Are magazines dead? Not quite. The North American market size for digital magazines and newspapers is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3% from 2022 to 2028, according to a report by Grand View Research.
This growth rate makes sense when you consider the perks of digital magazines. Also called e-magazines, webzines, and ezines, digital magazines can provide your audience with an engaging way to interact with your content. This evolution of online storytelling also comes with additional perks, such as lower production costs and wider distribution.
But publishing an online magazine isn’t as easy as it may seem at first glance. You’ll need to determine the type of magazine you want to publish, then structure it and manage your content workflow. It’s also likely your digital magazine will cover content from multiple areas within your business, making a content collaboration hub like GatherContent an invaluable tool.
Let’s take a look at the different types of online magazines, the benefits of creating one, and how to get started.
What is a digital magazine?
A digital magazine is similar to a print magazine except that it’s published online and read on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Digital magazines typically include a large number of high-resolution videos, images, and even audio and animations to augment the feature stories inside.
While the term “magazine” may conjure up the typical titles sitting on the grocery store rack, such as Us Weekly, Better Homes and Gardens, and National Geographic, digital magazines have been successfully used by organizations such as universities, non-profits, and businesses—and publishers are known to sell digital magazine subscriptions alongside their print editions as well.
Types of digital magazines
There are multiple ways to publish a digital magazine, and each one comes with a unique set of benefits and drawbacks that can affect the reading experience. Here are some different methods of digital publishing:
Native mobile apps
Along with formatting an online magazine for an app like Kindle, many publishers also create native apps. This gives the publisher full control of the look and feel of the magazine, including personalized ads and analytics, fonts and font sizes, and the functionality of audio and video embeds.
But the downsides to creating a native e-magazine app are primarily the sheer amount of resources and time needed to build a successful, fully-functioning product—then get it approved by an app store.
You also face the challenge of getting your readers to download your app to their mobile devices in the first place.
Magazine subscription apps
Speaking of apps, Amazon Kindle isn’t the only place you can publish your digital magazine. Other existing apps, including Zinio, Issuu, and Readly, host your publication alongside other digital magazines on their digital newsstands.
If this is the route you choose to go, you’ll need to ensure your publication meets any requirements set by the app. Meaning you’ll still need a team of developers to help you ensure your online magazine meets those guidelines.
The March 2023 edition of Food & Wine can be viewed in the traditional magazine format or in a format optimized for reading on the Kindle app, as shown here.
Additionally, while publishing your online magazine to an existing app may be less expensive than building your own app, you’ll still face costs. This could include a publisher’s fee or a percentage of your sales—or both. You’ll also compete for attention against numerous other titles, which means your audience’s attention may be divided.
HTML5 magazines
Similar to a website, an HTML5 magazine uses HTML to create a responsive design to craft a personalized experience for the reader. This approach tends to require fewer resources than a native app, and you no longer need to tailor your online magazine to any app or app store restrictions.
You’ll also still get many of the same benefits as you might with a native app, including reader analytics, full control over the design, and even search engine optimization (SEO).
Still, HTML5 publishing platforms do cost money. For example, here are some of the top HTML5 magazine publishing platforms and their starting costs:
Issuu: Starts at $19 a month for 500 pages per upload and a 100 MB file size limit. A free version is also available. Issuu lets you convert PDFs to HTML5 flipbooks.
PubHTML5: Starts at $12.42 a month for 1,000 pages per book and unlimited storage. A free version is also available. You can publish your HTML5 digital magazines on PubHTML5’s cloud or host them yourself.
Joomag: Starts at $50 a month for 12 publications with 100 active readers within the last 30 days and additional sales features. Joomag includes an HTML5 mobile viewer.
Flipsnack: Starts at $14 a month for 10 100-page flipbooks with a 100 MB file size limit each. You can download and host your flipbooks in HTML5 format. You can use Flipsnack to convert PDFs into HTML5 flipbooks.
