New portable, digital magazine medium

Texterity has released a new platform to access publications on your Apple iPhone (not my iPhone because I don’t care for one just yet), according to knowledgespeak.com (which covers the scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing sector. The digital edition readers see emulates the magazine, as published. It’s a beta test and 20 publications are taking part and providing free iPhone editions of their mags.

The magazines, according to a Texterity press release are:

The American Lawyer, ALM Media

Baseline, Ziff Davis Media

Cabinet Maker, Watt Publishing Company

CIO Insight, Ziff Davis Media

Cottage Living, Time, Inc.

Craft, O'Reilly Media

eWEEK, Ziff Davis Media

Elite Traveler, Universal Media

ID Magazine, F+W Publications

Industry Week, Penton Media

Make, O'Reilly Media

Northern Home & Cottage, Prism Media

Oracle Magazine, Oracle Publishing

Popular Science, Bonnier Magazine Group

Quest Magazine, Quest Media

Quick & Simple, Hearst Corporation

Every Day with Rachael Ray, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.

Ready Made, Meredith Corporation

Statement Magazine, EJJ Publications

Taste of Home, Reiman Media Group

Telephony, Penton Media

Vibe, Vibe Media

WoodenBoat, WoodenBoat Publications

Knowledgespeak reports that Texterity’s iPhone interface uses “the company’s long-standing ‘browser-only format’ that does not require Flash or plug-ins to ensure broad compatibility and easy access.”

Several publishers quoted in the press release offer warm sentiments to the effect of “wowee, the iPhone owner is a great demographic and we want ‘em.”

The Texterity iPhone option is browsed — not downloaded. Still, it brings us closer to the day when the magazine as a portable, digital medium is the (pardon the expression) norm.

From toys to mags…is it the new convergence?

Samir Husni, Mr. Magazine, offers the existence of two new magazines --- Barbie and Hot Wheels as proof that print has many days left. He says:

For anyone who still doubts the future of magazines, and print in general, here are two new magazines that were launched this year celebrating toys, yes toys…

So if a company invests money in an old technology, then that technology is safe? Putting the irrelevant premise aside, I too find joy in the ingenuity and vision people bring to the creation of new titles. The expanding universe of niches instills much awe. I still miss Yo-Yo World which, by the way, also was based on a toy.

Magazine City

We know two things about the above photo.

1. I should forget about photography as a career.
2. The picture is a metaphor for the print magazine's downfall (and perhaps a snarky photo op).

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.

Er-uh-excuse me. The ship is sinking.

Bob Sacks reports back from the Periodical and Book Association of America(PBAA) meeting. He and Samir Husni had a stimulating debate. There were some thoughtful and hope-inducing presentations. But there also was a shocking supply of self-destructive conventional wisdom. It was as if some industry people thought it okay to steer through the icebergs. Apparently there was a supply chain panel and a wholesaler told of a program that reduced inefficiencies. This was good; but another panelist dismissed the results by trotting out that old chestnut, "cut the draw and you cut the sales."
Sacks notes

Anyone that tells you there absolutely cannot be improvement in the print-ten-copies-and-sell-three model is leading you towards a big iceberg in an increasingly digitized sea. Get off now or get off later, it's your decision, but I guarantee you are getting off that ship or sinking with it.

I can attest to the self-delusional conventional wisdom that poisons the magazine publishing industry. In preparation for the launch of Magazine Retailer magazine, I asked a number of leading publishing people what information they thought I should deliver to retailers. They told me the following:

Since the magazine category is one of the most profitable in a retail store, they should know that they should devote more space to magazines.

I thought, thank you very much. I'm going to tell retailers what does and doesn't sell in their stores. That was just the first of the many quaint notions that it was my privilege to encounter. But jeez, I thought the "cut the draw" routine had gone to that great shredder in the sky.

