E-editions are gaining ground in the mainstream market.

E-editions are gaining ground in the mainstream market.
By Gretchen A. Peck
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=110154&var=story

This spring, Barnes & Noble announced that it would offer both print publications and digital editions of more than 1,000 magazine titles to visitors of BN.com. The e-editions will be fulfilled by Barnes & Noble partner Zinio. Indeed, it’s just one more indication that, despite some debate on their future, digital editions are becoming a viable alternative to print for a growing number of readers.

Cambridge, Mass.-based The Gilbane Group recently published a study, “Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions: Growth, Trends, and Best Practices,” showing that the number of business-to-business publications offering digital editions increased by more than 300 percent in a two-year span (2005 to 2007), and the number of consumer publications offering digital editions has increased by more than 200 percent.

For publishers, clear economic and environmental benefits exist: Digital editions don’t kill trees, and the cost to produce a digital edition is much less than a printed publication.

Beyond the environmental and economic considerations, many publishers also have found digital editions to be an effective medium for enhancing the editorial and advertising experience with the use of rich media.

Today, even businesses that have for generations been dedicated to printing publications are looking at digital distribution as a new way to serve publishing clients. For example, Brown Printing Co.—one of the nation’s largest magazine printers—announced that it would assist publishers with their digital publications by partnering with iMirus Digital Solutions, the e-edition division owned by parent company Riggs Heinrich Media Inc. Many other printers are now offering digital-publication services to their publishers as well.

Digital editions also can be an effective way for publishers to expand into new markets, and increase their circulations without the additional printing and mailing costs.

It was the opportunity to launch a new global title that prompted the publisher of Recycling Today to venture into e-editions. The global edition of the magazine debuted in April exclusively as an e-edition, with the help of Advanced Publishing Corp.

“We are extending an existing North American title into a global market position,” explains James R. Keefe, executive vice president and group publisher, GIE Media, which publishes Recycling Today. “The launch of the new product, which is different from a content perspective, was easier to achieve in an electronic format, as delivery to a reader base around the world is more reliable and immediate. Therefore, the distribution issue becomes much easier to solve. As well, the platform we selected allows a lot of powerful multimedia and interactive applications.”

The monthly, controlled-circulation title already has 30,000 subscribers, but with reader feedback already very positive, Keefe expects continued circulation growth.

Digital editions are also proving to be a valuable strategy for publishers looking to breathe new life into previously published issues. For example, Wenner Media contracted Bondi Digital Publishing to convert Rolling Stone’s entire printed history into digital format and republish it as a searchable DVD, “Rolling Stone Cover-to-Cover: The First 40 Years.”

Whether the mass market will adopt digital editions as their preferred format for reading magazines in the future remains to be seen—and debated by industry pundits. But with recent triple-digit growth rates and one of the nation’s largest magazine retailers giving space to e-editions on its Web site, the future certainly seems promising for the digital magazine.

Solutions on the Market
As the number of publishers providing digital editions of their publications has grown, so has the number of digital editions solutions providers. Today, publishers have their choice of a wide range of products and services to fit their and their readers’ expectations for a digital publication. Here are a number of today’s top solutions on the market. Many printers of all sizes—such as Publishers Press, RR Donnelley and Sheridan Magazine Services—also now offer solutions to help publishers provide digital editions of their publications (but are not listed here). Many of these solutions are available to non-customers, so they may be worth investigating in your search for the best solution for your needs.

Advanced Publishing Corp.
Solution/Service: RIDE (Rich Interactive Digital Edition) is designed to enable publishers to create digital publications based on Microsoft’s award-winning Silverlight platform. Publications are fully searchable and may be complemented with rich media features. A secure subscription system is provided. Publishers also have access to real-time reports on pages viewed, time spent, click-thrus and more. Advanced Publishing digital-edition service includes conversion, hosting, subscriber access management, customized registration and data capture, e-mail notification delivery, BPA/ABC audit assistance, cross-publication search, archive issues access, and added capabilities for online ads, sponsorships, online video and more.
Pricing: All-inclusive, consisting of a one-time setup fee and a per-page fee based on the number of magazines and the overall volume of pages. For paid consumer magazines, it may also include a per-subscriber fee for each issue.
Magazine customers include: Composites Manufacturing; International Figure Skating; Vertical Magazine; GIE Media Inc.; Western Design & Interiors; Madavor Media LLC
Contact: (866) 785-4400, AdvancedPublishing.com

alQemy
Solution/Service: alQemy is an Adobe Partner that pioneered the first interactive PDF magazine and catalog format with the launch of Magazooms. Today, all digital editions are built in Adobe Flash format, transformed using the company’s Internet-based Flash application and hosted on alQemy servers. Publishers also can present their e-editions, including archives, on their own Web sites via customizable portals, and have access to content feeds to supply their Web sites and RSS feeds with articles from their Magazooms publications. Magazooms offers a “Search and Save” feature, which enables users to conduct global cross-issue searches and save resulting pages to the desktop as a new, customized PDF. AlQemy has announced plans to offer special Magazooms versions for the Apple iPhone.
Pricing: Available as a Free Basic Service, which includes conversion and hosting to qualified publishers (some restrictions apply), or a Full Feature Service, based on cost-per-page with enhanced options such as video insertions, custom hyperlinks, reader graphs and analytics with reader maps, customizable Web portals, shopping-enabled pages and an integrated Shopping Cart.
Magazine customers include: Electronic Retailer; Online Strategies; Dog Fancy; Freshwater and Marine Aquarium; Texas RV Park and Travel Guide
Contact: (864) 284-9918, Magazooms.com

BlueToad Inc.
Solution/Service: BlueToad’s page-flip technology is designed to enable publishers to create and deploy an enhanced online version of print publications. Publishers can upload and convert print files to create a one-of-a-kind online publication with streaming audio and video, and as many as 20 direct Web links per page. Publishers can put a publication on BlueToad’s Web site, or distribute it from their own sites with a BlueToad Icon and a self-contained, online viewing system.
Pricing: No fees for setup, and no contracts required. Pricing is based on a per-page fee, which may be as little as $2.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (407) 992-8744, BlueToad.com/publisher

Bondi Digital Publishing
Solution/Service: Bondi Digital Publishing designs, creates and publishes complete print-magazine-archive box sets in searchable digital editions.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: The New Yorker; Playboy Enterprises; Wenner Media
Contact: (212) 405-1655, BondiDigital.com

Content Data Solutions, a div. of Thomas Publishing Co.
Solution/Service: Content DSI converts print-ready publication files into digital replicas that are searchable by keyword or full text, and can include live links, and statistical reporting on editorial content and advertising. Content Data Solutions can also host digital publications on the publisher’s behalf.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (800) 872-2828, ContentDSI.com

DMC Inc.
Solution/Service: EditionDuo enables publishers to create digital replicas of print publications, enhanced with rich media, and stored and hosted by DMG. Publishers can present the publications on their Web sites; animated GIFs can be sent to subscribers via e-mail; or publishers can distribute a Flash file of the e-edition via removable media. Accessed via standard Web browsers. Among EditionDuo’s features: simple text feeds (an Article Link will open a text version of the article in a new window); article translation; link building through bookmark sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, Google and more; article commenting; and an Adverts Menu, which acts as a table of contents for all of the publication’s advertising features. Links can direct readers to advertisers’ specific Web landing pages. Reader activity is tracked and reported.
Pricing: $229 setup fee plus $3 per-page fee. $0.50 per page for removing all EditionDuo branding (optional). Additional charges include $35 for an animated GIF, and $95 for a compiled Flash file.
Magazine customers include: Golf Georgia; Grape Anticipation; I Do for Brides; Clemson University; Designs Direct Publishing
Contact: (770) 992-5078, EditionDuo.com

Dirxion
Solution/Service: Dirxion’s solution replicates printed publications, and supports restricted or open access. Standard features include: database-driven searches (by keyword, phrase and category); banner ad space; hot links to Web sites and e-mail addresses; customized table of contents; “sticky” notes; cross-reference links; Flash ads; audio/video linking; usage tracking and reporting; and support for multiple languages.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: PennWell; Harrison Group
Contact: (888) 391-0202, Dirxion.com

