Here’s a hopeful article: 6 Things Digital Natives Should Know About Print It’s hopeful because I’m seeing more and more articles like this — by people who are realizing that all the “digital revolution” kids were just trying to sell us something, and that print is neither dead nor dying. 2013 was the year print …
When it comes to magazine publishing, print revenues have been flat or declining. Mostly declining. There are some exceptions, but overall the industry is losing ground. The Big Hope was that people would migrate from print to tablet, and that tablet publishing would become a new source of revenue. Or at least something to slow …
Continue reading ‘The migration from paid print to ad-supported digital’ »
I recently did an A-B test on a web page where one panel showed the product and the premium and the other panel showed a picture of our esteemed chief. The chief won. Then I duplicated the test for a different product on a very similar page. This product goes to a different market, and …
Continue reading ‘Be careful applying one A-B test to another product or market’ »
Today I clicked on an article about how Stephen Hawking says black holes don’t really exist. It attracted my attention because black holes are cool, Stephen Hawking is smart, and he’s one of the people who got everybody interested in them in the first place. Unfortunately, Hawking didn’t really say black holes don’t exist. He …
Continue reading ‘The 25 astonishing ways the internet is changing journalism’ »
I just got a marketing solicitation disguised to look like a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles — demanding my immediate action. Of course if it was from the DMV I would take care of it right away, but as soon as I found out it’s a deception I wanted to find the marketer …
I have an old clothes dryer that just keeps going, although every once in a while I need to do a minor repair. Recently I had to get a new idler pulley. It’s a cheap part that’s very easy to replace. I bought it and installed it. I’m done with idler pulleys for another decade. …
I expected to like Evgeny vs. the internet a lot more than I did. Although I love technology, I am very skeptical of a lot of the pro-technology talk out there. I wanted to hear some serious take-downs of the b.s. that passes for wisdom in the technology space. Unfortunately, it was slim pickings. I …
There was a time when everybody and anybody who knew anything about publishing was hyping the tablet magazine. You simply had to be on the tablet and in Apple’s newsstand. Anything else was “old school,” print-centric thinking. Backwards. If you thought that way you probably dragged your knuckles while eating your Woolly Mammoth sandwich. The …
I’ve read that when you’re asking for donations it’s good to set a standard, like “most people donate $10.” People don’t know what’s “the right” amount, so they want to know what other people do. How much am I supposed to tip the taxi? Should I tip the mail man? Etc. I read about a …
It seems that every magazine is having the same problem. It’s the “death of print.” Something amazing has happened. Magazines no longer fail because they aren’t meeting the needs of their subscribers. They don’t fail because they have misunderstood the market, or because they are serving an interest that doesn’t exist any more. If there …
Continue reading ‘The “death of print” is the excuse of the day’ »