New digital literary magazine TOK to be launched in April

A new digital magazine -- TOK -- is to launch officially in April. It's an outgrowth of Disapora Dialogues, which has a long record promoting emerging writers, playwrights and artists. 

The magazine project will rely at first on fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and drama created under the auspices of the Diaspora Dialogues mentoring programs.  The new venture is being led by Helen Walsh, until recently the publisher and president of the Literary Review of Canada, and the founding director of Spur, a national festival of politics, art and ideas.

"We see TOK as the logical extension of the work we’ve done over the past decade and a half. In a world whose reading habits have changed, the publishing landscape irrevocably altered, we’ve designed TOK to be a fluid, responsive network. A way to showcase and support writers across backgrounds and styles. And we’re committed to collaborating with partners across literary, artistic and community realms, to do our bit in fostering a non-zero-sum culture."

Quote, unquote: Good intentions; workouts and digital mags

“Digital subscriptions have become the equivalent of a gym membership.Lots of people have them, but no one actually goes.”

-- Scott Schumaker of PacificBasin Communications (Honolulu magazine, amongst others), quoted in a story in Folio:.

Have we reached the point of "peak digital"?

D. B. Hebbard over at Talking New Media says in a current post that digital circulation of magazines seems to have peaked, at least judging by established U.S. majors. He points out that while digital's contributions to over all circulation numbers climbed for two year or so, towards a "magic level" of 10%, they seem to have stalled.Wired, which once claimed 10.2 percent of its circulation in digital subscriptions, now reports 7 percent. 

"Most discussion about digital today in the magazine world centers on “total audience” a concept best exemplified by the MPA’s Magazine Media 360 reports. According to the MPA, magazine audience growth was nearly 10 percent in the first half of 2015, making magazine publishing one of the fastest growing segments in the US economy – something absolutely no one believes. 

"The idea that measuring total audience reflects the power of a magazine brand makes sense, but it does little to actually sell advertising. The list of magazine being folded continues to grow not because total audiences are declining, but because too few ad pages are being sold into these struggling titles." 

Magzter magazine newsstand service cuts all-you-can-read fee by 20%

One of the players in the "all you can read" digital newsstand world is Magzter which, since January 2015 has made access to downloads of more than 3,000 magazine titles from 212 countries available for a single, monthly fee of $9.99. 

Now, the New York-based service is cutting its monthly fee for Magzter Gold by 20% to $7.99 a month. (The company continues to offer Magzter Gold Lite which allows reading of any five magazines for a monthly price of $4.99.) 

(It may be coincidental -- or not -- that the price cut is happening just as Next Issue Media and Next Issue Canada have rebranded as Texture.)

In addition to the all-you-can-read option, Magzter offers readers a portal to subscribe to individual magazines. It offers publishers a revenue share model and apps for most mobile platforms, both for iPad/IPhone and for Android. However its magazines are all PDF-based, so limited in their interactivity. It does offer a family sharing plan whereby subscribers can share the sub for free with any four designated family members. 

[H/T Talking New Media]

Rogers Media to "reimagine" Next Issue subscription service as Texture

Next Issue Canada, the two-year-old Rogers Media all-you-want magazine subscription service, is being rebranded and repositioned as Texture starting Thursday. According to a story in the Globe and Mail, Rogers is following the lead of its U.S. partners, a consortium of publishers including Condé Nast Publications Inc., Hearst Corp., New York-based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Meredith Corp., News Corp. and  Time Inc. The consortium presents Texture as "a completely reimagined magazine experience."

It moves the service -- which has more than 100,000 subscribers and has enjoyed a bigger relative uptake than in the U.S. --  from its positioning to date as an electronic simulation of a traditional "magazine stand". It puts the emphasis more on digital content and the way readers make use of it -- much different than from being a "flip book" or pdf online version of the traditional Rogers publications as well as more than 100 U.S. titles.

“It was a great opportunity for us basically to go out and say, whatever preconceived notions you might have about magazines, about digital magazines, about this product itself, we continue to evolve and we continue to innovate,” Steve Maich, senior vice-president of publishing for Rogers, said in an interview last week at his Toronto office. “So give it a second look.”

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Quote, unquote: Why tablet editions are down the list

"Why did people who are perfectly comfortable exploring articles on their laptop and watching videos on their phone never make the switch to perusing magazines on a tablet? The tablet edition of a magazine can be a beautiful collection of articles and images. But the printed edition can also entertain visitors, decorate a coffee table, or display's the owner's taste or passion. It is an object that can be clipped, shared, or collected. You'd better know what your customers want and how they use your products before creating a new, "improved" version."

-- D. Edward Tree, writing in "8 Lessons from the failure of digital magazines to revolutionize publishing".

Mags Canada unveils set of standard metrics for digital editions

Magazines Canada has published a new set of standard metrics to provide advertisers, agencies and publishers with a consistent measure of engagement and readership in digital magazine editions. 

The guidelines outline a set of standard measurements in five categories of audience data. 

• total unique readers per issue
• total number of sessions per issue
• total amount of time spent per reader per session
• average number of sessions per reader per issue and 
• total accumulated time spent per reader per issue.

These would be measured over a period of 30 to 90 days (depending on the frequency of the title.) The information would be reported as a 6-issue rolling average on a 14-week release. Provision is made for special interest publications (SIPs) to offer a 120-day metric.

"This is an important first step in marketing our magazine media brands on multiple platforms," said Mark Jamison, CEO Magazines Canada. "By working together and with our partners in measurement organizations, Canada's magazine media will provide a better understanding of the remarkable connectivity audiences have with our brands on every device."