Scribd (www.scribd.com) is a great place for storing published works that you want the world to see at minimal cost over the internet (in other words, its a FREE place I can stick RANmagazine issues, and embed them into www.ranmagazine.com, our Facebook account and twitter...) Of course there's LOTS of other folks doing this too-- Duke University, The County of Los Angeles, Microsoft, Ford Motors... It's a HUGE aggregate of written material, I happened upon while working my former job back in the States--we used it to publish our tech manuals for different systems.
With all the content there, they've built communities around them, and you can subscribe to any sets of publications that come via Scribd. If you choose to, you can subscribe to RAN and have it be delivered via email.
Today though, I was looking through the analytics for our site and noticed a serious SPIKE in traffic...
Normally, we get around 10-15 reads per day... But all of a sudden, we started trending UP on July 22nd.... And that's just site reads... There's the option to DOWNLOAD the magazine to your PC, or even iPhone, iPad, or other mobile. Take a look at this...
We got over 120 downloads a few days ago... Why??? What happened? Well we did have a little erotic photography in this issue... But nothin' major... Maybe they were enthralled by my Japan Beaches piece on page 22.... But then I checked my email to find this...
We got FEATURED on their front page! So we have people from all over the world looking at RAN and Nagoya right now... Check this out--
THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED EIGHT individual reads on Issue 6... Honestly, thats well above what we actually printed...
Folks, the future has arrived; When a print magazine's competing with the likes of YouTube and gains readership via Facebook and Mixi, and has loyal readers from places like Sweden, Kenya, and even a few pings in Saudi Arabia, you know its a different world... You can read our magazine in print... But you can also get it in ANY digital format you like, for the nice price of FREE.
Got a shiny iPad or new iPhone 4 or one of the latest 'Droid sets? well you DEFINITELY need to be taking RAN on the go--
Just access the Issues page at www.ranmagazine.com from your mobile and navigate to the issue you want. Then download it and there you go. I keep a copy of every issue in iBooks so can show the other 99% of people who haven't read RAN yet, my mag... BTW, save some trees, and DON'T throw RAN away, just pass it on to the next person who HASN'T seen it....
Again, thanks Nagoya, Japan, and the whole planet (it seems) for reading and supporting YOUR magazine, RAN.
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