For Mygazines, the key to success has been moving from a business model that put the Toronto digital publishing startup at odds with publishers to helping them better understand their audiences and target their content.
The company was born in 2007 when co-founder Darren Budd was browsing through a magazine rack. Why, he wondered, should he buy an entire magazine to read one article? What if he could buy one article from this magazine, one from that one, and create his own customized magazine?
He took the idea to an acquaintance, Yoav Schwartz, and the two hatched the idea for Mygazines. The original concept was a sort of YouTube of digital publishing, where anyone could upload an article, it would be formatted into an electronic document, and readers could pick what they wanted.
Mygazines drew more than a million users in its first month, but some people uploaded copyrighted content without permission, and publishers weren’t pleased. “There was definitely a misuse of the technology,” admits Mr. Schwartz, now Mygazines’ chief executive (Mr. Budd remains a shareholder).
Mygazines could have stuck to its original concept and drawn the wrath of the magazine industry, or just abandoned the idea, but its founders instead chose the middle ground. Controls were tightened, effectively stopping anyone but the owners of content from uploading it. They kept the idea of a digital newsstand where users could pick and choose content – now renamed Mstand – but shifted Mygazines’ focus to providing an electronic publishing platform for publishers.
Magazine publishers can create electronic editions of their publications, readable from the browser of a personal computer or mobile device. But Mygazines isn’t limited to magazines. Mr. Schwartz says there is also a sizable market in catalogues, corporate brochures and other publications – just about anything that would traditionally have been printed.
Mygazines’ customers include St. Joseph Content, a unit of the large Toronto printing and publishing firm St. Joseph Communications, York University, and Calgary-based RedPoint Media Group Inc.
There are other players in the electronic publishing field, including such companies as Zinio LLC and LibreDigital Inc. What sets Mygazines apart depends largely on the fact that the Toronto company chose the software-as-a-service model, meaning it runs its software on its own servers and delivers services to its customers via the Internet.
That means there is no client software to download to a personal computer or mobile device before you can read an electronic publication through Mygazines. Whether a reader is using a desktop computer or an iPhone, Mygazines works through the Web browser software. And it detects what sort of device is at the other end and formats material accordingly.
“We serve up a very specific format for each of those devices,” Mr. Schwartz says.
That saves customers from developing apps for multiple mobile devices at costs that start at around $10,000 per app, says Randy Frisch, chief marketing officer. It’s also easy for publishers to promote their publications by sending out simple Web links – linking to an app is virtually impossible, Mr. Frisch notes.
“I think the mobile version is probably one of the biggest draws for us,” says Rhett Soveran, who works at RedPoint Media as Web editor for up!, WestJet’s in-flight magazine.
“You can browse the magazine on your iPhone or iPad or whatever,” Mr. Soveran says.
Mygazines also offers publishers insight into what readers are looking at. The software can track how long readers look at individual pages and what parts of a publication they zoom in on. That can tell a magazine publisher whether readers are looking at ads, which articles they read and whether they finish the articles or abandon them halfway through. A catalogue publisher could see which items are attracting the most attention.
