Leading Resource for Magazine Publishing Professionals
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
What Exactly is 'Publisher's Own Data?'
Jan 22, 2010Anyone who uses products like Alexa, Compete.com or Quantcast for anything but a friendly way to compare one Web site...
Is Microsoft Right About Magazines' Future?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted the near-death of traditional media this week. To Steve, traditional media is defined as anything not digital.
It is a doom-and-gloom scenario from Ballmer about our industry. But let's remember a few things about Steve and his rant. He is a digital guy. That is what he is, what he does and, most importantly, what he sells. So, to say that his opinion is skewed is an understatement. I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but my disagreement is measured in degrees.
Where he is right, or perhaps I should say, where he and I agree is that it is never going to be the way it was. I have said so for over a decade. I follow that thought with the idea that it is not going to be the way it is either. We are in a new age and we are running with new technologies. And that, my friends, is the problem. This new technology has not stopped growing and developing, and it has not stopped getting better at what it does.
This is not like any other time in history. It used to be that a new technology was developed and that was that. You could understand it quickly and create a good business plan for it. Gutenberg invented the press, and we printed that way and made good money for 600 years. Now, the technology has not and will not stop changing and morphing into something else.
So when I say the new technologies are a problem, my question is this: How can you figure out a good and profitable business plan if the platform you are developing won't stay static? How can develop an adjustable, far-seeing business plan?
This time period that we are now in is all about communication. Not only communication, but also communication to any individual taste on a global platform. In my lectures I have been calling it reaching out to the "universal niche."
Publishers need to stop waiting for things to get back to normal. It is not going to happen, and there is no longer a "normal." If there were, we would already have a sensible business plan by now. Normal now can only be reckoned in small timeframes of a month or a quarter, but perhaps not even a year. Normal is that there is no normal. That is the new rule around which to build your publishing empire.
There are still going to be plenty of profits and new information empires will continue to be launched. And, yes, I still think that we are headed into a new golden age of publishing and reading. However, it will have little resemblance to our empires of old.
It is a doom-and-gloom scenario from Ballmer about our industry. But let's remember a few things about Steve and his rant. He is a digital guy. That is what he is, what he does and, most importantly, what he sells. So, to say that his opinion is skewed is an understatement. I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but my disagreement is measured in degrees.
Where he is right, or perhaps I should say, where he and I agree is that it is never going to be the way it was. I have said so for over a decade. I follow that thought with the idea that it is not going to be the way it is either. We are in a new age and we are running with new technologies. And that, my friends, is the problem. This new technology has not stopped growing and developing, and it has not stopped getting better at what it does.
This is not like any other time in history. It used to be that a new technology was developed and that was that. You could understand it quickly and create a good business plan for it. Gutenberg invented the press, and we printed that way and made good money for 600 years. Now, the technology has not and will not stop changing and morphing into something else.
So when I say the new technologies are a problem, my question is this: How can you figure out a good and profitable business plan if the platform you are developing won't stay static? How can develop an adjustable, far-seeing business plan?
This time period that we are now in is all about communication. Not only communication, but also communication to any individual taste on a global platform. In my lectures I have been calling it reaching out to the "universal niche."
Publishers need to stop waiting for things to get back to normal. It is not going to happen, and there is no longer a "normal." If there were, we would already have a sensible business plan by now. Normal now can only be reckoned in small timeframes of a month or a quarter, but perhaps not even a year. Normal is that there is no normal. That is the new rule around which to build your publishing empire.
There are still going to be plenty of profits and new information empires will continue to be launched. And, yes, I still think that we are headed into a new golden age of publishing and reading. However, it will have little resemblance to our empires of old.
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There can be little doubt that the digital world has infringed on the world of paper and ink. I think it is sad, though, that it has become a contest of which one will survive. There is a place for both.
As Andrea mentioned, those who stare at a screen all day do not want to do so during their free time. If they're a reader, they will want to hold a paper and ink product.
However, it seems that if the publishing industry hopes to survive, it is going to have to make some changes. It is going to have to offer something new, something the digital world cannot offer. That has always been the case where competition is an issue.
I don't pretend to have the answer but I do know that no industry can continue if it does not make changes, either in product or in marketing strategies.
As a writer, I will submit my work to both. The survival of my career depends upon it. But it is my sincere hope that the ink and paper industry is able to come up with new ways to attract the reader. I would not want to see a strictly digital world.
How sad it would be if some day a child is heard asking its mother: "What's a book?"
When people ask me about the decline of print publications, I tell them, "when you get more excited about having an article and picture about you and your company posted on a website as opposed to my magazine or other print publications, then we can talk about the decline of print."
Though I agree that digital communication will gain a foothold, I don't believe that print publications—magazines and books included—are going to disappear anytime soon. I sit behind my screen 8+ hours a day and the last thing I really want to do is read for pleasure at it.
Sure, I might check out headlines, or click a link about something I am interested in, but that's not going to replace my ink on paper reading. It takes too long, for example, to read the comics section of the paper online.
I also read magazines while I am eating lunch (NOT at my desk) or (blush) in the bathroom. I read real books on the bus, in waiting rooms, at the beach, on the ferry, etc. I don't always want to lug my laptop with me and worry about security of a kindle, laptop, etc. when out in public. I have personal knowledge of friends who have had laptops grabbed at cafes and on the bus.
So, until everyone, and I mean everyone (issued at birth perhaps) has some sort of electronic reading device, they are made to be indestructible, and we have inexpensive, all encompassing lighting internet speed, ink on paper will survive.
Will that day come? Probably...but not anytime soon.
Should our industry continue to prepare for the inevitable? Of course, but we don't need to have the wake yet.
This talk of the online vs print is not new, it's an old business model of competition. Everyone goes "online" because it is free (relatively speaking) and when print is no longer a serious competitor, watch online subscriptions go up. Why is this so shocking? The question is, if all designers, writers, managers go over to online publishing, can print survive not only financially but intellectually?