MagLoft: Starts at $49 a month for unlimited readers as well as SEO tools, analytics, and sales features. MagLoft offers HTML5 templates and also converts PDF files into HTML5.
Good to know: Whatever publishing method you choose, GatherContent’s content hub helps you keep a watchful eye on production statuses for each section of your e-magazine.
Embedded PDFs
“What about a PDF magazine?” you might ask. While PDFs can offer support for image-heavy, immersive content that you can embed directly on your website, they don’t provide a high-quality user experience for anyone reading on a cell phone. Your mobile readers will need to zoom in and out and constantly scroll to read your PDF magazine’s digital content.
Additionally, you may find it hard to gather accurate data or optimize your PDF publication for SEO. With this in mind, we don’t recommend using a PDF as the primary format for your digital magazine.
P.S. These same disadvantages apply to PDF flipbook magazines as well.
Flash magazines
Adobe Flash was a widely popular web technology in the early 2000s, making it an ideal choice for engaging online experiences like digital magazines.
But Adobe removed support for its Flash Player on December 31, 2020, and now blocks Flash Player content. The company also advises everyone to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player and related plugins, since they pose serious security risks.
Benefits of starting an online magazine
There are many reasons why several traditional publishers have started creating digital editions of their print publications. The benefits of digital magazines include:
Lower publishing and distribution costs.
A potentially wider audience compared to print publications.
Support for immersive and interactive graphic, audio, and video content.
Additional options for digital lead generation.
An eco-friendly alternative compared to print magazines.
As a quick case study, the publisher of Vogue, Wired, and The New YorkerCondé Nast posted its first profit in 2021 after years of losses. The main driver behind this boost in profitability? The digitization of its editorial operations—Axios reports that the majority of Condé Nast’s advertising revenue comes from digital advertising.
"Magazines aren’t dead: Conde Nast digitized its editorial ops and posted its first profit in 2021. Coincidence? I think not.”
The University of Leicester used GatherContent to collaborate on its course prospectus, which aims to get prospective students interested in the university.
Similarly, a digital magazine can help draw in more leads. For example, most universities publish a prospectus with information about their different degree programs. The prospectus is intended to highlight why students should attend that particular institution instead of others as well as what students could look forward to if accepted to the degree program of their choice.
Similar to a print magazine, your digital magazine includes covers, front-of-book sections, and features.
Cover
Your main cover, the front, needs to clearly communicate your highlighted magazine contents clearly—and grab readers’ attention, too.
The cover of the November 2022 digital edition of Reader’s Digest clearly shows the main features and grabs readers’ attention too.
When designing your front cover, consider which features or contents you want to draw attention to or will catch a reader’s eye. Are there certain topics your readership is particularly interested in?
On top of that, you’ll also want to pick a graphic for the cover, the more eye-catching the better. Some digital magazine designers have even created animated covers to stand out from the crowd.
Front of book
If you’ve ever opened a print magazine, you likely noticed that the front of the publication usually included the same elements: a table of contents, an editor’s letter, the masthead, and possibly comments from readers.
Not all of these elements are required, but your online magazine should include a table of contents and a masthead, or page that lists all people and businesses involved in publishing the magazine.
Features
What main stories and elements should be printed in your online magazine? These features depend on the goals behind your magazine, such as driving sales or informing prospective customers.
For example, a university prospectus helps inform potential new students about your institution and the programs you offer. Your magazine can also be locked behind a content gate to gather email addresses and allow your sales team to follow up.
Whatever you choose, your feature content will likely make up the bulk of your online magazine, and you should also directly mention one or more of the features on your cover to let readers know what’s inside.
And because your features are the most important part of your magazine—after all, this content is why someone is reading it—it makes sense to take extra time to plan and organize this content. If you don’t already have an editorial process in place, you should start developing one now to detail the steps to take your content from idea to published.
Ideally, you’ll have a content production management tool like GatherContent to help you stay on top of your magazine’s features. GatherContent can help you:
Create templates and style guides to maintain consistency throughout your magazine.
