The 4 Digital Publishing Trends to Watch in 2017

The table for digital publishing in 2017 was actually set last fall when Apple killed off its newsstand app. This set the wheels in motion for Adobe to de-emphasize its digital publishing software in February in lieu of mobile app development. Just like that the two biggest players in the digital publishing game were now largely on the sideline.

These two events, along with a plateaued growth rate for tablet sales, have greatly tempered the hope that digital magazines would both be the next evolution in publishing and replace a decline in print revenue. However, digital magazines aren’t dead. In fact, Adobe relinquishing its stranglehold on the market opened opportunities for existing and new players to reinvent how we think about digital magazines. This potential reinvention of digital magazines is one of the trends to watch in digital publishing next year.

1. Digital Magazine 3.0: Made for Mobile

Around 2005, digital magazines first emerged as glorified flip books, followed by the interactive format that was fed by Apple’s iPad & Adobe software, but neither digital format gained significant traction. David Blankenship, president of Advontemedia thinks he has a solution — software that builds magazines that scroll vertically instead of swipe horizontally.

Mobile drives content consumption. Think about the apps we use most often on those devices. According to comScore, more than 80% of social media time is spent on mobile devices, including more than 50 minutes per day on Facebook. And how do we use it? By scrolling through our posts. Instagram? Endless scrolling. How about Twitter and LinkedIn? Scrolling. Even the progressive content-driven mobile web sites, such as ESPN, have adopted endless scroll within its responsive design. Sure, apps like Snapchat and Flipboard utilize swipe, but think about how much deeper you go in the scrolling apps in comparison.