Not for printing. How we ran an iPad magazine

Preamble

It is no secret that recently the phrase that prints are dying is increasingly heard. One can argue about this for a long time, drawing analogies with the winged phrase from the Oscar-winning film “Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears” about theater and television. But one rather big automotive print edition has not passed away - about a year ago the magazine was closed.

Start

Having gathered one winter evening at the table in the editorial office, we (one designer and two journalists) began to think about the future. And behind the conversation in the air hung the idea to create your own, independent from anyone, automobile magazine. And it is interactive, not printed. No sooner said than done. Began preparatory stage.
At first we came up with a name. Well, as they thought out: they just sat at the table for a glass of tea and threw into the air the first words that came to mind regarding automotive (and not only) subjects. Among them were both Russians, and English, and abbreviations ... As a result, they settled on the simple word WTF. Knowing exactly that Apple’s censorship will completely wrap up this euphemism, we added the phrase automotive magazine to this. Well, the letters themselves "deciphered" as Wheel, Trends, Fun. These words in addition to the name have become the name of our headings.


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Now it sometimes seems that this was an erroneous decision, since the main market for us is the Russian-language Kiosk on the App Store, and the English-language title will be written on the cover. Like it or not, we still do not know - after three months after launch, we ourselves did not understand this.

Process

It was decided to do just an interactive publication, and not just an ordinary lay out in pdf, what most of the magazines presented on the App Store do. After studying the tools that allow it to be realized, they settled on Mag + ( http://www.magplus.com ). Why not Adobe, you ask? Yes, everything is simple - the first decision at that time was cheaper, its cost is $ 399 per month, subject to the conclusion of a contract for six months.
It is worth staying in more detail. I do not know, like Adobe, but Mag + works without problems with private traders. The contract is signed by a simple facsimile and sent back, the amount is paid for the first month (and not immediately all for six months). That's all - an account to start the magazine in a large navigation created. Now it's time to create an Apple Developer Account to access the AppStore Kiosk. This also turned out to be simple - $ 99 (payment for one year) and a week of waiting for an answer. Everything - the account is ready, all the data is “clogged”, it remains to send the binary for approval by the moderators team ... The shell for the magazines itself is done on the website of the plug-in manufacturer - everything is simple and clear.
What is the Mag + toolkit? Here, too, everything is simple - this is a regular plugin for Adobe InDesign, starting with version CS4. The entire layout is done in this program (at the moment everything is done in the CS6 version, the Adobe CC developer’s support has not yet been announced). Interactive elements are added here - the main thing is to observe the internal hierarchy, that is, take into account what should be on which layers - this is the “trick” of the plug-in. Well, various html5-effects are created either independently or on the developer’s site (for example, panoramas, slideshow, 360-degree view)



As everything is put together, export to the program Mag + Production Tool is done, where the whole number is collected.



There is a small subtlety here: initially the magazine is made for Retina resolution, for export for a regular iPad a specially trained button is present in the plugin - everything happens in just seconds and without problems.



Well, finally, and assembled the entire number, made two files (Retina and the usual resolution). It is time to upload the whole thing to the server - and now the first number in the AppStore.

Sales

Finally this long-awaited moment! Nobody knows about us, but we are already in the Kiosk :) Literally on the second day we hit the “What's new” scrolling. Little by little, the races began, the first few reviews from readers, to our joy and pride, were positive ...
One month passed, the second toll free number was launched. And here we decided to spend money on placing reviews on specialized resources. The result did not take long to wait: literally on the second day after the publication of the review, we appeared in the Top Free Application in the car kiosk in second place, after the highly respected "Driving." Our pride knew no bounds! But this did not last long: after just a couple of days, we returned to previous positions, i.e. somewhere in the 50th place among automotive magazines :) ...
Now in the Kiosk there are already three issues of the magazine. We are in the top ten of the car magazines and we hope that we will not fall out of it anymore.

Results

As a result, I want to draw a line under our begin. Within three months, the three of us made three free numbers. Now we are preparing the fourth issue, but it will already be paid - after all, you will not live long on the bare enthusiasm. Now we can sum up some of the results of our undertakings, evaluate all our mistakes.
The first error is the name of the log. Or rather, not even the very name in English - WTF: automotive magazine - but the fact that we didn't have the word in Russian on the cover. We corrected this omission only to the third edition, choosing the slogan “The whole truth about the automotive industry” for ourselves and the fourth “Not for printing”. By the way, this completely corresponds to the truth: we are not engaged by anyone and write only what we think. There will be no “jeans” in the future - this is our principle :)
In general, this is probably our only mistake so far, because it is still too early to judge any successes or failures.
By the way, on July 1 we opened a three-month subscription at the price of 99 rubles (the cost of one number will be minimal by the standards of the AppStore - 33 rubles) and we plan to go out twice a month. What will give us this, we will see in early August, and if it is interesting for habravchanam, we will be happy to report to you.