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.
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The New Reality of the Magazine Business
Everyone still seems to be looking for new business models when these models have been right in front of you the whole time. Create a product worth buying and people will pay for it. Forget the welfare checks from the advertising community and start to make exciting magazines on any substrate.
Will everyone survive? No. But perhaps that is the point. Move past the struggle for survival and start creating new, powerful, profitable products. These could be on paper, but the point is that they don't have to be on paper. They just have to be worthy of paying money for them. If you are trying to salvage your six-figure job in an old empire, you can forget it. That is part of the problem with this industry. There are too many top-heavy organizations with senior management trying to keep their jobs as they were and the six figures that went with them. It is very hard to be nimble and quick and keep your stuffy old job at the same time. Better to create a new six-figure job in the new world and the new economy. It is being done every day by one entrepreneur or another. The riches and the new fortunes are out there, the ideas are out there, and the reading world is growing faster than ever before.
All this posturing about saving the venerable old magazine business is nothing but the last gasps of dead men walking. If you have a title worthy of printing, then do so. There will be plenty of successful printed magazines. But you must charge enough so that you may employ the editors and writers that you'll need to be successful on any substrate. You must understand that a major component—and perhaps the most successful part of our industry—is going to be digital. If you find this talk offensive, then you are just part of the problem and the solution—a pink slip—will likely be handed to you any day now.
Bravo! Good points. Absolutely agree with the point that there is everything out there to make successful digital and print publications - just switch your brains and go for it!
Excellent article! Having been a magazine publisher myself, I also had to learn that times are changing.
Right on Bob. I love magazines and always will. And like you, I believe there will always be a place for them. It's just going to be a lot smaller. Meanwhile, it's going to take years for some of today's dead-men-walking to finally fail. But they will either fail or transform.
I used to be in B2B. Now I'm a consultant, helping media companies go digital. I have more work than I can handle. I'm going to link to this blog post on my own blog - just as soon as I can take a few minutes away from paid work to get it done.
Is it time to talk about mass customization. "Mine" was an interesting start toward paying more attention to the content needs of the market, the potential for more granular segmentation, and providing something for those that still think beyond the first paragraph. And now that large scale digital printing is possible, who knows where the leadership is.
Well said Bob I have several additional reveal-ations that many help further your points.
Pick a path. Highlight the truth objectively. Bring beauty and grace back to the front covers of your publications.
listen to what your core consumer is telling you. There is merit to their voice. The very consumer base that your six-figure salaries told you to turn away from can add direction.
Hire real people to bare witness to the real life thats going on outside our windows and behind our closed doors. People that want to be there not because the degree fits the pretty person wearing the suit. Allow the unlettered amongst you stand by your side in this craft. Together build and adapt to this new exciting world we are now living within.
Good blog. It's as if you been following my career for the last year! I just started a new B2B online publishing company using what I learned from print, applying to digital and it's working! Not to mention, I'm having fun again.