Digital publishing news for November 13, 2013
America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) is now offering access to all three of its subscription websites for 69.99/year. Gigaom reports, “ATK is offering bundled access to all three of its websites, plus a selection of 1,000 recipes from its cookbooks, for $69.95 per year. That’s a good deal because previously a subscription to just one website was $34.95 a year, and if you wanted access to the “Cookbook Collection” recipes you had to pay an additional $15 a year.” This single login system also gives subscribers access to a new search engine that lets you search for recipes on all three sites. Unfortunately ATK doesn’t bundle this offer to print subscribers. They actually don’t bundle print and digital access either. Will this be the next step in unifying their website subscription model?
Twitter Photos a Boost for Publishers
Digiday is reporting that Twitter’s new photo centric design has been great for publishers. John McDermott reports, “Publications like The Atlantic, Grantland, Slate and Wired are turning tweets into the kind of story previews readers already see on Facebook. Not only does this make tweets more aesthetically pleasing, it takes up more space in the Twitter stream. This pays off in the form of increased engagement (retweets, mentions, favorites and sharing), which is up to four times higher than that of a “normal” tweet in some cases. That means more publishers will start to look at their tweets as more than just a link and a headline. Just like a story, they’ll have to consider art, too.” It’s no surprise that engagement soars when photos are involved. We’ve seen how Facebook posts do when images are added. Will the Twitter of the future look more like the Pinterest of today?
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Forbes Licenses CMS to ALM
BtoB Online is reporting that Forbes Media has licensed its digital publishing platform to the ALM, which plans to use when they relaunch law.com. “Under the agreement, ALM will license the Falcon software, the digital publishing platform used by Forbes.com’s contributor network, including its BrandVoice marketing partners. Forbes Media will host ALM’s flagship website, www.law.com, and provide ongoing consulting and custom software development services.”
Flipboard Lets Users Create Catalogs
VentureBeat is reporting that Flipboard is now letting users create their own catalogs. Dylan Tweney reports, “A catalog is basically a magazine that’s filled with the products of a single merchant rather than ads for different brands. But the design aesthetics are similar — and well-suited to the medium of Flipboard, which presents news articles, photos, and — now — catalog entries as appealing, uncluttered, full-screen “pages” on your tablet or smartphone.”
Flipboard launched 11 catalogs curated by staff members and various brands like “Banana Republic, ModCloth, Fab, eBay, and Birchbox.” Flipboard completed user studies that showed people wanted to shop while using the app. Tweney adds, “With the curated catalogs, Flipboard also has a new way to make money: Encouraging the brands to advertise — on Flipboard, of course — to drive readers over to their catalogs.” For now Flipboards catalog service is free but I wouldn’t be surprised if they monetize it soon.
ATK’s Chris Kimball is always ahead of the curve when it comes to all thing subscription marketing… and he has a growing list of magazines and subscription websites to market in new ways…
I suspect we’re likely to see more creative subscription offers from Chris in the future.
Re: the Twitter snippet …. I think it’s crazy how Pinterest has changed the design of practically every major site we use today. And it’s not just the social networks either, I remember the day Mashable moved to a photo-first design. It was straight up unusable and they’ve made adjustments since then, but it’s still pretty impressive what one new site did for all of media design!