We have been ecstatic over the last year at the customer reception of our new product offering, including our RIDE version that uses the rich media power of Silverlight. As many of you know, we were one of the first (if not the first) commercial application launched using Silverlight(SL) 1.0. Since then we have continued to improve our reader experience and add options to make every reader have an accessible and user friendly viewing option for all our magazine and newspaper customers (ie. Digital AnyWhere).
Silverlight 2.0 has been in the works for some months and was recently released to the general public. Those readers who had SL 1.0 will be automatically updated to the new version over the next few weeks.
While we knew that this cross platform viewing environment had significant benefits on many fronts, it was going to take a while for it to achieve mass level of adoption (like Flash, for example on home based computers). We were very enthusiastic with download rates which were initially 1.5 million per day. Then came the Summer Olympics and the growth rate increased tremendously.
Finally we got new information that was better than we had hoped for! In an October 13, 2008 Microsoft press release issued in conjunction with the release of Silverlight 2.0 to the public, Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president at Microsoft noted, “We launched Silverlight just over a year ago, and already one in four consumers worldwide has access to a computer with Silverlight already installed.” In addition, "..Silverlight adoption continues to grow rapidly, with penetration in some countries approaching 50 percent.."
This is fantastic news for our publishing customers and their readers. Achieving such a rapid level of penetration in only a year shows the power that Silverlight has - and this is only expected to increase. Many application developers were waiting on the sidelines until the more mature SL 2.0 was released to begin commercial deployment, so this should only accelerate adoption further.
Yesterday we announced the launch of a complete new version of our solution. The importance of this version - we call Digital Anywhere - is that it will enable EVERY reader who wants to read any of our customers' magazines or newspapers to view a feature rich version, without the need of any sort of plug-in.
We strongly believe that the future of digital magazines is firmly moving towards a more interactive rich reader experience, like that which our RIDE version (using Microsoft Silverlight) can provide. However, currently many readers of digital magazines, especially those reading trade or business publication at work, are not always permitted to download browser plug-ins, like Silverlight or Flash. In addition, some readers of digital magazines may still be using older PCs that have operating systems that may not have the capability to take advantage of new cross-browser viewers.
Digital Anywhere is our answer to meet this need. We took awhile to release this product as we wanted to take the time to create a non-plug in version that still provided a sleek and easy to use reader experience with features that are unique. We certainly feel that the resulting look of Digital Anywhere does just that!
We will provide a choice between the two versions to all readers who have the system capability to choose. To other readers who may not, we will deliver the Digital Anywhere version automatically. In addition, once a reader selects the version they prefer, they will automatically receive each new issue in that format.
Our publishing customers can now provide a great experience to all their readers -- at no additional cost.
You can check out our press release on our website here. We have also created a sample that shows how each version looks for one of our B to B customers, Vertical.
Robert Sacks recently penned an interesting article for Publishing Executive. In his article he identifies 5 key trends in publishing and clearly articulates a call to action for publishers related to each one. Digital delivery of magazine content is a cornerstone in his views on how the industry will grow and thrive.
The 5 key trends he identifies include:
Key Trend #1: Magazines are not changing, how you read their content is.
What is a magazine? We at Media-Ideas believe that for a magazine to be a magazine, it must be metered, edited and have designed content, as well as be delivered periodically to the reader in a format that is date-stamped and permanent. We accept that a digital magazine with those six attributes is a magazine. We further believe that over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market. Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals.
Call to Action: Publishers must create a specific road map today toward multiplatform magazine publishing and content distribution.
Keeping the structural integrity of a magazine online, with the six components necessary to be a magazine, will help to protect publishers from the leveling force of content aggregation that exists on the Internet today. This will greatly limit a magazine’s exposure to the content-dilution factor that is increasingly being played out in the realm of information distribution on the Web.
Key Trend #2: Costs are increasing faster than the traditional magazine business model allows.
Raw-material acquirement is causing paper, ink, printing and shipping costs to increase over the long term. These will be further impacted as ecological concerns grow. The lack of attention to ecology is going to be a major cost. Imagine having to pay carbon offsets for each copy returned.
