Magazines

[wymore]

I thought I would enjoy reading magazines with the Nook Color, but my first try with National Geographic has left me disappointed. It tells you it is best viewed in landscape mode, but in that mode, it wastes a good portion of the screen. Portrait mode is a little better, but still almost nothing is readable without going into Article View, which then brings up a zoomed in view of the article. This is OK, but again only uses a portion of the Color's screen. I would have muched preferred emagazines that were actually designed for the device instead of constantly requiring switching between Article View and regular view or zooming in and out. Also, the article view only has the main articles and not some of the sub-articles on each page.

Thankfully though, Barnes and Noble has their 14 day trial, so nothing lost.

[RAH]

Originally Posted by wymore

I would have muched preferred emagazines that were actually designed for the device instead of constantly requiring switching between Article View and regular view or zooming in and out.

Funny thing is that if you buy a magazine for a Classic Nook, it IS reformatted for the device (essentially just text articles) and most people hate it that way too.

In fact, if you have both a Classic Nook and a Color Nook, you can download the same magazine to both (the magazine is in your B&N account) and on the Classic it looks like just text articles, while on the Color it looks like you described. Maybe you should get yourself a Classic Nook or borrow one and take a look. Actually, you could use both side-by-side, and look at the pictures on the Color and read the articles on the Classic! I'm only partially kidding.

[jersysman]

I still say it is hard to read something as large as a magazine on the amount of screen space that we have available on eReaders. Is there a zoom mode available when reading a magazine where you can zoom in and out depending on what you are reading or looking at the time?

[wymore]

Double tap on the part you want to zoom in on.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I personally like the reading methods on the NC. I've alternated using article view and double-tapping to enlarge, depending on the layout, and whether or not the article is "continued on" multiple pages out. You can also pinch-zoom as needed. The screen size works fine for me.

I've never tried NatGeo, but I read Popular Science and Men's Health on the device, and both are rather graphics-centric in places. I've also sideloaded PDF magazines and find them easy to navigate and read. So I suppose it's a preference thing. Maybe you just need a larger device for more screen space.

[wymore]

Originally Posted by RAH

Funny thing is that if you buy a magazine for a Classic Nook, it IS reformatted for the device (essentially just text articles) and most people hate it that way too.

In fact, if you have both a Classic Nook and a Color Nook, you can download the same magazine to both (the magazine is in your B&N account) and on the Classic it looks like just text articles, while on the Color it looks like you described. Maybe you should get yourself a Classic Nook or borrow one and take a look. Actually, you could use both side-by-side, and look at the pictures on the Color and read the articles on the Classic! I'm only partially kidding.

Interesting. Too bad there can't be a happy medium for the color with text reformatted but retaining the pictures. Perhaps there just aren't enough people subscribing to emagazines yet to justify the cost of reformatting it, although you wouldn't think it would take that much time.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by wymore

Interesting. Too bad there can't be a happy medium for the color with text reformatted but retaining the pictures.

There could be, but it would be (yet another) publication to produce. It depends a lot on the publisher's workflow and at what point and in what format the final, edited copy is "frozen." In my case, with P&W, I had to do a lot of coding to back out of our (pre-)pre-press stage, convert the text, shove it into something that can have the images reinserted, and then build that into a Kindle-compatible feed.

I'll know shortly what the process is like for B&N-compatible mags, as we're just about to begin that process. In theory, we should just be able to export ePub versions of our pre-press files from InDesign with little-to-no extra effort.

BUT--that would result in the full magazine, like Nat Geo, described above. To produce the happy medium you refer to, we'd have to introduce yet another editing/formatting stage to create that new layout. So now we've overwhelmed our managing editor and have to add staff just to keep up and suddenly we have to go back and look at cost-effectiveness.

In a market where one or two NEXT BIG THINGs appear each year, each requiring its own customized production workflow, it's impossible for small publishers (specifically small non-profit publishers, in my case) to keep up.

[ashleeee]

Hello all,

Sorry to bring up an old thread. I am one of those who want the magazines to remain like a hard copy magazine that I've purchased. So is it safe to say that for something such as Reader's Digest, it looks exactly like the printed one just that now it is digitalized?

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by ashleeee

Hello all,

Sorry to bring up an old thread. I am one of those who want the magazines to remain like a hard copy magazine that I've purchased. So is it safe to say that for something such as Reader's Digest, it looks exactly like the printed one just that now it is digitalized?

In a word, yes, but not all of the publishers are doing it that way. Some of them are selling text-only magazines. Since B&N gives you a 14-day free trial on subscriptions, you can test it out. If you don't like it, dump it.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by RAH

Funny thing is that if you buy a magazine for a Classic Nook, it IS reformatted for the device (essentially just text articles) and most people hate it that way too.

In fact, if you have both a Classic Nook and a Color Nook, you can download the same magazine to both (the magazine is in your B&N account) and on the Classic it looks like just text articles, while on the Color it looks like you described. Maybe you should get yourself a Classic Nook or borrow one and take a look. Actually, you could use both side-by-side, and look at the pictures on the Color and read the articles on the Classic! I'm only partially kidding.

I can't download any of my magazines to the Nook Classic - they all claim that it isn't supported - so this may depend on individual magazines. I have National Geographic and cooking magazines, which are very picture-heavy - presumably that's why.

[fekish]

i'm very curious to see how the New Nook behaves with magazines.. Anyone seen any videos anywhere? I still dont know how do you zoom on that thing

[RAH]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I can't download any of my magazines to the Nook Classic - they all claim that it isn't supported - so this may depend on individual magazines. I have National Geographic and cooking magazines, which are very picture-heavy - presumably that's why.

Yeah, I think they switched over to using Zinio technology for magazines. When it started and I just had a Classic Nook, you got an epub file. Later, when I got a Color, the epub file looked and acted as I described. And I even bought a PC Magazine fairly recently and it acted that way (reformatted for Classic, fancier for Color). But they are probably switching to using Zinio for everything.