Kai Hua Roh goes digital

The move aims to take advantage of the growing use of digital gadgets and changing patterns in consumers' reading behaviour. It will expand distribution of Kai Hua Roh beyond the paper version, especially for Thai people living overseas.

Banlue Publication's deputy managing director Santi Laohaburanakit said his company had formed a partnership with IT Works, a local software developer, to turn 1,150 pocket-sized issues of Kai Hua Roh, published over the past 25 years, into digital format, ready for reading on tablets and smart phones. The process has so far produced more than 60 issues of Kai Hua Roh, from the current issue back through the past year.

"Kai Hua Roh has a wide range of readers, both in Thailand and overseas, who now use smart phones and tablets. For current issues, the price of the application is US$0.99 (Bt29.68) for three issues, $3 for 12 issues and $10 for 52 issues, covering one year. For previous issues, we will charge one price: $0.99 for five issues. We believe many people who know and love Kai Hua Roh will download this application and take entertainment with them while they are on the go," Santi said.

Banlue Group's deputy managing director Chotika Utsahajit said the company had invested Bt10 million in a "first phase", to digitize its cartoons and turn them into a mobile application. This covers only the existing 1,150 issues of Kai Hua Roh. The next phase, which is expected to be completed in the next 12 months, involves "doing more in a digital-magazine application format." She declined to elaborate.

The Kai Hua Roh app will offer the Banlue Group two sources of revenue: one from app purchases and another from advertising. The proportions of the two revenue streams are expected to be similar to those in conventional publishing - revenue from advertising should outstrip that from app sales.

"But we do not expect revenue from this new business," Chotika said. "We have developed the Kai Hua Roh app so that our readers can reach it easier. On the other hand, we can enjoy better costs of delivering cartoon content to our readers, especially those who live overseas."

She said the cost of advertising on the Kai Hua Roh app would be the same as that for the paper version of the cartoon.

"We will launch each new issue of Kai Hua Roh both in a paper version and a digital version at the same time - that is, each week," she said.

Santi said the company was now able to offer advertisers more flexible formats. They will have to pay the publisher for the ad space and IT Works, as the developer, for ad production.

"In only the first two days, we had between 20,000 and 30,000 downloads," Santi said. "We expect to have around 100,000 downloads in two months."

IT Works' chief executive Natavudh Pungcharoenpong said the average cost of ad production for digital-magazine format was between Bt10,000 and Bt30,000. This depended on the complexity of the advertisement.

"We offer templates of ad formats for customers' consideration, including such things as voice, 360-degree turnaround, video, pop-up and multi-photo display," he said. 

Natavudh said IT Works had developed digital-magazine applications for more than 100 magazine brands over the past seven months. It has 200,000 registered members at Ookbee.com, its digital-publication platform for iPad, iPhone and Android.

Chotika said Banlue Group had been growing by 10 to 12 per cent every year. Revenue from the Kai Hua Roh application will help to raise this growth rate to more than 15 per cent. The company is planning to boost the amount of space it devotes to advertising on the digital version. While advertising constitutes less than 10 per cent of the paper version of the cartoon, the digital version will carry around 10 to 15 per cent.