Call to Action: Sky-rocketing costs will force publishers to become more efficient with distribution. The goal has to be 100-percent efficiency or zero returns (and zero returns means a massive reduction in a publisher’s carbon footprint).
Call to Action: Crippling costs will force publishers to offer better-quality, more-targeted print products at even higher price points.
Call to Action: Ballooning costs will force publishers to further espouse digital delivery.
Key Trend #3: The control and branding of digital content is a critical battle.
XML, content aggregators and search engines are growing in importance and acceptance. This type of online distribution should principally be considered as a marketing tool to attract new readers. Only the very largest magazine publishers and publishers of addictive niche titles will manage to retain their brand awareness through this information-
distribution model. Digital magazines must become a critical piece of a publisher’s digital content-distribution plans over the next two years. Because they preserve the core characteristics of a printed magazine, they are best equipped to retain reader loyalty in a digital world.
Call to Action: The formula construction of a magazine’s distribution will become a central battle for relevance. If publishers do not take an aggressive stance, outside forces will steer a solution away from the interests of the magazine industry.
Key Trend #4: E-paper is rapidly developing flexible, color displays.
Although the Amazon Kindle is not ready for prime time, it is a prime example of where we are headed. Our Media-Ideas researchers predict that by 2020, e-paper’s worldwide market will be worth more than $20 billion. We further predict that by 2020, the annual global production of e-paper displays will be 500 million units with a unit price of $50. Imagine a piece of paper that is a screen, plasticized at first, but becoming more and more like the pulp we have all grown to love.
Call to Action: If digital magazines have not made sense to you, your readers and advertisers, they will with full-color e-paper. Publishers must be acting on their digital magazine implementation plans today or risk irrelevance.
Key Trend #5: The corporate structure of traditional publishers cannot keep pace with technological changes, causing a misalignment between internal organization and business needs.
In every corner of the publishing organization, employees need a larger skill set—one infused with technology—such as writing a blog, shooting and editing video, and repurposing content. Today’s IT departments are ill-equipped to act upon consumer-imposed requirements. It must fall on the business unit to provide the necessary guidance and forward planning.
Call to Action: Type A publishers need to assign business-technology “visioneers” within each unit of the organization who report directly to a C-level executive.
Call to Action: Visioneers are responsible for planning necessary technology and functionality over five years. Both the business units and the visioneers must be partially compensated on each other’s success
An in-depth interview with Bob Sacks - the publishing visionary. His common sense approach to the evolution of media mirrors the sense that we also hold about the future. Power is in creating compelling content and the delivery mechanisms will continue to improve and change. The indisputable advantages that digital delivery has in terms of efficiency and economy make the future of publishing very promising.
Bob Sacks: In an Iconoclast By Himself
By John Parsons
The Seybold Report
Volume 7, Number 21 · November 1, 2007
Bob Sacks ("BoSacks" to his readers) is an outspoken columnist and lecturer to the
media and marketing industries. A veteran of many printing and publishing ventures since the 1970s, Sacks has been an advocate for innovation and change, as evidenced by his popular e-newsletter, "Heard on the Web" (http://www.bosacks.com/), and the BoSacks blog.
Sacks straddles the past, present and future. "I've had every position there is to have in our industry," he said. He's been an editor, a publisher, a columnist, a director of manufacturing and distribution and a chief operating officer. He's also been a pressman, sold advertising for print and radio and worked for International Paper, "selling dead trees to major publishers." Sacks is sometimes cast in an adversarial, Jeremiad role, usually opposite the optimism of Prof. Samir Husni ("Mr. Magazine") in the debate over magazines and their fate. Far from being a prophet of doom, however, Sacks views technical innovation as the key to successful publishing - in whatever forms it ultimately takes. He consistently challenges past assumptions and his measured skepticism, combined with his vast expertise in media of all kinds (his first publishing venture used hot type), make him a valuable voice in the publishing industry. We asked Sacks about the future of publishing as we know it.
TSR: On your Web site, one of your lecture topics is something known as "El-Cid." What is that?
