promotional piece in future sales pitches, so they not only need to contain advertising, but also need to be able to showcase for advertisers exactly who should be spending there ad dollars in future issues.

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12 Apps of Christmas: In October, two indy publishers show two visions for tablet-only magazines

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night.  TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began last week, will look at significant media apps  released in 2012. Today we have reached October, and will continue the series through New Year's Eve.

In October the app developer of Instapaper, Marco Arment, released a tablet-only magazine, simply called The Magazine, which garnered great attention from the tech community. Some called the spartan digital magazine the way future digital publications would be designed, without interactivity and more like a Kindle Edition.

But other developers strongly disagreed, stating that the platform's strength was its ability to create both simply digital publications, as well as publications that can convey complex information using animation, audio and video.

A good example of this is 451 MagPad, the tablet-only magazine from France, originally released in October.

The French magazine takes its name from the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 – though, as I wrote at the time, the publisher may have been thinking of the François Truffaut film of the same book.

While I see value in Arment's new venture, I tend to think that any publisher who intentionally ignores the attributes of the platform they are using places themselves at a disadvantage. While too many of the early digital magazines may have over done animation and other features, that does not mean that these features don't have value when used properly.

October saw developer begin to incorporate Passbook into their mobile apps, the Apple payment system introduced with the launch of iOS 6. Starbucks, one of the more obvious uses of Passbook, updated its mobile app to add in Passbook support during October – only later finally updating the app to add in iPhone 5 support.

Also in October, one of Canada's leading newspapers, The Globe and Mail, announced that it would be launching a metered paywall later in the month. "Some of the world’s largest and most respected media outlets have successfully introduced a similar model, and we look forward to the benefits it will enable us to deliver to our readers and advertisers," said Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail.

Paywalls continue to be a controversial issue in the industry, with some success being recorded by financial newspapers and major national papers like the NYT. But other papers have launched paywalls while skeptics continue to warn publishers that they are about to make their titles irrelevant online.

TNW Magazine: Publisher says the next issue will be the last build for the Android platform, at least for now

The co-founder of The Next Web has let TNM know that the next issue of their digital magazine, TNW Magazine (iTune link) will be that last built for the Google Play store. The next issue, v0.12, is being produced now, but the following issue, v1.1, will be for iOS only.

"The platform is just less developed," Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten said, referring to the Android platform. "We did, however, give it a try after getting a lot of requests for it."

The Android app description states that the app, which is built using the Mag+ platform, "is optimized for the Google Nexus 7. Other Android tablets are supported, use on your own regard." (sic)

The Android app has been generally well received inside Google Play, though there are only 46 reviews written to date with the main complaint being issues with various Android tablets. There are 167 reviews for the universal iOS version inside the Apple App Store, the vast majority of which are five-star.

Goodbye Android?

"We are seeing one Android reader for every 80 iOS users. We might try again next year when more Android tablets are being sold but right now it seems like an easy market to ignore," Veldhuijzen van Zanten told TNM.

According to a draft announcement to appear on the TNW website, the website's co-found says "We tried an Android magazine, and found out it just isn’t worth the effort. Does that mean that Android sucks? Ehm, no, and there is no reason to tell us how cool Android is in the comments, because we understand it is. It just means that with the current state of technology and the way the market is divided we can’t afford to invest in it anymore."

One of the biggest hang ups, besides download numbers, is the time needed to produce the Android version, 3 to 4 days versus just a couple of hours needed to convert the iPad version into the iPhone edition, according to the publisher.

The TNW Magazine app, being universal, supports not only the two versions of the iPad, but also the iPhone and iPod touch with its two different display sizes. With Android, that means the web property is supporting four different formats with its tablet-only magazine.

With the Mag+ platform the typical cost to produce a single platform app that will have Newsstand support is $399 per month, according to the vendor's website. There is an added charge of $99 or $199 per month to add support for one or more other devices.

Update: The Next Web's own story on their decision can be found here. The comments, in particular, are interesting. My only question would be this, though: if all these Android users didn't know TNW even had a tablet-magazine for the Android platform, why are they upset now that TNW won't be building one for Android anymore?