E-Book Systems Inc.
Solution/Service: E-Book Systems’ FlipBook Publishing System’s Digital Flip technology is designed to replicate the page-flipping experience. With FlipBook Creator, a Wizard-based program, online magazines can be enhanced with video, animations, music, embedded links and search functions.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: FHM; Primedia; MediaCorp
Contact: (408) 625-8000, FlipViewer.com

iMirus, a div. of Riggs Heinrich Media Inc.
Solution/Service: iMirus enables publishers to create digital editions—online or downloadable—of their print titles. The iMirus Reader may be customized to match the publisher’s branding and deployed via the publisher’s site (no software download is required), or served up as a client application for readers who wish to download a publication “to go.” iMirus also provides advertising and marketing programs, including banner ads, sponsorship programs, custom-published content, and sales of the outside front cover of the e-edition.
Pricing: iMirus operates as a “software as a service” model. Pricing is based on a package, which includes all services, or a la carte, which start at as low as $600 (including hosting).
Magazine customers include: Business Traveler; NWA World Traveler; Dental Economics; Rhode Island Monthly; Giant
Contact: (918) 492-0660, Imirus.com

NewsStand Corp.
Solution/Service: NewsStand takes a consultative approach to developing solutions for publishers of magazines, books, newspapers and more. NewsStand’s services and solutions include archiving, content management and repurposing, electronic editions, subscriber management and custom publishing. In addition to its public-facing NewsStand.com site, the company also works with b-to-b and corporate publishers to develop e-editions and Intranet-based content portals, enabling more robust advertiser-publisher programs.
Pricing: NewsStand.com’s e-editions are created based on flat fees dependent upon circulation. For pricing of other services, contact NewsStand.
Magazine customers include: Barron’s; Harvard Business Review; Laptop Magazine; Flight International; Nature Publishing
Contact: (866) 837-4567, NewsStand.com

Nxtbook Media
Solution/Service: Nxtbook Media’s e-edition solution features include: bookmarks and page notation; word searches (current issue and archival); “forward content to a friend” capabilities; hyperlinks and e-mail links; and permalinks. The e-edition may be enriched with toolbar ads and sponsorship programs; Flash ads; audio and video ads; gatefolds, bellybands and inserts; and Gravicon surveys. Reader behavior is also tracked.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Advanstar Communications; Reed Business Information; Weaver Official Publications; EContent Magazine; Primedia
Contact: (866) 268-1219, NXTBookmedia.com

Olive Software
Solution/Service: Olive Software is designed to create exact print replicas, through a centralized data-storage system and a single workflow, and to enable publishers to use the software to produce and host the digital edition—or, via its outsourced model, have Olive produce and host the title.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Time Inc.; ESPN; Reed Business Information; Hearst Business Media; Newport
Communications
Contact: (866) 654-8387, OliveSoftware.com

PageSuite Ltd.
Solution/Service: PageSuite is an online, interactive, page-turning software application that enables publications to be presented in a digital edition deployed via the Internet.
Pricing: From $500; depends on page count and frequency.
Magazine customers include: Condé Nast; Cambridge Style; City Living; Working Mother; Clarity Media Group
Contact: Info@PageSuite.co.uk, PageSuite.co.uk

Pressmart Media Ltd.
Solution/Service: Pressmart converts publishers’ digital prepress pages into digital editions, using a patent-pending technology, and delivers them via the Web, mobile, podcasts, RSS feeds, social networks and content-aggregation services. Publications are promoted to subscribers via Pressmart.net, as well as by online advertising, new-edition notifications, news alerts and e-mail campaigns. E-editions are pre-
integrated with social-networking sites and content-
aggregation services, and are search-engine ready.
Pricing: Not provided. No upfront investment; fees based on a per-page rate.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (212) 351-5090, Pressmart.net/eedition.html

Qiosk.com
Solution/Service: Qmags’ electronic issues, delivered via the Internet, can be exact copies of the printed magazines, or digital publications created with the QuVu format, which enables the publication to fit readers’ computer screens, requiring no page manipulation. E-magazines can be enhanced with audio and video, hyperlinks and electronic search capabilities.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Animation Magazine; Armchair General Magazine; Computer Magazine; IEEE Security & Privacy; Waste Management World
Contact: (212) 947-6050, ext. 11, Qmags.com

Texterity
Solution/Service: Texterity converts publishers’ titles into the Published Web Format (PWF) from PDF files. PWF replicates page-turning, and enables cover wraps, bellybands, etc., to be transformed into overlays, pop-ups or animation. Buyers’ response cards appear as blow-ins (layered on the publication), and direct readers to specific advertiser locations. Texterity’s Lead Management System enables publishers and advertisers to offer premium content, such as white papers, within the digital edition, prompting readers to opt-in. PWF reader reports may also be used for BPA and ABC circulation statements.
Pricing: Not provided. Costs include a per-page conversion fee; a monthly maintenance fee for document hosting with customer-branded URL, search engine visibility, archive issues, and availability across all platforms without a plug-in or application (Windows PC, Macintosh, and iPod Touch or iPhone), among others; and a delivery fee. Other services also are available.
Magazine customers include: Make Magazine; Game Developer; Internal Auditor
Contact: (508) 804-3000, Texterity.com

YUDU Media
Solution/Service: YUDU Publishing Pro features include video, audio and Flash file insertion; a digital rights management system; contextual and archival search; bookmarking and notations; advertising components, such as tabs, gatefolds and bellybands; statistics capture; and more. It offers crisp vector text (which eliminates pixelation) and infinite zoom.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (888) FOR-YUDU, Yudu.com

Zendition
Solution/Service: Zendition’s a base model application is designed to enable page flipping, print capabilities, search functions, zoom, table of contents and more. Add-on modules include audio, video, pop-ups, back-end integration, BPA auditing, and registration and user tracking.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Strategy & Business; Relix; Global Rhythm; Trader Monthly; Corporate Leader
Contact: (646) 278-0621, Zendition.com

Zinio LLC
Solution/Service: Zinio’s Publisher Growth Services Group collaborates with publishes to help integrate and tailor online marketing programs to a publisher’s circulation, ad sales, brand extension or other audience-building goals.
Pricing: Not provided.
Magazine customers include: Primedia; Reader’s Digest; VNU (now Nielsen); Disney; The Hearst Corp.; Rodale; National Geographic; TV Guide
Contact: Zinio.com/publishers

Zmags Inc.
Solution/Service: Zmags Publicator is designed for creating and editing electronic versions of print publications. It is designed to enable creation of e-editions in as few as five minutes, on average. The solution is Web-based, requiring no software downloads. Available in two levels—PublicatorExpress and PublicatorPro. PublicatorPro also features advanced editing; archives management; high-resolution zooming; advanced analytics; and automatic linking to internal and external sources.
Pricing: Starting at $45/month per publication.
Magazine customers include: Not available for publication.
Contact: (613) 627-4101, Zmags.com PE

Gretchen A. Peck is a freelance author who writes about the international printing and publishing industries.

Will Print Die? Not Today.

Will Print Die? Not Today.
Noelle Skodzinski
Editor-In-Chief
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/

In his column on page 42 [seePart 1 in today's Newsletter], columnist Bob Sacks writes: "The only thing holding [digital magazine editions] back presently is a perfect substrate." That's sort of like saying, "The only thing holding me back from a fabulous singing career is my voice."

The key to any new medium seems to be the benefit to the user. When cassette tapes came out, I never wondered whether they would replace vinyl. Cassettes wouldn't scratch, they took up less space, and you could play them in the car.

When CDs came out, did anyone wonder whether they would replace cassettes? CDs didn't get "eaten" or melt in the sun, and you didn't have to fast forward to find the beginning of the next song.

Then came the iPod-it's teensy-tiny, it won't scratch or melt, it's easy and inexpensive to download music, and it can do many things a CD, cassette or record can't. With each new medium, the benefits to the music fan increased dramatically.

But e-books' and digital editions' future is under debate. Will they be the future? Bob Sacks says yes. Many disagree.

E-editions and e-books do save on space. But are books or magazines really that cumbersome compared to laptops or even e-readers? How often do most people carry them around anyway, and particularly several at once? Students, along with frequent travelers (who Sony initially targeted with its Reader), may be the exception. Are print pages difficult or time-
consuming to flip? Print publications are already quite cheap and convenient (delivered to your door).

But there are benefits: archives and searches available with many digital editions; rich media enhancements and live links; timeliness-you can eliminate printing and distribution time. But what about magazines where time isn't a factor? As Alex Brown points out in her "Master Manufacturer" column (page 18), some magazines are meant to be in print, some are not.

