Publishing Dinosaurs

Summary of Meeting the Challenge of Declining Print Revenues - Part 1

2008-07-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve just watched the first part of a video entitled “Meeting the Challenge of Declining Print Revenues” – a tad relevant to this blog don’t you think?
You can view the video at SIIA Brown Bag Lunches but here’s a summary with my take on it.
Heidi Cohen, a Principal at Riverside Marketing Strategies, New York, NY, chaired the meeting and in setting the theme she quoted Ann Moore of Time Inc. as saying “the average reader of Sports Illustrated delivers about $118 to the bottom line in Time Inc. The average very engaged user of SI.com can generate about $5 in advertising contribution.” Sums up our dilemma very well don’t it?
There is a clear recommendation that comes out of Part 1 of this video and it’s the old age maxim of understanding your customer. As Heidi Cohen said, “It’s not about the company, it’s not about where you want people to be or what you want to offer them. It’s about what your customer is talking about”. Dora Chomiak, Senior Director of eBusiness & Digital Media at McGraw Hill suggested we think about “where’s the audience and where’s the audience going and how do we evolve with that audience” whilst Andy Pickup, President and CEO of The Wall Street Transcipt (no, not the Journal) asked us to think about “what value am I creating for my customers here, is everything that I used to be doing still as valuable as it used to be?”
My take - It’s just one of those reminders that occasionally comes along letting you know that you’re not seeing the wood for the trees? Of course we need to focus on the customer and I’m as guilty as everybody else. We all talk and think about becoming a content-oriented or content-centric publishing business but, according to Andy Pickup “rather than saying the centre of my world is content . . . [we should be] saying the centre of my world is my clients".
And finally, I know we’re after making as much ‘dough’ as possible but is Dora Chomiak really suggesting we become bakers when she proposes we ‘bake’ our information as tightly as possible into the workflow of whoever it is who is using our content?
I’ll be summarizing parts 2 and 3 shortly so do drop by soon.

More Musings on this Blog's Purpose and Objective

2008-06-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Been a couple of days since I started this blog and I’ve found myself musing as to what it should be about, what it shouldn’t include and its overall objectives. After consideration I’ve decided this blog is about the web. Why? Well, the (deliberately simplified) assumption is that readership and advertising revenues for printed products such as magazines and newspapers are falling because today’s audience prefers the web. If that’s the case, then today’s print-orientated publishing businesses will have to change to web-centric publishing businesses and if true then the obvious question is “how will they make money?" Actually, the question is bigger than that - can traditional print publishers fully replace lost print revenues by publishing their content on the web?
We’ll keep this blog’s purpose to answering these questions – we won’t worry ourselves with the future of traditional media (print, paper, etc.) nor will we concern ourselves with other electronic media such as mobile phones, electronic readers, etc.
The blog’s overall objective? Simply, it’s to explore and answer the question “can traditional print publishers fully replace lost print revenues by publishing their content on the web”. We’ll do this by looking at, and commenting on, ideas and actions from publishers and commentators whilst at the same time we’ll take a look at technologies that might help us publishing dinosaurs make acceptable (or should that be tolerable?) revenues from the web.

Faster Future: Publishing possibilities now and beyond: We're All Publishers Now: My presentation for Digital Asset Management?

2008-06-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

Faster Future: Publishing possibilities now and beyond: We're All Publishers Now: My presentation for Digital Asset Management?

Objective of this blog

2008-06-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Greetings fellow Publishing Dinosaurs.
Well, here we go. My first blog and I start with a great feeling of trepidation. Ah but what the hell; let’s see where it takes us.
This blog is for the benefit of traditional UK publishers – i.e. UK magazine and newspaper publishers who have customarily made their money from publishing regular printed products.
The blog’s sole objective is to answer a burning question – “can traditional UK publishers make considerable money by putting their content on the web?”
It’s a big question because it might decide the future success (or not) of traditional UK publishers.
I hope you will help me to answer this question.
I was at a Digital Asset Management (DAM) conference in London last Thursday/Friday and met an interesting gentlemen by the name of David Cushman. It's David who gave me the inspiration to publish this blog and so to start things off what better than a link to the presentation he gave at the conference. Interesting and food for thought for us Publishing Dinosaurs. Enjoy.