We had the great opportunity to sponsor an outstanding webinar today about Digital Catalogs, which featured three very successful publishers. For those of you who missed it, feel free to view the archive here. 

One speaker offered the following data:

* Sales figures of five times the cost of the digital catalog
* More than three minutes of engagement time (better than their website)
* A conversion rate of 11.33%, compared to 3-6% on their website.

What’s going on with the fall tv lineup? Look no further than this catalog, which includes more than twenty video trailers.

Here’s a recent review of the Nxtbook:

It’s actually pretty nifty - you can link to a specific page
(and send such links directly to various social networks), and each
entry in the page leads out to Gale’s website for more info. …

The NY Times features Readius, the first roll-up e-paper display due to hit the market next year. At $359, we’re still nowhere near a price that the average consumer will pick one up and at five inches diagonal with black and white text, we’re still nowhere near the size or resolution it will need to be if magazine publishers are to embrace it, but no matter…. it’s the type of product that could birth the magazine of the next generation.

Several months back, we made reference to the fact that traffic to Nxtbooks via Google is up tremendously. In fact, comparing April, May & June to January, February and March, we see more than a 400% increase in traffic via the big guy.

It’s possible that the rapid growth (which started in April but continues to increase daily) has to do with Google’s news that they’re now able to index text within Flash itself. As we’ve said, Nxtbook content has been indexed for some time via our hybrid index Flash technique. However, if Google is now indexing the Nxtbook itself, the result would be that Google would see the content twice on the page - inside the Nxtbook and within the XML. This double-shot of content seems to be having the desired effect for our publishers and their readers.

We recently had the good fortune to sponsor a great presentation by Hillary Bressler, an awesome Internet consultant to the travel industry. Afterward, Hillary asked us to convert her presentation to NXTbook format. Inside, you can see how the travel industry can plug into scented web sites and much more. Oh, and if you’re not up to speed with Shoshmosis, click here.

One the obvious benefits of digital publishing is that your publication doesn’t get stale and dog-eared. Looking through our traffic statistics from last month, a book that remained in our Top 20 list was the Official Fall 2006 Visitors Guide to New York City, which received tens of thousands of readers and had its best month ever — in February!

Do you know where you’re going on your NXT vacation? Use our new Google Maps Mash-up to visit more than one hundred and fifty different destinations!

Love it or hate it, snow is finally falling in central Pennsylvania. Many of us sat at our desks this morning watching the first significant flakes of the year. Emerging from the whiteness was a figure out for a walk in the winter wonderland. We soon recognized him to be our contact from our closest customer - a successful educational publisher located just a stone’s throw away from our own building.

We’d recently done our first-ever project for the publisher and were curious to see why our contact decided to visit (other than the obvious fact that it’s nice to be neighborly, and doubly nice when snow is falling).

The fellow walked inside our office, smiled, set down a folder and returned to the snow. Inside the folder? Exactly forty-one e-mails from customers, with compliments like these:

“Perfect!”

“LOVE it!”

“It is money well spent.”

“Very cool, indeed.”

“Brilliant.”

How do we know this? Because more catalogs than usual made up our Top 20 list of most-viewed NXTbooks in the past week. So whether you’re looking for stuffed animals for a good cause, a nice bottle of wine, some Celtic soccer garb, or something from Fly Buys (for our NZ friends), we’ve got you covered! And if you’re looking to get something for your favorite NXTbook blogger, how about a nice Caribbean cruise?