Online evangelism belies publishers' problem

1903533 — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:14:00 GMT

So, PC Mag in the US has ceased to print and is now only available online. Its consumer electronics editor Dan Costa recently wrote on the demise of the print edition and how that was a good thing (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336608,00.asp).

Refreshingly, he’d also just got a love letter in the form of a personalised book from his girlfriend, so he was also singing the praises of print-on-demand.

So far, so balanced. I’m delighted that he could do a little bit to praise print while panning it too.
His argument for online was a little bit more measured than the usual – he led with it being economically sensible for his publisher to go online, but also added the usual line about online being more environmentally friendly too.

Let’s tackle the economics first. In the midst of the general economic malaise, the recent report from our sister-title MediaWeek on a report from Deloitte on the state of publishing (http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/868984//). Print media is in peril, but look at what’s doing the damage and the report suggests that the rush online without a business model to replace the advertising and subscription revenues is the biggest problem. Among its tough messages are for publishers to step back from online activities and put renewed effort into print, ask for forced savings from suppliers, reduce print frequency and re-educate shareholders and investors not to expect returns of 20% anymore.

For magazine printers the schadenfreude of seeing publishers' margins falling from such high levels to those nearer their own is small if served with a further, and unrealistic, squeeze on their prices and reduced volumes of work, which will only put further pressure on their profits. Or deepen their losses.

I hope Costa’s magazine has found an online model that works, however I suspect his economic analysis is as accurate as his environmental one.

He writes, “Environmentally, there is no reason to print something that will be useless in 60 days and spend the next 20 years in the ground. Going digital is going green.” Of course the consumer electronics he writes about, and we read from, won’t spend the next 20 years in the ground, they’ll be sitting in the landfill for hundreds or thousands of years tying up precious resources and slowly leaching nasties into the environment. And that’s after a life not that much longer than the recyclable paper-based magazine has enjoyed several useful lives as an information carrier and ended up as an energy source or soil improver.

Costa goes on to mention Zinio, an online digital edition subscription service. It strikes me as the digital manifestation of the worst sort of corner shop newsagent. Rather than allowing browsing the magazine in a way that might make you want to buy it has a particularly annoying restricted digital edition engine.

And the digital gatekeeper is far more annoying and likely to make me leave without buying than a torn bit of crisp carton with no-browsing scrawled on it, or a cross looking guy behind the counter ever would. It highlights how good a printed magazine is for reading and browsing and how bad digital editions can be.

It also has a misplaced environmental zeal. It is “pro-tree” and claims if one does buy an online edition “trees will thank you for it”. Why don’t they go the whole hog and firebomb a commercial fores…oh probably not such a good idea that. And since when were trees sentient?

Costa makes a valid point about huge amount of waste in the magazine newsstand supply chain. If Zinio was a web -based window to encourage printed magazine subscriptions then it might help to solve that problem and the rest of the publisher and printer’s woes. I could see it working well with print on-demand. It would be a natural partner to HP’s MagCloud project. If a browser sees a magazine they like the look of, they can order a single copy to be produced and sent to them there and then with no unsolds or overs. Then, if they like it enough, they could buy a subscription.

That might keep everyone happy from environmentalist, electronic evangelistic and economist through to the beleaguered publisher and even the printer.

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Online evangelism belies publishers' problem