Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

TOC Podcasts: Now in iTunes

A month or so ago we decided it was time to extend TOC's reach with industry news, interviews, etc., in the form of video podcasts. I've already featured many of those segments here on the 2020 Publishing blog but now you'll be able to retrieve them in a more convenient manner.

Head over to iTunes and subscribe to the TOC podcast series using this link. Four of the first sessions are currently available via iTunes and more will follow shortly. Going forward we plan to create 1-2 new segments every week.

We're always on the lookout for new and interesting people, products and platforms to cover via this podcast series. If you know of any be sure to send them my way and I'll make sure the TOC team follows-up on them.

Mitch Joel Tells Us to "Burn the Ships"

Mitch Joel spends every day thinking about digital marketing. He's President of Twist Image as well as author of the book, Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch also has an extensive background in both the music and magazine industries. In this TOC podcast he talks about some of the common challenges facing the music, magazine and book publishing sectors. Mitch also provides more insight to his suggestion that publishers should "burn the ships" and not look back.

TOC SneakPeek Webcast #2 Archive

Last week we held the second of our TOC SneakPeek webcasts. SneakPeeks are where we give you a look behind the scenes at some of the most interesting publishing technology/platform startups. Each SneakPeek speaker is either from a company in pre-release mode or about to go public with a significant update to their existing product. This SneakPeek had a nice mix of both and featured the following speakers:

Rochelle Grayson, BookRiff

Craig Tashman, LiquidText

Paul Canetti, MagAppZine

If you missed the live webcast you'll definitely want to check out the archive. Rochelle and Craig covered their platforms that are going live in the next few months while Paul provided coverage of how MagAppZine can be used by book publishers (as well as the new features and pricing model available in their 2.0 release).

Why I'm Keeping Some of My Print Subscriptions

My iPad is more than a year old and several magazines are available on it, including quite a few I've had print subscriptions to in the past.  So why am I renewing print subscriptions like Businessweek, ESPN The Mag and Wired?

First of all, more and more magazine publishers are starting to realize it makes sense to include free app content access with print subscriptions.  ESPN The Mag was one of the first to do this, although you still won't find all the print content in the app version.  More recently, both Businessweek and Wired jumped on the bandwagon.  The latter is particularly noteworthy since, for the longest time, Wired took a premium pricing approach to their app's content; at first they charged $4.99 per app issue but now I see you can get one month for $1.99 and a full year for $19.99.

That's much more reasonable, but I get the print edition for $10/year, so if they're going to throw in free iPad app content access my best option is to just keep subscribing to print.  I can get a full-year print subscription to Businessweek for $20, including app content access, so it would be foolish to pay $3 per month for the iPad-only subscription.

The Week is another magazine I subscribe to in print.  There's no app option here though.  The Week offers some free content via an iPhone app but you won't find all the print content there.  That's too bad.  I pay $50/year for my print subscription and would pay even more if they'd offer an iPad alternative.

Then there are those magazines that are available in digital format but I've decided to stick with the print subscription instead.  This is mostly because the e-reading experience for those magazines doesn't leverage the digital platform, in some cases offering no more functionality than print.  That's OK if they want to toss that in as a freebie with my print subscription, but don't expect me to pay more for something that's simply a digital rendering of the print product.

I also wish the magazine publishers would start thinking beyond the quick-and-dirty conversion of print to digital and take advantage of the e-reader capabilities.  Rather than just letting me archive issues, which I don't want to because of memory limitations, why not archive just those articles I've read and/or other stories on those topics or companies?  How about gathering information about what I'm reading, creating a profile of me, and offering me more content on those topics, companies or industries?  Or how about partnering with other magazine publishers to open my eyes up to their content, possibly driving a new subscription and creating a finder's fee for the original magazine (e.g., while reading something in Businessweek, include a link to a related article in Time...maybe I'll discover what I'm missing and start a new subscription)?

The bottom line is that I had higher hopes for the shorter-form content model by now.  I'm hard-pressed to point to any one magazine app and say, "yeah, they've really created something special here."  Instead, the Wired's of the world came in and offered the print content in e-format and thought they could charge a lot for it.  I'm glad they've learned that won't work but now I'm hoping they'll start experimenting more, either on their own or jointly with some of their competitors.

