Exact Editions Blog

The Exact Editions web service can be branded, or if you prefer, themed to support a magazine, or to support an important advertiser. When you think about it, the service can also be customised to support both. The magazine subscription that goes to the ordinary subscriber should carry the magazine’s branding, but important advertisers might wish to offer the magazine (or a short-term subscription to the magazine) to its own audience. This may be an important message for the big … Keep Reading

We have noticed that some big and very successful magazines are showing an increased interest in the prospect of building digital subscriptions. Subscription revenues are looking attractive and necessary as advertising revenues in magazines and newspapers shrink. Gradually the largest magazine publishers are thinking about the potential for digital subscriptions, see some comments from Hearst’s John Loughlin. He reckons that each new email address is worth 80c to them. Using the back of the only available envelope, and factoring … Keep Reading

Yesterday Google announced a mobile implementation of their Book Search service: Google Book Search Mobile.

There are 1.5 million books available for complete reading on your mobile phone (iPhone or Android recommended), but less than half of them will be available outside the USA, for copyright reasons previously discussed on this blog. In an email forum a Google engineer estimated that 620,000 are readable ex-USA. 40% of a huge library is even so a very large library. There are … Keep Reading

The answer to this question is obviously yes, and yes. But there is a widespread and total conviction in the newspaper industry itself that paid for digital newspapers will not fly. Anyone who doubts this is considered to be an unrealistic dreamer. Roy Greenslade, who puts out great blogs about newspapers for the Guardian subscribes to this view. But Roy is not blinkered and the other day he mentioned a countervailing opinion:

“Giving away information for free on the

Michael Heller, a property lawyer at Columbia University, has coined the term the ‘tragedy of the anti-commons’. This is a twist on the more familiar idea of ‘the tragedy of the commons’ — which is thought to be the cause of such ecological disasters as the implosion of fisheries, perhaps even the nearing apocalypse of global heating. Heller’s insight is that too much private ownership can be as much of a problem as too little: “When too many owners … Keep Reading