ABC REPORTS STRONG SWING TO MOBILE MARKET

BY A LARGE NUMBER OF PUBLISHERS 

The Wooden Horse last week reported on a study by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) that approximately 70% of publishers are now turning their attention to the mobile market and 80% of respondents stated felt that people would continue to rely more heavily on the devices to access the information they seek. 

Almost 75% of respondents currently have a smart phone application in production or plan to develop one in the next year or so. They anticipate growth of mobile traffic to their web sites of between 5 and 25% over the next 24 months. Almost half of the executives surveyed stated that mobile devices have already added as much as 10% to their web traffic. 

With all the hoopla lately about the mobile market’s growth and its future potential, this may well prove a worthwhile addition to your promotional agenda. 

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12-YEAR-OLD BLOOMBERG PRESS

ANNOUNCES IT WILL CLOSE ITS DOORS 

With a history averaging 28 or so new business and finance titles every year since 1996 and a backlist of around 140 titles, Bloomberg Press has revealed that it plans to close its doors shortly. No date has officially been set, and no reason for the closing has been stated. 

The company says it will try to absorb the nine members of its staff in other divisions. The closing follows the call for Chapter 7 liquidation by Graphic Arts Center, another mid-sized publisher. 

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HOW TO MAKE PAID DIGITAL CONTENT WORK 

Media people from every category have wrangled over this challenging question of paid online content for more than a year. As print newspaper failures multiply, this concern grows in immediacy and importance. A fascinating article in the Wrap.com last week is well worth reviewing by everyone involved in the issue of presenting content on the Web. 

Dylan Stableford, the article’s author, makes several very cogent points. Although lots of publishers are discussing the subject, a critical mass must be created to make it doable.  As Stableford writes in his piece, “Enough major players have to move to a paid model simultaneously, or it won’t work.”  

The article states that 60% of newspaper execs claim to be considering options for paid content, according to the American Press Institute. Unfortunately 90% of those publishing digitally don’t currently charge for content, and that makes the conversion to paid extremely difficult and risky.  

The second concern that Stableford expresses is the fear that most readers won’t be willing to pay. He quotes a study by Forrester Research that reports 80% of the 5,000 consumers polled state they won’t bother with online newspapers or magazines if they aren’t free. The Boston Consulting Group found in its survey of 5,000 Internet users that 48% said they would be willing to pay for news content. The average price respondents set was $3 per month, hardly enough to cover staff and operational expenses. 

With tycoons like Rupert Murdoch pushing hard to develop a digital pay program and several newspapers moving into the fray, it behooves every one of us involved in editorial of any type to keep abreast of developments in this highly volatile arena. You can find the Stableford article at www.thewrap.com.   

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PRICES FOR PAPARAZZI PHOTOS

PLUNGE BETWEEN 31% AND 50% 

Beware you freelance photographers. The market is tightening severely. The Daily Beast

reports that prices for celebrity photographs by the Paparazzi have plunged due to the economic climate. The drop-off has also been felt by the agencies that employ them.  

The Beast studied a large group of photos sold by one agency between 2005 and 2007. Adjusted for current economic levels, the fall-off ranged from 31% for typical celebrity shots to 50% for the high end of the market. 

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AMERICANS LAG BEHIND OTHERS WILLING

TO PAY TO RECEIVE NEWS ONLINE 

The controversy over readers’ willingness to pay for news online received a new twist this week, when the Boston Consulting Group announced results of its survey of 5,000 people that showed 48%  of Internet users in the U.S. would be willing to pay to receive news online, whether through their web sites or on mobile devices. 

That figure was surprisingly lower than nine Western European countries that were also surveyed. Only Britain posted a figure as low as the American level. Indeed, in several countries more than 60% were willing to pay. 

The survey asked Americans the amount they would be willing to spend. The answer averaged $3 a month. With prices that low, it would be hard to sustain a top quality staff and produce a decent report, even though the cost of producing an online paper is far less than one in print. 

However, the gloom and doom of so many prognosticators who have already killed and buried the news industry received quite a come-uppance from Scarborough Research’s most recent report showing that 74% of American adults (171 million) read a newspaper last week, whether it was on or offline. 

The firm reported that despite “The fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well. While circulation numbers have fallen over the past six months, total readership is somewhat different from circulation because of pass-along papers. 