BoSacks: It's all about the future of publishing. El-Cid is a key component to what
I'm trying to project. It means electronically coordinated information distribution.
It's imperative that we no longer consider ourselves as just publishers. We are information distributors. El-Cid is the ability to deliver information anywhere instantly,
which is where our business models have to be. The future of publishing is the ability
to access any information - all the time, effortlessly and accurately.
TSR: So you're talking about all forms of media, including browsers and readers?
BoSacks: I'm totally indifferent to the platform. Our franchise is information, and we
shouldn't be hung up on atoms. That's a good way to distribute it; it's just not the only way.
TSR: Speaking of digital distribution, there are a number of digital edition vendors, the equivalent of a turn-the-page book or magazine on your screen. Do you think people are ready to turn virtual pages instead of paper ones?
BoSacks: I'm uncomfortable with your phrase "ready." We're getting there. It took
us 600 years to perfect the magazine, and it works. It's easy to read, usually beautifully
designed. How many Web pages can carry that description? Electronic magazines are
improving every day and they have something else that no other Web page can emulate:
a beginning, middle and an end. That's critical. Once the correct platform is developed
for the digital magazine experience, it will readily be adopted.
TSR: What do you think the correct platform needs or what is it missing right now?
BoSacks: Touch-screen e-paper. When you can emulate the magazine experience, fly
your hand across your page and it will flip for you - what the iPhone does today -
that's the correct platform. A sheet of plastic, polymer, e-paper - looks like paper,
feels like paper, smells like paper but it isn't paper. It's a screen that works on reflective
technology. Light doesn't shine through it or from it. It uses ambient light, which
makes it a pleasant reading experience. It needs to be four colors, it needs to be wifi
connected and it needs to be scalable.
TSR: Does size matter?
BoSacks: Yes, for some, but the beauty of publishing platforms of the future is that
we don't care. You want it little? I'll deliver it little. You want it medium? I'll do that. You want e-paper? I'll do that. Would you like dead trees? I've got plenty of them, too.
TSR: The old print advocate saying is that they want media they can take to the beach
or read in the bathtub. Is that realistic? Is e-paper going to get there eventually, and
how do you think it's going to happen?
BoSacks: I predict in five years we'll have a workable e-paper solution, commercially
affordable. We're predicting under $50 in five years. Comfort level, ease of readability
is really important. It's interpreted as wanting paper and books, but that's a
learned exercise. What they really want is to get their intellectual fix, the information
that they're addicted to. It could be news, it could be about Britney, it could be wooden
boat building, whatever your focus or passion is. People want that and that want it in
an easy-to-read, portable format. This could be e-paper or something we haven't invented or thought of yet. E-paper seems like the most likely next mechanism of change. There is also nanotechnology, which is not what e-paper is about currently. Nanotechnology might jump ahead of e-paper or follow behind it, but I see e-paper as the next defining moment in information distribution.
TSR: What do you see as the future of printing on dead trees, as you put it?
BoSacks: I see it just like vinyl records. That used to be the way people used to listen to
music, and the majority of the public now uses MP3s and MP3 players. There is still
a market out there for audiophiles who swear by records and they still make some
records. Collectors are out there. My friend Samir Husni is a collector, and I think that's
a part of his philosophy. He's a dead-tree hugger. He loves his magazines, and he's a
vinyl record collector.
TSR: How long do you think there are going to be printed publications on paper?
BoSacks: I could foresee there are a couple of generations left. The number of titles is
clearly going up, but the number of printed pages is clearly going down. Magazine circulation is going down. Printed products will be around for quite some time, but I think the right question is, how long will printed products be the dominant source of information distribution? The answer is, not that long.
TSR: A couple of generations?
BoSacks: It doesn't matter. The inevitable conclusion is that digital media will be the
dominant way that we distribute and monetize our franchise, and printing will be less
dominant as we move forward - not disappear, but be less dominant.
TSR: What about the business of publishing bothers you the most? What's your pet
peeve about magazine publishers?
