Table of Contents:

 

Printing Magazine today   (videos)

Magazine Industry is influenced by the Internet

1. Paperless: Salon and Slate
2. E-readers and Tablets
   
3. Business and Advertising

 

Magazine Industry is handling the digital era

1. Exclusive Online Content Advantages
2. Tablets and Apps
3. Business
4. Advertising
   

 

Challenges in the digital era

1. Competitions
2. Paywalls
3. Turning to Digital

 

 

Other links:

Magazine Group

Magazines Past

Magazines Future

Reference List

 

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Like others media industry, magazine have had many obstacle in the digital era and it also had to handle those difficulties by diversify its business. We will take a deeper look at it after cheking out how the magazine printing works today.

 

Magazine Printing System

 

How Magazine Printing works with full functions of technology and complete business model nowadays

 

 

 

 

The Industry is being influenced by the Internet

 

Paperless

 

With two-third of American households linked to broadband Internet connections, the Internet has become the place where print magazines like Time and Entertainment Weekly can extend their reach, where some magazines like FHM and Elle Girl can survive when their print version ends, or where online magazines like Salon, Slate, and Wonderwall can exist exclusively.[2]

 

Website is a popular method for expanding the reach of consumer magazines. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of consumer magazine Web sites grew by almost 50%. [2]

 

Because of the unlimited space, many online magazines now carry blogs, original video and audio broadcasts, social networks, games, virtual fitting rooms, and other interactive components. For instance, PopularMechanics.com has added interactive 3D models for do-it-yourself project.

 

Webzines such as Salon and Slate, which are magazines that appear exclusively online, were pioneers of the online-only magazine format for news and discussing culture and politics. [2]

 

Salon was founded in 1995 by David Talbot. Salon now is leading online magazine, claiming 6 million monthly visitors in 2010. Slate was founded and owned by Washington Post Company since 1996, drawing 5 million monthly unique visitors. There are many online magazines with have high circulation and amount of monthly visitors such as Politico.com, FLYP magazine, Lonny, etc.[2]

 

 

 

Salon ans Slate online magazines

 

2010 was the year of the development of new technology. The evolution of the e-tablet, was also considered as digital paper, may alter the interaction consumers have with digital journalism and make the concept of an electronic magazine easier to imagine as well. [2]

 

E-Readers

 

E-readers are not a new thing to us now, but in 2006 the e-book revolution was started. Sony Reader was the first e-reader that was launched to the public. In 2007 Amazon introduced the Kindle. The Kindle is still a major player in the e-reader and is many times considered the top seller. E-readers put all of your magazines into one small unit so that you can carry multiple items in one area. This makes it easier for a consumer to get more magazines and keep them with them at all times.

 

[46]

A quick snippet about how the Sports Illustrated e-magazine is going to work. The man shows how interactive and easy it is going to be and how much more information they can have on this e-mag.

 

Tablets

 

The Internet has changed the how people get they media and news. Instead of print and Television being the only way to get info people can now get news and media updates on the go from any source of internet. This could be laptops at coffee shops, smart phones or iPads and tablets. Not only is this information easily accessible but a lot of the time the info can be found for free. This has forced the magazines industry to adapt into what it is today. The magazine Industry has become a media form with many outlets besides the standard print form. You can now view magazines through their website online and online subscriptions that can be sent to iPads, smartphones and tablets.

 

 

 

Business and Advertising

 

Nowadays, 44% of U.S. adults own a smartphone in 2011. [49]. The rapid growth of tablets, e-readers and smartphones fundamentally affected the magazine publishers. As shown in the Past part, magazine publishers' main revenues are from print sales and advertising. However, those revenue were lower as well as the number of print ad pages in the year 2011 because the advertisers cut back on the number of print ads purchased and consumers bought fewer magazines. [49]. This graph below shows the decline in Newsstand sales of magazines within 4 recent years.

 

 

Two-third of the top 25 popular magazines suffered circulation declines. This graph right below also shows the decrease of some popular magazines' circulations. [49]

 

 

 

Newsmagazines altogether and went entirely digital make a huge decline in print magazine circulation and advertising pages.

