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Media Vent
By Bob Sacks
About Bob
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.
Pub Talk
Don't Let Your Advertisers Put You Out of Business
Mar 8, 2010Perhaps publishers are becoming the 85-year-old widowed grandmother who gets taken by the nice guy on the phone offering to...
Big Developments in the E-reader Market
The new Barnes & Noble -- the Nook -- has what I believe may be a Kindle-killing function. It has the ability to lend books to your friends. Yep, just like a real book -- when you are finished reading the book you can lend it to a friend. While in your friends' possession, they can read it and you can't. Simple enough. And after 14 days it digitally reverts back to you, the original owner. That is clearly a step in the right direction for e-readers.
And last week, a hinged, two-page, netbook-like product was released called the enTourage eDGe. It claims to be the world's first dualbook, combining the functions of an e-reader, netbook, notepad and audio/video recorder and player in one. It features an e-paper left-hand page and a full-color LCD page on the right.
The thing is, technology is morphing faster than we can imagine. And the cool products that I just mentioned above will be antiques in less than a year. That is what we are all up against -- speed of light transformation. How do you devise a long-term strategy and business plan around a moving target?
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Bob, You ain't seen nothing yet!!! Q1 2010 will probably see the launch of another dozen products in this space between the laptop/netbook and the smartphone. More and more will morph towards the "tablet" concept -- powerful web browser, wifi, 3 and 4G, touch, more color screens with smaller power requirements, more business models for the devices and for content. You will see content providers bringing out their own as well as traditional hardware manufacturers....So there will be more Nooks, more SONY, but also more Cool-ER, Plastic Logic, IRex, etc. I believe that it will be color, content, and interactivity that will be the key differentiatng factors....First to present a finished symphony of those requirments will be a winner in the space. Keep on talking, and don't blink! You might miss something!
Isn't the purpose of xml-first that the content will be easily adaptable to any medium or platform? In that case, you concentrate on content and quality of the content, have the data technology people modify DTDs for new products, and let the consumer choose. Or am I oversimplifying things?
Well if you are the United States Postal Service you spend 6 years and $1.5 billion dollars and who knows how many man hours on a machine designed to sort magazines and newspapers that doesn't work.
You allign your publishing company with a digital magazine service that develops a cloud computing structure that allows for the sharing of one paid subscription over multiple reading devices. If I subscribe to Popular Science or Saveur on my laptop, I will also want to be able to read it on my iPhone and my new 4/color Sony or Plastic Logic or Apple or what ever e-reader. Consumers will not pay for multiple subs to be read on each device. Obviously we have to be nimble and the system has to adapt quickly to the latest consumer fave reading device--but none of this is going to happen in real volume and replace print magazines to a large degree until the price of the device is below $100.
We including research and development in our business plan.
Any company that's not actively looking ahead and working to stay on top of the curve will quickly fall beneath it.