Magic Magazine Editor and Publisher Stan Allen emailed and advance copy of his January column to me today to share with our readers. In it, he announces the release of the Magic Magazine iOS (iPhone & iPad) app version of his publication. Here's a sneak peek:
For the past five years or so, I’ve been standing at a fork in the road. Both paths lead toward a digital version of MAGIC Magazine. One direction was to take more and more content from the magazine and put it on our website, while somehow securing that content for subscribers only. I repeatedly took a few steps down this road but always came to a stop, mainly because I couldn’t find a reader-friendly experience that I was happy with. Sure, we could place PDFs of every page of the magazine up on the web, but PDFs are basically photographs of the printed page. Depending on the size of your computer screen, you might be able see the entire layout, but reading the words requires zooming in. Then you have to scroll around to get the whole story. To me, it’s like reading a magazine through a telescope. So, even though this road was clear and well traveled, I kept turning back.
The other direction was less clear and certainly less traveled. In fact, that path was dark and had so many twists and turns, I couldn’t see what was ahead. Then, last year, I ran across something that lit up the path and made it clear that this was the road for me. What showed me that I was on the right track was the Apple iPad. After only a few days of playing with it, there was no question — this was the direction for the digital MAGIC Magazine.
We’re launching our first digital issue on January 6. Appropriately enough, that is the same day I launched the first issue of my Inside Magic newsletter 26 years ago. We don’t have all the answers; nobody does. But we’re moving on down the road!