Savory | Blog

Savory | The New Platform For Digital Publishing | Blog

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Users talk: Max Henry from CHaINA Magazine

Another month, another interview with one of our beloved users. This time we have spent some time with Max Henry, Founder and Executive Director at Chain Media, a Shanghai based marketing and communication consulting firm for the Asian supply chain industry.

Hi Max, let's start from the very beginning. Would you like to tell us how things went? How did you start using Savory?


Like many other publishers, we have used InDesign to layout our magazine for a number of years but got increasingly frustated by the complexity of the software, the time spent for each issue and the poor look of our magazine online (ePDF have fonts that are too small, zooming not convenient on screens and tablets). After evaluating several solutions like Onswipe, Pressly and various Worpdress plugins, we finally selected Savory for its design, simplicity and low cost.

What kind of editorial product are you publishing using Savory?


We are publishing our flagship supply chain magazine CHaINA that has been published on print for the past 5 years and recently went fully 100% digital. It’s a magazine that get promoted and read by over 20,000 readers each month.


Some companies would have preferred a native application, or just a simple newsletter. What convinced you to experiment with a different solution?

We looked at native apps and for some time had an iPad App for our magazine using PixelMags solutions. We tested it for 2 years, could not make any money (Apple takes all our profit) and anyway it was using a PDF format, something we did not want to continue… For small publishers, it’s impossible to maintain an App for iOS, Android, BB and now Windows 8, so having an HTML 5 web magazine that can work on all devices and browsers is a “no brainer”.

Was it hard for you to integrate Savory in your workflow?


No, like many publishers in transition from print to digital, we totally changed the way we work around the magazine. Savory makes it super easy to put together a magazine.


How did things changed for you since you launched the new magazine?

We are very pleased by the easyness of using the solution and our magazine looks great regardless of the device you use. So far, no complaints.

What about the relationship with your readers? Has it been affected too?

Our readers love the look and feel and the ability to read the magazine on their tablet and smartphone.

You are experimenting with advertising. How are things going? What was the advertisers' reaction?

We are still struggling to convince our advertisers to support us as they still prefer the printed magazine. It’s going to take some time but eventually we will win their trust and budget as we continue to deliver great content, fast growing readership. We are also working hard to provide creative advertising packages that combine both AD insertions, web banners and social media.

What features would you like more to see implemented in the near future?

I think the big one right now is the automated download of the full magazine when people start to read. The page swiping is still a bit too slow.

What are the main issues you found yourselves to face? Any concepts hard to understand?

Not at all, we love your team and the great support.

[savorypub-blog]

Savory on Enter the Cloud

The italian magazine Enter the Cloud features an insightful interview to our founders Andrea Campi and Andrea Granata. They talk about cloud computing, agile development, open source software and digital publishing.

Here is a brief quote from the interview. Italian only, of course :)

La mia ambizione è che Savory consenta ad una fascia di persone che non sono strettamente “giornalisti” o “scrittori” di creare una propria pubblicazione. Ciò non toglie che sia un prodotto per sua natura più complesso di un blog, e quindi meno di massa.

D’altro canto la progettazione e realizzazione di un prodotto editoriale di qualità comporta costi (anche solo in termini di tempo) di fronte ai quali il nostro canone diventa secondario.

Il nostro punto di partenza è stato il mercato: qualsiasi prodotto professionale costa decine se non centinaia di volte più di Savory. Abbiamo visto un buco nell’offerta e abbiamo voluto riempirlo.

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Users talk: Valentina Orsi from EDT

A little more than a month after the launch of Savory we have had a little talk with Valentina Orsi, a communication and marketing manager at EDT, an italian publishing house focused on travel, music and kids books that is also the italian publisher of the well known Lonely Planet guides.

EDT uses Savory to publish its bulletin to the booksellers, and does that since months before we publicly launched. For this and many other reasons their opinion is very important to us.

Hi Valentina, let's start from the very beginning. Would you like to tell us how things went? How did you start using Savory?

Since 2009 we felt the need to find a way to constantly and directly communicate with bookstores and libraries, outside regular sales meetings and institutional events such as book fairs and festivals.

