Not quite time to stop the press
In this guest post, Nati Harpaz argues that print is far from dead and remains a viable profit and engagement platform as long as you are prepared to adapt your model.
The struggle faced by traditional print publications such as newspapers is well documented as the industry faces increasing competition from the online world.
In fact, just recently, this discussion was reignited after Fairfax’s chief executive, Greg Hywood, commented to investors that the company was willing to cut print editions of major mastheads, if publishing profit continued to spiral.
As my company, Octomedia found out, moving to an online-only platform is not always smooth sailing but is also fraught with danger.
Several years ago, due to continuing increases in printing and postage costs, we decided to cancel the print edition of our long-standing publication Inside Retail Weekly, which has been in publication since 1972.
Nati, you’ve pretty much outlined the reasons we never abandoned print, pushed eNewsletters and went with responsive web design over the OS tail-chasing that comes with apps. In short, giving our readers as few reasons as possible to opt out.
And yet, print’s most immediate threats come not from online competition, but the health of the supporting links in the production and distribution chain.
Printing companies are not just losing magazine business to digital, but brochures, company reports, catalogues and more. and this is on top of increasing paper costs. The result is a reduction in the number printing companies, the staffing levels at those companies and, ultimately, the quality of your finished print product, something which impacts on the decision making of your advertisers.
For those of us using Print Post for distribution, Australia Post’s three price increases over the last 12 months have eaten into whatever ad rate rises we may have introduced and we now find ourselves subject to a downgrade in service (not price) where 12 months ago a magazine lodged in Sydney for a Sydney address would be delivered in 1-2 days. It is now taking a week. Such delays also impact on advertiser perception, making the promotion of time sensitive offers, exhibitions, etc., more difficult to sell.
It is high time the Federal Government opened up the postal market to more competition in the way it has in the area of telecommunications. One only has to look to the Netherlands to see how deregulation has given consumers and publishers more choice.
With a succession of price rises, diminishing quality of service, and a flailing attempt to reinvent Gmail/Internet banking, Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour has not only added more pressure to the business of publishing, but put his own organisation into a death spin of contraction.
There are more elements to the perfect storm facing print publishers than just competing with online content. That should be the least of your worries.
If there was a “Like”button, I’d have clicked on both Nati’s article and Phil’s comment 🙂
Print and digital are partners, not competitors.
Publishers should be serving their audience a Sunday roast – roast beef AND Yorkshire pudding not roast beef OR Yorkshire pudding.
I’m with you Trevor.
Totally agree Phil. Printing cost has made any controlled circulation a big issue. That’s why only on our highly priced subscription product the print post is still viable. Anything else it gets very difficult to get the volumes up.
I have seen a lot of publishers working around this issue by reducing circulation or finding some forms of non postal distribution but ultimately this means that the advertiser is not getting what they paid for and its a downward spiral.
print or not is no different to a persons choice of transport or movie venue. Sometimes it’s best to walk but you won’t get to Brisbane very soon. And while I often watch streaming film I love to go to the cinema for the big ones.
Publishers need to learn that it’s the content that engages. The medium is not the message, but a horses for courses thing that needs to be good.
A lot of print is being snuffed out by managements that do not focus on product. Like Fairfax.
I established Central Coast Business Review (a monthly regional business magazine fo 26 years ago and 10 years ago the Hunter Business Review).
And then the Internet arrived and so did Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram and along with them the “gurus” who saw that all this would take over and print would be dead.
Plenty of well meaning people were giving me advice to get out of print and go digital. But I kept harking back to the surveys I do and listening to what my readers had to say. Business people are all busy people so they don’t like getting stuff sent to them by email or Facebook etc. We introduced a weekly newsletter which we kept very relevant to recent news but even now find that less than half of our subscribers read it.
Our readers all liked the hard copy and the no nonsense concise articles we provide each month that must always be relevant.
We do have a website (which we are upgrading at present) and a Facebook page but out of a circulation of 5,000 monthly our surveys show we have a readership of around 15,000 – 20,000.
We have advertisers who have been with us every month for 26 years and more than half for over 5 years. They are not interested in advertising on our website but just want us to stick to our knitting.
On the cost of distribution I agree Australia Post is red hot. But they are the only ones who can guarantee delivery even if it is a week or so late.
What a great read. Thank you Mumbrella for facilitating an informed conversation.