EM&T, the production and test print title from IML is to merge with EPD. The EM&T content will be a section within EPD in print, although I understand that IML is considering allowing digital subscribers to request just one or other of the two titles. It’s sad to see EM&T disappear from the UK publication roster, although the good news is that the move will see EPD’s circulation increase to 24K (13.5K print and 10.5K digital).

I’m reassured that this change will not impact EMT WorldWide, which has grown into a website and email newsletter with global reach.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, EM and T, EPD, UK

At Embedded World I was able to have a chat with a few publishers about digital magazines. Digital distribution is still a new technology, and it was great to get some hard facts that appear dispel a couple of myths about digital mags:

1: People only read a couple of pages of digital titles

The facts simply don’t bear this out. ElectronicSpecifier reports an average of 23 pages per visit, whilst EDN Europe generated an impressive average visit duration of 7 minutes 46 seconds for the February issue. Clearly readers are doing much more than simply flicking through the first couple of pages.

2: People don’t really want digital magazines

Elektronik i Norden has offered a digital version of the publication since 2007. Rather than trying to switch readers from print to digital distribution, the publication believes that the digital format enhances the experience for the reader, pointing to the increasing number of readers who have the publication sent to their home address. These readers say they browse the print edition at home, and then will download content they need for their job from the digital edition when at work. This approach has resulted in stunning stats: the February issue has received over 5600 unique visitors, and the January issue 6045 unique visitors and 17421 total visits, which probably makes Elektronik i Norden the most-read European digital magazine in our industry. Perhaps one of the best ways to promote your digital magazine is to distribute a print version!

3: Adverts don’t work in digital magazines

Adverts definitely work better than online banners! For example in the January edition of EDN Europe, one advert on page 7 has achieved 168 clicks. With 3512 total opens of the publication, this represents a click rate of almost 5% – about 20 times better than the average return from a banner or skyscraper.

Of course this doesn’t mean that everything is rosy in the world of digital magazines. Despite some titles such as Elektronik i Norden achieving impressive statistics, most tiles achieve between 10% and 20% open rates, and the large number of unopened digital copies is probably the biggest problem facing publishers that are attracted to the low cost of digital distribution. If the open rates could be increased to 30-40% then we’d start seeing some pretty respectable figures for readership. I’m optimistic that this will happen eventually, and am hopeful that better use of digital media’s capabilities, careful control of circulation and more convenient readers will drive higher open rates. If this doesn’t work, however, perhaps the inevitable decline in the availability of printed magazines might push engineers to adopt digital titles.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Digital Magazines and Print Publications

EP&Dee (Electronic Products & Design Eastern Europe) has added digital distribution and has started a push to grow its digital circulation. The title currently has a circulation of just over 6000, and the move to digital will help increase this without the high cost of print and postage that is incurred with international distribution. It will be interesting to see how the publication develops – the title is probably the only one to establish a significant footprint across several Eastern European countries, and the digital edition should grow this significantly, as well as allowing growth beyond its current reach across South Eastern Europe.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Eastern Europe

I was sad to see that Total Telecom has stopped publishing the print edition, although it was some consolation that the website – totaltele.com – will continue.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications

It’s not often I write about media packs, but the new EDN Europe media information is worthy of comment. The circulation is up to 19K – it’s great to see the number of readers recovering after what seemed a rather hurried transition to all-digital distribution. The new media pack is also the first I’ve seen in our industry with embedded video. I think that the magazine did a pretty good job on the videos – managing to include useful information that might otherwise have not made the document, whilst avoiding a tone of desperate pleading for adverts!

To be serious for a moment, I have been very impressed with the way that EDN Europe has incorporated video into their digital editions, and I’m also a huge fan of the Ceros platform they use. Not only does it produce a great rich-media document that opens quickly, but I can also download a very workable PDF version of the media pack.

Tags: EDN Europe, Reed

The latest ABC figures are out (ABC issue annual figures, whereas BPA audits are published when the audit is completed), and I’m pleased that many titles continue to invest both in circulation and audits. It’s particularly pleasing when smaller publishers, who don’t have a huge circulation machine like some of the bigger publishers, are able to get good audited circulations. Perhaps the best example of this is MMG, whose title Electronics Sourcing UK is now 98.09% requested, with 86.37% of these readers have requesting ES within the last twelve months. Congratulations to MMG and all publishers who recently achieved an ABC audit.

