Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

MagaBrands and Online Content

I somehow missed this interesting development last October, but it’s well worth getting it on the record here.

The annual American Magazine Conference was held October 28-30, 2007. As stated on the Magazine Publishers Association (MPA) site promoting the conference:

“Our theme this year is ‘The MagaBrand Revolution: How Media Brands are Finding Success on the Printed Page—And Beyond.’ What is a MagaBrand? It’s a magazine that’s found a way to extend the power of its brand beyond the printed periodical—into realms like ‘old’ media (books, newsstand specials, television, radio); ‘new’ media (podcasts, webcasts, cellcasts, e-newsletters); even non-media (nightclubs, restaurants, tour operations, fashion lines, retail products, conventions, big-cause crusades, hotels and casinos).

“The MagaBrand Revolution will detail how magazines can—and must—expand their brands into all corners of the target audience’s consciousness, and how your magazine will live or die on the inventiveness and daring you bring to your brand. From bricks and mortar to burgeoning new technologies, you’ll learn what works (and what doesn’t) in the new media environment.”

Jason Fell, in a February 2008 Folio blog called “Print No Longer ‘Heart and Soul’ of Magazine Brands,” adds a commentary to the topic. “Here’s an idea that has been kicked around ad nauseum (see: ‘MagaBrands,’ Dave Zinczenko et al.) but perhaps never expressed so bluntly. According to Computerworld and Infoworld editorial director Don Tenant, the print magazine no longer should be the “heart and soul” of a brand. Instead, as his team did at IDG, publishers should think of their brand as an online media company with ancillary print and event products,” Fell wrote.
“‘Advertising is shifting from print to online in droves. So, what do you do?’ Tenant said this morning during a session at the FOLIO: Publishing Summit. ‘Content should be going online first. Our strategy is to think of print as being a compilation of the content online.’

“Like a growing number of companies, Tenant’s group merged its print and online editorial teams four months ago. On the surface, at least, this seems to be an easy, efficient content management strategy.
“‘I can’t tell you how much this was a morale boost for everyone,’ he said. ‘ We should have had a plan in place all along to unite the two teams.’” End of blog entry.

While Mr. Fell may think the idea has been kicked around ad nauseum, I’d argue that while getting kicked around, the concept has failed to be put into practice by most print publishers (book publishers being the #1 offender, followed by newspaper and then magazine publishers).

The time to stop kicking and start acting is overdue.

Are Magazines now a Luxury Item?

This blog entry complements my last entry on magazines (May 2nd). The information came to me by a circuitous route.

Bob Sacks, aka “BoSacks” “a veteran of the printing/publishing industry since 1970” (primarily the magazine industry), issues an iconoclastic email newsletter, and does so thrice daily (!), most of which focuses on the magazine industry, some of which reaches out to the broader publishing business. (You can subscribe and read back issues here.)

In his first issue today he quotes an entry by Michael Truro from his “[in plain sight]” blog. That entry, also posted today, says in part:

“While I hate to sound like chicken little – and though the print is dead meme is way overplayed – I had to post this quote from Steve Frye [a publishing and printing industry consultant]. In a sidebar in the current issue of Publishing Executive titled “The State of the Printing Industry,” Frye drops this bomb:

“‘I think we need to change our philosophy of what a magazine is. We are no longer a cheap means of dispensing information, and that’s what we were until the Internet came along. Now we are an inefficient and expensive means of distributing information.…We need to reinvent ourselves as a luxury item that people want and are willing to pay for. And until we change our own image of who we are, we’re going to find out that our vendors are going to change it for us. Because, right now, postage is a premium. Paper is a premium. Soon printing will be a premium. How long can we buy at a premium and sell at a discount? We can’t.’”

Frye’s is the strongest statement I’ve yet encountered on the future of magazines. I’m not sure I agree – it doesn’t really matter if I do. I think it’s a well-thought-out comment, worthy of consideration and debate.

Print is not a Burden: Useless Drivel is the Burden

An article appeared on May 5th in the New York Times called “Publisher Tested the Waters Online, Then Dove In.” In glowing terms, it recounts the apparently amazing transformation of media giant IDG from primarily a print-based magazine publisher to an online publisher.

The article moved quickly onto the Times’ most-read and most-blogged list (today it’s still #5 on the most-blogged list), and I figured that I’d just let that one go, particularly as my blog has been focusing quite a bit on magazines for the last week.

But I couldn’t resist getting a comment on the record, and so posted a remark on Jeff Jarvis’ excellent Buzz Machine blog. I wrote:

“I read this article with some incredulity. It reads more like a corporate brochure than a carefully-researched piece of journalism. First of all, IDG is privately held, so there’s no way to check into what’s been happening to the overall sales and profitability of the company in its transition to digital.