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SF CHRONICLE TURNS TO GLOSSY PAPER

IN AN ATTEMPT TO REVERSE FALLING SALES 
 

Seeking to improve both readership and advertising levels, the San Francisco Chronicle has begun a program of replacing newsprint with glossy paper stock for its page one and section fronts. Some additional glossy pages may be scattered throughout the sections. 

After losing a little more than half of its circulation over the last eight years, the Chronicle management believes the new “magazine” look will attract more readers and certainly woo advertisers who will take advantage of this more elegant  presentation of their wares. 

The newspaper, part of the Hearst group, posted a 26% loss in weekday circulation during this year’s seven-month period from April through September, the highest loss posted by any major newspaper in the country. Can a simple change in paper stock

turn the bottom line around? We’ll soon see. 

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AT LAST! REASSURING NEWS

FROM THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY 

Following month after month of gloom and doom, it was wonderfully refreshing to learn that revenue this year beat last year’s figure for 22 of the leading titles on the list of periodicals tracked by the Magazine Publishers of America.  

The Wooden Horse, Meg Weaver’s excellent weekly report on the industry, reveals that ad pages for the month of December are up in the top U.S. magazines. Even those publications that posted lower figures were not down by percentages as large as they have been during past months in this period of lean advertising. 

For example, while this month’s edition of  Martha Stewart Living was down, the slippage was less than 5%, far better than what had been happening over previous months. 

Despite all of its troubles, Conde Nast can take heart that its December edition of Glamour is 5% ahead of last year. Hearst is looking at a very cheerful holiday with December increases already posted for Cosmopolitan, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire and O. 

It will be interesting to see whether the increases hold up as the first quarter of 2010 grinds along. 

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CHECK OUT “AUTHORSROOST” ON THE WEB. RUN BY

TWO SEASONED PROS, IT PROVIDES RESOURCES & OTHER HELP 

A January launch is scheduled for www.authorsroost.com, a brand new organization that will offer varied resources and lots of promo opportunities for authors and speakers. Run by Joe Carroccio and Paul McNeese, two trusted professionals, the program was test-run in Arizona and proved so successful that it is being launched on a national basis.  

It is principally designed to help members gain both local and national exposure for their work. The program will offer broadcast opportunities through its own radio station, and assist in placing members on other broadcast outlets. 

Teleseminars will be available for members, as will free articles on various aspects of writing, publishing and promoting their work.  

 Check out the web site for further information, and possibly consider becoming a beta-tester for the program and play a role in helping to design and shape the program to meet the needs you and your peers need most. 
 

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HERE’S A NOVEL IDEA: FORMER EDITOR

PROPOSES GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES FOR THE PRESS 

In a study commissioned by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr and co-author Michael Schudson proposed government subsidies as a way to bolster failing newspapers. The approach includes legislative changes allowing news organization to function as nonprofits or as hybrids of limited liability companies and charities. 

Even more upsetting is the comment by the journalism school’s dean, Nicholas Lemann, that the report makes clear that the Internet “has brought the days when privately owned newspapers could be the main bearers of this reporting function to an end.”  

Downie and Schudson draw a comparison between their proposal and government subsidy of the arts. They suggest that the funds come from FCC’s surcharges on phone bills and be used for “worthy initiatives in local news reporting.”  

In an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, newspaper entrepreneur and adjunct journalism professor Seth Lipsky took umbrage with the proposal. He wrote, “The notion that any of them (newspapers) might be sustained by government subsidies strikes me as profoundly contrary to a free press. Subsidies are the enemy of competition.”  That’s not a very comfortable outlook “as the newspaper industry flails around for a solution.” 

I certainly agree with Lipsky when he writes that “Mr. Downie has stepped onto an exceptionally slippery slope.” 

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USPS PROMISES NOT TO RAISE FIRST CLASS

AND PERIODICALRATES NEXT YEAR

NO SIMILAR PROMISES FOR MEDIA MAIL 
 

In statements made last week, the U.S. Postal Service claimed it will not increase rates for what it calls “market dominant products” in the coming year. That category includes mailings of periodicals (magazines), first class and some categories of Parcel Post.  

That set a lot of minds at ease during a gathering of the Magazine Publishers of America last week, and should be welcome news to freelancers concerned about the stability of the periodicals they write for.  

But what about the concerns of book authors?  USPS has said nothing about media mail, that very special category that saves us thousands of dollars each year by reducing the mailing costs of the books we sell. 

The postal service has experienced a huge fall-off in activity over the past several years bottoming out at 202.7 billion pieces of mail in 2008.Projections for next year (2010) are as low as 160 billion.

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