Saving trees is a growing consumer priority and may be a significant contributor to wider-scale adoption of e-magazines.

But at this point, most benefits are to the publisher-saving on manufacturing and distribution costs, which publishers are striving desperately to tame. This is pushing publishers to push digital editions. Is that in the consumers' best interest?

Digital editions are being adopted in growing numbers (see "Digital Editions' Growth Spurt," page 33). For others, reading for pleasure on a computer screen at home isn't appealing. Sacks even acknowledges this.

But, he writes, "The future is here now," with the Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle and other e-readers. The price of e-readers will likely come down. And, as Sacks notes, "These devices will not go away, but rather will only get better and more advanced at what they do-distribute content."

Will screenagers be the tipping point? Maybe. They want the latest gadgets and are used to reading on screens. But they also are used to reading in bytes. So the question may not be whether they'll read a book or magazine in print or digital form, but whether they'll read them at all in their current format.

You should offer a digital edition if your readers want it. Should you offer only digital editions? Sacks writes, "By 2025, e-paper devices will be the predominant way in which people read. And they will most likely be reading some formulation of digital-edition technology." That's 17 years away, so you've got some time, even by BoSacks' standards.

E-paper-if developed to truly mimic real paper, and to be cost-effective and benefit-driven-seems a promising alternative to paper. But I can't help but be reminded of the fact that the first e-book was created more than 60 years ago, and people have predicted the death of print since at least the '60s. Marshall McLuhan, an English professor, media analyst and book author, predicted print's demise 46 years ago.

In 1999, Princeton University history professor Robert Darnton wrote in the New York Review of Books: "Marshall McLuhan's future has not happened. . . . The electronic age did not drive the printed word into extinction . . . . . . . We have heard that prophecy repeated ever since the first e-book, a clunking monstrosity known as Memex, was designed in 1945. By now, the conventional book has been pronounced dead so often that we shouldn't be surprised to find that it seems in excellent health."

The media world is changing-no denying that. Readers' habits are changing. Business models are changing, and online media empires are being built as we speak. But will print die? Not today.


BoSacks Replied thusly on the Web Site
That was a brilliant and wonderful treatment and overview of the "current" publishing situation. Key emphasis is on the word current. The technology and the sociology is changing faster than anyone can possible keep up with, and yet I try to do so. Our researchers at Media-Ideas.net continue to focus on emerging technologies, and they have forecast some interesting data and reading utilization curves. Predicting that an event will happen and concurrently predicting when it will happen are two different sets of prescience. 600 years ago Leonardo Da Vinci forecast and actually designed, the tank, the car, the automatic transmission, hydraulic pumps, reversible crank mechanisms, several flying machines, including a helicopter, a light hang glider, and the parachute. He wasn't wrong. But the "current technology wasn't up to the task and his vision.

Today, for publishers, the technology is not in some far off distant future, but present and on sale right now. Each month there are new and improved additions to the ereading marketplace.
At the next Publishers Executive meeting let us forget about inviting Samir Husni. I would be delighted to debate you in his place on this very subject. It would be fun and informative for everyone. You represent the hopes and the real fears of the editor in us all, while I represent . . . well something else.

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah, the Sky Is Falling. But It's Time to Stop Mourning the Demise of the Golden Age of Easy Media Profits

By Simon Dumenco

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127893

In Medialand, the sky is falling, the sky is falling! No, really, it's totally falling, for real. Every last bit of it -- the sun, the stars, the clouds, the rainbows. And somebody (Google, I think) has even made off with the pots of gold that used to anchor those rainbows. 10 years: Google's anniversary is coming up in September.

We've been getting the news, in dribs and drabs, about the disintegration of traditional media models for how many years now? The chorus of death rattles -- all that gruesome gurgling and gasping! -- is getting to me. So I propose a moratorium: Let's stop obsessing about the lost golden age of easy media profits and just get on with inventing the media future (which will, let's face it, involve lower margins for just about everybody -- except Google!). I'll go first. I'm going to do my best, from now on, to stop writing about any of the following Top 10 Media Death Memes. Wish me luck.

The end of Madison Avenue hegemony. Thanks, Sergey and Larry! (By the way, did you realize the 10-year anniversary of Google is this September? That's right, 10 years ago today, there was no Google Inc. AMC should make a "Mad Men" spinoff about how sexy and awesome things were in the summer of 1998!) The end of (duh) newspapers. Honestly, I can barely stand to read Jim Romenesko's journalism-industry blog anymore because it's like reading the obits.

Actually, the end of all print. Tip of the hat (of course) to Romenesko for giving big play to Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer's pronouncement (to The Washington Post) that "there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form."

The end of the album. The iPod forever trashed our musical attention spans, and no matter how much full-length album auteurs such as Radiohead expect that we'll listen to their Complete Works start to finish, life has become one big random mix tape.

The end of the rock star. Nobody will ever again sell 100 million copies of a record (like Michael Jackson did with "Thriller") or even 25 million (like Nirvana did with "Nevermind"). Ever. Ever ever! Rapper Lil Wayne sells a measly million records in a week and there's practically dancing in the (record-label) suites. With easy money no longer propping up rock-star lifestyles, what will we be left with? More multimedia moguls like Kanye West, for whom music making is just one part of the equation.

The end of broadcast TV. In the future, everybody gets their own on-demand, internet-delivered viewing experience with custom-tailored ad insertions (for when they're not watching the "American Idol" finale on Fox).

The end of media civility. Thanks, apparently, to bloggers. And blog commenters. And bad parenting. The end of journalism in general. Seriously, who's gonna bankroll the bulk of it once the newspaper industry collapses and network TV throws in the towel on the evening newscast? (Watch for CBS to go first, after Katie Couric's successor also sinks in the ratings.)

The end of objectivity. With the death of journalism and the rise of millions of pro and semi-pro opinionists on the web, in the future every media person will be an insufferable partisan.

The end of paid content, period. Wired Editor in Chief Chris "The Long Tail" Anderson has a book in the works that will expand on his recent cover story, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business." (Basically, nobody's going to pay for content anymore, so you have to give it away and figure out how to merchandise and monetize everything that surrounds the content.) Cue chorus of the Smiths' "Shoplifters of the World Unite."

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah

Th-Th-Th-That's All, Folks! No More Talk of Media End-Times Yeah, the Sky Is Falling. But It's Time to Stop Mourning the Demise of the Golden Age of Easy Media Profits

By Simon Dumenco

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127893

In Medialand, the sky is falling, the sky is falling! No, really, it's totally falling, for real. Every last bit of it -- the sun, the stars, the clouds, the rainbows. And somebody (Google, I think) has even made off with the pots of gold that used to anchor those rainbows. 10 years: Google's anniversary is coming up in September.

We've been getting the news, in dribs and drabs, about the disintegration of traditional media models for how many years now? The chorus of death rattles -- all that gruesome gurgling and gasping! -- is getting to me. So I propose a moratorium: Let's stop obsessing about the lost golden age of easy media profits and just get on with inventing the media future (which will, let's face it, involve lower margins for just about everybody -- except Google!). I'll go first. I'm going to do my best, from now on, to stop writing about any of the following Top 10 Media Death Memes. Wish me luck.

The end of Madison Avenue hegemony. Thanks, Sergey and Larry! (By the way, did you realize the 10-year anniversary of Google is this September? That's right, 10 years ago today, there was no Google Inc. AMC should make a "Mad Men" spinoff about how sexy and awesome things were in the summer of 1998!) The end of (duh) newspapers. Honestly, I can barely stand to read Jim Romenesko's journalism-industry blog anymore because it's like reading the obits.

Actually, the end of all print. Tip of the hat (of course) to Romenesko for giving big play to Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer's pronouncement (to The Washington Post) that "there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form."

The end of the album. The iPod forever trashed our musical attention spans, and no matter how much full-length album auteurs such as Radiohead expect that we'll listen to their Complete Works start to finish, life has become one big random mix tape.

The end of the rock star. Nobody will ever again sell 100 million copies of a record (like Michael Jackson did with "Thriller") or even 25 million (like Nirvana did with "Nevermind"). Ever. Ever ever! Rapper Lil Wayne sells a measly million records in a week and there's practically dancing in the (record-label) suites. With easy money no longer propping up rock-star lifestyles, what will we be left with? More multimedia moguls like Kanye West, for whom music making is just one part of the equation.

