BoSacks Speaks Out: The Terrible Burden of Destiny

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Terrible Burden of Destiny
6 guidelines publishers need to consider while pondering their futures.
By Bob Sacks

As we move forward in this economic recession, it is important to remember that while some processes may be slowed, others will continue to fling us forward and create both unexpected opportunities and, depending on your perspective, unfortunate struggles to simply survive. We are faced with, some might say, "the terrible burden of a digital destiny." As an industry, we will adjust and adapt to the conditions at hand, not necessarily because we want to, but because we must.

The following is a series of guidelines or propositions that we must be aware of and be prepared to deal with as we move forward.

1. Advancements by the digital universe will never retreat, and will only improve and become more ubiquitous.
Digital publishing will continue to become a stronger platform that is easier and easier to use. The print-only world has not been able to hold its own, nor will it be able to do so against such formidable odds. If you can't accept this as a truthful premise, you will continue to struggle with your own destiny.

2. Our competition has been totally redefined.
While our publishing competitors used to be easy to identify, today almost any company, group or individual can become a future competitor. New technologies empower this and enable it to be done anywhere on the planet. There is a new and increasingly lower threshold of entry, which means new competitors are in abundance. They can come from anywhere and will come from well below the radar screen. They will be online, global, fast-moving and smart.

3. Content remains important.
A critical concept to understand is that content is more important than the delivery vehicle. This is a new concept for publishers rooted in tree fibers. The digital delivery of news, information, instruction or fiction has just as much validity as pulp-delivered products, and in many cases it has more creditability-the creditability to be timely and immediately fact-checked for accuracy.

4. New revenue models are required.
The new technologies of information distribution offer endless options to reach a world full of future customers. The shipping cost to reach this global market is exactly the same as it is to reach the girl next door. This empowers a style of publishing that I call "universal niche"-an idea, concept or hobby enjoyed by a few on a global basis. Basically, the scale of the available readership redefines small as big.

5. Our audience will increasingly demand to be treated as individuals.
Despite the growing trend of individualism in society, mass media continues to offer the same message to everybody while new media opportunities have the power to offer individual content based on our uniqueness rather than our sameness. This concept combines very nicely with the power of citizen journalism. The "screenager" generation wants to be involved and take part in news reporting. They have grown into a generation that has the ability to be in touch with each other immediately at earlier and earlier ages. This from-birth experience is fostering a new generation of readers who are naturally adept with technology and comfortable with having virtual access to friends, family and the world at large.

6. Advertisers will demand accountability more than ever.
Advertisers increasingly want to reach their customers directly. They want a one-to-one relationship that heretofore was not possible.

Today, that kind of science is not only possible, but perhaps mandatory as a part of doing business. Simply put, digital media offers improved measures of success. Digital publishing has an increasingly important advantage of being able to measure the impact of advertisements, clicks, transactions, etc. As the economy goes through the current parabolic curve of dipping south, flattening out and then starting the climb to profitability again, publishers need to adapt to the inherent changes before them.

Will publishing survive? Definitively yes. Will it survive with the old-school business models of our fathers? Categorically no. Every aspect of publishing has to be reevaluated and reexamined against the digital criteria outlined above and be reconstituted as an advanced publishing formula for the 21st century. It is never going to be the way it was, and sure as the sky is blue, it is not going to be the way it is. Your future is in your hands.

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Surviving Publishing's Perfect Storm?

BoSacks Speaks Out: Surviving Publishing's Perfect Storm?
By Robert M. Sacks
Let’s face it, traditional publishing is under serious attack. We are facing both the customary enemy of rising manufacturing costs and the nontraditional entry of strong digital competition where once none existed. And if that wasn’t enough, we have the increasingly evident disadvantage of a terrible carbon footprint. This is a perfect storm of tremendous proportions. What are publishers to do? How can we survive?

In the past few weeks, a couple of headlines have crossed my desk. Each alone is powerful enough, but when considered together they offer terra-forming, watershed moments for the magazine industry, and, if viewed correctly, financial hope and a foundation for a very successful publishing enterprise.

