Rival IT firms hope digital editions click with mag publishers

Rss |

Homepage |

E-mail this article |

Keith Jones

1:00 am, August 11, 2008
Rival IT firms hope digital editions click with mag publishers

Marlin Group focuses on corporate market, Nxtbook on trade publications

By Joanne Birtwistle

A home grown Greater Manchester business and the local office of a US-based rival are tapping a fast-growing publishing market — digital versions of print publications.

Creative design agency The Marlin Group, based in Stretford, hopes digital publishing will grow from a “very small” part of its £1.5m turnover to 25 per cent of the business a year from now.

“This was a future technology, but initially it took too long to produce,” said managing director Keith Jones. “But now the techno boffins have found where we needed to get to.”

The company is the UK reseller of Australia-based Digital DM's Digital Editions technology. It faces competition from US digital publishing company Nxtbook Media, which opened its Salford-based European headquarters in July, which is targeting trade publishers.

Marlin Group's Jones said Digital DM's technology enables publications to be more easily viewed offline. “Most internet e-brochures today are essentially just animated pages on a website. The client's artwork is animated with Flash, meaning they can only be viewed inside an online web browser. The pages also often appear slowly and viewing and print quality is compromised in order to reduce streaming times to the reader.”

Publications can have hyperlinks, be overlaid with video and sound, and have clickable contents pages and order forms. A desktop shortcut can automatically update with the latest issue of a magazine.

“The technology has an inbuilt sniffer. If you are viewing the brochure offline, it can sniff when you are back online.

“If a new edition has been uploaded, a branded pop-up will ask you whether to download,” said Jones.

The company is focusing on corporate publications — newsletters, corporate magazines and monthly updates. Clients include HSBC, the Commonwealth Bank, BBC, Toyota, Skoda and Mazda.

Publishers can track what is read and market directly to clients with updatable information. “If a consumer clicks on information about mortgage brokers, the client can see that, follow it up and cross sell,” said Jones. “Once a company's client has downloaded the newsletter, you can send other information out through that same channel.”

Conversion of a print publication using the latest version of Digital DM's technology costs around £50 a page — compared to £150 previously — but variables such as videos and user tracking would cost more.

Nxtbook, a privately-held company based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said its in-house technology can do everything Digital Editions does, although it is a Flash product and the company doesn't offer the desktop short cut.

£10 a page

“We'd email them when a new edition was out or send an RSS feed,” said the group's marketing director Marcus Grimm.

It charges £10 a page — with extra for Flash work or rich media such as video and audio.

Nxtbook's European operations director Darren Fowler said digital started as a cost saver for publishers but can now generate advertising revenue of its own. “We don't just convert, we give statistical feedback on how a reader uses a publication and how long they spend reading certain pages,” he said.

Declan Cosgrove, managing director of digital marketing company Bite IT, in Manchester, said there were still issues with viewing digital publications on screen.

“If companies are using old print methods on screen they are missing a trick — I don't want to have to zoom in and out to read a page and scroll around — it's just not suited for onscreen viewing,” he said.

COMMENTS? jbirtwistle@crain.com