Today’s blog asks the question are App Stores alone enough to get your digital magazine or eBook discovered? Presence in the stores provides an additional channel of discover-ability sure, but with competition on Google Play and iTunes at all time high due to the recent popularity of self-publishing coupled with the boom in digital media, is the space too overcrowded to enable your edition to be discovered?
Is the solution a compromise? Apple takes 20-25 percent of sales, but at the same time opens up promotional opportunities inside the App Store. An important cost to factor into this is the cost of the digital publishing platform used to build, maintain and submit your App.
We’ve made no secret of how we feel about this at 3D Issue. We believe it is best to distribute your digital magazines or eBooks to as many channels as possible to gain maximum exposure. But it is important to do so on your terms, whilst also taking advantages of the opportunities to gain exposure provided in the App Stores. That is why the 3D Issue platform is structured in a way that allows you to do both. Below describes how 3D Issue allows you to gain maximum exposure:
Building Digital Magazines & eBooks in All Formats, Not Just One
Add PDFs to 3D Issue, add rich media and additional functionality. Enable output in Flash (desktops, laptops), HTML5 (mobile/tablets), .epub and .mobi (Kindle, Nook, Sony & other e-Readers). Flip through pages like a real magazine or book.
Self-Host to Gain Exposure in Search
Upload to your own website via built-in FTP in the 3D Issue software. By self-hosting your ebooks and magazine, you enable your publications to be found via your website as it will appear in Google, Bing Yahoo! etc. This is why we have an SEO feature – to allow you to add titles and description to your publications.
Publish to App Stores
There’s no doubt that publishers need to utilize the app stores to gain exposure. Whether it be news, entertainment updates, my favorite eBooks or magazine subscription, I will check if it is available as an App – it’s just easier to access on a daily basis. With this in mind, we include this feature in our pricing model.
Download for Offline Viewing
Enable readers to download your publications for offline viewing, so they can read on the go.
Gain exposure via Social Sharing
When readers find something of interest they can use the share feature to share the digital publication amongst friends and colleagues via social networks including Facebook and Twitter or via email.
Tracking Performance
Integration with Google Analytics to enable you to measure both engagement metrics and constantly improve upon your performance in all distribution channels.
In conclusion, to answer the question originally asked “are app stores alone enough to get your digital magazine or eBook discovered”, we say when the opportunity to distribute to so many channels is available as a 3D Issue customer, why limit yourself to just one? Sign up for a free trial of 3D Issue today.
By Joanna Brien.