We’re not even through with Halloween yet, and some of our swiftest publishers are already bringing out the holiday good.

Here’s a really neat catalog from Mastermind Toys. These folks have used side-bar real estate for how-to instructions and also linked up the product pictures with their online store. Very cool!

Meanwhile, it’s not too early to get started on your holiday baking, either. This Betty Crocker Holiday Cookies catalog has 70 of their best recipes, ever!

Then again, if you’re wondering how you’re going to afford yet another holiday season, you can always fire up the most recent issue of Sales & Marketing Management.
 

A new feature on the sidebar of our corporate blog is a special blogroll including links to great employee blogs. If you want to see what makes us tick when we’re not building Nxtbooks, this is a great place to start. Here’s what you’ll currently find:

FP4 - Duane Dagen - If you like movies, here you’ll find weekly postings where Duane plays match-maker between movies and personality types. Need a flick pick? Duane takes requests!

S.A.S.S.I.E. - Jason Epperson - Jason is one of our developers. To be honest, I can’t understand much of what this blog is about. But Jason is very smart, so I’m thinking the problem is me. Chances are, if you’re a techie, you’ll love this blog.

Stubborn Running - Eric Gervase - Fresh off a strong finish in the Marine Corp Marathon (which he ran with his wife, Melissa, and Nxtbook Interactive Media Designer, Christina), Eric’s blog recaps his journey from a non-runner to a marathoner.

Sweet Victory - Marcus Grimm - As if you couldn’t get enough of the Nxtblogger? Sweet Victory looks at endurance sports through the lens of a Type 1 diabetic. If you’re a diabetic endurance athlete, you’ll love this blog. If you’re one or the other, you might like it.

Happy Reading!

Nxtbook offers publishers the ability to display website search results along side digital edition search results. Very cool! This search can either be displayed on your website or inside the digital edition, meaning that each product works to find you readers for both.

As a proud sponsor of the 2008 Maggie Awards from the Western Publications Association, we were proud to produce the 2008 Maggie Call For Entries Brochure in Nxtbook format. Good luck to all!

New to the family is Solage Magazine, a custom pub from the creators of Auberge Resorts. I don’t know whether the soothing background color was chosen by the customer or the Nxtbook production person, but it catches the mood of the publication perfectly. Incidentally, custom background colors are free for all Nxtbook customers, so we’re sure to match the look and feel of your brand.

There are five great educational opportunities coming up in the next few months with Nxtbook involvement. Here they are:

Digital Edition University - a 3 part webinar exploring what’s worked, what hasn’t and what will in the digital edition industry. Part 1 airs in just a few weeks, and stars David Renard and Bo Sacks from mediaIDEAS. BONUS: Attend any 2 Digital Edition University webinars and win free DEU garb. Click here for more info.

Folio Roadshow Explores Indy Publishing - The FOLIO Roadshow heads to Chicago in November and Atlanta in December. Don’t miss these great events. For more info., click here.

Over at Custom Publishing News (which is quietly becoming a "go to" source of information), Don has blogged about one customer’s new Nxtbook, available in two languages:

The initial circulation is slated for 15,000 copies for its premiere issue and 30,000
copies for the June and December 2008 issues. Thereafter the 104 plus
pages magazine, gloss cover and perfect bound will circulate biannually.

With 40% of all Nxtbooks being read outside the US, having a second (or third) language strategy is a great idea. We’re ready, with experience in Farsi, Chinese, German, French, Italian and more.

• Leicestershire Chamber
  Leicestershire Chamber
  (tags: Chamber directory)

This Fall, General Mills has released their second Nxtbook, a yummy collection of soup recipes. No surprise here: those who love to cook love to write about cooking and are doing free marketing for General Mills, promoting the collection on various websites.

Ok, that headline was outright hyperbole. Nevertheless:

Google has damped down speculation that it will
extend its
Google Book Search platform to include magazines with an ISSN
number. Technical difficulties with digitising magazines and a lack of existing
archives were cited as the main reasons.

Is this a blow for magazine publishers? Not hardly - a book is a product and if you’re looking to market a product, Google is the bomb. But a magazine in today’s world is just one piece of your brand and having it stand alone in the Google library doesn’t help your brand extension plans very much.

Keep in mind that with Nxtbook, you can search for anything with a given issue or anything from that publishers’ archive. Granted, that’s not the same thing as indexing every magazine everywhere, but it is something for the publishers we work with.