Digital Magazines Are Taking Overr

No more crankyboots

I haven’t posted here for awhile. I was tired of being cranky.
All that “When oh when will publishers see the light?” stuff. And “When oh when will they prepare themselves, their staffs, their partners and their readers for the obvious crossover to digital?” Let’s not forget ”When oh when will they realize that the magazine format doesn’t require paper clothing?” Blah. Blah. Blah.
I know it’s tiresome to read futurist blather about how the magazine industry ought to settle in and really eat its spinach. It’s more tiresome to write that crap.
Then I realized the obvious. It’s not futurist blather. It (and by “it” I mean the arrival of publications as digital media and the vanishing of print) is very here-and-now blather.
As it turns out, loads of trees fell in the forest, and there were plenty of people to hear it. Sadly, most of those people are still in denial about hearing the sound.
I’m glad that’s settled.
So where we go from here?
I don’t know about you; but I’m now going to treat publications as digital, portable media. I know this stance invites an air of “as if” about it all; but I can live with that.
So let me ease in with a blast from the past that has some resonance now. It was written for the Periodical & Book Association of America’s (PBAA)2000 convention program when I was editor of Magazine Retailer. It deals with the mood that enveloped the retail sector when events caused the wholesale distribution system to hit the fan.

“How do you see yourself in five years?”

The Magazine nervously entered the VP’S office for a review of its performance. Droplets of ink dotted The Magazine’s forehead.
The VP asked, “How do you see yourself in five years?”
“I enjoy working with the public,” said The Magazine ‘and I guess I’ll he doing that. Also, I’ve been getting into computers lately. That’s pretty challenging.”
The Magazine gave a halfhearted smile. This felt easy He had been around for a few hundred years and always was able to adapt to social, cultural and technological changes.
The VP smiled, but then started saying things like “unacceptable efficiencies” and “under 40% sales”, and the Magazine wondered how long this examination would take.
“I’m not like any other category,” said The Magazine. “Each issue is a new product. If you cut the draw, you cut the sales. I’m an impulse item. I’m really one of the more profitable categories you’ll ever have the good fortune to know. Good fences make good neighbors. And did I mention that if you cut the draw, you cut the sales?”
“I’m looking for answers, pal” said the VP, “and not conventional wisdom.”
The Magazine sighed. This was one more VP he’d have to train in the art off How Things Really Are.
“These are the eternal truths that everybody must learn,” The Magazine said.
“I’m on your side,” said the VP. “Really I am. But if you’re going to shuffle around, hoping the old days will somehow come hack, we won’t get anywhere.”
The Magazine’s pages rustled. If only it could control that tic.
“I know what they’re saying about you” the VP continued. “You’ve lost a step and yon can’t cope with change. I don’t think that’s true. You’re the product that knows all about change; that flourishes ‘with change; that is an agent of change.”
The Magazine straightened its spine.
The VP added that conventional wisdom is not necessarily wrong. But it must he tested constantly. When the shoreline changes, navigators should get the hint.
Some retailers have learned that when you cut the draw, you don’t significantly cut the sales — but you can increase the sellthrough. And that makes sense. Customers don’t know what the draw is. They only know what they see. Perhaps it’s the display that shouldn’t be cut.
The developing scan-based technology, plus the increasingly shorter reporting cycles is giving all of us a new opportunity. Now we can more deftly pinpoint how many copies of a given magazine should be displayed in a given store — as well as which store should never he entrusted with particular titles.
“I love your impulse thing,” said the VP
“People see me,” The Magazine said, “arid they have to have me and take me home.”
“Except,” the VP, “you’ve got to do more with it.
Yes there’s attention-getting packaging — covers with alluring pictures and enticing words that trigger that nerve ~which connects the eye to the wallet. Find out how to jumpstart that impulse before the customer enters the store and you’ll see greater action.
The Magazine acts as if the job is done once you’re in the store. Other products market directly to the consumers of their products.
“I’m a unique product,” said The Magazine.
“Hey” said the VP, “don’t publishers routine1y market subscriptions directly to consumers? Single copy’ consumer marketing probably will cost less with better results.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said ‘The Magazine.
Other products market directly to the public with publicity, contests, events, special offers and premiums. Publicity does wonders, sometimes: Esqnire’s Bill Clinton issue had a 60% selltlthrough, thanks to all the news coverage it got. A well-coordinated special marketing event can work, too. A bunch of travel magazines got together to promote the category in a New York State supermarket chain. Signage and promotion in circulars and prizes (including a trip to Italy) aroused consumers: sales of those travel hooks increased dramatically’.
‘I read about that travel thing in Magazine Retailer” ‘the Magazine said. “I didn’t know it was true.
What’s wrong with letting the public know what date the next issue of their favorite magazine goes on sale? ‘What’s wrong with running a really good ongoing public relations campaign that raises your profile? What’s wrong with looking at your subscription marketing activities and figuring out a way to piggy-hack single copy awareness onto the efforts? And then the VP mentioned the notion of branding to Yhe Magazine.
“Oh yeah,” The Magazine replied, “I have been experimenting with that. And you’re right! Displaying magazines with recognizable names that consumers respect certainly triggers the impulse buy. Names like Martha Stewart, Oprah, Mary Engelbreit. ESPN, Arthur Frommer, certainly do pump up the public’s interest.”
Yes, but more can be done. A speaker telling writers how to market themselves in the 21st Century advised, “If you don’t have a personality; get one.”
Magazines already have personalities. They just have to let the public know it. Making that happen is what branding is all about. Make yourself, the voice, soul and ubiquitous keeper of your niche’s flame. Your market — that pool of prospective readers —may stay constant but your audience will grow.
And speaking of a growing audience, another dirty little matter needs a mention. Allow yourself to stay constantly rabid about one more vital detail — editorial excellence. A title’s brilliance may not always he found in the delivery of fine words and memorable pictures — although they can’t hurt. The key is sharp editorial focus where everybody on staff understands, supports and contributes to the magazines mission. There’s something about a magazine edited really for its readers.
“I have one more thing I want to say about your performance,” said the VP “Yes, those impertinent graph lines generally are staying flat or dipping downward. But a closer examination shows many titles achieving healthy and improved sales. Too many titles showing too much strength to justify the playing of taps for the categorv~ Americans trust you. They turn to you for information, inspiration, ideas and affirmation. Opportunities abound as long as the public knows what promise you hold for them.”
“Okay,” said The Magazine, “Let’s get to work."

