"Rolling Stone" and "Playboy" Digital Histories from Bondi Publishing Offer Ideal Holiday Gifts to Consumers and Archive Value for Publishers

If you're looking for the perfect gift for fans of either Playboyor Rolling Stone, or both, the new searchable DVD archive and coffee table book sets from Bondi Publishing, priced at $125 for the Rolling Stone set and $100 for Playboy, are ideal. (www.covertocover.com) The complete digital history of 40 years of Rolling Stone and the 1950s issues of Playboyrequired transcribing every single word of text into a digital format.

"Our biggest focus has been on creating something that has a good reading experience, taking each issue and presenting it as originally published, in a searchable database," Bondi co-founder Murat Aktar told Jack MyersMedia Business Report in an exclusive interview. "A compete text conversion with tagging and indexing of each issue allows the software to have a full search component," he explained.

Aktar and his partner David Anthony founded Bondi in 2004, publishing The Complete New Yorker searchable electronic archive in 2005. "It's a pretty complex project," Anthony comments. "We scan and create a database out of digital photographs of every page. Hundreds of thousands of pages are retyped by humans to create a digital archive." I have seen both the Rolling Stone and Playboy box sets and they are not only visually beautiful, but the DVD product is amazing. Search any centerfold or any rock 'n roll legend, and there they are.

"Publishers are clearly thinking about what role the Internet will play in the future of magazines," says Aktar. "Bondi has been thinking about the role of archives in the digital model. Traditionally magazines have not been able to generate revenues from their back catalog. What is the value of an archive? If it's not in the right digital format, the value is zero. With no digital archive assets, there is no real income stream from the magazine. We are working with publishers to create incremental new revenue streams from their existing and previous issues."

Anthony adds, "There is a lot of talk about people migrating to the web, but the magazine experience in digital form is what we are about. We promote the magazine in a purely magazine format, which is a big benefit to the publication. It casts the magazine's digital presence in the same light as the core product. It tells a story the way a tip-in card or single issue can't. When Bondi does a project, we celebrate the history of the magazine. Rolling Stone is celebrating its 40th anniversary. We present this not in the context of one current anniversary issue but with every single issue and it helps people understand Rolling Stone's rich and illustrious history.

Bondi, says Anthony, has a good opportunity to scale its business with the right properties. Magazine publishers are quickly developing digital and online assets and expanding into a pay per download and advertiser sponsored model. "It's amazing how much archival value exists in magazines that are simply not available to consumers," says Anthony. For example, if you want to read the famous Jimmy Carter "lust in my heart" interview in Playboy, it has not been available previously.

Aktar says Bondi is in active discussions with several publishers and plans to develop another seven or eight digital archives. The magazines, he suggests, are fairly self-evident because they "have to be collectible. With Rolling Stone and Playboy, the brands are widely recognized, but there are also smaller more focused magazines with value," he points out. The marketing for these archives, he adds, will require more focus on subscription lists. Trade publications that offer a history of an industry, he believes, are also an opportunity.

The Bondi process is significantly different than Google's method of scanning book pages. Scans are 25 percent of the process, says Anthony. "There is no way to turn a scan into an interface that has value to the user." To create a strong end-user proposition and archive with full mapping, search and browse capabilities, Bondi's archivists spend hours faithfully recreating the magazine content. They incorporate in searchable format multiple spellings of names and other tags to enable a high degree of search success. "We had to analyze each magazine individually because of format changes, font changes, layout differences," says Aktar. "It takes enormous behind-the-scenes work to have an enjoyable mode for the end user."

Prior to Bondi, Anthony and Aktar co-founded Metropolis DVD in 1998. The company developed a reputation for innovative programming by helping major media companies—including Viacom, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Warner Music, and Disney International Publishing—develop and implement their DVD strategies. Metropolis won numerous awards for interface design and produced ground-breaking music DVDs, including the Rolling Stones’ Four Flicks, the Beastie Boys’ Anthology, and Janet Jackson’s All for You. Aktar is also a partner in and president of Sterling Sound, the market leader in audio mastering.

David Anthony can be contacted at davida@giant-interactive.com and Murat Aktar can be contacted at Murat.Aktar@sterling-sound.com .