• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 4, 2011

Digital magazines got another boost this week. Moving Media+, a Bonnier spinoff, has made its Mag+ tablet publishing system available to publishers and agency creative executives in all branches of the industry, including consumer and trade magazine publishers, catalog marketers, and advertising and design agencies.

The system is available for free download at magplus.com; however, publishers have to pay for distribution.

Among other capabilities, Mag+ allows publishers to create as much content as they want free of charge. They then have to pay a small amount ($2,500) for five months of unlimited content publishing through a branded reader app.

After the initial five-month run, they can buy continued distribution for $500 per issue or per month. The platform's built-in features include analytics from Omniture, Localytics or Flurry; in-app subscriptions; and integration of Tapjoy, Admob and Appirator.

After winning critical praise for its first digital magazine editions for iPads, including Popular Science+, Bonnier spun off the publishing platform Moving Media+ in January 2011. Moving Media+ CEO Staffan Ekholm stated: "Mag+ was created by publishers for publishers. ... The team has already taken more than 25 magazine titles on to iPads, with others lining up in markets including the U.S., the U.K., and across the Continent."

Bonnier is not the only major publisher trying to expand the overall market for digital publications.

Last year, The New York Times unveiled plans for a new digital publishing platform, Press Engine, which draws on the company's experience creating its own apps for the iPhone and iPad; it is available to other newspaper publishers for a fee.

The new service provides app templates that save articles, share content, have photo galleries, audio and video features, horizontal and vertical reading, simple search and device-standard advertising units. It also allows for partial offline reading.