For a couple of years we produced a simple PDF document that we sent as an email attachment, but slowly the things we wanted to communicate, the images we wanted to show and the links we wanted to embed within this document grew larger and larger, to the point our PDFs became too heavy, difficult to read and to download.

So we started looking for a different tool, a tool that allowed us to produce publications that should have been easy to consult, and accessible through the new family of mobile connected devices that were becoming available: not only personal computers, but tablets and smartphones too.

What kind of editorial product are you producing using Savory?

We produce a monthly bulletin of publishing informations concerning new titles and promotional activities of our publishing house, EDT.

For each publishing area (such as Travels, Music, Kids) we report the upcoming books, marketing operations, press coverage, planned advertising activities and promotional material we produce.

This way, booksellers are always updated about our activities, and have a way to get in touch with us easily.

Let's make an example. Imagine that we launch a new series of travel guides, and we produce, as a marketing tool, a dedicated display rack. Booksellers could have decided not to pre-order the rack during the launch of the series because five months earlier - when we proposed it to them - they could have considered it not useful.

Now, thanks to our new bulletin, we can remind them that the new guides are about to be available together with the display rack, and that, if they want, they are still able to easily get the rack: all they have to do is to get in touch with us.

Without the bulletin, we would never have sent an email to booksellers just to remind them about this kind of information.

Many companies would have preferred a native application, or set for a simple newsletter. What convinced you to experiment with a different solution?

The bulletin could not have been a native application, since we could not assume that all our readers had the right device to access it.

The same way, newsletters are a great way for business communication, but does not suit well a structured editorial communication that has to cover multiple and varied topics.

On the other hand, the bulletin we produce using Savory is a web application, and this allows us both to make our content accessible through a broad range of devices and to deliver a magazine like, content rich publication, that also comes with a layout that looks familiar for the professionals of the publishing world.

How did you integrate Savory in your workflow?

Integrating Savory in our workflow proved to be quite easy. As we used to do with the old PDF document, one person in our team collects content and materials for the new issue directly from the managers of each publishing areas.

Then, in a couple of days of work and revision, working directly within the CMS, content is structured and formatted. Once the new issue is ready, we send a communication to our mailing list informing that the new bulletin is available.

How did things changed in the communication with bookstores since you have been using the bulletin?

First of all, the new bulletin makes it easy both for us to update the content, and for the users to access the publication directly in their browsers, without having to receive a one-to-one email message.

Also, every number of the bulletin is always available on the web, so past issues are easily consulted. And, finally, thanks to the new bulletin we provide our readers many more direct ways to reach our different online channels (websites, social media, and so on).

You can take a look to the EDT bulletin here.

[savorypub-blog]

New feature: Issue templates

TL;DR You can now create a template issue with a cover, sections and other common elements that you use repeatedly, as well as regularly recurring articles. When it's time to create your next issue you can start from a template, saving time and avoiding boring and repetitive work. Yay for productivity!

If there is one thing that really sets Savory aside from other online publishing platforms, that is our focus on editorial workflow. A blog platform will allow you to write articles, but it has no higher-level grouping of content.

If you are publishing a magazine, what you probably want is publishing a monthly issue, which has its own metadata and some amount of internal consistency. In Savory that's a central concept, and among other things it gives you one-click publishing of a bunch of articles with one click (try that with Wordpress!).

Issues also help reinforce you brand identity, which is something that matters a lot to publishers, whether they are established media companies or up-and-coming online journalists. A publication's identity goes well beyond the style or the logo: a great many real-world publications have a faithful following of readers just as much for their regular columns as for their feature stories. So it's not surprising that our customers spend a lot of time figuring out how they want to organize their publication.

When we launched last month we knew it was just the beginning of the journey. Most of our launch customers had produced just one issue, and were happy campers. But once the time came to prepare a second one, they had to redo it from scratch! which requires a lot of clicking.

We are all about efficiency, so we couldn't have any of that. Your time is way too valuable to spend doing repetitive, mindless work—that's what computers are for. So now, once you are confident you got that first issue exactly right, you can just click a button and turn it into a template. That's very similar to what you would do in an office suite when you turn a document into a model so you can use it again and again—except in this case, the template contains the issue itself and all the articles in it. And when it's time for next month's issue, it's again a single click and boom! there's your new issue, all that is left for you is to type your articles.