Track which features are at which points in the editorial process.
Easily manage approvals by outside stakeholders.
View your content calendar to ensure you hit important deadlines.
GatherContent allows you to quickly check on the status of any feature article and remove any roadblocks so you can hit critical deadlines and publish your digital magazine on time.
Other digital magazine layout elements
Along with the main structures listed above, your digital magazine likely needs an approved approach to the following layout elements:
Icons or styling that indicates an interactive element.
Headlines that not only draw readers in but also increase conversions.
Whether ads should go in your magazine and, if so, where they should be placed and which ones are approved.
Design elements, such as fonts and font size, graphics, copy layout, pull quotes, captions, credits, bylines, and the folio (or the page number plus date and the magazine’s name).
You can ensure each of the elements that make up your digital magazine is consistent and matches your style guide by using a content production tool like GatherContent.
Its Components feature allows you to define the style, length, and any other requirements across multiple content templates. That means each of your headlines and subheadlines is the same font, size, and color—no need to worry about a rogue title in the wrong font.
Bonus: 5 Examples of digital magazines
1. Travel + Leisure
The March 2023 edition of Travel + Leisure includes a simple yet striking animation on the cover.
Travel + Leisure makes excellent use of digital features to showcase what really draws readers to it: the sense of adventure. Its magazine cover is animated to remove the text so readers can get the full experience of the vibrant, dramatic cover photo.
The magazine does an excellent job pairing images and text along with animation to appeal to the wanderlust its readers likely experience along with helpful content for planning their next big trip.
2. National Geographic
The February 2023 edition of National Geographic showcases the power of digital magazines as storytelling tools, with interactive captions, moving images, and animated covers.
National Geographic has fully embraced the digital in digital magazines. Its features and photos move to place emphasis on the expert photojournalism the magazine is known for. Not to be outdone, the cover includes subtle animations as the origami gear folds and unfolds before your eyes.
And while motion is fun, the magazine doesn’t skimp on accessibility features either. Photo captions are still present and text—even stylized text—is easy to read.
3. ProPublica’s Year in (Mostly) Visual Journalism
ProPublica upgrades your typical article roundup by turning it into a digital publication.
A unique take on a digital magazine, ProPublica created this roundup of its most popular visual journalism of 2018. Along with excerpts and summaries of each story, this interactive list includes moving photos and links to additional interactive features like games and audio recordings.
4. Vox
The November 2022 edition of Vox includes audio recordings of its main feature stories.
Vox’s digital magazine focuses only on its main features, but there’s one element that sets it apart from the rest. The Play Now button at the top of the feature is an audio recording.
This keen attention to accessibility—and perhaps its readers’ preferences—shows Vox knows how to use digital-only features to its advantage.
5. Five celebrated Black chefs on the recipes that raised them by The Guardian
The Guardian’s article on renowned Black chefs uses a more traditional magazine layout instead of interactive elements or a simple grid.
Not all digital magazines need to be interactive. With asymmetrical photos and a non-grid layout, this article from The Guardian is a nod to print magazine predecessors.
Despite being more simplistic than other examples we’ve shared, this Guardian article still uses digital elements to its benefit. Large images draw your eye in to the featured chefs and their recipes. And collapsible recipe blocks allow readers to learn more about each dish without overwhelming the rest of the content.
How GatherContent can help
GatherContent helps you manage and assign different stages of content creation, while its built-in content templates and style guide ensure each assignee consistently matches style and tone.
You can maintain consistency throughout your entire digital publication by creating a style guide and templates.
While this can simply be a Google Doc shared with your teammates and stakeholders, it’s much more effective to implement your style guide directly into templates and your content workflow. A content hub like GatherContent can help you do this and manage each stage of your online magazine’s content production and approval at the same time.
Give GatherContent a try for free and find out first-hand how it simplifies your digital magazine production from a single source for planning, organizing, and creating to easy content collaboration.
