BoSacks: The Profit Prophet
5 Key Future Magazine Trends and 8 Ways to Prepare for Them
April 2008 By Robert M. Sacks
Last month, I had the pleasure of delivering a lecture at the Publishing Business Conference & Expo with David Renard, my partner at Media-Ideas. Addressing a packed room, we examined the five key issues that will affect our industry over the next decade and provided actionable advice to prepare publishers for that future.
The trigger to these key issues is, simply put, “change.” We are faced with changes unprecedented in history. The “screenagers” have been a digital demographic from birth, growing up after the dawn of cellular (1983) and with the Internet (1993). They are a generation comfortable with immediate interaction and virtual access. This is fostering a new generation of readers, naturally adept with technology and comfortable with virtual access to friends, family and the world at large. It also is fostering a change in reading habits. Pixels are being increasingly accepted as a way of life.
Another element of change is the access to connectivity. Wi-Fi and mobile phones allow people to stay connected to friends, family, work and information immediately, almost anywhere.
We have the ability to deliver information to multiple platforms in an instant, on a global basis and, most importantly, in any format the reader requires.
Key Trend #1: Magazines are not changing, how you read their content is.
What is a magazine? We at Media-Ideas believe that for a magazine to be a magazine, it must be metered, edited and have designed content, as well as be delivered periodically to the reader in a format that is date-stamped and permanent. We accept that a digital magazine with those six attributes is a magazine. We further believe that over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market. Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals.
Call to Action: Publishers must create a specific road map today toward multiplatform magazine publishing and content distribution.
Keeping the structural integrity of a magazine online, with the six components necessary to be a magazine, will help to protect publishers from the leveling force of content aggregation that exists on the Internet today. This will greatly limit a magazine’s exposure to the content-dilution factor that is increasingly being played out in the realm of information distribution on the Web.
Key Trend #2: Costs are increasing faster than the traditional magazine business model allows.
More BoSacks Online
Check out Bob Sacks’ new blog, “Media Vent,” online at PubExec.com. You’ll get his straightforward insights and opinions on news headlines, and be kept abreast of happenings affecting the industry.
The trigger to these key issues is, simply put, “change.” We are faced with changes unprecedented in history. The “screenagers” have been a digital demographic from birth, growing up after the dawn of cellular (1983) and with the Internet (1993). They are a generation comfortable with immediate interaction and virtual access. This is fostering a new generation of readers, naturally adept with technology and comfortable with virtual access to friends, family and the world at large. It also is fostering a change in reading habits. Pixels are being increasingly accepted as a way of life.
Another element of change is the access to connectivity. Wi-Fi and mobile phones allow people to stay connected to friends, family, work and information immediately, almost anywhere.
We have the ability to deliver information to multiple platforms in an instant, on a global basis and, most importantly, in any format the reader requires.
Key Trend #1: Magazines are not changing, how you read their content is.
What is a magazine? We at Media-Ideas believe that for a magazine to be a magazine, it must be metered, edited and have designed content, as well as be delivered periodically to the reader in a format that is date-stamped and permanent. We accept that a digital magazine with those six attributes is a magazine. We further believe that over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market. Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals.
Call to Action: Publishers must create a specific road map today toward multiplatform magazine publishing and content distribution.
Keeping the structural integrity of a magazine online, with the six components necessary to be a magazine, will help to protect publishers from the leveling force of content aggregation that exists on the Internet today. This will greatly limit a magazine’s exposure to the content-dilution factor that is increasingly being played out in the realm of information distribution on the Web.
Key Trend #2: Costs are increasing faster than the traditional magazine business model allows.
More BoSacks Online
Check out Bob Sacks’ new blog, “Media Vent,” online at PubExec.com. You’ll get his straightforward insights and opinions on news headlines, and be kept abreast of happenings affecting the industry.
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