“Thank you for calling. Your business is important to us, but we really don’t want to talk to you, so please go to our website. It’s a great website that makes perfect sense to us, because we use it all the time, but will confuse the heck out of you. “Of course we could talk …
I used to manage the audio conference department for a publishing company that sold legal reference guides. The guides covered everything you needed to know about the topic, and had monthly updates. If you needed instant information, you could call the editor. Nevertheless, we had a successful business selling 90-minute audio conferences on some narrow …
Continue reading ‘Why pay for a conference when you can read the white paper?’ »
I’m generally not the type to be giving a shout-out to Playboy, but I was encouraged to read that both Playboy and Rolling Stone have started using HTML5. This sidesteps the Evil Empire’s app store. Hurrah! So, to mix my sci-fi references, resistance is not futile, and the more you tighten your grip, Governor Tarkin, …
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Suzanne Vranica has a very good article about the Kindle Fire. See Magazines Join With New Tablet Challenger She is right to point out the growing overhead associated with all these devices. “With each new tablet comes a long and expensive process for publishers, which have to retrofit their content for each device.” That’s exactly …
Publishers are desperate for new sources of revenue, so every time some new gadget comes along they think, “Can this save us?” The answer is usually no. I have a Nook Color, which is a pretty cool little tablet. It’s not much good for “productivity” stuff. I wouldn’t want to compose a document on the …
Continue reading ‘What should publishers do about Amazon’s Kindle Fire?’ »
I just got an email from The Wall Street Journal advertising their digital edition. Part of the ad reads … When it comes to getting critical business news, there’s no substitute for The Wall Street Journal. You may agree or disagree with that claim, but at least it’s a reasonable claim that some people will …
Continue reading ‘Why the WSJ can charge for online content’ »
At a recent conference I was chatting with some SIPA friends about the idea that “something done adequately today is better than something done well tomorrow.” It’s not always true, but it’s often true. I thought of that when I saw this post from Chris Brogan: Simple Plans Executed Trump Complex Plans Still Planned.
Andy McLaughlin told me today that every time someone asks the question in the headline of this post, a kitten dies. (He was quoting some tweet from the SIPA conference in June.) Sorry, kitty. The canonical response seems to be “That’s the wrong question,” which simply makes my head hurt. When someone asks about the …
Netflix has the right idea. With my Netflix subscription I can watch movies on my TV, on my PC, on a mobile device — wherever I want. I have purchased the rights to watch the shows, and I should be able to do that where it’s convenient for me. Customers to subscription products want the …
Continue reading ‘“Buy once read everywhere” needs to include print’ »