Alan Meckler on Tech Publishing

Alan is CEO of Jupitermedia. This post on his blog talks about how the tech magazine and book publishing businesses “continue to die.” He cites the final editions of C++ Users Journal and Software Development magazines as examples. I’ve certainly seen all of the tech magazines shrinking and going away over the past few years, so I don’t disagree with that point.

He goes on to say that the “technical book and technical magazine markets are being destroyed by the Internet.” I completely disagree with that statement. Although certain tech book publishers continue to struggle, many are doing just fine, thank you very much. As I mentioned in a follow-up comment on an earlier post, the computer book market is showing some gains in the past 6-12 months. Further, although I don’t claim to be an expert on the magazine business, I do see interesting new ventures such as O’Reilly’s Make magazine doing fairly well (based on Bookscan data, for example).

The bottom line: The market continues to evolve, web properties are certainly an important part of the mix, but there are plenty of old and new topics and customer segments that prove we’re still in a viable marketplace.

Although I’d like to post a comment or use a trackback for this on Alan’s blog, he doesn’t support either, so I’m limited to giving my perspective on my own blog…

Comments

[Jim Estill]

To say the internet replaces a book or magazine is like saying the TV will replace the radio. The use and experience is different. Good content still sells in magazines and books.

[Joe Wikert]

Jim, excellent point. To take it a step further, although satellite radio is obviously picking up steam, it's not going to kill AM/FM radio. What it will do is force the existing AM/FM companies to adapt. That's exactly the same thing going on in our industry and just about every industry at one point or another.