Joe Wikert's Digital Content Strategies

Expedited Morning Delivery: A solution in search of a problem

BusinessWeek is all hyped up about a new service they're offering print subscribers. It's called "expedited morning delivery." I first heard about it a couple of issues ago and didn't think much about it. Then when I went out to grab the morning paper late last week I found my next issue of BusinessWeek in with the paper. Here's what the BusinessWeek cover says:

We are pleased to announce that your magazine will now be hand delivered to your residence in the morning 1-2 days prior to when you previously received it.

My bubble thought: "how much money are they wasting on this meaningless initiative?" After all, if I'm really that anxious to get my hands on the next issue I'll simply go to the free digital version they include with my print subscription. The simple truth is I generally don't read BusinessWeek (or any other print magazine, for that matter) till a few days or so after it's arrived. I wonder how many other subscribers are like me and this does absolutely nothing for them.

Ironically, BusinessWeek's expedited delivery service comes in the same month that my print subscription expires...and I have no plans to renew. I love the magazine so why am I letting my subscription lapse? Two words: Next Issue. If you're not familiar with it, Next Issue is an all-you-can-read digital magazine subscription service that can't be beat. I've been a subscriber for a few months now and they're always adding new magazines to the list. BusinessWeek was recently added, so I see no reason to pay for a separate print subscription when I can access the same content via Next Issue. It's not cheap ($14.99/month) but it's well worth it, particularly since it allows me to cancel a few print magazine subscriptions.

There are two other great features of Next Issue that really appeal to me. First, I can share my subscription with my wife. We both like different magazines but we're covered under one subscription. She's got an iPad mini and I use an Android tablet; the user experience is the same across both platforms. Second, Next Issue promotes discovery. I'm reading a couple of magazines I never would have bothered to buy on their own. But since they're part of my existing subscription I'm reading them from time to time and extending their advertising reach.

So now I listen to most of my music via streaming services (primarily Spotify) and I get most of my magazine content from Next Issue. It won't be long before we'll see the same phenomenon with ebooks. For now, though, I'm still buying individual ebooks and waiting for a Next Issue-like service that meets my needs for longer-form content.

P.S. -- This BusinessWeek initiative reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quote:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

It seems BusinessWeek is actually trying to create faster horses. Silly idea.

My new job

I spent the last six weeks taking on some consulting projects and exploring full-time job opportunities. I've had the luxury of being very selective on both, but especially on the latter. My primary goal has been to find a role where I can have a significant impact on the organization's future. Culture is critical as well, of course; I've been looking for a team that's passionate about the business and where everyone is rallying around a common goal. Lastly, I made it clear I need to stay in Indiana, even if that means I'm on the road a lot.

I'm delighted to let you know that I've found the ideal solution that addresses all these objectives. On June 20th I'm officially joining the team at Olive Software. If you're not familiar with Olive it's probably because they only recently started expanding into the book publishing and eLearning space. Olive specializes in creating a digital presence for publishers and content owners. And although the organization is currently thriving, that's not where the Olive opportunity ends.

I spent time in Olive's Aurora office last week and came away thoroughly energized. I wanted to dive in and become a contributor to this team right then and there. I met several Olive employees throughout the day and each one of them left me with the same impression: they all love what they're doing, they deeply respect what their colleagues bring to the table and they're all enthusiastic about the future of the organization. What more could I ask for? :-)

I've got a few days to decompress a bit before I fully immerse myself in my new role at Olive next week. I can't tell you the last time I was this excited about a new job. Part of it has to do with the fact I'm stepping outside of the book publishing industry for the first time in many years. But as Kat Meyer and I realized long ago, the challenges that exist in book publishing are similar to the ones faced in other content creation and distribution industries; the length of the work and the frequency of publication doesn't really distinguish content as much in the digital model as it did in the print model.

Thanks to everyone who brought me on board for consulting work and to discuss full-time opportunities. These past six weeks have been a new experience for me and I've learned at least one very important lesson: Even though the traditional publishing industry is rapidly shrinking and the job openings are limited, there are plenty of interesting opportunities in adjacent businesses, particlarly with organizations that truly understand digital and aren't paralyzed by The Innovator's Dilemma.

Next Issue: Why I recommissioned my old iPad

I had to take my first-gen iPad out of mothballs for this one. I’m talking about the Next Issue service and app. Like most of you I’ve let my print magazine subscriptions lapse over the past several years. I spend less than $150/year on my remaining subscriptions and more than half of that is just for one, The Week, which is highly recommended, btw. So why would I sign up for an online magazine subscription program that will cost me $15/month, or $180/year? Because it’s terrific.

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It’s the brand, stupid!

None of the Big Six are all that interested in creating their own direct channel. They usually say “we already have retail partners…we don’t know how to sell direct and we don’t care to learn.” That’s all true but the real reason they won’t do it, and wouldn’t be successful if they did right now, is because none of them are household brand names.

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Taking a page out of ESPN's playbook

If you missed this recent BusinessWeek article about ESPN you owe it to yourself to go back and read it. ESPN is so much more than just a sports network and their brilliant strategy offers plenty of lessons for publishers. Here's just one important indicator of their success: While the average network earns about 20 cents per subscriber each month ESPN is paid $5.13. That's more than 25 times the average!

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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?