Tiny magazine demonstrates iPad's power for small publishers

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and LOUISVILLE, USA, Oct. 18, 2011 – First launched as a fanzine in the '90s, editor Scott Ritcher started K Composite Magazine by publishing interviews of his friends in Louisville, Kentucky. The new issue of K Composite, however, is a technological world away from its photocopied roots.

Available as a free iPad app, the new issue features lush layouts and flexible layers. When a reader rotates their iPad from portrait to landscape mode, layout elements magically glide into new positions optimized for that orientation.

The app's cool features are only a small part of what Ritcher says are the huge advantages that publishing to the iPad holds over distributing his niche magazine on paper.

"The iPad is an amazing opportunity for publishers, especially independents," Ritcher says. "Small publications like K Composite are always limited by how many pages we can print, how many can be in color, the costs of paper and shipping. But publishing to the iPad smashes these limitations."

K Composite for iPad was built with software called Mag+ which has been employed by the likes of Popular Science, Transworld Snowboarding, Maxim, the British Journal of Photography and furniture maker IKEA, for their iPad editions. Developed in Stockholm where Ritcher currently lives, Mag+ became available to small publishers in April and K Composite is one of the first to put it to use.

Through the combination of Mag+ and Apple's App Store, K Composite is now available free in 124 countries alongside titles like Vogue and Vanity Fair.

"It's a whole new world for small publishers," Ritcher says. "If a magazine has quality photography, design and content, it can now reach a massive audience."

With about 40 million iPad tablets worldwide, this opens up an unprecedented potential audience for indie publishers.

iPad owners can download K Composite #14 free by visiting www.kcomposite.com/ipad or by searching for K Composite in the App Store.

Contact

Scott Ritcher
1 502 365 5665
scott@kcomposite.com

Images for publication: www.kcomposite.com/press

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K Composite began as a fanzine in the 1990s with editor Scott Ritcher publishing interviews of his friends in Louisville, Kentucky. The magazine grew after being featured in Rolling Stone, Chicago Tribune, Harper's and on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." Ritcher's former interview subjects now assist by interviewing their friends.