You close your comments with “In other words take advantage of all the “Web 2.0″ there is some included but it is very clunky.”

You might want to expand the scope of your review as most of us in the digital publishing space, including Zmags, certainly have examples that are far more dynamic than the single example you chose to highlight. I’ve certainly seen examples from Marcus’ group that do present “Web 2.0″ in a far more dynamic light.

Keep in mind we are somewhat limited by the fact that we offer what is in effect a tool set and it’s generally up to the client’ creative concepts to determine what is and isn’t presented.

Thanks for highlighting the ePublishing space.

Pierre

Thanks for stopping by the website and thanks – too – for the kind comments on our interface.

Your questions are quite valid. What advantages do exist for the 400 or so magazines we work w/ on a regular basis? There are essentially three:

1) Publishers can use digital magazines as audited circulation. In situations where they’re looking to get international distribution, this is a huge advantage and – quite frankly – was how our industry was created.

2) Users navigate digital magazines in different ways than they navigage a website. In short, they don’t come in UNLESS they have time to be there. But once they come in, they stay much longer and click through at a much higher rate. It’s a different audience: smallers and more highly engaged.

3) In a less than terrific economy, not all print publishers have the necessary resources to have a great website. While we never suggest a digital magazine as a substitution – as I say in #2, it’s a different audience – using our service provides publishers without those resources to get their content online quickly.

As far as advantages to PDF’s, there’s this:
a. Page specific permalinks. A direct link to each page of the publication.
b. Multi-media.
c. Additional ways to monetize the content (Adobe is currently experimenting w/ it, but we have publishers already making thousands of dollars per issue now.).

Thanks again for stopping by.

Marcus