Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	June 5, 2008

Digital magazine editions get a big thumbs up from readers

Texterity released the results of their “Digital Magazine Reader” survey today. Magazines such as SPIN, Premier Guitar, BabyTalk and Popular Science are using Texterity to deliver their digital editions. See some digital magazine edition examples here.

The results of the survey showed that 89% of digital magazine readers were highly satisfied with their digital editions. Only 1.4% were dissatisfied, and less that 0.5% were very dissatisfied.

As with all online media, users have different reasons for preferring one medium to the other. Some users might prefer the Amazon Kindle to a print edition of The New York Times while others might prefer a copy they can hold in their hands to clip articles and save for a later date.

51% of the participants in Texterity’s survey said the reason they like digital magazines is because they are environmentally friendly. The other popular reasons for preferring digital over print were that the magazines were easy to save, and easy to search. The search feature is popular these days; how many times have you seen a cover story in a magazine and wished you had a “find” tool instead of sifting through ten pages of ads to find the table of contents?

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Like a lot of people, I have a stack of unread magazines sitting at home that have been collecting dust on my bookshelves for likely over a year. That’s kind of embarrassing but true. After all, you never know when you’ll need a craft idea from Martha Stewart Living, or an inspirational design idea from HOW. According to the Texterity survey, a whopping 90% of their users read the issue within the week, and 39% say that they read it the day they get it.

But how can digital editions satisfy your advertisers? Well, how can they not? According to Texterity’s survey, 48% clicked an ad in their digital edition to go to an external website. How many times have you read a magazine and ripped out an ad, only to lose it and forget about within the day?

Here were the rest of the results from the survey:

• 71% of digital magazine readers said they want the ability to read magazines online (or online with the option to download).
• 78% of B2B readers said that they use digital editions to get information to do their jobs better.

• 47% of digital magazine readers spent at least 30 minutes reading each issue.
• 63% of digital magazine readers said that they enjoy video clips as a “rich media” add-on, while audio clips, animation and interactive surveys got a big thumbs down.

• 96% of users said they had a high-speed connection at work and 90% of users said they had a high speed connection at home.
• An average of 53.5% of users chose "online" as their source for industry, job, business, product and supplier news. Only and average of 11% chose print as their source for this information. 36% said that they use both.

• For information on technical features, print had a better response with 22% of readers saying that they use print, 32% using online and 46% using both.

The survey was taken by digital magazine readers with a median of over 17 years of industry or professional experience. 56% of respondents were USA readers with English-speaking countries topping the list. Digital reader adoption encompassed all age groups, with a median age of 46 years old. 65% of respondents were male, which Texterity says is because of the consumer 1/3 and business (2/3) reader mix. Last but not least, 55% of respondents for this survey were in a professional or managerial position, with 22% in a technical position.

See the Digital Magazine Reader survey for yourself.