BoSacks: It's the distribution model, which once worked and once worked well but is
archaic. Today, for newsstands, we print 10 copies and sell three. This is not a successful
formula to compete with the digital world. I want to distribute 10 copies to the
7-Eleven and sell 10. I don't want to have the infrastructure to go back and pick up
seven out of the 10 and take it back and shred it. It's inefficient. Compound that with the circulation side,
where Samir and I are in agreement. We basically tell our newsstand readers that they're stupid.
Here, you just spent $6.95 for this magazine on the newsstand, but we'll give you 12 issues for $4 if you subscribe. What is going on there? That is a
model that only exists in this country. In Europe, newsstand and subscriptions are
the same price, as it ought to be.
TSR: What is it about the magazine world that gratifies you the most?
BoSacks: I love being in the thick of it. This has to be one of the most exciting times in
the history of information distribution. My first magazine was typeset in hot lead, pretty
much what Gutenberg did and we've done for 600 years. Now, in one lifetime we're
making these technological evolutionary jumps. It's exciting. I love being around and
involved in this part of publishing history. In my lectures, I say, "What Gutenberg
did was democratize knowledge." I think this digital process is doing the same thing,
democratizing knowledge all over again, empowering and teaching people, giving
them access to information that they never had before. The libraries of the world are
now available to damn near everybody. Admittedly, you have to have an Internet
connection, but the barriers to that connection are fewer and fewer. I love that about what we can do.
TSR: Don't we have a ways to go with finding all that information? It seems to be pretty well buried.
BoSacks: You're absolutely right. But I'm not sure that anything has really changed.
Before the Internet, let's say 10 or 15 years ago, there were literally millions of books:
hard, dead-tree books. How did people find them? They went to a bookstore and asked
for recommendations. You need experienced professionals. In those days it was
the bookstore manager, and now you have Web sites and editors of Web sites who
can make recommendations to get you the information you want. Search engines also
are only going to get better. I'm not daunted by the amount of information out there.
I think it will continually improve the filtration process, and this may be fee- based,
because everything has to revolve around revenue. How do we monetize our information? That's what we do.
We own information. We distribute words. How do we place enough value on those words to monetize it?
TSR: So it'll be democratized for those who can afford it?
BoSacks: It's democratized now without the structure. It takes a certain skill set to really
find what you want. Anybody can get on Google, put in the name "Bob," and they'll
probably get 2 million hits. You want to find Bob Sacks, you have to have the skill
set to say, "I want Bob Sacks," and you'll only get 1,000 responses. Of course, if you
do put in my name, it will be top of the list. That's just my ego talking.
So it's out there, but as we move forward, I think the question is, what's the next business model going to be?
One path may be the cable TV model. People will pay and publishers will sign them up for programs.
You can get the basic package, which might include your local newspaper and a magazine of your choice for $6 a month.
Then you get the silver package, the gold package, all the way to the platinum package - everything that's been ever printed - for $79 a month.
You refine your research, you refine your sources, much like the 500 channels we have now,
and combine that with the value of editors. Editors can help you sort and deliver the information that's relevant.
I do that for the industry. For my newsletter, I'm the editor, the sorter, the filter. Based on 37 years in the business,
I decide what's important to know and I pretty much have a successful handle on what's worth knowing. That's a human intervention.
TSR: What's your long-term prognosis for publishers of information and their business?
BoSacks: The most important thing that publishers need to know is that their franchise
is nothing more or nothing less than words and ideas. They don't own paper companies.
Publishers don't own computer companies. They sell words. If they put the words in the proper order,
those words have value. So they shouldn't care about the distribution path; all they should care about
is monetizing their franchise, their franchise's words, and words aren't going to go away. We've been at this a long time.
To go way back in history, we used to do cave paintings. That's how we communicated and took out-of-brain memory and shared it.
Then we scratched on bones or wooden sticks and passed them on from generation to generation 25,000 years ago.
Those were the first books. Then we get into parchment, then Gutenberg, now we're into electronic transmission.
We're doing the same thing we've done for 25,000 years. We're reading words. The platform doesn't matter.