New Electronics will launch a digital edition of the magazine, starting with the September 13th issue. Clearly the low cost of digital magazine publishing is very attractive, allowing titles to grow circulation without the need for a significant increase in revenue – unlike print.
New Electronics plans a digital circulation of at least 10,000 at launch. I asked Peter Ring, the publisher of New Electronics about this digital circulation: he told me that although there were 4,000 readers that requested both print and digital circulation, the majority of these readers will be new to the publication.
New Electronics – like the other Findlay titles – builds circulation by researching company locations with electronics engineers present, rather than simply trying to get registration cards filled in. This means that building the requested circulation takes time, but it does allow Findlay Publications to take a strategic view of who to add to the distribution.
Opens are the key metric for digital magazines, and I will be very interested to see the stats for New Electronics. Will their research approach generate high open rates, or will the fact that not everyone has requested the digital magazine mean that opens are relatively low? I’m sure the industry will be watching carefully.
