• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, April 11, 2012

A lot of attention has been devoted to the technology required to turn print magazines into digital editions, but less to the reverse -- taking digital publications and making them into print products. This is especially true for the myriad smaller, niche digital publications that have proliferated on the Web over the last decade.

Now, a company called Peecho is helping small digital publishers make the print transition.

Issuu, a digital publishing platform serving over 2 million digital publishers of varying sizes, has tapped Peecho as its print publishing partner. Issuu publishers that want to create a print version of their publications can click a “Peecho Cloud Print” button, which takes them to an online interface that sets the desired print specifications.

Peecho, which is connected to a global network of print publishers, then automatically combs its database of publishing partners and finds the lowest price for producing a printed version, displayed alongside other price comparisons. 

Founded in Denmark, with offices in Copenhagen and New York City, Issuu claims that its 4 million original digital publications attract 52 million unique visitors and serve over 3.5 billion impressions per month. While still mostly a European platform, it is growing rapidly here, with 48% of its traffic coming from Europe and 24% from North America.

The Amsterdam-based Peecho isn’t limited to producing print versions of digital magazines. It can also be used by publishers and users of mobile apps, photo-sharing Web sites, social networks, or online games to produce photo books or canvas prints.

Thanks to the rise of tablets and ereaders, interest in digital magazines is growing. A new forecast from Gartner predicts there will be 665 million tablets in use around the world by 2016, with over 45% of those iPads. YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are said to be working on a new digital magazine publishing app, Zeen, which is intended to help users “discover and create beautiful magazines,” with a major role for multimedia sharing.