Publishing Executive & Book Business as iPad Apps

I'm a longtime subscriber to both Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines, so I was happy to see both recently released as free iPad apps (iTunes links here and here).  Like most magazine apps to date, they're simply digital reproductions of the print edition.

One of the nicer options is that anytime you see an url on the page you can touch it and quickly jump to that website.  Unlike most ereader apps available today, you go directly to the site without leaving the app; a built-in browser appears on the bottom half of the screen, resulting in a user experience that's far better than any other I've seen.  Amazon and Apple, why are you guys unable to offer something as simple as this in your ebook reader apps?!  (This is exactly why I'm pleading with Amazon to open source their ereader app.  They could offer a much richer reading experience if they'd just let the community help.)

As much as I appreciate having these two magazines as apps there's one key feature that's missing: the social aspect.  I've never been one to write letters to the editor but I guarantee you I'd be more engaged if I could just touch the screen and post something about the article I just read.  I'd also love to see what other readers have to say using that same one-touch access.  They could use the same pop-up window approach they used for the browser so you could see the article and comments on the same screen.  Reader comments are a basic of every newspaper and magazine website, so why isn't it built into apps like these?

"Google-level Relevance, Facebook-level Social, & Apple-level Design"

Of all the items I read over the holidays, a blog post from Bradford Cross called Why the iPad is Destroying the Future of Journalism was by far the best.  It's a must read for everyone involved in any form of publishing.  Here are some of my favorite excerpts (italics) and with a few comments of my own mixed in:

The iPad has been dubbed a revolutionary device and the journalism industry has raced to embrace it.  But their embrace is more of a desperate final grasp at the past.

Yes!  That's exactly why I've tried out at least 4 or 5 different magazines on it but have yet to subscribe to a single one.  Wired is my favorite example.  I spent $4.99 on the first iPad issue and never went back for more.  Even though they lowered the price, why should I buy the iPad version when I get the print one for $10 a year?  There's nothing new and exciting enough to get me to switch.

Publishers want to have their own branded channel - whether in their own app, or in some meta-app.  They are fighting back against syndicating their content on the web and they want you to come to their sites and pay.  Nobody gets their content from only one source; this is the Internet.  Nobody is going to pick their favorite newspaper or magazine and just stick to their app.

This is where we in the publishing industry need to think more about getting our content to where readers already are and not expect them to always come to us (or grab our latest app).

Nobody wants an app for each content source.  The parallels to RSS are striking.

This reminds me of a conversation I was part of at a recent conference.  One person in the session mentioned that he couldn't recall the last time he opened his RSS reader.  Another agreed, saying she felt too guilty seeing the new tally of unread items in it.  How true.  I also can't tell you the last time I looked at my RSS reader, but I certainly don't like the idea of individual apps for every type of content I'm interested in.

Since most non-direct traffic for news now is coming from search, Facebook turns out to be the largest subscription source of news content on the Internet.

Even though Bradford's post is all about the news industry, I believe there are parallels to book publishing here as well.  See this earlier post on publishing in the social world for more info.

The success of search, social, and design seem to indicate that the future of news products need Google-level relevance, Facebook-level social, and Apple-level design.

What a terrific way to state it.  And unlike the famous words of Meatloaf, two out of those three simply isn't good enough.

If journalism is going to rediscover a model that works, it has to figure out how to integrate with the social web.  What should I be able to do with that Economist article?  Should I be able to share it à la carte so I can discuss it with the people I want?  Should I be able to share it within my network?  Should I be able to share it publicly?

I think the answers should be yes, yes and yes.  Btw, I read this article using the Instapaper app on my iPad.  Doing so helped me realize social network functionality that need to be added to Instapaper as well -- see my latest iPadHound post for more info.

Where Are All the iOS Magazine Subscription Apps?

Sports Illustrated is the latest big-name magazine publisher to offer an iPad edition.  It's a nice looking product, btw.  The app itself is free and it includes a sample of what's to come.  It joins the likes of Time, Wired and Newsweek...but they all currently have the same limitation: You can only buy individual issues, not sign up for a one-year subscription.  Worse, most of them seem to think they can charge the full print cover price for each iPad edition.