The first headline comes from a Media-Ideas press release that claimed that: “In 25 years, digital magazines will command 75 percent of the magazine market.” That is a powerful statement and, even if these calculations are off by 50 percent, it means that almost 40 percent of printed magazines will be gone in 25 years. Will yours be one of those missing titles? Are you gearing up for that kind of transformation?

Media-Ideas attributes this transition to the growth of new and more affordable, flexible e-reading technologies, some apparently ready for deployment as early as 2009. These devices will be full-color, flexible, e-paper-based reading instruments. There will be several stages to the development and release of these new products, but the results will be staggering. I believe that the 25-year time line is conservative, as technology notoriously proceeds much faster than anyone can predict.

The next headline is a statement from the United Nations communications chief, who predicts that more than half of the world’s population will be connected by some sort of mobile phone before 2009. That is a large number of people possessing Web-accessible, text-reading, communication devices. Can you imagine when flexible e-paper, digital-magazine-reproducing products get into that global equation?

The proliferation of powerful, handheld, supercharged communication systems changes everything, including our precepts and concepts of publishing. Technology is no longer only for nerds, or an indulgence for the rich. It’s who we all are and who we will be. It’s embedded in our lives and culture. It’s everywhere, it’s global, and there’s no going back to rolls of parchment, or mass-distributed, carbon-hogging magazine distribution.

Printed magazines will not disappear, but they will become the less dominant reading platform and perhaps exist only for those who can afford them. Of course, printed niche products will continue to thrive, though non-niche titles will not make it—according to Darwin’s law of survival of the fittest or, in this case, Bo’s law of survival of the most uniquely remarkable. And the subset of Bo’s law is that unique remarkability is in the eyes of the distinctive beholder (reader).
So, what am I getting at with this introduction of the new world order of communications? As new generations of e-paper reading devices enter the market, the relevance of digital magazines will take on a whole new importance.

If digital magazines have not made sense to you yet in the 21st century, they will with the advent and ubiquity of portable and flexible e-paper devices.

You can add to this conversation that digital magazines have the increasingly important advantage of being able to measure the impact of everything the reader does—the advertisements, the clicks, transactions, the reading time, the actual engagement of the consumer with the product itself. Publishers must act now on their digital-magazine implementation plans or risk irrelevance in the new media future. PE

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

The Real Viability of Digital Editions

The Real Viability of Digital Editions
By Bob Sacks
http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=exjwyocab.0.5fadzocab.cuf4zubab.1&ts=S0350&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pubexec.com%2Fstory%2Fstory.bsp%3Fsid%3D110150%26var%3Dstory

Resistance to digital magazines is futile. Here's why.
I've been inundated lately with e-mail requests about the viability of digital magazine editions. The letter that put me over the top was from an old and dear acquaintance, who is a senior production director, that said, "Digital editions of magazines will never get traction with the magazine-reading public." This is a ridiculous attitude. And if it is yours, too, bury it now with other ridiculous ideas like the world is flat and man will never fly.

Perhaps Jeff Gomez, author of the book "Print Is Dead," put it best when he wrote: "To expect future generations to be satisfied with printed books is like expecting the BlackBerry users of today to start communicating by writing letters, stuffing envelopes and licking stamps."

Do we expect magazine readers to become any less sophisticated as time and technology roll by? Things change, platforms evolve, business models adjust, and people's habits change, too. History is loaded with once-successful personal methodologies that are now nothing but antiquated dust.

This is not a discussion of whether or not print will survive. That is moot. What is important is how people will read in the future. Gomez's comment is spot on. How people read today gives us the smallest inkling of how people will read in the future. I'd be curious to know the number of words read on a computer screen (including PDAs, cell phones, e-readers, etc.) versus those read in print.

Digital editions will play a central role in the magazine business's future success. They are growing in popularity, and eventually will become ubiquitous. The only thing holding the format back presently is a perfect substrate. Computer screens are good for the task, but not perfect in their portability, flexibility and readability in various lighting conditions. What the industry is waiting for is a substrate that can match the robust nature and inherent abilities in digital editions.

