Only a few years ago the idea would have caused many people to shake their heads in disbelief: placing a reproduction of a printed newspaper on the Internet? Completely at odds with online culture! A failure to understand the possibilities offered by the new medium. These critical voices have now been silenced. This is not because the Internet has suddenly become less up-to-date and is no longer used for chatting, communication or interaction.
On the contrary: experience shows that the Internet is much more than this and is used in a much more varied way than one might have imagined at first. So, why not find out whether the Internet is suitable as an additional sales channel for daily newspapers as a quality product?

Digital newspaper editions are mushrooming all over Europe. In the past several years newspapers in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have started to publish digital replica editions of their papers on the Internet and are continuing to do so – this year UK followed. At the end of May 2003 The Times switched from publishing a paid for text version of the paper to digital edition only available to users abroad. Just one week later followed The Telegraph with its “Screenprint edition”. Early in July The Guardian made its plans public for charging for a digital edition. And in December 2003 finally the national Audit Bureau of Circulation for the United Kingdom and Ireland agreed to audit and certify digital editions. However, it won't allow publishers to combine digital edition and print edition totals.

“Digital Editions 2003 – New Business for Newspaper Companies” is a 120 page report on the experiences of (mostly) European newspapers with those kind of editions and the vendors that offer such systems. More than 20 systems to produce digital editions are already competing on the market – the homegrown solutions of some newspapers disregarded. This study tries to give insight into the various possible solutions for presenting the digital editions and the business models behind them. The vendors and their software are portrayed in detail. Insofar possible each solution has been complemented with a case study of a newspaper already using the system and its experiences with digital editions.

You can download the Free Executive Summary of the Digital Editions RISolutions-Report or buy and download the full report immediately.