Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Best Practice Cases
Vertical Magazine
Reaching a Geographically Diverse Audience Efficiently
Vertical Magazine (www.verticalmag.com) is a semimonthly
business-to-business publication covering the helicopter
industry in the US and Canada, including news, interviews,
features, and photography. It is a publication of MHM
Publishing Inc., located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
Although Vertical is a B-to-B magazine, many aspects of it make
it resemble a consumer publication, including its emphasis on
high-quality photography. They do their own photo shoots of
helicopters by flying in them themselves. Vertical has 12 editorial
staff and four in-house photographers.

Advanced Publishing (www.advancedpublishing.com) is a premier provider of digital
edition and digital delivery solutions to the publishing world. With a strong technology
platform that is continually enhanced and broadened, Advanced Publishing is
committed to provide an ever-increasing portfolio of services and products to enhance
the relationships between our publishing customers and their subscribers and
advertisers.
The Challenge
Many of Vertical’s readers are in remote locations around the world, where they could
be posted for months at a time. These readers now tend to have Internet access. Vertical
needed a way of reaching these readers quickly and without incurring postage costs,
which are typically $7.50 per copy for distribution outside North America.
Meeting the Challenge
Vertical was the first of its competitors – of which Rotor & Wing is the largest – to
launch a digital edition. It did so with Advanced Publishing in early 2005, using
Advanced Publishing’s technology. At the time of launch, Vertical also had Advanced
Publishing create a digital archive of back issues to enhance the value to readers with
full search across the full archive.
To create the digital edition, they simply produce a print-ready PDF from their layout in
Adobe InDesign; they send the PDF to Advanced Publishing. The digital edition is thus
an exact facsimile of the print publication. Launched originally in DjVu format, the
magazine has been converted over to Advanced Publishing’s new solution, RIDE, which
uses Microsoft Silverlight for its viewing interface.
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