29 June ADDENDUM: When posting the above, I should have followed publishing tradition and stated the obvious. While the proposed remedies now feel a bit quaint, the main source of the problem remains constant. Yjr magazine publishng industry, as a whole is a bit averse to inevitable change.

Route Cause

Knowledge@Wharton has delivered just what we need—one more wakeup call for the publishing industry: And no, don’t reach for the snooze button.

The report, “Urgent Deadline for Publishers: Find a New Business Plan before You Vanish,” quotes a number of Whartonians from various disciplines. It was published: January 07, 2009. We thank Bob Sacks for distributing it.

The lead paragraph sets a tone:

If 2008 were an ordinary year -- one during which iconic American firms like General Motors didn't teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, the stock market didn't lose a third of its value, and foreclosures, hemorrhaging 401(k)s and holiday retail blight weren't in every headline -- the precipitous decline of the nation's newspaper business might have been the biggest financial story.

After some No-the-sky-really-is-falling statistics, the piece offers a bouquet of alternate business routes. They include philanthropic, niche, pay, participation, commercial.

The pay route, suggested by  marketing professor Eric Bradlow, co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, is particularly interesting. The report summarizes his view this way:

subscriber strategies aren't always doomed. Companies from Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, to any number of small trade magazines that offer highly specialized information to affluent subscribers manage to keep content behind a for-pay firewall, defying the conventional wisdom about an Internet audience that demands freebies. The key is a degree of specialization, whether by locality or by subject matter, that the traditional general-interest paper didn't deliver.

