Earlier this week, we applauded the Kindle for what it will lead to, even as we were a little disappointed with what it’s not. But the real question is, "When will products like the Kindle offer color and video?"

A "Think note" from mediaIDEAS published this week suggests we’re only a few years away from this kind of reality. We can hardly wait. :) 

While you have to pay for Think notes from the mediaIDEAS guys, you can listen to two of them wax philosophical about digital editions by viewing the archive from the last session of Digital Edition University… You can do so here. 

Courtesy of Mr. Magazine, here’s a link to custom digital-only Holiday special from People Magazine. Though not done in Nxtbook format - it easily could’ve been, mind you - there’s one very important aspect of this magazine that shouldn’t be overlooked: it was supported by a single sponsor.

Much like ProjectAnalog, a custom digital-only publication Nxtbook produces for Hearst, there’s an increasing desire among forward-thinking advertisers to push the envelope with something new, and a custom digital edition is a great way to do it. For a fraction of the cost of a print custom pub, publishers can offer these types of solutions. The single sponsor doesn’t have to share screen real estate with competitors and is seen by readers as being cutting edge. It’s a win-win all the way around.

• American Cinematographer - November 2007
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• Diagnostic Imaging Scan - November 27, 2007
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At Nxtbook, we tend to be a rather active group. We’ve got walkers, yoga people, weight lifters and runners. Actually, lots of runners. And one of the things we’ve learned is that the media profession tends to attract a lot of runners. So - we thought - wouldn’t it be cool if we sponsored a race marketed to…. Media Professionals? So here it is:

WHAT: The World Media Run, a 5k Race
WHERE: Friday, Feb. 22 at the FOLIO Publishing Summit in Miami, OR wherever you are 2/22-2/24.
HUH? It’s a virtual race, too! Sign up, send us your time and compare results with other media professionals.
WHAT MEDIA PROFESSIONALS? Go to World Media Run and see for yourself.
WHY? Proceeds benefit Special Olympics, you get a cool World Media Tech Shirt, and you might even win an award for being the fastest web person, or fastest BtoB print guy, or fastest Consumer print Girl, or, or… well, you get the picture!

Congrats to FOLIO: for a nice relaunch of their website this week. Despite the fact that I can’t find any of our ads on the site, I’m sure that’s just a glitch. Content-wise and layout-wise, the site is a dramatic improvement and well worth a visit.

Several months ago, Minonline had a nice relaunch, too, multiple paid-gateways notwithstanding. Both sites should be commended with embracing new technology and trends. 

If you have great content, your readers can’t wait to talk about it. A few days ago, Chris Gentri - one of our sales reps - made it a point to share with me the link for the 2008 Walt Disney World Marathon in Nxtbook format because a. he knows I’m a runner and b. he knows I love to blog about cool Nxtbooks.

Before I even had the time to do so, though, another reader posted the link on a Disney fan website. What you’re seeing here is the digital equivalent to what print publishers call "pass along rate," and this sharing of links is the number one way Nxtbook readership is growing. It’s where smart publishers are spending their marketing energy and - where appropriate - their dollars.

One of our customers called this week, wondering if their Nxtbook would play on the new Amazon Kindle. While it’s super-cool that anyone would hope it would, it won’t.

The Kindle runs on E-Ink. A few years from now, E-Ink could be the cool stuff that revolutionizes the print industry. Right now, commercial applications are only black and white and - in the case of the Kindle - mostly text. No graphics. So if you’d like a black-and-white text version of your magazine to be available on the Kindle, I guess you could, though really, you could do that now. For free. It’s called RSS, and most magazine publishers have discovered that while RSS is something they should have their hands in, it’s hardly a winner-take-all strategy.

This is also why magazines are tumbling off of the Kindle’s best seller list and will continue to do so. It’s a rather unfulfilling experience for the reader - having no charts and graphs.

But only for now. The realist in us says, "There’s no market here," but the realist in us also says, "But there will be!"

There are quite a few other reasons why the Kindle isn’t a silver bullet for magazine publishers, but we’ll leave them be for now. At best, this is a device that will lead to other devices that change the way we do business.
 

Jason Preston has an interesting survey on his blog, asking people how they’d like to be reading newspapers 25 years from now. He doesn’t have many responses, yet, but I think it’s a great question and could easily be applied to magazines. Click here to give Jason your thoughts.

Sign up for Digital Edition University but oversleep the course? Didn’t even make it to registration? Lucky for you, the entire show has been archived and is available for viewing. And remember, if you attend this course and either the January or February class, you receive a FREE Digital Edition University t-shirt. Don’t miss your chance! View the archived webinar here.

A special "thank you" goes out to those who attended the first installment of Digital Edition University yesterday. Whether it’s the promise of a free t-shirt or the great speakers, attendance was awesome and the questions were tremendous. (Incidentally, the webinar was archived - link will be posted as soon as it’s available.) Keep in mind, it’s not too early to register for the next webinar.

There was one problem, though - great questions kept pouring in and time didn’t allow us to answer all of them, despite running ten minutes longer than advertised. So over the course of the next several days, we’ll be posting some of those questions along with the answers we’d hoped to give.

Here’s 1 example: Have the producers of digital magazines solved the SEO problem—we have hundreds and hundreds of pages up on the web in digital magazine format but the search issues can’t find the info. 

There are many reasons a digital edition won’t show up or won’t show up well in search results. They include:

1) Is the content even indexed by search engines?  Simply put, Google can’t read all formats and the first thing a publisher needs to do is make certain that the solution they’ve chosen is indexed by search engines. Many solutions - particularly many of the new crop is inexpensive digital editions - aren’t. And if the vendor says they are, make them prove it.

2) Even if the content is indexed by search engines, that doesn’t necessarily mean that search engines will boost queries of digital editions to the top of the results. Search engines care about three things:

       * Traffic - The more traffic you have, the more important search engines think your content is. So if you want to have more Googlers in your content, get more people in your content.

       * Relevance - We’ve all seen websites that get to the top of Google rankings simply by littering the page with the same keyword. Search engines look at the weight given to keywords to determine how important that word is in the context of your content. Mention a keyword once or twice in the magazine and Google doesn’t think it’s as relevant if you would mention it ten times.

       * SEO Formatting - Let’s face it. A magazine isn’t formatted for ideal SEO. In fact, many websites aren’t. If you haven’t seen it, yet, check out the hilarious but educational If Google Were Designed for Google.

All of that being said, of course SEO is important to your digital edition. In fact, traffic to Nxtbooks via Google is up nearly 27% from what it was last year. But here’s the thing: Traffic from all sources is up nearly twice that amount. Traffic from social media sites like Digg and del.icio.us is up well into triple digits. In other words, you can get far more traffic to your digital edition via other sources (assuming your digital edition plays well on Digg and del.icio.us).

In conclusion, some digital publishers have gotten their content indexed by search engines, and this has made the content able to be seen by those looking for it on Google and Yahoo. But there are far easier ways to broaden your audience using tools that the best digital editions already have installed.