The end of broadcast TV. In the future, everybody gets their own on-demand, internet-delivered viewing experience with custom-tailored ad insertions (for when they're not watching the "American Idol" finale on Fox).

The end of media civility. Thanks, apparently, to bloggers. And blog commenters. And bad parenting. The end of journalism in general. Seriously, who's gonna bankroll the bulk of it once the newspaper industry collapses and network TV throws in the towel on the evening newscast? (Watch for CBS to go first, after Katie Couric's successor also sinks in the ratings.)

The end of objectivity. With the death of journalism and the rise of millions of pro and semi-pro opinionists on the web, in the future every media person will be an insufferable partisan.

The end of paid content, period. Wired Editor in Chief Chris "The Long Tail" Anderson has a book in the works that will expand on his recent cover story, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business." (Basically, nobody's going to pay for content anymore, so you have to give it away and figure out how to merchandise and monetize everything that surrounds the content.) Cue chorus of the Smiths' "Shoplifters of the World Unite."

8 simple rules for succeeding on the Web

8 simple rules for succeeding on the Web
Commentary: Magazines should find opportunities, not obstacles
By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/

Magazines are squandering a golden opportunity.
That was my message last week when I spoke at the annual meeting of City and Regional Magazines here in this charming city on the banks of the Mississippi River. In fact, many media folks beyond magazine editors are blowing it.

I encountered magazine editors and publishers who bemoaned the state of publishing today. Advertising is down. Circulation remains stagnant. Costs are rising. It's impossible to fully embrace the Web.

Huh? Give me that last one again.

Here's a rundown of their gripes:

Their writers don't want to write exclusively for the Web because it isn't as glamorous as a glossy magazine.
They have a hard time devising easy-to-navigate sites.
Their publishers won't commit funds to the Internet business.
They don't know what kind of content to publish on their sites.

Hogwash. There is no excuse for magazine editors and publishers to be uneasy about the Internet. They talk as if it's some strange, exotic instrument that nobody quite understands.

Here are my eight simple rules to ensure success on the Internet:

Have an attitude. If you have a good time presenting the content on the Web, your audience will likely enjoy reading and using it.
Make it easy to read. It doesn't matter how much great stuff you pile on your site if people can't find it, don't know where to look or feel overwhelmed. Readers should be able to navigate your site easily.

Stress interactivity. The Web offers you an enormous opportunity to reach and keep readers as long as they feel part of your "Internet experience" (not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix Experience). On the Internet, a person can read a story, watch a video, listen to an interview and, presumably, work up enough of a reaction to send a comment. Building a community of readers and customers is a big step toward success. Interactivity is the magic word.

Entertain. Know your audience. These are curious, busy, easily bored people. Don't be afraid to entertain them while you inform them. The Web shouldn't have the tone of the Nuremberg Trials, after all. People like to see creativity and wit. Heck, by now, the public all but demands originalityon the Web. Let them down at your peril. Reading a Web site should not be something akin to doing geometry homework.

Maintain an identity. Your site should stand for something and reflect the tone of your magazine. If your magazine is sarcastic, your site should be sarcastic. If you intend to come across as highly intellectual on newsstands, do the same on the Web.
Live in real time. Refresh your front page at least once an hour. Your readers exist in real time and so should your site's most important component -- or else you will look dated and inconsequential.

Be true. Accuracy is key. When you print an error, correct it as quickly as possible and make it clear to readers that you have done so. If a factual error appears in a magazine, it must stay there until an editor can print a correction in the following issue. The Web is more nimble.

Experiment. Don't make every single headline the same size or feature the same, endless black-print-on-white-page style. You have an opportunity to look different, as well as to present an alternative style of journalism to your readers.

Again, if you have fun creating a Web site, the readers will have fun. I promise.

Make Your Marketing Useful

BoSacks Speaks Out: Jonah Bloom is spot on in this vent to the advertising/marketing industry. It is a retelling of a story I wrote about last year, but one worth revisiting. The concepts here are just as relevant for large publishers as they are for smaller publishers. Just as relevant to local magazines as to national titles. With a little creativity we can market ourselves with unique applications to reach our public in humane and genuinely appreciated ways.

"It is not what we read, but what we remember that makes us learned. It is not what we intend but what we do that makes us useful. And, it is not a few faint wishes but a lifelong struggle that makes us valiant." Henry Ward Beecher (Liberal US Congregational minister, 1813-1887)

Make Your Marketing Useful, Like Samsung and Charmin
Take a Small Chunk Out of Those Billion-Dollar Budgets and Help Provide a Free, Helpful Service
By Jonah Bloom

After about half an hour of staring at the space where a plane should've been, we're granted the announcement we knew was coming: The 3:30 p.m. out of LAX is now the 4:50 p.m., which we all know means it's really the 6-something p.m. There's a brief period of eye-rolling before everyone goes back to their business, which in my case means huddling with a dozen other worshippers around the Samsung totem pole to which our BlackBerries and laptops are attached.

If you have the misfortune to run the gauntlet of America's airports with any regularity, you're all too familiar with this scene and may even know the totem I'm referring to. It's an eight-foot, electrical charging station with a little shelf about halfway up its length where devices rest and recharge. It was Samsung that came up with the idea to pay for and install these life savers, hence having its brand name emblazoned on the side.

There are now more than 50 of them in both LAX and New York's JFK and a bunch in Dallas-Fort Worth, too. Earlier this month Samsung announced plans to bring them to LaGuardia and Orlando, where they'll undoubtedly be the most functional thing about two airports that vie for the title "grimmest travel hub" with Uzbekistan's Tashkent International Airport.

Do I think charging stations sell phones? Unlikely. But they're way more likely to leave me feeling affection for the brand than some mind-numbing airport billboard that has nothing to do with the frustration and boredom I'm experiencing. They're classic examples of marketing as service, a concept worthy of more attention and dollars than it's getting.

Marketing as service is where brands actually give consumers something they want or need. It's also been tagged "brand utility," while WPP's Bridge is giving it a slightly more altruistic, cause-centric slant and calling it "marketing with meaning."

One of my favorite examples came from Metro newspapers in the U.K., which spent some of its launch marketing budget repairing and improving inner-city sports facilities. It was a good way to get the Metro name emblazoned into the very fabric of the cities in question and a clever way to give the brand a bit of "history" within the city.

There are other examples: the oft-quoted Nike Plus and, just as brilliant, the Charmin restrooms in Times Square. But they're too few and far between. Drew Neisser, CEO of interactive shop Renegade, collects them on thedrewblog.com and is responsible for executing one such program, the HSBC BankCab, which ferries the bank's customers around New York free of charge. But he admits he hasn't been able to find that many and believes that's because "frankly, even if a few people talk about it, too few really get it."

My suggestions: AT&T, for example, how about you spare a few million from the billion you spend shoving your bars in my face, and help the MTA fix its Subway intercoms? Or Citi, how about you take some of the hundred million a year you spend telling us how friendly you are to construct a wireless network for New York? (Hell, I can even see an adaptation of the umbrella in your logo as a wireless signal.) BP, you really want to convince us you're green, how about putting together a borrow-a-bike system in a few U.S. cities, like the ones in Paris, Berlin and Munich?

Don't get me wrong. Consumer affection and interaction can be won through extremely entertaining advertising. But for brands who don't believe their mission in life is to entertain or have tried and repeatedly failed at that exercise, marketing-as-service offers an option that doesn't involve thrusting your mission statement in our faces every time we turn a corner.

Coffee and the papers. Yes, papers
By Anita Diamant
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/12/opinion/eddiamant.php

Monday, May 12, 2008
For me, the morning begins with the newspapers, which arrive somewhere in the vicinity of my front door, every day of the week. This fact brands me as a bit of an anachronism, and certainly a demographic cliché: middle-aged, middle-class, blahblahblah.

According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only about 4 in 10 Americans get their news this way anymore, down by 18 percent since 1993, a trend that continues. I am not among the 57 percent who watch TV newscasts. And while I am glad to know that between 1993 and 2006 National Public Radio nearly doubled its audience from 9 to 17 percent, I will never quite forgive "All Things Considered" for what I swear was a 20-minute segment about Indian cooking that included a lingering sound-clip of garlic hissing in a frying pan.

I have friends who long ago canceled their hard-copy subscriptions and pick up the news from a laptop. My reluctance to join them has something to do with the fact that I already spend far too many hours staring at a screen. The computer is my work station, a place where I frequently pull at my hair and wish I could be somewhere else. The last thing I need is to start my day there, too.