Are magazines dead? Not quite. The North American market size for digital magazines and newspapers is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3% from 2022 to 2028, according to a report by Grand View Research.
This growth rate makes sense when you consider the perks of digital magazines. Also called e-magazines, webzines, and ezines, digital magazines can provide your audience with an engaging way to interact with your content. This evolution of online storytelling also comes with additional perks, such as lower production costs and wider distribution.
But publishing an online magazine isn’t as easy as it may seem at first glance. You’ll need to determine the type of magazine you want to publish, then structure it and manage your content workflow. It’s also likely your digital magazine will cover content from multiple areas within your business, making a content collaboration hub like GatherContent an invaluable tool.
Let’s take a look at the different types of online magazines, the benefits of creating one, and how to get started.
What is a digital magazine?
A digital magazine is similar to a print magazine except that it’s published online and read on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Digital magazines typically include a large number of high-resolution videos, images, and even audio and animations to augment the feature stories inside.
While the term “magazine” may conjure up the typical titles sitting on the grocery store rack, such as Us Weekly, Better Homes and Gardens, and National Geographic, digital magazines have been successfully used by organizations such as universities, non-profits, and businesses—and publishers are known to sell digital magazine subscriptions alongside their print editions as well.
Types of digital magazines
There are multiple ways to publish a digital magazine, and each one comes with a unique set of benefits and drawbacks that can affect the reading experience. Here are some different methods of digital publishing:
Native mobile apps
Along with formatting an online magazine for an app like Kindle, many publishers also create native apps. This gives the publisher full control of the look and feel of the magazine, including personalized ads and analytics, fonts and font sizes, and the functionality of audio and video embeds.
But the downsides to creating a native e-magazine app are primarily the sheer amount of resources and time needed to build a successful, fully-functioning product—then get it approved by an app store.
You also face the challenge of getting your readers to download your app to their mobile devices in the first place.
Magazine subscription apps
Speaking of apps, Amazon Kindle isn’t the only place you can publish your digital magazine. Other existing apps, including Zinio, Issuu, and Readly, host your publication alongside other digital magazines on their digital newsstands.
If this is the route you choose to go, you’ll need to ensure your publication meets any requirements set by the app. Meaning you’ll still need a team of developers to help you ensure your online magazine meets those guidelines.
The March 2023 edition of Food & Wine can be viewed in the traditional magazine format or in a format optimized for reading on the Kindle app, as shown here.
Additionally, while publishing your online magazine to an existing app may be less expensive than building your own app, you’ll still face costs. This could include a publisher’s fee or a percentage of your sales—or both. You’ll also compete for attention against numerous other titles, which means your audience’s attention may be divided.
HTML5 magazines
Similar to a website, an HTML5 magazine uses HTML to create a responsive design to craft a personalized experience for the reader. This approach tends to require fewer resources than a native app, and you no longer need to tailor your online magazine to any app or app store restrictions.
You’ll also still get many of the same benefits as you might with a native app, including reader analytics, full control over the design, and even search engine optimization (SEO).
Still, HTML5 publishing platforms do cost money. For example, here are some of the top HTML5 magazine publishing platforms and their starting costs:
Issuu: Starts at $19 a month for 500 pages per upload and a 100 MB file size limit. A free version is also available. Issuu lets you convert PDFs to HTML5 flipbooks.
PubHTML5: Starts at $12.42 a month for 1,000 pages per book and unlimited storage. A free version is also available. You can publish your HTML5 digital magazines on PubHTML5’s cloud or host them yourself.
Joomag: Starts at $50 a month for 12 publications with 100 active readers within the last 30 days and additional sales features. Joomag includes an HTML5 mobile viewer.
Flipsnack: Starts at $14 a month for 10 100-page flipbooks with a 100 MB file size limit each. You can download and host your flipbooks in HTML5 format. You can use Flipsnack to convert PDFs into HTML5 flipbooks.
