Publishers Weekly (or PW as it is commonly known), a leading American weekly trade magazine aimed at publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary agents and more, has added interactive print from Layar to its pages.

Published since 1872, the magazine joins a growing list of industry publications – like Publishing Executive, which added Layar to its pages earlier this month – embracing Layar’s interactive print technology.

The trend is clear: the biggest names in the print industry think Layar’s interactive print is here to stay. Just take this headline from Publishers Weekly describing the interactive print content in the magazine: “Welcome to the future.”

“Publishers are looking for new technology like interactive print to connect with readers in different ways,” said PW publisher Cevin Bryerman. “Publishers Weekly is a leading publication for the book industry and discusses new technology trends, so we felt it was important to feature Layar’s interactive print.”

Scanning the cover of the most recent issue of Publishers Weekly, which features a young girl’s body health book, reveals an interview with the author and links to download an excerpt, meet the author and more. Give it a try yourself on the cover and these example pages.

“The Layar staff has ben awesome and responsive to our needs as clients,” added Bryerman when asked about PW’s experience with Layar and the Layar Creator. “We are looking forward to using Layar in editorial and advertising in the future.”

We’re happy to share another great example from the States as respected publishing industry magazine Publishing Executive has enhanced its latest issue with Layar’s interactive print technology.

Publishing Executive is a magazine tailored for, appropriately, publishing executives! It provides case studies and discusses new innovations in the publishing world, among other things, so it’s natural that Publishing Executive will include interactive print going forward.

Click here to view and scan the Publishing Executive cover!

“We make it our business to keep up with and write about new technology in the magazine industry,” said Editorial Director Lynn Rosen. “I think it’s really important that we also use the technology we write about. It helps our readers learn more about the various products and how they work.”

Publishing Executive first heard of Layar when co-founder Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald spoke at Dr. Samir “Mr. Magazine” Husni’s ACT 3 conference last fall. “It was a very compelling presentation,” said Rosen.

“We found the [Layar] system to be extremely user-friendly and the results had a lot of impact. It has a real “wow” factor. And the customer service is excellent!”

The cover of the latest edition of Publishing Executive, titled “Reinventing Publishing,” offers links to social media, subscription options, slideshows and videos help bring the publication to life.

When asked about the magazine’s experience with the Layar Creator, Rosen called it “clear-cut and simple.”

“You can be up and running quickly,” she adds. “We went from deciding to use it to closing an issue in about two weeks!”

Publishing Executive plans to use the Layar Creator to enhance each of its issues with more and more interactivity going forward. The magazine joins the growing group of publications and industry influencers using Layar’s interactive print technology.

“Everytime I pull out my smartphone and show people how the cover comes to life, I get a great reaction!”

Today in the Layar Creator, you may notice a few small changes we’ve made that will go a long way to improve your experience.

Tooltips and Pre-Filled Forms

First, you’ll notice that many of the menus for adding a button now have tooltips and pre-filled entries to make them easier to understand. It helps a lot when using buttons like the “Download App” button, in which you need to enter URL links to the App Store or Google Play store. A handy tooltip now walks you through how to find these URLs.

In the example above, a tooltip provides a nice suggestion for helping to sort messages you might receive from users of the “Email us” button.

Easier Purchase of Individual Pages

Below is the next improvement we’ve made today – purchasing pages. Previously if you wanted to purchase individual pages, you had to do so at the moment of publication, only bundles could be purchased on their own outside of publishing. Now, both can be purchased at any time, not just when publishing!

Better Analysis of Pages

And finally, we’ve implemented a system which performs a more detailed check of your images when you upload them. Previously we did a quick check to save time, but a more detailed check is also needed. Now we do both!

When you upload your image, after the first quick check, we now perform a more detailed analysis, but you can already get to work adding content to your pages while we check. You’ll see an “ANALYZING” badge on the thumbnails of your pages until it finishes.

In only takes a few moments, and if your page doesn’t pass the check, you will not be able to use it in the Creator. In most cases (like in the example above), a page will be disabled because it is either blank, or contains text only, but symmetry and repetitive patterns can be tricky as well.

These kinds of images are hard for users to scan and will not result in the best experience for users. Trust us, its for your own good! But chances are your images will be fine and you’ll never see this message.

And more!

These are just the most visible changes we’ve made to the Creator today. We’ve also fixed our share of bugs and made other improvements behind-the-scenes that will make the Creator faster, more stable and more robust. 

Enjoy!

Another of the world’s oldest and most respected print brands has used Layar to enhance its pages with interactive print. 

Reader’s Digest, which has been publishing its general intrest magazine every month for the last 90 years, now is providing readers with a more engaging digital experience for its loyal readers in Canada.

And from the very start, Reader’s Digest grabs your attention with an awesome call to action on the cover, which reads “it’s alive! view the cover with Layar!” This issue of the magazine is about the “Rise of the Robots” and the cover comes alive with an animated robot. 

Check out the video below to see it in action!

And have a look at some of the great example pages below by scanning them with Layar!

Readers can watch videos and even add cool products to their shopping cart!

More big news from the Great White North! Glacier Media, Western Canada’s largest local media company, is launching a massive interactive print rollout with its newspapers in British Columbia. In total, 12 newspapers will incorporate Layar’s technology, with more papers lined up to join soon.

Read our press release here!

Editorial and advertising content in each of Glacier’s twelve local newspaper properties and one real estate publication in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia – a circulation of over 500,000 – will feature Layar’s innovative and enriching interactive print technology. Readers will be treated to a more engaging print experience, as extra digital content is displayed when they scan the pages with the Layar App.

“This will allow print to come to life,” said Alvin Brouwer, president of Lower Mainland Publishing, a division of Glacier Media. “It adds many different dimensions to a print advertising campaign or to the stories and photos that appear in our papers.”

Glacier Media joins a growing group of printers and publishers choosing Layar as its augmented reality and interactive print platform of choice. Fry Communications, one the largest printers in the United States, similarly chose Layar to provide interactive print solutions to its customers just last month.

We’ve already seen proven success in Canada. A recent interactive print advertising campaign for Nissan across a dozen Canadian newspapers produced a 65% increase in test drives for the automaker while helping its creative agencies earn the coveted “Best in Show” prize at the Media Innovation Awards.

“This is a game changer,” said Shelly Wilson, Vice President of Digital Sales at Glacier Media. “The Layar technology provides us the opportunity to increase newsprint’s utility to our readers and advertisers enabling immediate action.”