Digital Publishing Insights

Times are changing. Readers now behave differently than ever. They read different things and in different new ways. And now, they no longer want simply to read – they want to write too. They want to be publishers of their own thoughts and own ideas. Each one of these wannabe individual Publishers (somewhere deep in their heart) want to be bigger than the New York Times (and probably Wall Street Journal put together).

There is no debate. Print publishing is under fire. Dramatic changes in reading habits have hit print readership badly. This has pushed print circulation and ad revenues down. Increasing competition from new media channels for eyeballs and the ad budgets have made life difficult for the circulation and ad sales departments in the publisher’s office. Increasing production and distribution costs have further squeezed the margins in print.

This is no epitaph. It’s a simple idea for print Publishers. Stop thinking in terms of ‘print’. Print is simply a tool. A tool that has worked wonderfully for over past 400 years. It has given us our familiar ‘front-page’ that we have grown up having breakfast with or the ‘page 3’ that we have spent several leisurely moments with. A tool that has taught many things to the online news portals. A tool that will continue to play its role for the next several years. But, this tool WILL eventually phase out as it gives way to new tools that are more interactive, rich and ‘now’. There is no competition between these different tools. And, one must not make the mistake of thinking so. Unfortunately, the inertia with which Newspapers and Magazines have pushed change within their organizations is a proof that this mistake has been made for last several years now.

Just like an investment portfolio, one should never marry a stock. One’s exposure to a stock should be proportional to the returns one expects from it. If new stocks provide the same or more returns, one should make ‘changes’ in the portfolio. Just because one doesn’t understand a new business is no reason to get territorial about existing business. After all, change is the single-most consistent factor in business and how you adapt to change the single-biggest determiner of success.

Publishers are in the business of providing information to subscribers and a marketplace to advertisers. Media is all about that. Epublishing is helping publishers to increase the add revenue.

In today’s media, mobile is hot. Social networking is booming. And users are addicted to rich media. And, not for no reason. All these are interactive, rich and ‘now’.

New media channels have changed the rules of the media game forever. What took a newspaper or magazine decades to build is being done by new media companies in a matter of months and years. Adoption of new media by publishers is no longer “whether” but “when” and “how best”.

A newspaper today can be printed in Paris but delivered in Tokyo – that same very moment. Publishers can sell more copies, without ever printing them. A newspaper can be published in print, web, mobile and iPods – in the same go. Digital publishing companies like Pressmart are helping print Publishers in distributing their content on multiple delivery channels including web, mobile, RSS, podcast, social media and search engines over a seamless 360-degree full-service platform.

Times are changing. Newspapers have a brilliant new court to play in. They need to remember to show up.