How Magazines are Hanging On

I’m sure this is not true of all printed publications, but I had a thought.

I am a subscriber to Business Week, Fortune and Inc. They are all great publications with a different take on different pieces of our economy.

I am way behind on reading them. This backlog started when I became a dad, and I literally have a stack of unread issues piling up in my office. I do a lot of reading online, but I never seem to have the paper version when I have a moment to read it (other than takeoff and landing on airplanes, which I’ve planned ahead for).

There’s two things I’ve noticed, though.

The subscription price is plummeting. Fortune just offered me three years for $18. I took them up on that offer. Similarly lower prices on BW and Inc.
You’d think I’d cancel my subscription, but I look at it this way: if I get one great idea from reading these magazines, it pays for all three of them, even if I’m paying $20/year for each (and as you can see, I’m not). So I keep them around.

But the thought struck me: the dirty little secret of magazine publishing right now is that they have to have the circulation numbers up so they can justify the ad rates they charge to make their business model work.

So since I’m a “highly qualified” subscriber in their demographic, I’m getting these offers that compel me to keep paper issues coming. But I’m simply not reading them nearly as much as I was before, and therefore, not seeing the ads as much either.

If there was a way for the print advertisers to measure how many times people were actually opening the magazine, I have a feeling the magazine folks would be in as big of trouble as the newspaper folks are right now (not that they are far off in any case).

I don’t know exactly what the new media business model looks like, but the days of the Madison Avenue ad sales exec with the fat expense account are numbered.

I’m confident these people will find many new ways to be prosperous and successful — but the cycle of “destructive innovation” is not going to stop at the edge of media (if anybody still wondered).

Interested in Jeff Pelline’s take on this in particular…he’s launching a pretty cool new idea to reverse publish blog content in print and take advantage of the fact that advertisers are still spending on high quality print publications.

JeffPelline

Good points, Aaron. Here’s some thoughts:
*First off, magazines *and* newspapers face exactly the same problem you refer to: “the dirty little secret of magazine publishing right now is that they have to have the circulation numbers up so they can justify the ad rates they charge to make their business model work.”
It’s why newspaper subscriptions are *dirt cheap* now. Just check out the promotional rates on any local or national paper.
•This model I’m working with a group on has some advantages: It is free to begin with. Because it uses blog content, you lower your “legacy” print costs and thus can afford to charge lower ad rates. Your competition is “legacy” print publications, so you have some advantage.
Existing newspapers and magazines could do this, but they risk undercutting their own rate structure. Inevitably, they’ll start a new venture (within a company) to do this. Or they could buy us. (You always got to have an exit strategy).
•The key, of course, is to get some visibility. We’ve benefited from a writeup in the NY Times and some other high-profile publications. I handed out our weekly “beta” copy in Chicago’s Daley Plaza this morning, and people were very excited.
Many of them had read about the publication or were becoming “loyal” readers. It’s a big challenge to start a business in this economy, but it’s also an opportunity.

I made many people smile, but one response was so S.F. like: a woman couldn’t believe that we would reverse publish content you can read on a PC — “green” — to glossy four-color paper — “not green.” You can’t fight City Hall, especially when you’re standing in front of it.
Cheers.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

I hope you save me a copy so I can check it out!
http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

And I hear your comparison between newspapers and magazines, but I don’t put them in the same bucket.

Those three magazines I’ll keep around for $15-$20/yr each because one great idea can pay for them many times over.

Newspapers will cost me a lot more than that (the little Colfax weekly is $22/yr and I still get that), and it’s news content that I can generally get online for free.

(Note: I’ll pay $99/yr for the Wall Street Journal online because I like the content and can’t get it any other way. But it’s sort of magazine-level content, really.)

At this point, everyday news content is free. It’s the long-form stuff that tells me the story behind the story, that I’m willing to pay for. You’ve made that point before…that’s where journalism has to go to survive, I think.

JeffPelline

Will do

How Magazines are Hanging On

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