The Association of Publishing Agencies (APA) is the representative body for the customer publishing industry. Our members are agencies who produce effective editorial content in print and online for client brands.

Customer Magazines & Customer Publishing – Association of Publishing Agencies – APA.

This design discontent with magazine apps is not an odd-ball view, most/many good magazine designers are disappointed by the way that magazine iPad apps have been designed so far. My hunch is that the user experience and pleasure in magazine apps will improve as designers and publishers realise that magazine design and book design has to move to a more holistic and a more abstract level (more…)

When the iPhone first appeared, followed by the Kindle and then the iPad, it became clear that e-books and apps provided a way to siphon the resources of the Internet to individuals, who could now sample that energy without having to be vulnerable to the Web’s commercialism. That was an enormous breakthrough. Anyone who’s honest with herself knows that the Web stopped being a great place for consumers of culture a year or two ago. (more…)

“Publishers seemed to have this fantasy that iPad would allow them to call time out on the Internet,” Gene Liebel, a partner at the interactive agency HUGE, tells Fast Company. The idea is that for 10 years, publishing suffered from the Internet and its indignities, but that all of a sudden, thanks to the benevolent Steve Jobs, “now we’re back, now we’re gonna call a time out, start over, sell magazines at full price with immersive ads,” and so on. (more…)

The most interesting thing we learned is how Flipboard plans to make money. Flipboard plans to actually show more of publishers’ content, advertising against it, and then share revenues. Mike says it will increase publishers’ digital revenues “by a factor of ten from what they’re currently doing with banner ads.”

(more…)

I think that FT.com managing director Rob Grimshaw sums it up best, and in a way that should make all news publishers pause and re-think.

“Where we’ve found inspiration is Internet retail, not publishing,” he told me last week. “We’re becoming a direct Internet retailer and we have to have expertise to do that. When you do that with publishing, it looks like a different business.”

(more…)