I know that my morning newspaper is on its way into the museum, along with the model T and the whalebone corset, perhaps within my own lifetime. And while that prospect makes me a bit wistful, I am not convinced that the end of newsprint signals the death of literacy, reporting, language or civilization itself. The daily paper is, after all, only one of many news delivery systems. And some of the new systems are way cool.

Recently, I have taken to reading novels and works of nonfiction from the screen of an ebook - an electronic book - a paperback-sized, 10-ounce wonder that enables me to lightly lug a whole library in my carry-on luggage and to change the font size if I misplace my reading glasses. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I acquired this nifty little reading device as payola for taping an endorsement of the herein unnamed product. That said, I do love my new toy, which means I'm never stuck for reading material. Well, almost never.

I get all peevish when a title I want is not available in electronic form; what's the matter with that publisher, that writer? Are they quill-and-parchment Luddites? Get with the program already.

But when I settle into my airplane seat and fire up my ebook, I am one very chill Cheshire cat. The young man who sat beside me on recent flight admired it and asked if I worked in high tech. I glowed, feeling a good 20 years younger than I am, and precisely the sort of person who gets her news online, too.

And yet I cling to my paper. I'm biliterate, and proud. If I lost my ebook, I'd buy another. But cellulose is part of my morning ritual, a song-and-dance that starts when I open the front door to make sure it's been delivered. Will I need to put on shoes to retrieve it? Is an umbrella called for? Generally, I just sneak out in my robe and slippers, regardless of weather, studiously keeping my eyes on the ground, which makes me invisible to the kids walking past on their way to school.

Back at the kitchen table, I inhale the reviving aroma of coffee and open her up. First, I peruse the headlines and check in with the presidential campaign. But after that, it's pure chance what catches my attention. I flip through the sections: city, business, arts, sports. I wander and meander, finishing my grapefruit over a movie review. I pour a second cup and sigh about the situation in Israel, or Zimbabwe, or in a local public school. I glance at the ads and wonder who buys those "Sex for Life" books. I read all of the comics.

My husband wanders in and I say, "You've got to see this."

Anita Diamant's most recent novel is "The Last Days of Dogtown."

Print is not a burden, Useless drivel is the burden.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Rex Hammock is one of my favorite bloggers. I picked up this rant today from his site. It covers a lot of ground worth discussing with a style and grace we should all emulate. Rex and I have e-chatted for years and he is a top shelf observationist.

"There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen"
Francesco Petrarch (Italian Scholar, Poet and Humanist, 1304-1374)

Print is not a burden.
Useless drivel is the burden.
So ignore this post.
Posted by Rex

Early this morning, there seemed to be a theme emerging in my RSS newsreader. Here are a few items that showed up:

Frank Anton of Hanley Wood, says:

"If the magazines published two or three years from now aren't different, we're in trouble. The current magazine model won't take us into the next five years, let alone the next 100 years."

Colin Crawford of IDG says:

" . . . being unburdened by print allowed the team at Infoworld the opportunity to focus on the changing needs of their customers and to develop online, event and mobile products."

Jeff Jarvis responding to Colin's post, says:

"Yes, print is a burden. It's expensive to produce for it. It's expensive to manufacture. It's expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It's stale when it's fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can't be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can't be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.

So what was the theme? Print is a burden. Unfortunately, saying "print is a burden" implies that there are other options out there that are not burdens. Frankly, the web is a burden. Traveling to events IDG puts on is a burden. Trying to synch my phone and computer is a burden. As Scott Karp displayed in a post yesterday, trying to discover which among 2,000 different news stories on the same topic is a burden.

Despite my love (and I use the word love very deliberately) of the magazine medium, I have never been burdened by thinking print is a hammer and every communications or marketing challenge is a nail.

Granted, my company has published magazines since the day it opened 16 years ago. But even back then, we also created lots of "interactive multimedia" (published on CD-ROM). And in those pre-web days, we also managed "forums" on CompuServe. As a custom media creator, I've never felt "burdened" by any medium that helps build strong relationships between our clients (associations and companies) and their members or customers. If smoke signals would help forge and sustain those relationships, we'd be all over it.

Those who know me - even through this blog - know I personally agree with Jeff Jarvis on his somewhat satirical indictment of print. I'm about as paper-free as someone can get in their personal and business practices, but I'm no print vegan (did I just create a new buzzterm?). As Jeff is writing a book and writes for newspapers and magazines, it's not like he's a print vegan either. But my print aversion is neither "environmental" (as I always say , if paper is the cause of global warming, someone needs to share that inconvenient truth with this guy) nor based on any belief that print is inherently bad. What I find a burden is poorly designed, written and produced print. What I find a burden is the clutter and confusion print and paper often add to my already cluttered life.

Bottomline: Print is not the burden. My time is the burden. If you publish a beautiful magazine with articles that really matter to me - that instruct, inform or celebrate something I feel strongly about, it is no burden on me. If you help me get to the information and insight I need to live a fuller life or conduct business in a more flexible and productive way, your blogging and tweeting and bookmarking does not burden me. Useless, redundant, meaningless, re-shuffled drivel is the burden. It can be delivered via print or on a weblog or a mobile device. Crap is a burden no matter what the medium used to deliver it.

Condé Nast Eyes Eye-Tracking

Condé Nast Eyes Eye-Tracking
By Jason Fell
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/cond-nast-eyes-eye-tracking-ads
Publisher to monitor effectiveness of ad campaigns; others wait on technology.
When the thought of "eye tracking" comes to mind, one may invariably picture some amalgamation of popular sci-fi flicks-the Matrix, Minority Report, Total Recall-with test subjects wearing cumbersome, Robocop-style headgear to trace eye and head movement.

Today, the clunky headgear has been replaced by cameras that are built into computer monitors. By collecting and analyzing data like "first gaze" and a person's vision path across a page or screen, publishers can use the information to help design covers, monitor the effectiveness of advertisements and help plan Web site redesigns-and they are beginning to do so. Condé Nast recently partnered with eye tracking service provider MediaAnalyzer to analyze the effectiveness of its clients' ads, especially for its long-term advertisers.

According to Scott McDonald, Condé Nast's senior vice president of marketing research, the partnership enables the company to offer "a unique value add to advertisers in our publications." Using MediaAnalyzer's methodology, he says, "helps our advertisers maximize their ROI and determine whether readers are engaged with their ads."

MediaAnalyzer's Web-based "AttentionTracking" technology tracks the path of eye movement while a print or online ad is being viewed. This, combined with a questionnaire, allows MediaAnalyzer to quantify the ads that leave the most lasting impressions. Or attempt to, anyway.

"In an increasingly competitive magazine market-with publishers fighting declining circulation numbers and a shift in ad dollars to other media-it is important that publishers continue to differentiate their products and offerings from the competition," says Charles Boyar, MediaAnalyzer's vice president of U.S. operations. "Research can help publishers create better-looking and more compelling magazines [and Web sites] and can aid them in helping their customers to create ad campaigns that will best address readers."

Are Other Publishers Buying It?

Despite some of the stated benefits, magazine publishers so far have been slow to buy into eye tracking technology, even online. So far, Condé Nast is MediaAnalyzer's only magazine client.

"Most of the eye tracking technology science is used for video and Web work," says veteran magazine consultant Bob Sacks. "When we start to get into digital editions, then the science becomes more meaningful and important, e-paper, eye tracking technology and a Web connection changes everything."

"When used appropriately, eye tracking studies have the most immediate impact for magazine publishers as they relate to Web sites," says Tim Kauffold, director of business development at Oneupweb, an integrated online marketing firm that provides eye tracking services. Kauffold says studies can cost as little as $4,000 or "well into six figures." Oneupweb does not have any magazine clients.

"The demands for user attention online are huge, and it's critical for sites to maximize all the opportunities they have to interact with their users," says Kauffold. "Poor navigation, cluttered content, and unnecessary confusion can force users away. This is a huge loss for publishers, especially in the relationship with their advertisers."

But as print magazines continue to see their business move online, Sacks says more publishers will start turning more to eye tracking services. "When we as publishers adapt to the next level of digital information distribution, and abandon a print-only mentality, we will have to use all the science and technology at our command," says Sacks. "Our use of eye tracking technology will grow as we do."