 

 

[28]

 

 

For example, Time Inc.'s revenues unchanged from 2010. Its advertising income and subscriptions revenues fell 1% and 2 %, respectively. [50]. The company Meredith which owns Better Homes and Gardens and other women's magazines also dropped their total revenue, their advertising and their circulation by 2%, 5%, and 7%, respectively in 2011. [51] [49]

 

The combination of digital era emerging and weak economy brought the absolute negative impact on the magazine industry. According to those statistics, magazine publishers were shocked and they must figure out the ways to survive magazine industry through the influence of the internet and technology innovation as soon as possible unless the digital growth would make the magazine totally disappear from print. Indeed, let's take a closer look at how most of the magazine companies have done to overcome these difficulties and found their ways to ensure their strong future.

 

 

How the Magazine Industry is handling the Digital Era

 

Exclusive Online Content

Moving digital has not only hindered the industry, but it has helped in many ways too. One of the ways that it helps the magazine industry is the online content. Magazines are only allowed so much space and paper so they can’t put all of the pictures the editors want into it. It allows them to put more content in a website rather than be forced to have restrictions. It also provides users the ability to comment on the content provided by the magazines. Along with the commenting and photos magazine providers can have links to previous content or other resources. Ads are generated based on the content accessed by the user.

 

Tablets and Apps

 

Amid the digital techniques, tablets provide good environment for the magazine publishers. Research shows that people read magazine more than other media on the new devices. [49]. Apple iproducts are also a leader in this industry.

 

iProducts

 

Read magazines on iPads and smartphones

 

                                 

Furthermore, magazine publishers believe that tablets advertising will be the key factor to bring back advertising revenues which might have migrated away from the print form. In fact, 59% of the survey respondents admitted that they spent time reading magazine online when they bought tablets, 66% passionately would love to consume more and more digital magazines, and more surprisingly 63% said that magazine should change their content to digital form in the future. [52]

 

Therefore, last spring, Apple decided to allow publishers to sell magazine subscriptions in iPads. Amazingly, magazine have been faster than other media industries like newspaper to have and develop apps. [49]

 

 

 

The availability of magazines on mobile devices was greatly improved in 2011 with the introduction of Apple's Newsstand in October with hundred of title search, digital subscriptions and single issues which are all readily available. [49] This explosion of tablets made people easier to find and download magazines. Apple's Newsstand has been successful with those apps and its business strategy when creating a huge number of magazine downloads. The publisher of Popular Science+, Bonnier, stated that the magazine sold about 3,900 subscriptions and 3,200 single copies in six days on the Newsstand, so it was about 75 subscriptions and 65 single copy sales per day. [53]

 

However, magazine publishers would be required to provide Apple with 30% of all sales when subscriptions are bought through the Apple Store. Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a good deal for both parties: "Our philosophy is simple - when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing."[28]. Nevertheless, Time magazine refused to sell its magazines through Newsstand anymore. Its readers needed to sign up directly with Time Inc. to read its magazines. It launched its own tablets versions of all its 21 magazines by the end of 2011. At that time, only four largest publications had apps which are People, Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrate. Amazingly, all four were sold more than 600,000 digital copies. [54]

 

Besides, by the end of 2011, David Carey - Hearst Magazines President also stated it had nearly 400,000 subscribers through digital apps, which include Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar and O. Those apps are free to download. The number of subscribers is growing at a rate of 10-15 percent every month, and he also said that number were supposed to be increased. [55]. Furthermore, David Carey noticed in the interview with Mr. Magazine that there are about 30% no longer any issue available for sale on ink and paper very soon in the future. [56]

 

 

 

 

Business

 

It is too early to evaluate the advantages of these technological innovations. With the pressure on the magazine's biggest revenue source, print advertising, publishers must find or create alternative ways to generate their profit. For example, Time magazine cut costs by using more freelancers and contributors and cutting back on its full time editorial ranks. The Atlantic’s magazine decided to use a digital strategy by building a marketing services operation, expanding live events, and maintaining a relentless focus on hiring top talent.[28]. In addition, they invest more in digital and mobile versions of their publications. They try to diversify their brands to many different branches such as commerce, events, entertainment or marketing.

