Digital edition

A digital edition is an online magazine or online newspaper delivered in electronic form which is formatted identically to the print version. Digital editions are often called digital facsimiles to underline the likeness to the print version. Digital editions have the benefit of reduced cost to the publisher and reader by avoiding the time and expense to print and deliver like a paper edition. This format is considered more environmentally friendly due to the reduction of paper and energy use. These editions also often feature interactive elements such as hyperlinks both within the publication itself and to other internet resources, searching and bookmarking, and can also incorporate multimedia such as video or animation to enhance articles themselves or for advertisements. Some delivery methods also include animation and sound effects replicating page turning to further enhance the experience of their print counterparts.Traditionally, magazine publishers have relied on two revenue sources: selling ads and selling magazines. Additionally some publishers are using other electronic publication methods such as RSS to reach out to readers and inform them when new digital editions are available.

Current technologies are generally either reader-based, requiring download of an application and subsequent download of each edition, or browser-based, requiring no application download (such as Adobe Acrobat) and is often Macromedia Flash-based. Some application-based readers allow readers to access editions while not connected to the internet. Dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle and the iPad is also available for reading digital editions of select books, popular national magazines such as Time, The Atlantic, and Forbes and popular national newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Archives of print newspapers, in some cases going back hundreds of years, are being digitized and made available online. Google is indexing existing digital archives produced by the newspapers themselves or by 3rd parties.

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Wikipedia