12 Apps of Christmas: September – Apple makes a serious mistake with the release of its new Maps app

The Twelve Days of Christmas runs from Christmas Day to the evening of January 5th, or Twelfth Night.  TNM's 12 Apps of Christmas, which began last week, will look at significant media apps  released in 2012. Today we have reached September, and will continue the series through New Year's Eve.

There were a lot of really good new tablet magazine released in September, including two mentioned in the last installment of this series – the sports magazines from the SF Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. But no app got more attention that the new Maps app from Apple, released as part of iOS 6.

On Monday, September 17 TNM reported the issue several days before the public release of iOS 6. The problem was in plan site, if one downloaded and installed the gold master of the new operating system.

The problem with Maps was (and remains) with the data used to populate the app. Bad mapping, imagery and others issues made the new Maps an instant butt of jokes. Bridges that looked like they were melting didn't help, but the raw data is just plain bad.

The issue arose because Apple believed, probably correctly, that it needed to replace Google Maps because Google was withholding turn-by-turn directions. Google, for its part, wanted access to user data for advertising purposes. In retrospect, Apple should have allowed Google to launch its own maps app separate from the OS. Instead, the episode simply highlighted the ways Apple's software has fallen in quality over the past few years – iTunes being but the most glaring example until Maps.

September also saw the release of a new, lower priced app solution from Adobe. Priced at $395, Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition allows media app developers to create a stand-alone app using Adobe DPS.

The downside is that as a single edition the app will not support Newsstand allow for multiple issues. But a good example of its use can be seen in the app for ΜΟΥΣΑ, the Greek edition of Marie Claire released in December.

Then mid-month there was this announcement: “After struggling for close to three years, we’ve decided to discontinue the consumer-facing magazines,” Mark Edmiston told Adweek as Nomad Editions announce that the company was shuttering its titles.

Retweet: WaPo profiles dubious TV production firm

I suppose that in some ways this story is along the same lines and of the same theme as my last post: a company that makes money using questionably tactics. But whereas some firms employ the lure of "increased exposure" in order to gain access to a journalist's original content, the story produced by the Washington Post last night is all about cold hard cash.

Written by Paul Farhi, the story is headlined Production firms stir suspicion among networks, would-be clients, and tells the tale of a company that approaches companies, trade associations and nonprofit organizations such as schools, with a somewhat unique proposition: they will shoot a short video about their organization to air on a television program, the piece will be flattering and will garner the organization much attention. The catch is that it will cost them a production fee of over $20,000.

You can read the entire piece on the WaPo website here.

There is an interesting comment posted after the story by a PR professional who has run into this outfit and tells how they work and that sometimes the firm says it is doing "research" and does not immediately ask for the money – that comes later, of course.

The reason the story is interesting to me is that these kinds of firms operate in many other areas, including in the magazine publishing field. The pitch and angle is often different, but it is the same scheme, nonetheless.

One publishing company I actually worked at for about a year made this business model into quite a successful venture. The company would employ a phone room split into two: one part would call companies to tell them that the magazine wanted to do a feature story on them, all they needed to do was submit to an interview and supply the magazine with a list of companies they worked with; the other part of the phone room would take that list and hard sell them ads that would surround the feature story. The pitch was that the company being featured wanted them to participate, and that not doing so would be bad for business. Once enough advertising was sold the feature would "go live" and be passed on to someone in the small editorial department that would churn out a story.

Each issue would start with zero ads and only a bare minimum of editorial. Then the features would be sold and the issue would take shape. In this way an issue could go from $0 to over $500,000 in three weeks. The publishing company could create these magazine for any imaginable topic and could publish them monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly depending on the success of the phone room. In this way a magazine could be started up and made profitable instantly.

I came on board because the CEO said he wanted to go legit and needed a magazine pro to help him out. In the end, being slimy proved more profitable than actually trying to produce a legitimate magazine and so eventually I was gone.

But the real story here, I think, is that our industry, the magazine publishing industry, doesn't look at a company like this one described as in any way illegitimate. On the contrary, a big NYC private equity firm, one that has backed many other magazine companies, invested in this one, as well. Apparently strong arming businesses didn't bother them in the least.

(The PE firm still lists the magazine company they invested in on their website, though they say they have exited the investment.)

Let's not pretend the things the reporter for the WaPo is writing about are unique to the television industry. We have our own share of shady characters, and it doesn't take much effort to find them.