It’s more correct to term this approach the “proprietary route.” It’s not that the publication’s information and/or unique expression are for sale (which they are). It’s that the consumer can only get this material in one place. If content is king, exclusivity of content is emperor.

Not included in the pay or proprietary route was the notion of delivering the publication directly to a consumer's portable reader and bypassing the web entirely.

The report focuses on newspapers but it doesn’t take a great stretch to apply it to magazines. More than anything else, this Wharton report is a great shot of caffeine. Now is not the time to slow your roll.

The Earview Mirror

Which would you prefer?  The  ear half empty or the ear half full?

 Digital Media Wire Daily reports that 2008 music sales  reached 1.5 billion units, beating the 2007 total by 10.5%. This data, which encompasses the sales of songs, albums, vinyl, music videos and ringtones comes from Nielsen SoundScan. According to the article, “Sales of physical albums like CDs fell 20%, to 362.6 million, and are off by 45% since 2000. Meanwhile, digital album sales were up 32% in 2008, to 65.8 million units, and digital track sales grew 27% to reach a record 1.07 billion.”

To be fair, in 2008 vinyl gave its best showing  since 1991, the year SoundScan started tracking these numbers. Consumers purchased 1.88 million vinyl albums.

Is all of this good or bad news for magazines? It depends on whether you’re looking through the windshield or the rearview mirror.

DIGITAL, DIGITAL, DIGITAL (AND PORTABLE TOO)

In his Advertising Age article (“Trends to Watch in 2008”), Bob Liodice, president-CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), follows up on Steve Ballmer’s claim that all media is going digital. He notes the richness of digital features —including the portability — and wonders if marketers are skilled enough to take advantage of this rapidly changing landscape?” We might ask the same question of the folks who make the media — you know, like magazine publishers?

A New Kind of Hope

In his latest “Bo Sacks Speaks Out,” Bob Sacks tells of the plaintive reader requests for good news about the survival of print. He honestly and sympathetically explains that he tries to find positive gems and that he does pass along what he finds. But there isn’t very much.

He says:

"So in my writings and my daily newsletter, I am offering a new kind of hope. Nature abhors a vacuum. For every job that is eliminated in print there are even more new jobs created in the digital arena. Look it up. It is in the US census bureau data. Graphics jobs, editorial jobs, production jobs, and jobs we have never heard of. Those jobs are the new frontier. And it is growing by leaps and bounds."

And concludes:

"What I am dead sure of is the future direction of information distribution. The king of the information forest is not tree based life, but silicon based information distribution."

Allow me to insert my own two bytes. Two factors and two factors alone will determine if the tree goes the way of the dinosaur — technology and the marketplace.

Is there available technology to emulate the print magazine digitally? Almost. We already have specifically magazinoid digital formats. We are awaiting a relatively cheap reader. And there is a sense it is coming, so help me Microsoft.

The marketplace is trickier. Marketers and technologists can reason, declare, insist, bluster and foist all they want; but consumers (you know . . . people?) decide what makes sense to them and what doesn’t..

In the mid-‘80s I was at a 20^th Century Fox Home Video press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show. The news? The studio declared it would not distribute to any video dealers who let their customers rent instead of buy. So, how did that turn out?

It is entirely possible that current and future magazine buyers will decide that paper covers screen— no matter how light of weight, portable, convenient, paperish the screening device is. But considering the current and growing comfort with the screen and the digital technology behind it, I’d have to say paper is a paper tiger

As I asked previously, when was the last time you said, “send me a photocopy” and the last time you said, “send me a link?”

Digital, Digital, Digital

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft delivered more than a keynote at the opening of the Association of National Advertisers conference last week. He delivered a shot across the bow of traditional media, including our friend the print magazine.

He stated that in 10 years, all media would be digital and delivered over the Net.

Advertising Age reported the following:

"What if in 10 years we can give you a screen that's this light, this manipulable," he said, pulling a sheet of crumpled paper from his pocket. "That's what hardware will permit over the next 10 years."

Here at Magazine Daze we agree with him. But sad to say his prediction did not receive unanimous agreement.