Tags: Electronics Sourcing, MMG, UK

Firmware has launched a digital version of the magazine, making Inware Edizioni the first publisher in our sector to launch a digital title. I’m told that there is an ongoing commitment to the print edition, but clearly the move to digital makes sense. I’m a firm believer in the benefits of a magazine format over websites for browsing and educating readers on new approaches and technologies, and am convinced that digital distribution will be the norm in a few years.

Tags: Digital Magazines, Italy

A few days ago Canon Communications LLC acquired four media brands from Reed Business Information-US: Electronic Design News (EDN), Design News, Test & Measurement World, and Packaging Digest. EDN Europe was not included in the acquisition, and will continue to be published from Reed’s Paris office. I understand that the acquisition is not expected to significantly affect the European title, and that EDN Europe’s digital magazine will continue as planned, which is great news for European engineers.

Tags: EDN Europe, Reed

Hüthig, publisher of elektronikJOURNAL, has appointed Richard Thompson as their new sales rep in the UK. It makes sense to add elektronikJOURNAL, which is positioned as the publisher’s horizontal title covering design, production and automation, as Richard already represents the three vertical titles: IEE, Productronic and Elektronik Industrie.

Tags: Elektronik, Elektronik Industrie, ESE, IEE, UK

There is an interesting battle in the UK where the NLA, which is a company that has been set up to monetise copyright licensing for newspapers, is trying to charge a licence to companies that link to newspaper websites. Recently they appear to have lost confidence, saying invoices for licences will not be issued until the case is heard at the copyright tribunal.

Links are taken for granted on the web, and many people are confused as to why publications would not want linking, as this drives traffic and increases advertising revenue. The Times Online even has the following in it’s terms and conditions:

Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the Services, including … unauthorised framing of or linking to the Website is prohibited.

I’m not sure what would be authorised use, so I won’t link to the Times! The situation has even resulted in the launch of the right2link campaign.

I do have sympathy with the newspapers and other print publications – the world isn’t being kind to them. The idea that a site can include an obtuse clause in their Ts & Cs saying linking isn’t allowed and then sue people who link is, in my view, ridiculous. Unrestricted linking is an inherent part of the way the internet works. There is a chance, however, that the newspapers might take a different approach, preventing aggregators crawling their site with the robots.txt file, which has already happened to one aggregator, NewsNow.

Hopefully the situation will be resolved, links will be OK and all will be right with the internet. But what if links were deemed to be copyright in the UK, and you needed to get permission to create a link? Perhaps then Google would decide to stop linking to any UK site whilst the situation was sorted out. Although this move would be an effective way of getting the problem resolved quickly, I can’t imagine many UK publishers, particularly in electronics, would be happy to see their traffic from Google and the revenue associated with it disappear overnight!

Reed has reduced the circulation of EPN from 60K to 50K. The magazine still retains a large print distribution of 32K, whilst 18K readers receive the digital version. E-mail newsletters circulation has also dropped slightly from 20K to 17K in the latest media pack. That magazine retains its BPA audit, and therefore continues to be the European electronics title with the highest audited circulation. Given the challenges faced by the whole market, and recent cutbacks at Reed, the fall in circulation is not surprising although it would have been nice if more readers could be convinced to take the digital issue, rather than dropping off the circulation.

Tags: EPN, Reed

Elektor and Circuit Cellar have announced a “strategic partnership”, which, in plain language is an acquisition of Circuit Cellar by the publisher of Elektor. This is a great move by Elektor making it the primary “hobbyist” publisher on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although the editorial in both publications is apparently targeted towards hobbyists, it’s very clear that a large proportion of the readership of the titles is professional engineers who love the tips, tricks and circuit ideas. Elektor is now twice as big as it was in 2006, with impressive annual sales of €10 million, a result of strong organic growth as well as this acquision.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, Elektor, USA