The coolest part is that you can have as many templates as you want. You have a regular monthly magazine, but you also publish quarterly supplements? Just use two different templates. You run a daily magazine, with a few different sections every day? Why not, use seven templates.

This feature is available today to all our customers. Not a customer yet? Sign up now, it's just $49 / €49 a month, and the first month is on us!

[savorypub-blog]

Savory Through the Looking-glass

Launching a product like Savory takes a lot of time and work. Hardly surprising I guess, since nothing in this life comes free.

Growing it after launch, making sure it keeps improving to meet the expectations of our customers, is no small feat either. As soon as the launch euphoria was over, we put down our paninis and our glasses of spumante, went back to our desks and started banging on our product again.

Some of the work we do is surprisingly complicated stuff—like making sure your readers can look at your magazines on their tablets while relaxing at their lakeside cabin, despite a shoddy network connection. A lot of it is deceivingly simple stuff that takes us just a few hours, but it will save you days of needless work. And quite often, there's something interesting and maybe even funny that takes us in a different direction.

Savory is designed for a publishing workflow, and the concept of an issue is very much the focus of this workflow; at the end of the day, that is your finished product that you want your public to see. Each issue may or may not have a title: an ebook most certainly will, a monthly magazine may not have it, but then again many quarterlies have monographic issues that certainly do. The point is: it's an editorial and a marketing choice, and it's your choice to make.

Imagine this conversation with a colleague:

You: Jim, can you replace the opening photo in the third article of the next issue?

Jim: Is that the one we are thinking of calling "Life at the beach"?

You: No, that's the next one.

Jim: Right. And which article was that again?

I don't know you, but I have a feeling that's not gonna end well (besides, you never liked Jim anyway).

As humans we like to name things, so in Savory we decided early on that we were gonna give each important "thing" its own name. You can think of the name as a working title, or you can get philosophical and believe that knowing the true name will give you power on your content.

We think having both a name and a title gives you the right amount of flexibility. It's like your garage-opener: it's nothing to write home about, it's there when you need it and then gets out of the way.

That is, if you are not a geek. To me this dualism of name and title sounded like a textbook example of use-mention distinction.

Perhaps the most widely know example is in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-glass:

'Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS' EYES."'

'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested.

'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."'

'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice corrected herself.

'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'

'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'

See, we may be techies, but we are big literature geeks too :D

—- Andrea Campi

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Good News

Joe Wikert, general manager, publisher, and chair of the Tools of Change for Publishing conference, just mentioned us on Twitter.

If you believe HTML5 is the future of ebooks you'll want to keep an eye on this startup, @savorypub: oreil.ly/PnFS4f #TOCcon

— Joe Wikert (@jwikert) Settembre 26, 2012

Thank you, Joe :)

[savorypub-blog]

Savory, a week later

A week has gone by since we officially launched Savory, and what an exciting week it has been! We’ve received a ton of feedback, tweaked a thing or ten, and signed up quite a few early customers.  

What's most exciting, anyway, is the feeling that a lot of people have been waiting for something like Savory to be launched: an easy, affordable way to publish content across the always broader range of devices available on the market.  

Of course these days Twitter is the real “news wire” quite a few people got back to us immediately after the announcement:

A step forward for digital publishing: RT @savorypub We launched! Savory is officialy online starting today! Check it out at savory.io

— Scott Luberda (@ScottFuse) Settembre 5, 2012

Congrats to @treesaver and @zephirworks on the launch of @savorypub! @rogerblack has the backstory: rogerblack.com/blog/post/pivot

— Filipe Fortes (@fortes) Settembre 10, 2012

Savory is a powerful new digital publication platform powered by HTML. savory.io

— Jeffrey Zeldman (@zeldman) Settembre 6, 2012

The press noticed too. Craig Grannell was the first to get hold of Roger for a short interview for .net magazine in which he outlines our approach toward the future of publishing

"A Savory pub is really a website, and so I don't have to download anything. It works on my phone, my tablet, my laptop and my PC – even though they have different operating systems," […] "If I want to share a story on Twitter, Facebook, or by email, my friends can follow the link wherever they are, and on whatever device they happen to have."