“Mr. McGovern states ‘The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,’ and the major evidence offered is that ‘today, I.D.G. says, the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.’

“OK on that…but what about before the dotcom bust? I’d be surprised if the profitability of the publication was not significantly higher.

“I applaud IDG on its bold moves, but wonder if Mr. McGovern doesn’t sometimes wish for the good old days before the Web.”

I’d have let it go at that if I’d not today stumbled upon an entry on Rex Hammock’s also excellent rexblog.com. The blog entry, titled, “Print is not a burden. Useless drivel is the burden. So ignore this post,” is for me the final word on the affair, although it’s really more about content than the IDG story, per se.

Just one quote: “Unfortunately, saying “print is a burden” implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden.…If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me — that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.”

A powerful reminder that the medium is not necessarily the message.

Online Advertising Burnout

There are days when I don’t post a blog entry or otherwise update my site because I’m too immersed in housekeeping chores.

Those chores fall into two categories: scouring the Web for more articles, data and commentary that are the lifeblood of what goes into this site, and then sorting through and filing all of those articles, data and commentary to make sure they’re accessible when I get back to writing.

I just did a check of my resource data: I’ve got over 3,400 files in 180 folders comprising over a gigabyte of data. Please forgive me if I sometimes fall behind.

One article that I uncovered this evening was from a very interesting (and free) annual report issued by the Deloitte consultancy, called “Media Predictions: TMT Trends 2008” (“TMT” stands for Technology, Media and Telecommunications). I’ve got versions of this report going back to 2006; I’m not certain if that was the year when the report was first issued.

The 2008 version covers a range of topics, from music to offshoring to piracy issues. What caught my attention tonight was the section covering online advertising. It starts off with a brief history of the growth of online advertising, but halfway through the article comes the showstopper: a key barrier to the continued ascendancy of online advertising “may be growing antipathy to the online advertisement itself. One 2007 survey of US consumers found that over three-quarters of respondents considered Internet advertisements more intrusive than those in print. Nearly two-thirds claimed that they paid more attention to print advertising than to that on the Web. Over a quarter stated that they would pay for advertisement-free online content.”

That data, we learn from the footnotes, derives from a “Survey of 2200 US consumers undertaken in 2007, commissioned by Deloitte Development LLC.”

Over the last month we’ve seen that the voracious ongoing interest focused by all sectors of the Internet marketplace is based on the assumption that online advertising is the key factor (if not the only factor) that will determine the level of success of the most successful websites in the years to come (c.f. Microsoft vs. Yahoo).

Over the last few months I’ve been asking friends and colleagues whether or not they pay attention to ads on the Web, and/or click through to them. Without exception their response is that they’ve trained themselves not to even see the ads, be they banner ads or Google-style ads. They skim the content; the ads are just noise.

Obviously Google’s recent financial results indicate that my friends and colleagues may currently not be representative of the public at large. But I wonder how long it will take the general public to see Web ads as adding noise rather than value.

Is the Internet Really Destroying Newspapers?

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is a superb research organization funded by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. Its website is a rich treasure trove of research, analysis and commentary tackling the challenge of “understanding news in the digital age.”

PEJ’s flagship report is its annual State of the News Media. The 2008 edition was published on March 17th, 2008. The report covers not just newspapers, but television, magazines, radio, online and more. The full report is some 700 pages, highly-readable, and exhaustive – but also exhausting. I quote from parts of the report in various sections of this site.

PEJ drops a little bombshell in the introduction and overview to the 2008 report. While acknowledging that “state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago,” it continues that “the problems, increasingly, appear to be different than many experts have predicted.”

Pointing to Chris Anderson’s famous The Long Tail theory, it states that “critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.”

However, the introduction continues, “the reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience than in the legacy media (emphasis mine). The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists (emphasis mine).”

As I’ve pointed out repeatedly on this site, and others never tire to reiterate, newspapers are unquestionably facing serious circulation and revenue challenges. But as the heavily-concentrated newspaper industry slowly adjusts to the new economic realities of the Web, and quite conceivably masters them, they may find their brands stronger than ever.

Is This the Future of Publishing?

I’m thrilled to have received permission to post Heidi Julavits’ short piece of creative nonfiction, "The Writers in the Silos." It projects the future of publishing as nothing has before.

I first encountered it in the September 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine, though it was a reprint from “Creative Nonfiction Issue #31: Imagining the Future,” published by the provocative journal Creative Nonfiction.

As I wrote to Ms. Julavits when I discovered "The Writers in the Silos": “It’s hilarious, of course, but also wonderfully anarchic and apparently prescient. I was completely delighted to have found it.”

