The benefits of having your printer build your Web site

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Annual, 1997 by Barbara Love

It's common for scientific-and technical-journal publishers to have their printers set up Web sites for text and abstracts, but nothing like the graphical content of a magazine. Long-time journal printers that work in this niche, such as Science Press and Cadmus, have been building Internet sites for print customers for years. Publishers, however, have either put up their own Web sites or called on a third party to do it. Peter Banks, editorial director for the American Diabetes Association, is using Judd's, Incorporated, which has printed Diabetes Forecast for five years, to build a Web site for the magazine. Says Banks, "It's a little unusual for a consumer magazine to do this with a printer, but the idea of working with a printer on an Internet site was not new to us. We have had experience working with Cadmus to set up a site for Diabetes Care, a journal for clinicians who treat diabetes." Reasons why you might want to work with your printer to set up your Web site: 1) Technological ease. "As soon as I approve a blueline, the printer can pick up the approved file and go with it on the Net," says Banks, thus eliminating any translation problems. 2) An established relationship. "Typically, the Web site will be a very small fractional percentage of your printing contract," says Richard L. Warren, vice president-information services at Judd's. "You know you have the printer by a nose ring. All you have to do is twist that printing-contract nose ring and your Web services will follow." 3) Control of your image. Unlike some Web service providers, printers will stay in the background. They don't have their names on the masthead of your magazine and they don't require their image to be part of your Web site.

Barbara Love is general editor of Cowles Business Media.