Cover of the French magazine "Marmiton"
We are used to see printed magazines linked to a website, or at least offering an online version of their publication (i.e. via PDF viewers). Besides, if we look at the current magazines, most of them have at least a small online presence. It’s the trend.
The transition from paper to digital became something common. Going the other way is quite unusual but it also exists! Indeed, successful websites have decided to try their luck on paper by using their reputation on internet!
Here are three examples of websites which launched a paper magazine:
First, let’s talk about the French cooking website: marmiton.org. It has more than 7.5 million unique visitors per month. A magazine is born out of this website. It is widely printed (120,000 copies) and there were 20,000 unsold copies of the first issue, which is quite honorable!
Rue89.com, a news website, has decided to launch its paper in 2010, after three years of existence on internet. Approximately 70% of the content comes from the website (after being adapted for printing) and the remaining 30% is original content meant to be printed in the first place.
The latest is Doctissimo (health and well-being interests). This website, with an audience of about 9 million unique visitors per month in France, launched a paper which will be drawn to 130,000 copies.
There are other examples, I can’t name them all. This is clearly a new phenomenon that proves that paper and digital can still grow together! It also shows that having lots of visitors on a website doesn’t prevent the paper from living, it’s quite the opposite. People still love to “touch” a printed magazine.