In part, Black argued this trend was down to publishers being scared by Android's growth outpacing iOS, meaning they're no longer content with an iPad or iPhone app: "Frequent OS updates, new devices and new screen resolutions cause code rewrites and increased support. No publisher welcomes the cost. HTML5 is looking better and better!"

Luca Menato wrote about us on his blog:

It’s called Savory and it’s a unique HTML5.0 (look Ma, no flash!) solution to those who want publish the old-fashioned way regardless of the platform, a project close to the heart of news design heavyweight Roger Black.

Thank you Luca, we couldn't agree more! 

Finally, a couple of small features for our italian speaking readers are available on Pubblicità Italia and Editoria Crossmediale.  

This coverage helped spread the word, and our website registered a satisfying number of visits. Given that we are based in Italy and in the US, most visits came from those two countries, but we were pleased to see interest from many far-away places. The prize for the most remote locations go to the lone visitors from Kazakhstan and from Fiji.  

As you’d expect most people interested in Savory at this stage seem to be fairly technological; they run up-to-date browsers on recent devices. Interestingly, Internet Explorer accounts for about 2.5% of the visits. A personal message to the single person still using Firefox 3.0: come on, it’s time to upgrade!  

The Savory Team

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Savory is up!

Well, here it is. Savory. The new platform for digital publishing. It’s built with Treesaver®, the rule-based HMTL5 responsive and algorithmic layout engine, and managed by a powerful CMS  from ZephirWorks.  

Savory is a new kind of web hosting service. Its page-based design is tuned for publications—regular collections of stories by different writers, photographers and artists. Savory puts the narrative first. It’s like a tablet-smartphone magazine app meets a blog hosting service.  

Unlike apps, it’s on the web. The same Savory publication can be read on a phone, a laptop, a tablet—on any device that has a browser. You can share stories on the social networks, or e-mail links to friends.  

Savory goes beyond the linear story river of blogs, which are fine for short iterative items and links, but not for an issue filled with different kinds of stories.  

And it’s better for publications than a conventional web site.  (Have you ever used a magazine or newspaper web site that is as immersive and easy to read as the printed edition?)  

Monthly service is an affordable $49, or €49. This is great for start-ups—or for new efforts at established publishing companies. The fee is charged monthly like a subscription, but there’s no contract.  

At launch there are two complete design themes—one for magazines, and one for news publications. More features, and new themes will be introduced in coming months.  

So check it out. Savory is ready to serve your publication. We look forward to working with you.

[savorypub-blog]

Savory Is Coming (2) - the press release

The launch of Savory is getting closer every day, and we are really thrilled to finally announce our recent partnership with the Treesaver team.  

Together we are building an amazing product, and in a few more weeks everyone intersted will be able to try it.  

Here is the official pre announcement press release, to read and download.  

Speak soon :)  

Savory Partnership Pre Announcement

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Savory Is Coming (1)

Almost three months went by since the last time we talked about Savory, and in the meanwhile a lot of cool stuff happened.  

E.g., I (Ivan) joined the Savory team here at ZephirWorks, and one of the things I'd really love to be able to get done in those first few days is to try to clearly explain what Savory is and what is meant to.  

Savory makes it easy for you to publish your content on tablets, smartphones and PCs.

The great thing about Savory is that it lets you author, curate and manage your content, and then deliver it to every device (be it a PC, a smartphone or a tablet) with just one click. No magic involved: all you need is a browser, and you're done.  

All the content delivered using Savory is a proper web application, which lives and exhists within the browser, and this is the reason why you don't need anything else to enjoy it.  

Web applications are wonderful: open, standard compliant, scalable and flexible. Our customers won't be tied to any hardware, software or proprietary file format. They will be able to deliver content crafted using web standards directly in a browser. This is something strictly related with freedom, and we care about freedom.  

Here is another great thing about Savory: content is handled using HTML5 and CSS3 features. Those technologies enable responsive and context aware design. In other words, the layout adapts itself to the screen size and to the kind of device you are using to access the content. This way, great readability and beautiful tipografy is assured always.  

Savory Is About to Come

We are all working really hard, and we are almost ready to release our Public Beta. We will tell you (and also show you, finally) more in the next few days. In the meanwhile, you can leave us your email on savory.io, and we will keep you posted.  

And no spam, we promise :)