Business Management - Industry Trends

When it comes to the magazine, Oprah Winfrey said her staff prepared her to expect a 25 percent decline in newsstand sales after the talk show ended. (It has been closer to 22 percent.) And while she acknowledged that she enjoys “holding the magazine in my hand,” she is pragmatic about print’s future and said she would stop publishing a print magazine if it were not profitable.

The median age for an O reader is 49, according to data tracked by GfK MRI. Ms. Winfrey said she would like to attract women “in their 30s or perhaps their 20s

As the printing industry slowly recovered from one of the most difficult business climates ever, Harald Weimer stepped into his new position as president of Heidelberg USA. It brings me great pleasure welcoming him to my blog to share his outlook on the U.S. printing industry,

Many readers in the mid-Atlantic region report a new appreciation for print media in the wake of Sandy’s mayhem. Among the observations they passed along are: Print works just fine when the power is out. Print’s battery doesn’t die. If you own a printed product, you don’t need a wifi connection to access it.

This year’s elections have generated more than $500 million of added revenue for printing businesses nationwide. A chunk of that money is helping a struggling Wisconsin print industry. Between things like tickets for presidential visits, mailers and voter information flyers, Tom Schorr of Wells Print and Digital Services in Madison says he’s been busy this year.

“For the full year of 2012, we have seen an increase of by say 160-170 percent for election-based printing,” he says.

Schorr said many of his employees have been working 10-15 hours of overtime for the past two months to meet deadlines.

Want a competitive advantage? As NFL teams are discovering, there’s an app for that. Across the league, teams are trading in their 500-page printed playbooks for iPads. In the last year alone, NFL teams using the iPad have quadrupled from three to 12, representing more than one-third of all teams.

Those using PlayerLync report that it has revolutionized the way they push out film and significantly altered the way they communicate.

In addition to saving printing costs, digital playbooks are increasing effective, real-time communication by allowing coaches and quarterbacks to add and share plays with the click of a button.

Like much of print, magazines are at the convoluted intersection of old and new consumption models and technologies. In many instances, a look at the print and Web versions of many mags reveals much the same content in each.

Instead of killing physical books, eBooks have actually encouraged a new level of fetishization of the printed page. Beautifully made editions that sit as objets d’art on the shelf or coffee table are becoming more prevalent. Publishers are investing in more luscious, expensive print editions.

Taschen makes stunning art books that are artworks in themselves, often costing hundreds of dollars. McSweeneys continues to experiment with formats and materials. The attributes that eBooks don’t do well or at all—heavy paper stocks, bookmark ribbons, book plates, artful typography, metallic foils, and stunning, colorful covers—are being implemented in a new flourishing of mass-produced

Last week was a painful one for book publishing. On Monday, D&M Publishers in Vancouver filed for bankruptcy protection, laying off staff and leaving authors uncertain about their future as the company attempts a reorganization. Most reports about the D&M situation mention a number of other Canadian publishers who are no more, thanks to bankruptcies or financial reorganizations.

One inaccurate report in The Globe & Mail newspaper even went so far to assert that this latest news confirms the failure of the independent Canadian publishing industry. That assertion was alarming for two reasons.

The first reason is that it’s not true.

Magazine publishers from a broad cross section of the industry spent two days presenting their best practices and innovative ideas for an era of transition during the third annual ACT III conference at the University of Mississippi. Like at the AMC in San Francisco last week, the underlying theme of the event was whether print media's best days are behind it. And if it is, the question was how long the decline will take, and how far down print will go.

And like at the AMC, there was no broad agreement...no one really knows what form the business will take

Textbook piracy is on the rise, spurred by the expense of course materials and the popularity of computer tablets and e-readers. Some in the publishing industry have likened the proliferation of book-sharing sites to the launch of Napster a decade ago. But learning from the missteps of the music industry, textbook publishers have been quick to embrace the new technology.

Until recently, the industry’s war on piracy has been focused on shutting down the numerous websites devoted to the illegal trading of textbooks. No one went after the users of BitTorrent file-sharing software…That changed last year, when John Wiley and Sons