The bin of leftover magazines...its days are numbered in the digital age.
I’m contemplating the best angle for a new research project about the world of digital magazine publishing. I’m including here not just the magazines that have released iPad and other mobile apps, but also web-based publishing like that offered by Zinio, Yudu, Texterity, NoLayout, and others.
I’m interested in to what degree these digital magazine publishing opportunities are democratizing magazine publishing. Though I find print-on-demand a fascinating trend as well for magazines whose content and design implies the value of a lasting hard copy, the high cost of purchasing many of these publications means that they will likely be restricted for some time to a more affluent audience. But the opportunity for small publishers to whip up a magazine in PDF format, then post it online, seems to open up a whole realm of possibilities.
No longer are independent publishers relegated to blogs or mere websites; the ability to publish a polished, slick, easily accessible digital magazine is now within reach. Any magazine can be available on the web or even on the iPad using a newsstand app like Zinio, or through HTML5 using a service like NoLayout (though the latter concentrates on fashion and art topics).
So who is taking advantage of this opportunity to present a polished look at their subject matter? I’d like to know the breakdown by size and topic of the independent publishers who are crafting new projects online. I’d also like to know, more specifically, whether and how many activist or politically oriented digital-only magazines there are. An initial exploration of just Zinio’s listings suggests, interestingly, that there are many more ethnic or international magazines that might fit the “activist” label than English-language publications of this variety. As someone interested in how magazines affect or enable various social and political movements and identities, I also want to know whether and how digital magazines are playing a similar role to print magazines’ role in past movements. (I did a study on the role of National Review in mobilizing the conservative movement, though mine is just one of numerous studies in this area.)
I’ve previously explored the role of social media in adding to political/activist print magazines’ engagement of readers in this MediaShift story. The research study I’m anticipating now would likely examine the role of smaller, exclusively online activist publishers in directing, enabling, or mobilizing the causes they’re associated with through this new medium, as well as the reasoning behind their decisions to use digital magazines for this purpose.
If you have thoughts or suggestions along these lines, or suggestions of specific digital magazines I should explore, please leave a comment. I am excited about the opportunity to have some dialogue around this topic before I set out a concrete plan for the project.