SubHub's Super List

SubHub is stating a simple truth about digital publishing when it compares conventional printing on paper to the Internet. The lessons are here not only for conventional publishers but for custom publishers as well. Custom publishers — companies that create and manage publications (i.e. marketing tools) for nonpublishers — are an esteemed part of our community. They provide service, eyeballs, work, and a really neat (if not necessarily new) paradigm. Whether using the single sponsor or multi-advertiser approach, the editorial and demographic focus they provide tends to rock.

Even so, SubHub may be showing a bit of the future of custom publishing. The company’s stated mission is to provide “an affordable solution for publishers who wanted to control their own site and have the option to make money in different ways from their content. . .[the site would be] comprehensive yet simple to use; fully managed, but would leave the publisher in control.”

Granted, most SubHub clients seem to have deeper roots in products and services than in content. Neverthless, the SubHub tools enable smaller businesses to do their own custom pubs.

Felix Dennis on Editing

The sale of Dennis Publishing's Blender, Stuff and Maxim US editions pretty much takes a sharp mind out of the U.S. publishing biz. A snapshot of how Felix Dennis thinks can be found in a report I wrote for the Spring 2000 issue of Magazine Retailer. It goes a little something like this.

On December 2, Felix Dennis of Dennis Publishing was the luncheon "entertainment" at a meeting of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). His stateside publications – Maxim and Stuff – are relative newcomers to the North American scene. Their verve and, even more importantly, their success have made Dennis Publishing a player in the new world market. In a brash, droll and informative talk, he told the assembled New York editors about the power of single copy. The crème de la of prime time editing understood this intellectually and many had personal experience with the concept.

He cited some delightful statistics about Maxim's growth. The print run jumped from 175,000 copies to 2,700,000 in 25 issues. An MRI study revealed the average Maxim reader is a 30-year-old male with a median household income of $62,000 a year. He reported that the October 1999 issue "brought in 55,000 new subscription blow-in cards." Then he topped that nugget with the news that Maxim's newsstand percentage sale is currently 73% nationwide."

And then he shared his company's authentic success secrets. Staffing levels are lower than the norm which leads to "an environment where creativity and risk-taking dominates our company's culture." He also told the New York editors that "the cult of the celebrity editor" has no adherents at Dennis Publishing.

"The concept of one man or one woman," said Dennis, "as the big cheese, the font of all wisdom, is, in my judgement utter baloney. It leads to self-indulgence and a pomposity, which creeps inevitably onto the pages of the magazine."

He said that his company "worships at the altar of the reader" and that "the advertising community is a welcome and essential element of our congregation; but they are not invited to conduct the service or choose the hymns."

Dennis then gave a breakdown of Maxim's editorial content by category and confided that his company "arrived at these allocations of editorial content by the astonishing methodology of asking our readers what they wanted . . . and then supplying it." In looking at other magazines he pointed to "a gap in real affinity between reader and content" and observed that the "paid circulations of hundreds of magazines have been declining for years." To attract subscribers, American magazines have, according to Dennis, have employed such "promotional smoke and mirrors" as "junk mail drops, promotional giveaways and stamp sheets."

He suggested another way: "What if magazine subscriptions could be driven primarily by newsstand sales, and newsstand sales driven by editorial that connected with the reader." Dennis acknowledges that he does do some direct mail and that he has a three-person circulation department.

"I believe," said Dennis, "that the real circulation department at Maxim is called 'the editorial team." And that is the secret of reader-driven success."

The Meaing of Magazines

As we ponder the magazine’s fate, it’s kind of fun to look at the first time the word was defined. We take you now to A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. A magazine, sayeth the good doctor is:

A storehouse, commonly an arsenal or armoury, or repository of provisions. Of late this word has signified a miscellaneous pamphlet, from a periodical miscellany named the Gentleman's Magazine, by Edward Cave.

Built into the very meaning of a magazine, then, are the notions of power and sustenance. You can learn more about Cave and his magazine at John Lienhard's "Engines of Ingenuity " site.

Learning From Magazines

In his blog, the Inksniffer, veteran British journo/international consultant John Duncan talks about what newspapers could learn from magazines. My God, man, haven’t papers suffered enough?

