Company Developing One-Stop Digital Mag Shop

One of the knocks on digital magazines—rightly or wrongly—has been the increasing number of vendors—each, seemingly, imposing their own unique platforms and applications on users.

Now, one company is looking to simplify the process.

eMagazines, a spinoff of Valuemags.com, is set to launch an “agnostic” marketplace for digital editions. The online marketplace, slated to launch in March, will include titles using Nxtbook and others. “[We want to] develop a marketplace to integrate with all platforms and allow customers to shop, browse, and buy subscriptions and single copies,” eMagazines president Andrew Degenholtz told FOLIO: recently. “In the end, we think people shop by brand and interest, not by the software platform.”

While the list is still being finalized, Degenholtz said eMagazines will launch with titles from Hearst, Bonnier Corp., Advanstar, Meredith and Nylon. “No one right now is building a cross-platform marketplace like this,” he said.

Nxtbook says the eMagazine platform is promising in that it helps promote digital magazines. "While we've always felt, and still feel,that the best person to sell a magazine is the publisher themselves, today's market requires publishers to have lots of ways of promoting their content and eMagazines will simply represent another method of doing so," Nxtbook marketing director Marcus Grimm wrote in an e-mail to FOLIO:.

"It's also worth mentioning that unlike other newsstand attempts—like the recently relaunched Mygazines—eMagazines has involved us in discussions from the beginning and has consulted us regarding ways to make the service better for everyone involved. We know the people behind the company and understand the benefits of working with them," he added.

Pricing will be set by the publisher, Degenholtz said.
 
He added: “Digital doesn’t replace a magazine that someone will grab at the checkout counter, but is a different customer motivation and has other promises.”

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