Google CEO Foresees Advertising, Technology Cozying Up

Google CEO Foresees Advertising, Technology Cozying Up
by Laurie Sullivan
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=81589&Nid=42154&p=204904

Look for the advertising and the technology industries to grow cozier in a move similar to one experienced by the financial industry during the 1970s.


That's when a set of scientists and mathematicians developed new metrics, and suddenly a generation of employees focused on analytics joined financial firms to maximize efficiencies and profits, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt told attendees at the 90th annual American Association of Advertising Agencies Leadership Conference on Tuesday in Laguna Niguel, Calif.

"There is every reason to believe marketing will go through a similar transition--but the principles of marketing, which are around storytelling, entertainment, targeting and selling--will be augmented by analytical tools," Schmidt said.

The goal for Google is to develop technology that delivers actionable metrics, making it easier for advertisers and agencies to optimize and measure campaigns. More advertisers will have the tools to expand into multiple markets that can test consumer interest in products and services.

Take, for example, Cadillac's click-to-play video ads. The car manufacturer had its ad agency create 13 versions of an ad, testing them in multiple markets to gauge consumer impact and the correlation between viewing the ads and the actual sales. Chrysler allowed consumers to customize the Chrysler 300, but the carmaker did it as content to draw in consumer engagement.

Honda sponsored a concert. Google engineers built technology that allowed concertgoers to ask the band questions and get responses. Schmidt says these will become the defining models for advertisers over the next 10 or 20 years.

For Google, advertising nirvana occurs when the search giant can return the exact answer for each query, accompanied with one perfectly targeted ad. "Eventually, maybe what we can do is guarantee advertisers who pay us money--and this is my fantasy, the sale," Schmidt says. "If we can get to that level of that specificity, advertising will no longer be a marketing expense. It becomes a sales expense."

Schmidt also addressed the challenges of finding ways to compensate content producers and issues of finding advertising content on YouTube when the consumer does not have a specific destination in mind. He acknowledges that financial compensation from one minute of online content brings in much less than one minute on television, but says the solution should focus on creating more compelling and targeted ads that command higher rates.

Nearly 400 attendees signed up for the conference, which runs through today.

Vancouver's Magpie Magazine Gallery to close

BoSacks Speaks Out: Here is an interesting story of a small eclectic magazine store going out of business. I thought that the response of the owner interesting and quite telling.

Such as this remark:
The effect of industry consolidation was to reduce competition. The way so many wholesalers competed with each other was to offer good terms and lengthy lists of titles including many low-circulation, specialized magazines. After consolidation, the remaining wholesalers learned to respect each other's turf, reducing competition more. They tightened up terms with retailers considerably. And they reduced their lists of titles by expelling the kind of low-circulation specialty magazines Magpie thrived on.

Well industry . . . What do you have to say to that? Decreased competition and a reduction of magazine titles. Is that the way for our continued sustainability and success? Or do you think it is a good thing for us to be at the mercy of Wal-Mart who at any moment can lop off another "unnecessary" printed 1,000 titles.

Business is a good game - lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell

Vancouver's Magpie Magazine Gallery to close
http://canadianmags.blogspot.com/
Running a proper magazine store, one that reflects the owners' sensibilities and carries offbeat, quirky and hard-to-find titles is not an easy job and sometimes the job just gets too much. Hence, one of Vancouver's most engaging magazine stores, Magpie Magazine Gallery, is closing this Saturday after 15 years in business. The reasons given are sobering.According to a heartfelt tribute by Chad Christie in the Vancouver Sun and a personal note to his readers by Magpie owner Kevin Potvin, the store was done in by the usual suspects: Amazon, the internet, changing public tastes. As Christie put it:

It offered not the facade of intelligence -- a fake fireplace, decorative library ladders, a comfy "leather" chair -- but rather its own raw eccentricities.

Magpie was perhaps the only bookstore in the entire country that didn't play the same euro-centric classical music all day long. There, one could negotiate the sounds of Gracie Fields one minute and Public Enemy the next, Zhou Xuan and Madonna, Yma Sumac and Nine Inch Nails, Emmett Miller and Rodney Graham, among others.

Almost instantly Magpie became a community resource, the nexus of something new. In 2000 the owner of the store, Kevin Potvin, published a manifesto for the area in the Vancouver Courier entitled the "People's Republic of East Vancouver."

The article drew so much attention that I designed a logo for it, the merchandise of which -- stickers, magnets, T-shirts -- remained popular sale items to this day. Several local festivals and even realty brochures now refer to the area as such, and Potvin soon established the at times infamous Republic of East Vancouver newspaper, copies of which are subscribed to from all over the world.

Kevin Potvin, the Magpie's owner, writes in the current issue of The Republic of East Vancouver:

I am sad to be closing Magpie, but I'm very happy to have operated so long on this wonderful street bringing to residents of my community such a wide array of interesting magazines and good books. It was always a delight, and it remains one now.
Potvin says that changing public habits (staring off into space on the bus with ipods in their ears, rather than reading books, using laptops in coffee shops, staying home and surfing the web) were one of the blows. Another was the consolidation of the distribution industry.

Where once the store had magazine supply contracts with up to 42 wholesale distributors, today only three remain after a serious round of mergers, takeovers, consolidations and collapses.

The effect of industry consolidation was to reduce competition. The way so many wholesalers competed with each other was to offer good terms and lengthy lists of titles including many low-circulation, specialized magazines. After consolidation, the remaining wholesalers learned to respect each other's turf, reducing competition more. They tightened up terms with retailers considerably. And they reduced their lists of titles by expelling the kind of low-circulation specialty magazines Magpie thrived on. Just as supply of these types of magazines became harder, demand dropped as well, as particularly those readers who sought out specialized content were among the first to discover the internet as a source.... But there are things the periodical industry could have done had they perceived the changes in time and had they imagined solutions that were available.

For example, it is well-known in the magazine and newspaper businesses that the proceeds from sales of single copies at stores have never more than covered the accounting, collections, distribution and wasted copies costs of supplying stores. The only benefit to publishers of single copy sales in stores has always been the chance to attract new subscribers. The real business of periodicals is in advertising, a business that requires eyeballs at almost any cost.

Publishers could have perceived the same changes already sweeping the digital music business and switched their way of doing business by offering stores directly-shipped free copies of their products, sill with a cover price, with the stores responsible for paying for shipping only. The result for publishers would have been the same neutral cost they already accept by employing the lecherous distribution industry, but they would have helped create many more flourishing stores happy to make space to push sales of what would then be very high profit margin products. I wrote an article seven years ago for the leading magazine-industry magazine explaining this solution. The article was rejected. That magazine itself went out of business the following year due to the same pressures.
And, finally, it was finances that finished the quirky independent off:

Magpie itself had developed intractable business problems. Around 2000, after operating for six years and arriving, as expected, at a time to re-capitalize, the unexpected arrival on the scene of Chapters Bookstores, with its predatory schemes-successfully executed-to wipe out most independent bookstores, made it suddenly impossible for any remaining bookstores to negotiate ordinary business re-capitalization loans at banks. The only financing available was through credit cards. Rather than close after six years, I made the choice to take credit card money, the crack of financial markets.

Since then, the amount the store has paid in interest rates on credit cards is equal to almost two times the capital borrowed against them. Credit card interest rates, though at a period of historically very low Bank of Canada overnight borrowing rates, were such that Magpie had in seven years paid the borrowed capital back twice over and yet still owed the total amount again. Pleas for lower more reasonable rates fell on coldly deaf ears.

