Here’s a Printcast’s quick-read view:
http://beta.printcasting.com/publisher/micro/104/2?view=quick

And here’s a magazine view:
http://beta.printcasting.com/publisher/micro/104

If you download the PDF and look closely on the jump pages, you will see tinyurls at the bottom of articles where they end. Type those in, and you will be taken to the full contents of the article in “quick read view”. In other words, we have automatic online refers in the printable PDFs.

The microsites are automatically promoted in PDF footers, too.

The only way to have a large business with long-term success in that world is by managing a network of niches. Otherwise, the opportunities naturally shift to a decentralized archipelago of much smaller companies that each focus on smaller niche groups.

There are still opportunities for large companies, though. Over the last decade, Amazon has basically created a network for niche content. The Kindle only provides a more immediate way for people to do what they’ve been doing with Amazon all along. Hopefully that’s also what Hearst is trying to do. Rather than providing yet another way for people to get the same unweildy, untargeted product that everyone else gets every day, they could use these devices to get unique content that speaks directly to their interests on whatever schedule works best for them.

By the way, on the topic of multi-product, I’ve noticed that our Printcastinging PDFs display quite nicely on the iPhone. All that’s needed is an app that can download, store and display them offline. There’s an app called “Files” that does this very well. People could use that, or perhaps we will be making a Printcasting iPhone app one day in the future.

My point is that even though my project is about printable niche content, that doesn’t mean that ink on wood pulp is the only place that content can be viewed. We also have web-friendly “microsites” for every Printcast that make the content readable on a screen. (Read: can someone please get me on the list for one of those Plastic Logic readers?)

Here’s an example of the “quick read” view of a microsite:
http://alpha.printcasting.com/publisher/micro/103/2?view=quick

And this is the “magazine view”
http://beta.printcasting.com/publisher/micro/104