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

(Click here to read "The Writers in the Silos.")

The Financial Crisis: An Interview with George Soros

I am not an economist (thank God), but have always been fascinated and perplexed by sudden changes in the economy and their secondary effects. I’ve just updated my article on “Current Economics and the Future of Publishing,” using my admittedly limited knowledge to make some modest observations on how the current economic crisis in the United States could impact the short- to mid-term future of publishing.

It’s no doubt more informative to read the observations of one of the world’s acknowledged (although of course, not unbiased) authorities on economics, George Soros, and you have the good fortune that a detailed interview from May, 2008 with Mr. Soros is available on The New York Review of Books website.

One quote from the interview (very much in keeping with my perspective): “…the situation is definitely much worse than is currently recognized. You have had a general disruption of the financial markets, much more pervasive than any we have had so far. And on top of it, you have the housing crisis, which is likely to get a lot worse than currently anticipated because markets do overshoot. They overshot on the upside and now they are going to overshoot on the downside.”

An excellent read…

QuarkXPress 8 Announced

After leading the page layout sweepstakes for many years, QuarkXPress was slowly but surely falling behind Adobe InDesign in sales and functionality as the #1 page layout program (primarily for print). When Bruce Chisholm was at the helm at Adobe he championed the concept that Microsoft has used so effectively for years: bundle a bunch of strong applications into a “suite” and become untouchable in the market.

I still feel that Microsoft Office is more of a Halloween grab bag that a true suite of software. While there are meaningful software connections between Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc., I for one rarely exploit those connections. They must add value for some users, but the function of these disparate products is so…disparate…I find the major advantage of Microsoft Office is just saving big bucks over buying a program I use daily (Word), frequently (PowerPoint), infrequently (Excel) and never (Access). And then there’s Microsoft Publisher which I use (never).

Adobe’s Creative Suite makes a lot more sense. Most designers use Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Acrobat. Adobe InDesign, which was still behind the 8-ball when Creative Suite first entered the market, suddenly became more appealing as part of a bundle. The first versions of Adobe Creative Suite also tossed in Adobe’s ill-fated Web-authoring application, GoLive.

Fast forward to today, with the announcement of version 8 of QuarkXPress. The first thing to note is that this product will appear just over two years since the last upgrade to the software (oddly enough called QuarkXPress 7). This from a company where you used to be able to raise a family in the gap between upgrades. As such Quark is approaching Adobe’s revision calendar, usually about 18 months between versions.

The initial reaction of several commentators to QuarkXPress 8 is in the ho-hum category, but I think that QuarkXPress 8, while officially a new version, has to be seen as the completion of the major revision that was version 7. I wrote about that release on my Gilbane blog, “The Importance of QuarkXPress 7.0,” and also in a Quark-commissioned brochure, “QuarkXPress 7 for Output Service Providers.”

The best commentary on the new version is found, somewhat ironically, on AppleInsider, which I now discover leaked the news on May 13. Its commentary examines in some depth the smart moves that Quark is making to try to bring the software into parity with Adobe InDesign and make it compatible with Creative Suite 3. That’s an essential mission for Quark, while it continues into other market areas with products like the Quark Dynamic Publishing System (which I cover here).

And of course Quark needs to keep checking to see who’s walking behind in the darkened alley: if Adobe sticks with its 18-month revision cycle, Creative Suite 4 will be available by the end of this year.

Giving Away Digital Books for Free

Credit where credit is due: I was first informed of this fascinating tale about the future of writing and book publishing from David Pogue’s always fun, provocative and illuminating weekly column in The New York Times. His May 22^nd column provided his take on whether he should provide free downloads of his (many) books. After a couple of bad experiences he’s now firmly against it, while admitting that “I realize that it puts me, rather awkwardly, on the same side of the piracy issue as the record companies and movie companies, who are suing teenagers for downloading songs, and of whom I’ve made endless fun.”

But a far more intriguing story is referenced in Pogue’s column: the story of author Steven Poole, who took a successful book, “Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames,” and posted it for download on his blog. The book was first published in 2000, to favorable reviews, and, according to Poole, continues to sell well. But last November, as a simple experiment, he offered Trigger Happy as a free download, under a Creatives Commons license, which meant, if not in legal terms, but in technical reality, “no strings attached.” He asked only that “if you like the book, you can leave a tip via PayPal,” and provided a link for PayPal donations.

The results were, to say the least, disappointing from a financial perspective. As Poole reports in an April 2008 blog entry, “the proportion of [31,697] people who left a tip after downloading Trigger Happy was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%,” and as he comments later in the responses to his entry, “the average donation was a (very reasonable) couple of bucks. The total was a vanishingly minuscule fraction of what I earned from the book’s traditional publication.”