The new technology is not far-off science fiction. The future is here now; it is just not widely distributed. Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader and several others are e-paper devices, and they are available now. These devices will not go away; they will only get better and more advanced at what they do-distribute content. In 2011, there will be full-color versions of e-paper products released. By 2025, e-paper devices will be the predominant way in which people read. And they will most likely be reading some formulation of digital-edition technology.

Perhaps we need to look at it this way: When will the digital page be more user-friendly than the printed page? Is it so impossible to foresee a future of comfort and ease holding a full-color, flexible screen that has the ability to project any book or any magazine with greater richness and depth of coverage than its printed predecessor?

Gomez hypothesized that, "It's not about the page versus the screen in a technological grudge match. It's about the screen doing a dozen things the page can't do." Digitized words should count for more. "What's going to be transformed isn't just the reading of one book, but the ability to read a passage from practically any book that exists, at any time that you want to, as well as the ability to click on hyperlinks, experience multimedia, and add notes and share passages with others," Gomez noted.

The same logic holds true for magazines. This is not a Hamlet-type argument, "to read or not to read." It is a question of what format/platform we will be most comfortable reading in the future. Nowhere in history do you find society willingly going backward. As Jerry Garcia is reported to have once said, "You are either on the bus or off the bus."

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a printing/publishing industry consultant and president of The Precision Media Group (BoSacks.com). He is also the co-founder of the research company Media-Ideas (Media-Ideas.net), and publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, circulator and almost every other job this industry has to offer.

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices

New study on digital magazine and newspaper editions: growth, trends, and best practices
CAMBRIDGE MA, US: The Gilbane Group announced the general release of Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices, a pioneering and comprehensive study of the growing market for digital editions of periodical publications, earlier this week.

The study features statistics that, in an industry first, unify audited data from two sources (BPA and ABC) with data from unaudited publications. Highlights from the statistics include:
The number of business-to-business (B2B) publications offering digital editions has increased over 300% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 300%.

The number of consumer publications offering digital editions has increased over 200% from 2005 to 2007, with total subscriptions also increasing over 200%.

Digital vs. print penetration of B2B subscribers is up from 13.3 to 15.0%, while digital penetration of consumer publication subscribers is down from 2.2 to 1.4%.

The 130-page report includes 22 case studies of publishers, representing several dozen digital edition titles, which showcase a number of industry best practices identified by the study's authors. These span a wide range including big-name consumer magazines (Hearst, Playboy), leading B2B publishers (Reed Business Information, American Legal Media), daily newspapers (Toronto Sun, The Guardian), and catalog and directory publishers (Welco, Canadian Donors Guide).

Insights
The report also includes insights from five publishing technology visionaries on the state of digital editions and ideas for how to make them work for publishers. Visionaries include Gloria Adams of PennWell, Brent Lewis of Harlequin Enterprises, Mike Edelhart of Infovell, Peter Meirs of Time Inc., and Marta Wohrle, formerly of Hachette Filipacchi.

Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices presents data from leading digital publishing companies. Contributors include Nstein, Nxtbook Media, Olive Software, and Texterity (Platinum Sponsors); Advanced Publishing, YUDU Media, and Zinio (Gold Sponsors); and Audit Bureau of Circulations and BPA Worldwide (Data Sponsors).

Authors of the report are Steve Paxhia, director of publishing strategy and technology practice at Gilbane, and Bill Rosenblatt, senior analyst. Both are said to be recognised authorities on publishing business and technology strategy and have worked with many different publishing businesses and technology vendors.

Impressive growth
Said Paxhia, "Our study shows that growth to date of the number of digital publications and the number of digital subscriptions has been impressive. While this paradigm shift is still in its early stages, there are plenty of examples where publishers using today's best practices have generated impressive results. This is the most exciting time to be in publishing since Gutenberg invented the printing press."

Frank Gilbane, CEO of the Gilbane Group, said, "This new report on digital publications illustrates our continued thought leadership in the publishing market, which is embracing many of the content technologies that we have been following since 1993. At the same time, it's only one of several first-of-a-kind market studies that Gilbane Group is releasing this year."

The study is available for immediate download at http://gilbane.com/Research-Reports.html.