I bought the initial Wired edition for $4.99 but I'm not buying the second one.  Over the weekend I realized I played around a bit with the Wired iPad edition but never finished reading it.  In fact, I'm more likely to read the print copy that's sitting on my desk than the iPad version.  And since I get the print version for $10/year, why in the world would I even think about paying $4.99 per iPad issue?

I'm certainly not the first to blog about this and I doubt I'll be the last.  What I can't understand though is why, after Apple made in-app subscriptions possible months ago, are none of the big guys selling their magazines that way?

Does it have to do with Apple's 30% cut?  Are they all trying to find a way to get around this and sell direct?  That's what Amazon does.  When you buy a Kindle edition via the iPad app you're actually just going direct through the browser, not buying through iTunes.  I'm assuming Amazon therefore doesn't have to pay Apple a cent on the transaction.  Why wouldn't magazine publishers want to do the same, especially on longer-term subscriptions?

Of course, with magazines and newspapers we're talking about publishers who aren't exactly on the cutting edge when it comes to technology solutions.  They're still clinging to their print models as much as possible.  Why else would I get at least 2-3 "please come back" snail mails from BusinessWeek every month?!  So all these magazine/newspaper publishers are probably operating independent of one other, each trying to come up with their own direct sales app/tool.  I wonder how much time and money is being wasted because they're not working together on this.

Here's a crazy idea: Maybe they should consider pushing it all through Amazon.  If Amazon were smart, they'd pull an end-around on Apple and tell the magazine/newspaper publishers, "hey, sell your subscriptions through us...we won't charge you 30% like Apple...how about 20%, or maybe even 10%?"  Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to push content to the iPad as well as a terrific customer service operation, so why shouldn't they leverage their platform for something like this?

One potential pitfall is that Apple might decide it was OK for Amazon to sell their books for the iPad without getting a percentage, but if they're going to be magazine/newspaper distributors for the platform they'll cut off Amazon's iPad access.  Let's hope not.  After all, if Amazon could take this on, it would create a very healthy competition with Apple, and that would likely be a good thing for consumers.

The Social Networking Potential for eContent

I recently finished reading Kiss It Good-Bye, another take on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their miraculous upset of the Yankees in the 1960 World Series.  (It's a pretty good book, btw, if you're a Pirates fan!)  I bought the Kindle edition and read it on my iPad.  That's when I discovered a feature Amazon slipped into the reader that I hadn't noticed before.  It's called "Popular Highlights" and you can see an example of it in the screen shot on the left (click on the thumbnail version for a larger view).

You'll notice a small pop-up bubble that says, "3 other people highlighted this part of the book."  The popular highlights have dotted underlines, setting them off from the rest of the book.  In fact, you can see another one at the very top of that same page.

The cool thing about this is I can see what other readers felt were the most interesting aspects of the book.  That's nice for a story about the 1960 Pirates but it becomes even more compelling when applied to how-to guides or textbooks.

What if a chemistry e-textbook included highlights from everyone else who used it in previous semesters?  That capability exists today and becomes more valuable the more the book is used and highlighted.  Take it a step further.  What if you add notes to that e-textbook?  Again, the more it's used the more valuable it becomes.

One problem here is that each e-reader platform (e.g., iBooks, Kindle, etc.) will implement their own versions of these highlighting and commenting features.  So, unfortunately, the comments/highlights added by Kindle readers won't show up when iBooks readers use the same book.

Nevertheless, this could easily grow into a very valuable feature.  So valuable, in fact, that I could see a model where it helps distinguish one retailer's version of the book from another: If the iBooks edition has more highlights and comments, it's a more attractive option than the Kindle one with fewer highlights/comments; that leads to more people buying the iBooks edition, adding their own highlights/comments and creating a snowball effect.  If ebook retailers are smart, they'll invest heavily in this functionality since it will help distinguish them from their competitors.

