Now that a growing number of online publications are establishing themselves as viable businesses, traditional media players are still pondering the big question: Is print alive and well, dying, or already dead? At the Western Publications Association conference in Los Angeles last week, I asked a variety of people with keen interests in the topic for some answers.
The exhibitors and attendees at the conference primarily fell into three categories: publishers, printers, and a few “new media” service providers. Each group had its own perspective on what digital publishing is doing to paper publishing.
For publishers, it’s pretty hard to ignore the Web at this point. Large publishers have either completely transformed their businesses around the Internet or are in the process of doing so. Printed magazines are rapidly shrinking and being phased out, and they're increasingly seen as just a small part of a portfolio of products and services. Some of the most well known and widely read print magazines today are made up largely -- or entirely -- of articles that first appeared on the Web.
Many small publishers are still resisting taking more than just the first steps into digital publishing. They’re talking with advertisers who want the sort of tracking, personalization, and “hipness” of Web advertising. But when I talked to publishers about the Web, the comments you hear most often are things to the effect of “I guess the Web is the future” and “We have a horrible Web site now, and we really need to do more.” Many of these publishers are niche publishers who rationalize their lackluster Web presence by stating that their readers (dental floss collectors, exotic fruit enthusiasts, or whatever) aren’t on the Internet.
The printers I talked to are keeping an eye on what’s happening with digital magazines, and they’re concerned. Many of them are partnering with digital publishers to be able to offer electronic editions of print products. They strongly believe that paper is not going away, but recognize that it will be necessary to adapt. They’re just not sure how to go about that yet.
The digital magazine vendors are seeing a decline in attendance at publishing conferences and are competing fiercely with each other for the attention and business of a declining number of publishers. In talking to publishers and printers, they’re careful to make it clear that print isn’t going away. When you talk to them in private, however, they’ll tell you that it is.
Printing magazines is an environmental disaster, is getting more expensive, and is unnecessary for the majority of publications. Selling copies of magazines on the newsstand or via subscriptions has never been a big money-maker, and it’s becoming increasingly less profitable for many publications.
However, digital magazine creators are in an interesting position because their products are still not fully accepted or understood by their potential customers. Let’s face it, digital magazines don’t perform their core function (publishing content to be read by people) nearly as well as paper magazines. While the new media vendors at the conference fiddled with their laptops and tried to get their wireless access to work, the printers stood there confidently with their array of gorgeous ink presentations on a wide variety of paper -- none of it ever requiring a reboot.
One attendee I talked to said that he didn’t think e-book devices such as Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)’s Kindle would replace paper books and magazines, because women tend to be more avid readers and they would never prefer a high-tech gizmo over a paperback.
Putting aside whether there’s any truth to that statement, it does reflect a reality: Whether we’re publishers, printers, new media developers, or readers, the e-publishing revolution has happened so quickly that there’s been absolutely no chance for us to understand it, develop decent technology, or adapt our thinking and business models to the biggest change to happen in publishing since Gutenberg.
Though it may not have been available at the time of your post, that most excellent Green IT tutorial addresses the energy issues in the data center and on the end user's desktop quite well.....
Print in the traditional sense, is already breathing its last. While I personally like to hold a book in my hands, the way I get news, and time based info is vastly different than my predecessors. We do take a weekly newspaper in our home for the local interest stories and the obituaries, but we don't wait by the mailbox for it. It seems to me that there will always be a market for print, but always seems a very strong word. But again, print onscreen, and print on demand, are nonetheless print. The paper print in mass to reach an unidentified audience seems to be the way of the past, and an unlikely way to reach consumers with a timely message.
In the manufacturing world, there is still a need to produce printed documents for our customers, but we too offer alternatives in digitized format.
Is print dead? I say again, the tradional forms of print seem to be. But alert publishers are identifying and utilizing new forms of print to reach a new digital audience.
And when I say I speak for the trees, I mean that we need to work smarter if we are going to accommodate both camps. I agree that digital technology has helped increase the speed of which we get our information, but the energy required to power all of those servers, end clients, etc, is almost as bad as the printing process itself.
