We need to stop talking about “digital” The imprecise language people use about the “digital transformation” of publishing is getting frustrating. I just read an article that says “Hearst got a late start in digital.” Gee, thank you very much. That tells me almost nothing. Saying that a publishing company has increased its investment (or …
There are lots of ways you can improve a landing page to get better sales results, and wise marketers do lots of testing to find out what pages work best. But have you wondered … If you manipulate someone into buying a subscription have you done yourself a favor? There are all sorts of ways …
Rather than sporadic posts, I’m going to write one weekly column on my thoughts on issues in publishing. I’m not going to limit myself to B2B or even professional publishing. Some of the material will be about transformations in the industry. Some will be about writing. Some will be about self-publishing. I’ll discuss magazines, newsletters, …
There were some interesting discussions at BIMS about optimizing email for mobile, including a great session by my friends from Real Magnet. This is an important thing to watch because more and more people are reading (or at least triaging) their email on mobile devices. My biggest concern is the next step — getting the …
You probably have it in your pocket. I had a lot of interesting conversations at BIMS about monetizing mobile traffic. The concern is that as traffic moves from a desktop, where there are several ads per page view, to tablet and mobile, where there are fewer ads per page view, it’s harder to keep the …
Continue reading ‘The dangerous technology that’s going to kill your ad-supported website’ »
A colleague went to a meeting of publishers — mostly magazine publishers — and reported that many of them are finally realizing that this “the iPad will save the magazine” stuff should be filed right there next to “the Segway will transform city life.” Digital, yes — in a very fragmented, confusing way. iPad magazines, …
Continue reading ‘The end of this iPad nonsense, finally?’ »
Apple never even tried to understand magazine publishing, and magazine publishers were stupid to play along. Now Publishers want out of Apple’s Newsstand jail. It was a bad deal from the start, but publishers were willing to jump in because of all the breathless promises about the “digital revolution” — that still hasn’t done much …
Continue reading ‘The Apple newsstand was an abortion from day one’ »
This morning I gave a talk to some Chinese businessmen on publishing. Mostly on ebook publishing. Right now, the big publishers are facing serious competition on many fronts. The Unique Selling [Proposition] (or USP) of a trade-publishing house is its ability to print large numbers of physical books cheaply and get them into lots of …
Continue reading ‘If you think publishers are stressed now …’ »
Matthew Ingram posted an interesting article a few days ago: Journalism’s biggest competitors are things that don’t even look like journalism. The point is that people have more options today. Think of all the things you used to get from the newspaper. Classified ads. Information on style trends. Political opinion. Social opinion. Local news. National …
Conversion rates on mobile aren’t very good, at least in part (I suspect) because nobody wants to fill out a form with one of those silly keyboards on a smart phone. Especially if you have autocorrect! Argh. However, a lot of people like to shop on their mobile device. They may be at a store, …