Chris Minnick's blog

New Statreport Feature: Inbound Link Tracking

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:47:39 -0700

New Feature: Inbound Link Tracking
What it is: Records and reports the sources of inbound links
How does it work: Simply append "?linkcode=[yourlinkname]" to an inbound link to your ebook. For example, if your eBook is at http://demo.ebookhost.net/demo/ebook/1/, you could track an inbound link from an email by linking to it using http://demo.ebookhost.net/demo/ebook/1/?linkcode=emaillink. Track as many different links as you like!
Benefit to the customer: Allows you to see how people are getting to your eBook.

Minnick Web Services Reports eBook Sales Increase in 2006

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:53:14 -0800

Web site and electronic publication service provider Minnick Web Services (MWS) increased eBook sales by 84 percent in 2006. eBook hosting sales also increased in 2006, by 91 percent.

"Our substantial increase in eBook sales in 2006 shows that electronic publications are maturing into an integral part of the publishing world. It’s still a new format that a minority of publishers are using, but it is becoming more widespread and accepted," said CEO Christopher J. Minnick.

Unlike other digital magazine producers, Minnick Web Services doesn't simply convert a printed magazine to an online format. MWS works with the publishing team to create a custom product that's designed to be read online, doesn't require scrolling, and has an extremely simple user interface.

Announcing eLauncher!

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:32:32 -0800

Now MinnickWeb clients can watch the status of their projects as they progress from the beginning stages to completion, in one handy, informative page. This new, free service improves communication, and allows our clients to launch their eBooks whenever they desire. Ask about eLauncher for your next project!

eBookHost Update - October 6, 2006

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:37:33 -0700

First of all, Margaret and I will be attending the Folio Show in New York October 23-25. If you'd like to schedule a meeting with us during that time, please email or call me. Many of our clients are in the NY area, and many others will be in town for Folio that week. We're hoping to get a chance to visit with as many of you as possible.

In other news: we're continuing to roll out new features for the eBookhost system. The biggest changes have been to the tools we use to produce eBooks. These improvements have made it possible for us to produce more eBooks in the last 2 months than in the 6 months prior to that.

eBookHost Update - Aug 4

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 10:28:56 -0700

This week, we rolled out a few new reports for you to become familiar with and love!

1. Clickthrough ratio: in the Clickthrough report, we're now calculating the ratio of Clicks to visitors for each ad.

2. Page view time! In the page view report, you can now see how many seconds, on average, people spent on each page spread.

3. Engagement Factor. We used the formula: (visits/visitors)*duration to compute an Engagement Factor (EF). Engagement is one of those things where no one has really come up with a standard definition yet, but I read about this formula somewhere and it seems useful as a gauge of how valuable people find each page. This is displayed (along with a cool graph) in the page view report.

eBookHost Update - July 28

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:04:34 -0700

Last week's eProofer press release got quite a bit of attention. The story was posted on AJAX World, printondemand.com, jaxmag, The Daily Dog, nextwebgen.com, and a lot of other places. The people who have emailed me with questions and comments are confirming my belief that there's a real need for a better way to proof digital publications.

Have you used eProofer? Do you have suggestions or ideas for how it could be made better? Please send me an email or post a comment!

eBookHost Update - July 21

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:06:11 -0700

The most obvious improvement this week is that this Blog is now syndicated to the StatReport interface, making it easier for everyone to keep up to date with all the changes going on here. If you'd like to syndicate this blog to your RSS reader or your site, you can always grab our RSS feed here by clicking one of the XML links at ebookhost.com.

Here are some of the other changes made this week:

New eBookHost Features!

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:34:10 -0700

We've added a few new features to eBookHost in the last couple weeks. Here's a quick rundown of some of the bigger ones:

1. New Registrants: for publications that span over more than one issue, this new StatReport feature will tell you how many people registered to view the current issue (vs. people who registered for a previous issue and are returning to view the current one).

2. Open Rate: This stat indicates the percentage of visitors who opened the publication after registering or logging in.

3. Scheduled Reporting: Scheduled reporting, which can be accessed from the left navigation of StatReport, allows you to easily create reports to be emailed to you (or anyone else) on a schedule. For example, Scheduled Reporting could be used to send the sponsor of an eBook a list of new registrants every week for 6 months.

Announcing eBookHost eProofer 1.0

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 14:55:40 -0700

We've been thinking a lot about the best way to manage tight deadlines and improve our testing procedures while not creating additional steps for our developers or clients.

Last week, I had the idea that we should create an eMag proofing tool that shows all of the edit associated with the page you're currently viewing and allow you to create new ones and clear resolved ones. I mentioned the idea to Kevin on Wednesday and had him drop everything else he was working on.

Today (Monday), we're rolling it out! You can view and try out eProofer at http://demo.ebookhost.com.

Welcome to the New eBookHost!

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:44:30 -0700

Welcome to eBookHost version 2! Please explore the new site, check out some of our latest eBooks and eMags, view our demo and let us know what you think.