MagLoft: Starts at $49 a month for unlimited readers as well as SEO tools, analytics, and sales features. MagLoft offers HTML5 templates and also converts PDF files into HTML5.
Good to know: Whatever publishing method you choose, GatherContent’s content hub helps you keep a watchful eye on production statuses for each section of your e-magazine.
Embedded PDFs
“What about a PDF magazine?” you might ask. While PDFs can offer support for image-heavy, immersive content that you can embed directly on your website, they don’t provide a high-quality user experience for anyone reading on a cell phone. Your mobile readers will need to zoom in and out and constantly scroll to read your PDF magazine’s digital content.
Additionally, you may find it hard to gather accurate data or optimize your PDF publication for SEO. With this in mind, we don’t recommend using a PDF as the primary format for your digital magazine.
P.S. These same disadvantages apply to PDF flipbook magazines as well.
Flash magazines
Adobe Flash was a widely popular web technology in the early 2000s, making it an ideal choice for engaging online experiences like digital magazines.
But Adobe removed support for its Flash Player on December 31, 2020, and now blocks Flash Player content. The company also advises everyone to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player and related plugins, since they pose serious security risks.
Benefits of starting an online magazine
There are many reasons why several traditional publishers have started creating digital editions of their print publications. The benefits of digital magazines include:
Lower publishing and distribution costs.
A potentially wider audience compared to print publications.
Support for immersive and interactive graphic, audio, and video content.
Additional options for digital lead generation.
An eco-friendly alternative compared to print magazines.
As a quick case study, the publisher of Vogue, Wired, and The New YorkerCondé Nast posted its first profit in 2021 after years of losses. The main driver behind this boost in profitability? The digitization of its editorial operations—Axios reports that the majority of Condé Nast’s advertising revenue comes from digital advertising.
"Magazines aren’t dead: Conde Nast digitized its editorial ops and posted its first profit in 2021. Coincidence? I think not.”
The University of Leicester used GatherContent to collaborate on its course prospectus, which aims to get prospective students interested in the university.
Similarly, a digital magazine can help draw in more leads. For example, most universities publish a prospectus with information about their different degree programs. The prospectus is intended to highlight why students should attend that particular institution instead of others as well as what students could look forward to if accepted to the degree program of their choice.
Similar to a print magazine, your digital magazine includes covers, front-of-book sections, and features.
Cover
Your main cover, the front, needs to clearly communicate your highlighted magazine contents clearly—and grab readers’ attention, too.
The cover of the November 2022 digital edition of Reader’s Digest clearly shows the main features and grabs readers’ attention too.
When designing your front cover, consider which features or contents you want to draw attention to or will catch a reader’s eye. Are there certain topics your readership is particularly interested in?
On top of that, you’ll also want to pick a graphic for the cover, the more eye-catching the better. Some digital magazine designers have even created animated covers to stand out from the crowd.
Front of book
If you’ve ever opened a print magazine, you likely noticed that the front of the publication usually included the same elements: a table of contents, an editor’s letter, the masthead, and possibly comments from readers.
Not all of these elements are required, but your online magazine should include a table of contents and a masthead, or page that lists all people and businesses involved in publishing the magazine.
Features
What main stories and elements should be printed in your online magazine? These features depend on the goals behind your magazine, such as driving sales or informing prospective customers.
For example, a university prospectus helps inform potential new students about your institution and the programs you offer. Your magazine can also be locked behind a content gate to gather email addresses and allow your sales team to follow up.
Whatever you choose, your feature content will likely make up the bulk of your online magazine, and you should also directly mention one or more of the features on your cover to let readers know what’s inside.
And because your features are the most important part of your magazine—after all, this content is why someone is reading it—it makes sense to take extra time to plan and organize this content. If you don’t already have an editorial process in place, you should start developing one now to detail the steps to take your content from idea to published.
Ideally, you’ll have a content production management tool like GatherContent to help you stay on top of your magazine’s features. GatherContent can help you:
Create templates and style guides to maintain consistency throughout your magazine.