Brand Week reported

While some of Ballmer’s futurism (such as digital media that’s as thin and malleable as paper) seemed a bit too sci-fi, attendee Eric Leininger said never bet against Microsoft’s predictions.

And

others, however, weren’t buying. Motorola CMO Casey Keller said that Ballmer “was speaking in hyperbole. At a high level he is right, but I don’t think traditional media will die in 10 years.”

Come on folks, that paper-thin reader is coming. After all if we can put a golf ball on the moon . . .etc., etc.

Cell Phone Novels

In Web mag 3:AM Roland Kelts tells about how the recording industry is trying to cope with the downloadable, digital sea change. Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US, suggests the US publishing industry might be in worst shape than the music biz. US book publishers, he suggests, are in denial. He cites as contrast the Japanese embrace of “cell phone novels.”

Kelts writes,

“when I raised the topic of cell phone novel downloads as a promising new format for writers like me and publishers like mine in the U.S., a prominent and progressive editor from one of New York’s major international houses shook his head. “They’d just outsource the work [of producing the downloads] to someone in Chennai [India],” he said, referring to his superiors. “And it would just be a mess.”

He adds,

“When the concept of the electronic book (E-book) surfaces at the American Book Association conventions, or other major book fairs, Western publishers begin their moaning and dread. But in Japan, the success of downloadable cell phone novels is being celebrated by young editors, who are pursuing the format avidly.”

If it’s any consolation to our bibliopeers, the magazine industry has a louder chorus of digital deniers. The most forward of these talk about cross-platforms —marketing and content programs that encompass Web and print and mobile and whatever other media platform buzzword is floating around. Fine!

But this neatly ignores the evidence that the foundations of print magazine publishing —readership, advertising, circulation —are collapsing.

CDs and Magazines

The London Telegraph has a story about the magazine business in its business pages today (7 August 2007). Philip Aldrick reported on declining revenues, at EMI. His lead is "The demise of the CD is accelerating. EMI yesterday revealed that its first-quarter revenues from the music format had dropped by nearly a fifth."

Okay, the article is about the recording business, but we should take heed. EMI, one of the recording industry's Giants, was purchased recently for £2.4 billion. That's a lot of pounds but it's a heavyweight company. The article also noted that EMI "posted a 26pc leap in digital revenues."

You don't have to be a graphologist to see the handwriting on the wall.

Let's look at the timeline of recorded sound. Edison applied for a patent for the tin foil cylinder phonograph at the end of 1877. This launched what was to be the cylinder era. The 78 rpm disk became entrenched by the ‘20s. 1948 marked the birth of the 33 1/3 long-playing vinyl record from Columbia records. RCA struck back in 1949 with the 45 rpm. In 1963, Philips gave us the compact tape cassette. Sony, working with its partner Philips, introduced the CD player in 1982 and the compact disc. The CD-ROM has been a commercially available recording medium since 1983.

And now digital downloads are poised to replace CD-ROMs. Despite the recording industry's resources and resistance, the marketplace has voted with its feet — or rather, with its digits. Those pesky consumers apparently want downloadable media. The more they get it, the more they want it. We can chirp happily about the wonders of print — especially its virtues and longevity; but nothing is permanent and — dare I say it?— nothing is sacred.

Kids to Print Media: Well . . . Duh

Some years ago, while at a magazine industry conference, I sat at a breakfast table with a bright young man who worked for a wholesaler.

“Within 15 years,” BYM said, there won’t be any newspapers.”

“Sure there will,” I said. “We just don’t know what form they’ll take.”

As it turns out we both may be proven right.

The New York Times reports that “Only 16 percent of the young adults surveyed aged 18 to 30 said that they read a newspaper every day and 9 percent of teenagers said that they did.”

This and a lot more depressing stuff comes out of a paper, “Young People and News” released by Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

While newspapers and, by extension, magazines (oh, say for instance Jane) matter less to that perpetually perplexing group known as “The Kids,” portable media do matter. When print magazines and newspapers finally go to that great parrot cage in the sky, their digital counterparts may well be going strong in whatever device takes its place beside the iPod and iPhone.