What Are The Different Types of Digital Magazines?
Digital magazines take advantage of digital publishing technology. Unlike print, it allows adding of animations and links within the magazine to make it more informative or aesthetically better. The cost of printing is eliminated and the publishing price is greatly reduced, so most digital magazines do not require the same amount of advertising that print magazines do.
With all of the benefits of digital publishing over print, it’s no surprise that e-magazines have become so popular. Unfortunately, many people are still clueless on what digital magazine really is and what forms it’s available in, they’re left stuck at a time when the landscape is fastly evolving.
All the enormous opportunity out there for you is lost if you don’t know which approach you’d like your magazine concept to take. Fortunately, Mequoda clears it for us and draws out 4 types of digital magazines to help you tackle the steps necessary to get your magazine idea out to your readers in this digital age.
1. Online Magazines
Online magazines are read online. They aren’t formatted for a tablet and they can’t be bought in an app store. They are available through a magazine subscription website, where the user can view an issue of a magazine—one that is linear and periodic, has pages and a regular frequency, and can be viewed in HTML on any desktop or mobile device at any time. There’s nothing to download. Publishers of online magazines usually generate their revenue through subscribers and may also take advertising.
2. Online Magazine Archive or Library
Typically, when you’ve digitized your magazine into an online magazine, this makes it remarkably simple to create an online magazine archive or library. This is available through your magazine subscription website just like the original online magazine. Users have access to old articles up until whatever date you choose. The online magazine archive is typically an upsell to your online magazine subscription and offered at an additional price per month or year.
3. Digital Magazine App
Although a digital magazine could rightly refer to any magazine read digitally, most would agree that a digital magazine is a digital edition. In other words, this is the magazine that you read on your iPad, Kindle or other tablet-like device. It can still be held in your hands and the “digital” in digital magazine also refers to the type of content offered. For example, ads may link to webpages (a great advantage to advertisers), and articles may include videos.
Types of Digital Magazine App
a. Digital replica: A digital replica is typically a PDF of your magazine that has been formatted for a tablet reader.
b. Replica-plus: A replica-plus offers much more interactivity (the videos and ads previously mentioned.)
c. Reflow-plus: Magazine publishers who create a reflow-plus tend to add new functionality to the magazine that makes it act uniquely from any other digital magazine, and more like an interactive app.
4. Digital-Only Magazine App
A subset of the digital magazine app is the business model that does not include a print version at all. This is what some publishers have started exploring. We don’t see the digital-only magazine app as a survival strategy, as it once was, but rather, drastic innovation and serving the needs of a beckoning digital audience.
Digital magazines are completely different from print media, giving readers an enhanced online content experience. This shake-up has already reached publishers’ doors. And it’s high time for you to learn more about the new opportunities brought in by the proliferation of mobile and tablet devices. You don’t have to crawl your way alone, Realview can help!
