Until We All Grow Six Arms, Digital Editions Will Have a Place.

Sometimes we get asked this question: If our content is all over our website and we’ve got a great web strategy, should we have a digital edition? Our answer is long-winded and dependent on many things (including your international strategy, revenue strategy, etc.), but the one answer that resonates loudly with many publishers is, "That’s a big ‘if.’"

The reality is that many publications don’t have the time, money or resources required to get their content online and if the print world is treating them well, you can understand why’d they’d be hesitant to put together a dynamite web team. In those situations, a digital edition makes perfect sense, as it’s an inexpensive way to get your content found by both readers and search engines.

In fact, here’s a blogger pointing out that 30% of the UK’s top magazines have no content on their website (or no website at all). This blogger calls this "scary," but we prefer to consider it enlightening, as it may mean that the print world is working for these particular titles, or - again - it could mean they merely lack the time, money and resources to build a robust web strategy. For publishers like this, a digital edition is an inexpensive way to immediately embrace the web.