Imagine going back to visit your high school, walking into the cafeteria and seeing all your old friends, sitting at your old table, still arguing about the same things they were arguing about so many decades ago. <\/p>\n
That’s the way I feel about “digital magazines.” Can we please get over it already! <\/p>\n
Magazines have been around for a long time, so the word “magazine” has accumulated a lot of meanings that go beyond a reductionist analysis of its “content.” Here are a few. <\/p>\n
All those things (and many more) are part of what we mean by the word “magazine,” and none of those things apply to a “digital magazine” in the same way. <\/p>\n
A magazine comes in issues with a relatively small number of articles. A digital product has no such limitations. There’s no reason why it has to have issues, and there’s no reason why it should or shouldn’t have one, 15, 100 or 1,000 articles. <\/p>\n
A magazine has still photos. A digital product can have video, audio, moving graphics, etc. <\/p>\n
A magazine has a discrete, defined size. A digital product may be viewed on a computer, a tablet, a smart phone — maybe even a watch. <\/p>\n
A magazine is static. With advanced printing options you can customize an issue to specific market segments, and sometimes to individuals, but once it’s published, that’s it. It’s done. A digital product can be changed on the fly, and the ads usually are. <\/p>\n
If you see an ad in a magazine, you can go back and find it by flipping through. An ad you saw on a digital product may be gone forever, or it might follow you around the internet like a lost puppy. <\/p>\n
The users of a digital product can have a relationship with one another, and with the publisher, that the subscribers of a print publication can’t. They can comment on articles, they can have chats and even real-time discussions. Sooner or later somebody’s going to incorporate Skype. <\/p>\n
Users of a digital product are giving the publisher a huge cache of data that the publisher can’t get from print subscribers. E.g., people who read this article also read this other article, or people in this demographic group spend less time on the page than people in this other group. <\/p>\n
I could go on and on with differences. So, as a contrast, what do they have in common? <\/p>\n
Not a lot. The brand, the articles, and to some extent the ads. That’s about it. <\/p>\n
In my opinion, the common elements pale in significance to the differences. <\/p>\n
The articles from a magazine can just as well go on a stand-alone web page. In fact, when you hear about “digital revenue” from magazine publishers, that’s<\/i> what they’re talking about. Not sales of “digital magazines,” which are still (and have always been) in the tank. <\/p>\n
It’s time to give up this idea of creating a “digital version” of a magazine and to think of digital products as different things. They’re not “magazines,” they’re something else, and they should be treated as something else. <\/p>\n
Print has its benefits and its limitations. So does digital. We need to quit trying to force one into the other. It makes for a worse product in each medium. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine going back to visit your high school, walking into the cafeteria and seeing all your old friends, sitting at your old table, still arguing about the same things they were arguing about so many decades ago. That’s the way I feel about “digital magazines.” Can we please get over it already! Magazines have been …<\/p>\n