Btw, I'm sure somewhere deep in Amazon's end user license agreement (EULA) I allowed them to share my highlights with other readers.  OK, but wouldn't it be nice if publishers and authors could turn the tables and say, "sure, you can capture all this information, but when you do so with our products you need to share the results with us."  We'd learn more about what readers think of our products, which pieces they felt were most important and if we're smart, we'd use that knowledge to create better products (e.g., revisions, related titles and supporting materials).  That's wishful thinking on my part though, I'm afraid.  As a publisher, of course, I'd love to see the Amazon's and Apple's of the world simply share this information with their publisher partners, but I figure it's more likely they'll charge for it as they do other services.

Why does this feature have to begin and end with books though?  I think it could be even more useful for newspapers and magazines.  I can't keep up with all my news sources and I'd find it extremely helpful if I could just quickly glance at the key elements of a story, as highlighted by all those people who read it before me.  Sure, the newspaper sites offer commenting functionality today but they don't let readers highlight what they feel is most important.  Newspapers feel they're being ripped off by Google and other search engines?  They should make this highlighting feature a key element of their e-subscriptions, something that's not accessible through their free website.  Wouldn't it be cool if your local e-newspaper subscription showed up on your iPad each day with yellow highlighting of the key pieces of each story?  What we're really talking about here is convenience, time-savings and a service that's not accessible through the free access option of a website.  I'd pay for that!

Wired's iPad App

One of my major disappointments with the iPad has been a lack of good magazines to choose from on it.  I used to gripe about this all the time on the Kindle and I never thought it could be worse on the iPad.  This is probably more of a timing issue than anything else though.  A few more magazines have trickled in with their own apps over the past few weeks and none had a bigger launch than Wired.

Shortly after their app arrived they announced they sold 24,000 copies in the first 24 hours.  Nice start.  So is this really worth the $4.99 price tag, especially since your five bucks only gets you one issue?  I don't think so.  I wonder how many people will go back and buy the next edition for $4.99.

First of all, there's no cut-and-paste functionality.  On top of that, there's no social media connectivity.  Wow.  How could they overlook these incredibly important features?  Seriously.  These guys cover all the latest and greatest technology developments and they can't implement features from the 90's in their initial app.  Truly amazing.

There are also so many missed link opportunities.  For example, DoubleTree's URL is shown at the bottom of their ad.  Wouldn't it be convenient to let readers touch it so that it takes them to DoubleTree's website, possibly featuring a special deal for Wired readers?  The magazine could get a finder's fee for any reservations made through that link.  Even something as simple and obvious as this was missed.  Btw, you'll find a mixed bag of ads with and without links in this issue.  My guess is some advertisers agreed to pay more for their ads to include links in the app edition.  Perhaps Wired thought this would be a good way to test ads with and without links. The result is a very confusing user experience for the reader as you don't know whether touching a URL will open Safari or do nothing at all.  Here's a simple rule they should follow: All URLs should open a link!

You may have also heard that Wired tried a new UI approach where you scroll horizontally from one article to the next but you scroll vertically within an article.  The mix of horizontal and vertical scrolling feels forced, like a gimmick that sounded interesting in theory but has no real value in practice.  And as others are starting to complain about, if everyone implements their own UI tweaks we'll never have standards and nothing will seem intuitive.  Apple really needs to get their arms around this.

Like many people, I'm not wowed by interactive ads.  I'm very much wowed by interactive content though, which is why I love The Elements.  The Wired app tries too hard to just create the "faster horse" that Henry Ford referred to rather than the next gen content app.  If Wired wants to draw readers into the ads they'll need to better integrate them with the content, not have them as standalone pages, separate from the content.  They're still thinking like magazine publishers and it's holding them back.  Build an integrated approach so that I discover the ads while I'm doing a deep dive in an article.

Bottom line: if this is as good as it gets I'll keep my print subscription. There's no need for me to fork over 5 bucks more for each pseudo-enhanced digital edition when I can get an entire year's worth in print for $10.

Reaching New Audiences

After 5 weeks of iPad use one thing has become crystal clear to me: Magazine, newspaper and book publishers are too focused on applying the same old, tired business rules.