Actually he was reacting to a speech about “The Magazine in the Age of the Internet” that Canadian corporate exec Isabelle Marcoux of Transcontinental Inc. gave on 6 June at Mags University Conference. And he makes some good points.

Duncan says

Magazines are the handsome cousins of newspapers. They look like us in lots of ways, only they're prettier and they smell better. We could marry them if we wanted to and even have kids, but in the end we're just not attracted to them

.He states that the lessons newspapers could learn from magazines might include “keep launching with confidence . . .try much harder to make newspapers beautiful . . .see the internet not in terms of terrifying migration but useful augmentation . . .copy relentlessly from abroad.”

I'm convinced. Maybe magazines could learn something also. Miracles happen, so help me Christopher Hitchens..

Don't Get Me Wrong

Don't get me wrong. I love magazines.
And to be honest I love print. Or maybe I've been indoctrinated since birth about the eternal life of print that I stammer and shiver at the thought of a (-gulp-) world without print. (A chorus, if you please, of "Gimme That Old-Time Religion.") No matter. Print is dead.
But back to my magophilia. Fern Siegel's witty review of Bookmarks magazine in MediaPost shows why we love this medium.
She notes:

The 5-year-old bimonthly is chock-full of reviews; it summarizes more than 500 from over 50 major pubs. It’s a digest for those obsessed with new books and a user-friendly way to keep informed — and impress your friends.

She cites other features worthy of notice, such as a regularly-appearing piece, devoted to a past writer or era. She concludes by praising Bookmark's "devotion to literature."

She paints a picture of a magazine that delivers focus, smarts and passion to its subject matter. . .in other words, it exemplifies the qualities we have come to associate with magazines.

Okay, I have a flair for the obvious. (Why else would I have felt at home in magazines?) So here’s my two cents.

The magazine industry’s current hell only starts with cultural tsunami stirred by the Web. Yes, there’s been a migration of eyeballs to the Web. Yes, there’s been a migration of advertising to the Web. And yes, yes, yes, the Web is becoming a favored source for information and ideas.

The deeper problem is the entrenched structures and conventional wisdom of the publishing industry.

For example,The overwhelming majority of marketing and financial decisions are based, in my opinion, on enticing advertisers and retailers. Not a sin, per se. But aren’t they forgetting something? Oh yes, the readership.I

I know firsthand that publishers like, respect, maybe even love their readers. They adore the reader’s passion, knowledge and commitment. But I think that ultimately publishers do not see readers as customers but as bait.

How do you like them peanuts?

If the medium is the message, then clearly BusinessWeek is declaring "come fly with me."
According to Advertising Age, the McGraw-Hill business title is partnering with Brand Connections to put ads and BW columns on airplane table trays. Now if only they could find a way to put some food on those trays.
I guess we can expect a magazine industry study that shows table trays will not replace print -- at least in the immediate future.

Et tu, Pecker?

In his Ad Age "The Media Guy" column, the ever insightful Simon Dumenco uses the Ron Burkle purchase of the Primedia enthusiast group to make a point: What's wrong with magazines? Look at executives within the industry.

Or as he puts it "the print-media industry is not only filled with f--k-ups, it coddles them." He hopes that Burkle, a newcomer to publishing might come in with less baggage and more vision.

I suspect that we already have passed the rearranging-the-chairs stage. (It comes somewhere after grief and denial.) And we need to look beyond print.

Newspapers Here to Stay?

A new report from the World Association of Newspapers sets "the record straight" on questions about the "relevance, vibrancy and future vitality of newspapers in this fast-growing digital age."

Glad that's settled.

Of course we'll always have newspapers. And we'll always dial our phones and type our copy.

Backing Up Is Hard To Do?

Okay, I don’t back up my files nearly enough (if you consider never to be not nearly enough). Still, Business 2.0 has made it a point to remind the world that backing up is a wise policy. So,when the magazine’s system crashed in the midst of production, salvation came in the form of an unlikely ally — the lawyers. Here’s the story.