Track which features are at which points in the editorial process.
Easily manage approvals by outside stakeholders.
View your content calendar to ensure you hit important deadlines.
GatherContent allows you to quickly check on the status of any feature article and remove any roadblocks so you can hit critical deadlines and publish your digital magazine on time.
Other digital magazine layout elements
Along with the main structures listed above, your digital magazine likely needs an approved approach to the following layout elements:
Icons or styling that indicates an interactive element.
Headlines that not only draw readers in but also increase conversions.
Whether ads should go in your magazine and, if so, where they should be placed and which ones are approved.
Design elements, such as fonts and font size, graphics, copy layout, pull quotes, captions, credits, bylines, and the folio (or the page number plus date and the magazine’s name).
You can ensure each of the elements that make up your digital magazine is consistent and matches your style guide by using a content production tool like GatherContent.
Its Components feature allows you to define the style, length, and any other requirements across multiple content templates. That means each of your headlines and subheadlines is the same font, size, and color—no need to worry about a rogue title in the wrong font.
Bonus: 5 Examples of digital magazines
1. Travel + Leisure
The March 2023 edition of Travel + Leisure includes a simple yet striking animation on the cover.
Travel + Leisure makes excellent use of digital features to showcase what really draws readers to it: the sense of adventure. Its magazine cover is animated to remove the text so readers can get the full experience of the vibrant, dramatic cover photo.
The magazine does an excellent job pairing images and text along with animation to appeal to the wanderlust its readers likely experience along with helpful content for planning their next big trip.
2. National Geographic
The February 2023 edition of National Geographic showcases the power of digital magazines as storytelling tools, with interactive captions, moving images, and animated covers.
National Geographic has fully embraced the digital in digital magazines. Its features and photos move to place emphasis on the expert photojournalism the magazine is known for. Not to be outdone, the cover includes subtle animations as the origami gear folds and unfolds before your eyes.
And while motion is fun, the magazine doesn’t skimp on accessibility features either. Photo captions are still present and text—even stylized text—is easy to read.
3. ProPublica’s Year in (Mostly) Visual Journalism
ProPublica upgrades your typical article roundup by turning it into a digital publication.
A unique take on a digital magazine, ProPublica created this roundup of its most popular visual journalism of 2018. Along with excerpts and summaries of each story, this interactive list includes moving photos and links to additional interactive features like games and audio recordings.
4. Vox
The November 2022 edition of Vox includes audio recordings of its main feature stories.
Vox’s digital magazine focuses only on its main features, but there’s one element that sets it apart from the rest. The Play Now button at the top of the feature is an audio recording.
This keen attention to accessibility—and perhaps its readers’ preferences—shows Vox knows how to use digital-only features to its advantage.
5. Five celebrated Black chefs on the recipes that raised them by The Guardian
The Guardian’s article on renowned Black chefs uses a more traditional magazine layout instead of interactive elements or a simple grid.
Not all digital magazines need to be interactive. With asymmetrical photos and a non-grid layout, this article from The Guardian is a nod to print magazine predecessors.
Despite being more simplistic than other examples we’ve shared, this Guardian article still uses digital elements to its benefit. Large images draw your eye in to the featured chefs and their recipes. And collapsible recipe blocks allow readers to learn more about each dish without overwhelming the rest of the content.
How GatherContent can help
GatherContent helps you manage and assign different stages of content creation, while its built-in content templates and style guide ensure each assignee consistently matches style and tone.
You can maintain consistency throughout your entire digital publication by creating a style guide and templates.
While this can simply be a Google Doc shared with your teammates and stakeholders, it’s much more effective to implement your style guide directly into templates and your content workflow. A content hub like GatherContent can help you do this and manage each stage of your online magazine’s content production and approval at the same time.
Give GatherContent a try for free and find out first-hand how it simplifies your digital magazine production from a single source for planning, organizing, and creating to easy content collaboration.
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