Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions - (Page 16)

Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases Microsoft’s Silverlight Web multimedia platform). The publication is also easy to produce, yet still supports important interactive features such as live Web links. Advanced Publishing created a customized search presentation for the directory to present results in specific groupings based on categories determined by the publisher. The digital edition of the Donor’s Guide is an exact facsimile of the printed product, except with live links to email addresses in listings. To produce it, Third Sector sends a print-ready PDF to Advanced Publishing, which does the rest. Users can simply access the publication from the Web site; no registration is required. The digital edition was launched with minimal fanfare, other than publicity from the Association of Gift Planners and Canadian Bar Association. Results Readership of the digital edition has grown steadily to an acceptable level of 700 users per month who view the publication. Third Sector was able to achieve this readership with virtually no publicity. Lessons Learned Despite the relative success with no publicity, Third Sector finds that it needs to take steps to build traffic to the Donor’s Guide Web site. They also want to look beyond the print edition and consider how they can take advantage of the Internet; the digital edition may become one of several avenues for publishing the same information. They are considering online ads, online premium listings, and other sources of revenue. Gilbane Group Conclusions There is a viable role for digital editions in directory publishing, despite its migration from print to “pure” online services over the past several years. Digital editions can be particularly attractive to small publishers, for whom the cost of converting a print directory to an online database – and hosting that database – may be prohibitive. The DjVu format used by Advanced Publishing in this case turned out to be ideal: it is used in situations that might otherwise call for PDF but features much smaller page size while retaining such important features as searchability and embeddable links. It is a good fit for a large publication meant for offline reading. ©2008 Gilbane Group, Inc. 16 http://gilbane.com http://gilbane.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions

Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions
Table of Contents
Introduction
Section One: The Data
Section Two: Best Practice Cases
Nxtbook
Bentley Systems
Graduate Prospects
Hearst
Information Today
Marine Log
Vendor Description
Section Three: Buyer’s Guide
Section Four: Visionaries
Section Five: Conclusions
The Authors
About the Gilbane Group, Inc.
Our Sponsors

Gilbane Research Report - Digital Magazine Editions