 

Mr. Scott Havens who is the senior vice president of finance and digital operations for the Atlantic Media Co. has said, "the tradition model is coming undone, but we've got fans of our brand that we can serve in different ways. If you have established a level of trust with your readers, you should be able to move them to other things; readers want exclusive access to other goods or services tied to the brand." [49]

 

For example, Meredith corporation improved its e-commerce abilities by launching a website of Parents Magazine which discount for users on children toys and family products. It also expands the partnership with Wal-Mart under the Better Homes and Gardens magazine name to sell furniture. [49]. Besides, Rival Hearst expands the marketing business and services by purchasing the iCrossing agency to enhance blogs and its content. [57]. Additionally, to maintain the stable circulation, Time invested heavily in digital initiatives. It offered full access for mobile readers to the magazines and its digital contents. As a result, Time has the most online traffic in 2011. [49]

 

 

 

Advertising

 

In the digital era of today there is continuous innovations of how to advertise in the new market of digital magazines. The ability for magazines to be in the digital format allows for advertising to be digital. Now instead of just looking at a a picture of an advertisement you can click on it and view a video. There is also links to the products websites. This gives you direct access to buy the things that catch your eye. This is new wave of advertising that can generate great revenue for the magazine industry in a digital time where it has been struggling. [29]

 

    
[47]

 

Consequently, after four years turn into digital, the Atlantic stated it gained more from digital advertising than the print ads in October 2012. [49]

 

 

 

Challenges of Magazine Industry in the Digital Era

 

Competition

 

The digital era has brought a lot of competition to the tradition media outlets moving online. A big reason for this is the big movement towards Mass Amateurization which refers to the process whereby the dichotomy between experts and amateurs is dissolving and creating a new category of professional amateurs, also called Pro-Ams. [32]. One of the new and increasingly competitive form of mass amateurization the magazines face is bloggers. Bloggers gain there advantage in the fact that users can look at there information and opinions for free. There also is the absence of ads that makes blogs popular. [30]

 

Zines can be an example of this. Zine is a term used to describe self-published magazines. [2]

 

Paywalls

 

With so much information online for free magazines a big challenge for magazines was how to market there share their material online and still make money from it. Magazines have put up Paywalls on there information, charging a subscription for there content. This has been a hard thing for alot of online users to adapt to since a lot of information on the internet is accessible for free. It has been suggested that more older generations that are used to buying traditional magazines will be more willing to pay for online subscriptions as they seem less adept to searching online for free or easily accessible content. [31]

 

Turning to Digital

 

Digital era could bring to magazine industry opportunities to earn more profits but it always goes along with financial and technical challenges. Thus, magazine publishers put their efforts into digital space.

 

This table shows the magazine readers' sharp digital migration.

 

[49]

 

There are many evidences show that the emerging of the digital era (tablets and smartphones' growth) will be a boon to the magazine industry. However, they are still most rely heavily on the print form. And this is totally not easy to change it. [49]

 

More importantly, the more difficult challenge of this industry is the proliferating [49] - the super rapid growth of technologies. That means it's not easy for those publications to constantly renovate. They must adapt non-stop the changing of technological innovations. Tablets and Smartphones are those examples, magazine industry need to always find new methods get used to with the digital era. And it threatens the stable revenue as well as the magazine's strong platforms in the future.

 

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Other links:

Magazine Group

Magazines Past

Magazines Future

Reference List

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Works Cited

 

Pages and Pictures Cited:

 

02.    Cambell, R., Martin, C. and B. Fabos. Media and Culture. 8^th ed. Bedford: Erika Gutierrez, 2012. 255-85. Print.

 

28.     Matsa, Katerina-Eva, Tom Rosenstiel, and Paul Moore. "Magazines: A Shake-Out for News Weeklies | State of the Media." StateoftheMedia.org. The State of the News Media, 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/magazines-essay/>.