New Rules of Custom Publishing

Hell, there are no rules here-- we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

New Rules of Custom Publishing - New Complimentary White Paper: Nine Strategies to Create a World-Class Content Marketing Company
Posted by Joe Pulizzi
http://blog.junta42.com/content_marketing_blog/2008/04/new-rules-of-cu.html

The web and a continuing modification of buyer behavior (among other things) have changed the rules of what most people call the "custom publishing" industry. Traditional custom publishers, who profit from the creation and execution of customized content solutions for clients, must understand the new rules of custom publishing in order to survive. To help, I put together this complimentary white paper titled: The New Rules of Custom Publishing: Nine Key Strategies for Creating a World-Class Content Marketing Company.
Although this white paper is clearly targeted for publishers, or the providers of content services for marketing professionals, there is tremendous value for both marketers and publishers. This is especially true, since it doesn't matter if you make your money off of publishing or not. We are all publishers . . . so we all need to understand what is going on in the marketing/publishing world in order to compete in it (with content).
Unfortunately, most custom publishers are still hanging on to older business models and, as such, are getting plowed down by those abiding by the new rules of custom publishing. That said, there is a huge opportunity for those organizations that do choose to adopt the new rules as part of their overall business strategy.
The nine strategies highlighted in "The New Rules of Custom Publishing" are:
Understand the Changes That Are Leading the Content Marketing Future - A comprehensive overview of the changes in technology, publishing and marketing that are driving the custom content revolution.
Be Active in Social Media: It's Mandatory for the Future of Custom Publishing - From blogs to LinkedIn to Facebook, the new landscape of social media is an essential part of any strategy.
Acquire Expertise in All Forms of Content - Forget about focusing on one custom product; these days publishers need to be masters (or access to expertise) of everything from print magazines to Webcasts.
Walk the Talk - Don't expect a client to have confidence in your expertise if your company is not its own best content marketer.
Position Yourself as Both a Marketing and a Publishing Expert - Only companies that understand - and work with - both sides of the business are going to thrive.
Have a Clear Value Proposition - At some point the custom publishing field will become glutted. What's going to differentiate your company from the masses?
Price Your Services According to What the Customer Values - From industry standards to client specifics, everything a company could need to know about pricing.
Value the Role of the Project Manager - No project is going to manage itself. Don't underestimate the importance of good oversight.
Use Questions, Not Answers: Five Steps to Closing the Deal - How to make the client knock on your door...
Download this complimentary white paper The New Rules of Custom Publishing: Nine Key Strategies for Creating a World-Class Content Marketing Company and take your content company into the new world of publishing. I hope you enjoy it!

Ad buying goes digital

Ad buying goes digital
By Eric Pfanner
The International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/20/technology/ad21.php

For all the talk of "digital this" and "2.0 that," one part of the advertising world remains defiantly analog: the buying and selling of ad space and time in traditional media like television and print.

Eschewing online auctions and other digital-age transactional tools, owners of offline media and the agencies that allocate marketers' ad budgets often turn to an older negotiating forum: the bar.

There, over a beer, they can run through the available ad space in, say, a newspaper, and determine how much an advertiser is willing to pay. They can haggle over how much of a discount the advertiser should get, compared with the media owner's published ad rates. And, in some cases, they can decide how much of that discount should go back to the media-buying agency as part of its compensation for brokering the deal.

Advertisers sometimes complain about the lack of transparency in this arrangement, though media buyers say their clout helps them negotiate better deals than their clients would be able to strike otherwise.

Digital evangelists say there is greater clarity online, at least when marketers use systems like Google's AdWords, which places text advertisements alongside search results, using an online auction to allocate a keyword to the highest-bidding advertiser. Google has moved to extend its services to offline advertising in the United States, with agreements to sell newspaper, radio and some television spots.

Now an online media buying venture based in London is trying to do something similar in Britain. The firm, called MediaEquals, was set up by Martin Banbury, a marketing executive and entrepreneur, who described it as an "online stock exchange" for advertising.

The exchange allows media owners to list their available advertising space or time slots online; they can choose from a variety of pricing methods, including an auction system that allows agencies to bid competitively for the ad opportunities. Media buyers can go online and get a clear picture of what is available.

"When there's more transparency, people are able to spot greater value," Banbury said. "That opens up markets for additional trading."

Several media buying agencies said they would participate in the MediaEquals pilot. These agencies are eager for alternatives to Google, because its online auction system essentially cuts them out of the deal. MediaEquals, by contrast, keeps them in the loop; its system essentially moves the existing media buying process online.

"They aren't looking to replace the traditional buyer-seller relationship," said Jim Marshall, chairman of one of these agencies, the British unit of Starcom MediaVest, which is owned by Publicis Groupe.

MediaEquals plans to begin operating in a few weeks in Britain. If it succeeds, Banbury said, the goal is to expand the service to other markets, including Continental Europe and the United States.

Some media buyers are skeptical about the benefits of automating the process, noting that the planning of marketing campaigns has grown more complex, given the proliferation of new, digital media formats.

The biggest challenge for Banbury may be to persuade media owners to make attractive ad slots available on the system. MediaEquals is not the first online ad exchange, but previous initiatives have tended to focus on subprime advertising niches, like selling late-night space on cable television. A U.S. service, Bid4Spots, for example, allows radio advertisers to buy unsold radio air time.

Banbury said several media owners, including the magazine publishing arm of the British Broadcasting Corp. and the billboard owner CBS Outdoor, along with radio stations and newspapers, have agreed to join the system for the pilot program. Media owners will be charged a commission to sell their ads on MediaEquals.

"If I can get my inventory across more eyeballs, then I've got nothing to lose," said Matt Teeman, ad sales director at BBC Magazines. "The challenge will be to see how it can coexist alongside personal relationship. I don't think people will stop making phone calls or seeing each other in person."

New Research Into Why People Read

New Research Into Why People Read
Posted by Tom Weber
http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/04/15/habit-forming-blogs-new-research-into-why-people-read/?mod=WSJBlog

The question of what drives people to read blogs is a big one for traditional media losing time with their audiences to the Internet and companies looking to tap the Web for marketing. It's also of more than passing interest to bloggers themselves (including us here at Buzzwatch).
One view suggests that, with such a broad smorgasborg of blogs and posts to choose from, readers will only dine on the most compelling content. But some researchers who studied a group of blog readers say one factor may be unappreciated:
Habit.
When University of California at Irvine researchers delved into usage patterns, they found study participants who labeled their blog-reading time as "chilling out" and "doing nothing," with one describing his impulse to read blogs as similar to his cigarette habit. Another talked about following through on her blog-reading routine even when she wasn't interested in some of the content.
In other words, when it comes to some blog readers, keeping them may be much easier than getting them in the first place-a finding that suggests the importance of good marketing for blogs. The study, "Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging," was presented last week at a conference on human factors in computing.
There are some caveats to the research-most notably, that the study examined just 15 blog readers. The researchers say their results point to areas worthy of bigger studies-and note how little academic research has been done on blog reading.
One interesting finding: the blog readers typically professed little stress about information overload in trying to keep up with their favorite blogs. When they got behind on reading posts, they just skipped the old ones. (Blogs apparently are not like the pile of New Yorker magazines you intend to get to-someday.)
We asked two of the study's authors, Eric Baumer and Bill Tomlinson, to answer a few questions. Mr. Baumer is a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Irvine. Mr. Tomlinson is an assistant professor there. Here's the interview:
Q: Your study suggests that regular blog readers are reading out of habit, rather than making content-oriented decisions about whether to read. Do you think blog reading is becoming more like TV viewing, to which some people devote hours while complaining that they can't find anything good to watch?
Mr. Baumer: While blog reading often becomes habitual, that does not mean it is not about the content. Motivations for reading are highly multifaceted, and while routine is one motivation, there are many others, including finding current news, fostering a personal connection with the blogger, fulfilling social obligations by reading a friend's blog, entertainment value, etc. While blog reading is often habitual, that habitual nature interacts with many other varied motivations.
With respect to the comparison with television, the form of the habitual activity is different from TV viewing. With few exceptions, TV limits the viewer to being a mostly passive participant; it is not a medium that facilitates much audience interaction. On the other hand, blogs enable interaction in a number of different forms: comments, email, trackbacks, etc. Thus, while blog reading might in part be habitual, those habits include interaction and engagement by the reader in a way not possible with television.
Q. People told you that they don't get stressed out if they're not up-to-date with their blog reading-which you point out is at odds with the pervasive notion of information overload. What are the implications? And does this ring true for you personally?
Mr. Baumer: In the paper, we actually reference a quote that describes the excessive amount of information available and that people will soon be completely overwhelmed by it; that quote is from 1613.
There are a number of important implications here. First of all, this rhetoric of information overload is not new, and is certainly not only a product of digital information technologies (keeping in mind that books are a sort of analog information technology).
Second, I think this finding helps to open up the design space in terms of tools to support blog reading. Rather than focusing on helping readers wade through a deluge of information content, one could envision tools that focus on the reader's relationship with the blogger or allowing more fluid, nuanced interactions between bloggers and readers.
Does it ring true personally? Yes. Shortly after I started reading blogs regularly, I gave up on trying to stay completely up to date, as it was a futile effort. When I have a chance, I'll skim through titles and maybe glance at some interesting looking posts, but I'm not trying to get to everything in my RSS feed reader.
Also, one of the biggest ways I find items of interest is through other people I know. If another student in our lab or a friend of mine finds something interesting, they're likely to share it. Lots of online sites, such as del.icio.us, are built around this idea of social filtering, but that sort of filtering happens through casual offline conversations, too.
Q. What are the signs that someone's own reading of blogs has become habitual? Also, you say that tools to raise self-awareness could be needed. What might those be, and what problems would they address?
Mr. Baumer: Habits aren't necessarily bad; reading the same blogs in the same order at the same time every day can help make it easier to remember which blogs one wants to read.
However, habits aren't necessarily good, either. Habitual reading can become potentially detrimental when people disengage mentally and don't think very critically about what they're reading. Many of our participants were reflective about why they read blogs, but not as reflective about how or what they read.
In terms of self-awareness, there is an interesting potential for tools that encourage critical thinking and reflection about what a person is reading. We want to encourage and enable people to ask questions about what is being said on the blogs they read, not just by the words themselves, but between and behind the words. Encouraging this sort of critical reflection may be an interesting and compelling way to make blog reading a more engaging experience.
Q. Your results are based on 15 respondents-all under age 40, and many of them bloggers themselves. What are the limitations of that sample?
Mr. Tomlinson: In the early stages of research into a topic, it's often helpful to begin with small qualitative studies such as this one in order to figure out the key issues. Quantitative studies with larger sample sizes are then useful for refining the understanding of these issues and developing statistical analyses of specific phenomena.
While the small sample size in this study does limit the generalizability of the findings (i.e., not everyone will have the same perspectives as the 15 people in this study), it nevertheless allowed us to go into much greater depth with each participant and develop a nuanced understanding of their way of approaching the blogs they read. This study has helped us to identify behaviors and perspectives for this particular group; further studies can then help see if these findings hold across broader samples and different communities.
Q. Many bloggers are obsessed with-and depend financially on-the size of their readership. What do you see as the most important takeaways from your results to bloggers? How might they be used to improve blogs?
Mr. Tomlinson: One of the most important lessons for bloggers from the study is that readers are heterogeneous - they're coming from different backgrounds, and have different expectations and motivations. Even among the participants in this study, there was a wide diversity of perspectives on several key issues.
Being aware of this heterogeneity in their readership can help bloggers think more carefully about the content they are providing, and how it will be perceived by their audiences. Blogs as a medium are highly varied and give rise to a broad range of interactions between bloggers and readers; understanding a bit more about the dynamics of these relationships was one of the core goals of this study.

