After reading/experiencing the Project magazine from Branson, I got curious: how hard would it be to make an iPad magazine? If you don’t have an ipad and like to know what I’m talking about, watch a review on TechCrunch (skip the first 1.5 minutes).

So I’m set on a mission: create a simple magazine, with some multimedia and interactive features and have it available in the iPad store. Call it, if you will, a ‘proof of concept’.

At first glance, I’m going to need:

1. an authoring tool (layout, copy, basically assembling the magazine)
2. a publishing tool (wrapping it up, submitting it to the Apple Store)
3. a reader application (for reading, but sometimes also used to buy magazines or keep them grouped together)

So let’s go shopping…

WoodWing

The most exciting magazines I found were created using software from WoodWing – a suite of software programmes aimed at publishers using Adobe InDesign. Big & small clients are listed on their Gallery pages.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the software (workflow-oriented setup), they don’t offer a trial version. And the entire suite roughly costs 6000EUR; it includes: Enterprise Publishing System (renting instead of buying an option), Content Station and the Reader Application.

Zinio

The second name that keeps coming up is Zinio. They call themselves the largest online newsstand in the world. Not much information here on how you get from design and copy to an actual iPad magazine. I guess they provide tools or do a lot of the authoring themselves, but not enough info to get cracking.

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

Adobe is working on a suite build around Adobe InDesign CS5. The software is still in Beta and not yet commercially available. A number of publishers have been invited to give it a try and the result isn’t bad. I applied for the beta programme and within 48 hours received approval!

ScrollMotion

Another company worth mentioning is ScrollMotion, although they’re more iPad app developers than publishers. Again: no DIY software to be found.

RovingBird ePublisher

Frederik from dotProjects pointed out RovingBird also created a plugin to create an iPad magazine from Adobe InDesign. Looks promising, but the plugin is only available for Mac, and I’m a Windows user.

Converting PDF

A low end solution this. Convert a PDF to an iPad app, but without multimedia or any form of interactivity this can hardly be called ‘an iPad magazine’.

Developing an iPad app

If everything else fails, you still could develop your own iPad application. And while I’m familiar with some basic programming, developing an app to make a magazine doesn’t sound very appealing.

So is that it? Is it really that hard to make an iPad magazine?

My only option at this point seems to be the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. I’ll give that a try and if all goes well, you’ll see Comsbox appearing in the App Store!

To be continued, I’m sure…