Digital publishing has proven to be a great equalizer in the industry, in more ways than one. While self-published authors are now afforded the opportunities to publish their work and app developers have a marketplace to share their content, the same is now true for smaller magazine publishers who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily produce the requisite volume to display their titles among the household names in a physical storefront. Additionally, readers now have the ability to find these smaller, often niche magazines, something that wouldn’t have been as feasible before companies like Issuu made their production tools available.
Good e-Reader spoke with Scott Kinzie, VP of Marketing for Issuu, about how these tools level the playing field, so to speak, in terms of making it possible to produce a high-quality and engaging work, regardless of current publication size, while also aiding consumers with discovery.
“We have a fairly detailed and comprehensive product road map laid out,” Kinzie explained in an interview about Issuu’s platform, “The whole point of Issuu is to connect publishers and readers in a digital environment, making the content that these publishers are working so hard to create accessible to millions of potential highly relevant readers.”
Issuu’s most recent development, launched only within the last few months, was a complete reinvention of the science involved in connecting readers to what they want to read. “Today, Issuu allows you to discover high-quality content that’s been produced by a wide range of publishers globally that you may not have had access to previously. For publishers, we’re providing them with an engaged 70 million-plus member audience.”
One of the concepts that Issuu has brought to the digital publishing sphere is “stacks,” very similar in setup concept to Pinterest for magazines. Stacks let subscribers sort, organize, save, and share mention of interesting content. When a reader discovers new magazine titles or relevant articles, he can add those articles or issues to his pre-named stacks. In addition, that person’s network of readers can follow those stacks, meaning they will only find article content that is of interest to them and that they have chosen to follow. This stack concept can lead to new magazine subscribers as followers in someone’s network choose to subscribe to the source of some of the interesting article mentions, aiding publishers with discovery of their content and in finding a broader audience.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.