 

29.    Randall, Dana. "The Future of Magazines: How the IPad, EReaders & Tablets Are Effecting the Future in Advertising." BUILT BY THE FACTORY. BUILT BY THE FACTORY, 15 Mar. 2010. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://www.builtbythefactory.com/blog/2010/03/digital-magazines-ipad-tablet-ereaders-tablets-advertising/>.

30.     Brinson, Susan. "A Point of View: Magazines vs. Blogs." House Of Brinson. House Of Brinson, 27 Aug. 2012. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://www.houseofbrinson.com/home/2012/8/27/a-point-of-view-magazines-vs-blogs.html>.

31.     Biggs, John. "In Paywalls We Trust: How The Magazine Industry Can Weather The Coming DigitalTransition." TechCrunch. TechCrunch, 19 Oct. 2012. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/19/newsweek-the-blog/>.

32.     "Mass Amateurization." P2P Foundation. P2P Foundation, 24 July 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2012. <http://p2pfoundation.net/Mass_Amateurization>.

 

49.     Mitchell, Amy, Jane Sasseen, and Katerina Eva Matsa. "Magazines: Are Hopes for Tablets Overdone?" State of the News Media 2012. The State of the News Media, 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2012. <http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/magazines-are-hopes-for-tablets-overdone/>.

50.     Goldsmith, Jill. "Time Warner Posts Boffo Third Quarter." Variety. Business News, 2 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2012. <http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118045447>.

51.     "Meredith Delivers Over 20 Percent Growth in Fiscal 2011 Earnings Per Share." Media Relations. Meredith Corporation MediaRoom, 28 July 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2012. <http://meredith.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=2311>.

52.     Dinozo, Cristina. "MPA Releases Magazine Mobile Reader Study." News from MBA. The Association of Magazine Media, Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Nov. 2012. <http://magazine.informz.net/magazine/archives/archive_1378879.html>.

53.    Raphael, T. J. "Discoverability Central to Big Numbers on Apple's Newsstand." - Newsstand @ Audiencedevelopment.com. Audience Development, 26 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2011/discoverability+central+big+numbers+apple+s+newsstand#.UKcdL4ajKSo>.

54.     Kafka, Peter. "Time Inc. Doubles Down on Tablets, Promises All Magazines on All Platforms by End of Year." AllThingsD. All Things D, 3 Aug. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://allthingsd.com/20110803/time-inc-doubles-down-on-tablets-promises-all-magazines-on-all-platforms-by-end-of-year/>.

55.     Lunden, Ingrid. "Hearst's Carey: We Will Have One Million Paying Digital Subscribers In 2012 â PaidContent." PaidContent. PaidContent, 1 Dec. 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://paidcontent.org/2011/12/01/419-hearsts-carey-we-will-have-one-million-paying-digital-subscribers-in-20/>.

56.      Husni, Samir. "David Carey to Samir Husni: This IS What Keeps Me UP at Night! The Mr. Magazine™ Interview with the President of Hearst Magazines." Mr Magazine. Mr. Magazine Blog, 22 Jan. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://mrmagazine.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/david-carey-to-samir-husni-this-is-what-keeps-me-up-at-night-the-mr-magazine-interview-with-the-president-of-hearst-magazines/>.

57.      Patel, Kunur. "After Hearst Acquisition, ICrossing Moves Into Branded Content." Ad Age. Ad Age - Agency News, 31 May 2011. Web. 17 Nov. 2012. <http://adage.com/article/agency-news/acquisition-icrossing-moves-branded-content/227840/>.

 

Videos Cited:

 

46.   "Sports Illustrated - Tablet Demo 1.5." thewonderfactoryny. YouTube. 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.

47.   "Built by the Factory - iPad / Tablet Magazine Advertising Demo - iAds & HTML5 Ads." bbtfactory.  YouTube. 2010. Web. 13 Nov. 2012.