Maintaining your current customer base is critical to any business, but the number of existing customers is generally a fraction of the total potential base.  We're somewhere in the midst of an inflection point in the content business.  This is a stage where existing models are challenged, new ones are created, leaders can be toppled and the proverbial "guy in a garage" can completely reinvent things.  So why are so many publishers trying to apply all the old rules?  Here are a few examples:

Magazines at $4.99 an issue.  This one's just too easy to pick on.  Are you kidding me?  The product is nothing more than a quick-and-dirty print-to-e conversion.  Were these guys not paying attention to the book industry when they saw nobody could sell their quickie p-to-e books at the print price? Curiosity is driving some sales now, but that's not a long-term strategy. Look at some of the comments about Time's app:

Only $260/year to get content freely available on the web or delivered to your door in print for a fifth of that.  Idiots.

If each issue was a dollar I'm sure more people would buy this mag.  $5 is silly.

Time notes that they're only selling single issues right now and that a subscription model is coming.  Fine, but in the mean time how about doing something more creative?  If not a dollar an issue how about giving me the last 5 issues for $5.  Just because you can sell print copies at a newsstand for $5 each doesn't mean you should charge the same for single digital issues, especially when there's little to no value added.

I really want these guys to succeed and I'm more than willing to pay a reasonable amount for an issue or a subscription.  They should use this opportunity to come up with models that help them reach new customers, not just squeeze the early adopters because they know they have more disposable income.

P.S. -- It seems so obvious but I can't help think these guys have forgotten that they make a good deal of money on advertising, so if they go with lower prices and expand their audience they'll increase their reach...without the cost of printing and mailing.

Newspapers are still asleep at the wheel.  The New York Times seems afraid to commit.  Their Editor's Choice iPad app is OK but it's more of a teaser than a viable, long-term product strategy.  As I mentioned in this earlier post, these guys are just training me to find workarounds to get the content I want.  And although I'd love to pay for a subscription they don't even offer one.

USA Today is doing a better job but only going half way to a total solution.  Their iPad app is nice and it's even free.  I only read USA Today when I'm on the road but I'm starting to read it more thanks to this app.  That said, they need a model that pushes the content to me every day, not one that forces me to open the app for updates.  Go ahead and charge...it's OK!

My local newspaper is more typical of the larger problem though.  We've been paying subscribers for almost 20 years and every month we're one step closer to canceling.  Want to know how they could keep me on board?  Offer an iPad app version of the paper for free with my print subscription.  And please, make sure it includes every bit of content that's in the print version.

The focus there is on customer retention, not reaching new ones.  To solve that problem, how about forging alliances with other newspapers so that the app provides much broader access?  So if I'm heading to Seattle today I can open my app on the flight west to catch up on all the local news.  Sure, you can accomplish all this in a browser for free...if you're willing to grab the pages in advance.  But we're talking about convenience, which often comes at a price.  And don't forget about the additional advertising reach for all those non-subscribers today who could become customers tomorrow.

Lemmings waiting for the next channel to open.  Why does it seem like publishers are all sitting around waiting for channel equilibrium to happen on its own?  I have two words for everyone: Go direct!  Sure, you'll want your products in iTunes, the iBookstore, etc., but why is everyone so leery of creating a direct relationship with their customers?  Yes, some existing accounts will complain, but if you're not building a direct strategy you'll lose in the long run.  Despite Apple's "closed" model it's remarkably easy to add epub books bought elsewhere to your iBooks library.  And look at Amazon.  Even though they have a Kindle app for the iPad, any purchases you make for it are untouched (and untaxed) by Apple.  Why wouldn't you want to capture 100% of the transaction by building a direct channel, especially since the choices aren't mutually exclusive?  The more storefronts your products are in, including a storefront of your own, the better!

Here's an example of how we should all be thinking: The Elements, from Touch Press.  Why would a tightwad like me spend $14 on a subject I dreaded in high school and has nothing to do with my job or personal interests?  Because it encourages discovery.  I don't know the difference between Dysprosium and Holmium but this crazy app makes me want to learn more about both.  So while most chemistry publishers would have done quick-and-dirty p-to-e conversions, these guys took the time to make the topic fun and interesting.  As a result, they're reaching far more new customers than a dusty old periodic table ever would have.

So if the periodic table can be completely rethought to encourage discovery and reach a totally new audience, what about the topics you specialize in?  How can The Elements inspire you to approach your business differently?