Cheapskate Journalism

Cheapskate Journalism
What went wrong at JRC
Posted by Alan Mutter
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

Teetering near default on a tower of debt and days from being booted off the Big Board, Journal Register Co. shows how strategic missteps and bad luck can imperil even as good a business as this highly profitable chain of community newspapers.

For all that's wrong with JRC - and there is a quite lot, to be sure - the company's 19.3% operating profit not only compares quite favorably with those of several of the largest Fortune 500 corporations but actually surpasses the margins of such giants as Chevron (18.5%), Wal-Mart (7.5%) and General Motors (3.5%).

The ability of JRC to continue generating rich profits at a time of unprecedented contraction in the newspaper business is the direct legacy of the rigorous expense management enforced by Robert Jelenic, the chief executive who ran the company for two decades until he resigned in November to undergo cancer treatment.

In addition to leaving JRC with some of the leanest-running newspapers in the land, Mr. Jelenic also left the company with the hefty $628.4 million in debt that now threatens to force it into bankruptcy. Most of the debt results from one bold, but less than successful, acquisition he undertook in 2004 in an effort to keep the company's sales, profits and stock price growing.

Not only did the transaction prove over time to be a serious miscalculation, but a steep drop in JRC's sales in the last two years has made it increasingly unlikely that the company can generate enough profits in the future to service its ponderous debt.

Between 2005 and 2007, JRC's sales tumbled 20.2% to $463.2 million, a drop nearly 2½ times greater than the over-all industry decline of 8.2% in the same period. (Some revenue was eliminated in JRC's sale of a few modest operating units, but the volume of the discontinued operations comes nowhere close to accounting for the disparity between the performance of the company and the industry as a whole.)

Caught between high debt and declining sales, the company today finds itself in a world of hurt:

JRC's share price has fallen by 99% from a high of $21.84 in 2004 to $0.265 Friday at the New York Stock Exchange. The Big Board plans to ban the shares from trading this week, because the value of the company is too low to meet the minimum listing standards.

:: The company's debt, which amounts to an untenable seven times its operating earnings for the last 12 months, is now rated at Caa1 by Moody's Investor Services, which means the rating agency believes the company has better than a 1 in 3 chance of default. Moody's is concerned that the company cannot generate enough cash to cover the debt repayments scheduled for 2009.

:The largest portion of the debt that threatens to force JRC into bankruptcy resulted from the acquisition for $415 million in 2004 of a group of community papers concentrated around economically distressed Detroit. To date, the company has been forced to write off $215 million, or nearly 52%, of the value of those assets.

:: An investment banker has been hired to explore the sale of some or all of the company's assets, but few parties are interested in acquiring newspapers these days, given the the unsettled outlook for the industry. Further, it is questionable whether a buyer, if one materializes, would pay much more than the 7x earnings necessary to extinguish the company's debt. This fear has caused investors to hammer the stock to the point it is all but worthless.

Ironically, JRC, which owns 22 daily newspapers and more than 300 non-daily publications in six geographic clusters, got its start as the reincarnation of a newspaper empire that was run off the rails in the 1980s by Ralph Ingersoll II, a buccaneering publisher who built his eponymous empire by overpaying for newspapers and financing them with junk bonds.

When Ingersoll Publications collapsed under its debt in 1990, its investors turned to Bob Jelenic, Mr. Ingersoll's protégé, to restart the company as Journal Register.

The strategy for JRC, which went public in 1997, was essentially the same as that of Ingersoll Publications: Build the company by aggregating neighboring newspapers into ever-larger clusters that would make it possible to sell advertising more efficiently while lowering the costs of producing the publications.

It's a terrific idea, so long as you don't overpay for acquisitions and have a plan to build sales while judiciously cutting costs. But the execution didn't prove to be much better at JRC than it was for Ingersoll Publications.

As JRC pursued its rollup strategy, Mr. Jelenic sought to boost his company's stock by aggressively reducing expenses to increase earnings as much as possible, thus earning the reputation as the most zealous cost cutter in the newspaper industry. "Nobody cinches the belt tighter than . . . Journal Register Co., where cost-cutting has become an art," reported Forbes Magazine in a 2001 article titled "Cheapskate Journalism."

Beyond shrinking staff, benefits and newshole, JRC was known for such practices as printing on ever-thinner newsprint and requiring executives to check the odometers of journalists before reimbursing them for driving to their assignments. A former JRC publisher told the American Journalism Review in 1999 that Mr. Jelenic sometimes demanded the instant firing of an employee, any employee, if his paper missed its weekly revenue target.

JRC produced some of the highest operating profits ever seen in the newspaper industry when its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) hit 29.1% in 2001. But it is hard to replicate annually such one-time savings as downsizing a newsroom or consolidating two printing plants into one. In the absence of significant sales growth from 2001 to 2003, JRC's profitability, though still ample, began faltering.

To boost the company's growth and potential for future profitability, Mr. Jelenic in 2004 bought 21st Century Newspapers in what it called "affluent markets" in Michigan for $415 million, paying a generous 11.5x EBITDA. But the domestic auto industry was facing a decline that, if anything, has accelerated since then.

The Michigan acquisition not only failed to produce the hoped-for sales and profits, but also saddled JRC with substantial debt at the same time revenues began falling at its properties and most other newspapers in the United States.

Now, JRC is caught in a squeeze it may not be able to survive. Unlike newspapers owned by other publishers that are trying to tough out the tough times by paring expenses, most JRC newspapers have little left to cut - and limited resources to build sales with new print and online products.

Despite its straitened circumstances, JRC in 2007 did manage to pay Mr. Jelenic more than $6.3 million in salary, severance and other compensation, which represented a fourfold increase over the nearly $1.5 million he received the prior year.

As part of his severance arrangement, Mr. Jelenic got an extra 192,000 shares of JRC to add to the nearly 2.3 million shares he already owns. Unfortunately, his stock, like mine, isn't likely to be worth anything near what it used to be.