I like the Kindle, but I agree that a book, newspaper, pamphlet etc. is just too normal to pass up. If my grandmother can't give up her romance novels, not many of us will.
It takes 204,000 joules of energy to create one sheet of paper from virgin pulp, which is the equivalent of a 60-watt light bulb illuminated for an hour. Perhaps what is needed here is a new way to look at paper. Xerox PARC has just such a project underway.
The other opportunity to think differently includes reducing our energy consumption. Does anyone here want to take a crack at how to reduce energy output in either the data center, the end-user client... or both?
This is very interesting column and I'm in the camp that thinks there were be a blend of both online and print publications. Newspapers and generic news publications are a different story but niche magazines will continue to have a place in the market mostly because they are mobile and tend to be audience specific, meaning advertisers have the ability to reach a specific demographic that reads the magazine each week/month. People read them by choice as well, meaning that people deliberately pick up a magazine to read. Online and broadcast shows/news sites are more passive and people tend to multitask when viewing. The are also mobile, meaning they can travel with a person unlike online publications.
there is one more thing.Internet is easily accessible, printing machine is not so.So I write a book and I could upload it in every electronic library.But nobody will take me seriously untill I sign a contract with publishing agency and get my book printed, so you could go to the book store and buy it.
The succees of the writer is still defined by the amount of sold copies not the amount of downloads.
I agree with Mashka that certain types of media lend themselves more to print: long-form journalism and fiction both come to mind. Having worked both in online and print journalism, there's only so much of an attention span that online readers have.
Now, that might change if there were a really good device that made reading digital text as much of a pleasure as reading a novel. Also, was the attendee who said that women "would never prefer a high-tech gizmo over a paperback" perchance a man?
Somehow millions of women seem to be able to use iPods, cellphones, iPhones, etc. without too much trouble. Can't remember the last time I saw a woman lugging around a boom box. Women simply have less patience than men for bad user design. Apple seems to understand that.
The reality is that paper publication is dying and may be really dead for the future generation. An experiment is been conducted in France to replace the student's 6kgs books (the avairage per student) by the convenient and light e-book. And it seems to work well. Publishers have to face the reality and adapt to the new trend. People use to say that the internet doesn't kill Tv so digital media will not kill paper books and magazines. But traditional Tv is being killed by online Tv. This is the digital era and only those who don't want to face the reality will keep cherishing the idea of reviving the traditional information media.
The paperback book is the perfect size for recreational reading. Traveling, a day at the beach, sitting in the tub. The e book is going to have a hard time in that venue.
News media is another story. The newspaper is a day behind now. I don't even watch television news anymore.
I think there will always be both, who wants to curl up in bed in with a flat panel?
In spite of the fact that many people like to start their day with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, I would say,that after all, news will be a prerogative of e-media.Like I start my day with the cup of tea over my laptop, and read mostly digital news.The best in e-media is that you could easily choose the source of information and the way this information is offered.
But being a very active reader, I just don't want to read the books from the screen.I just can't get into the book, if I don't hold it.It's so great, to turn the pages, to smell the book.Of course, to have a reding device is more convinient,than carry a book-that's the reason I have only backpacks-need space for my book-friends, but I am ready to carry big and sometimes heavy bag, to have a pleasure to read.I know that in terms of enviroment, digital gadgets are better, but i would really keep the books printed, and make all adds- digital.
Interesting column, Chris... did you bump into anyone from online-only flagships like the Huffington Post? The New Yorker, which is getting dragged to the online party kicking and screaming, ran a great piece on the future of newspapers, pointing to the HPost and the like as aggregators that tap loyal readers as their best sources, as the likeliest survivors.
I don't think the churning's quite done yet. There's still some blood to be spilt transitioning away from print, and if Gawker and Perez Hilton are the future of journalism, I'd be more inclined to pay more for print pubs I value. Whudda thunk 10 years ago the NY/LA Times and other papers would end up in the NPR, subscriber-supported mode?
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