Business Management - Industry Trends

Mary Berner, the new CEO of MPA, set a feisty tone for the 2012 AMC right from the start. “I’m pissed because we have others hijacking our narrative,” Berner said in opening remarks here Monday morning. “By letting others hijack our story, it has become one of doom and gloom, demise and even death. And that conversation is affecting our business.”

Instead, Berner said, the magazine industry is well positioned to thrive, if it has the “balls and the chutzpah” to prevail. Changing the conversation, she said, “has to be faster, louder and with one strong freakin’ voice.”

I am registered as a speaker for the DMA conference starting today and I’m very much looking forward to what looks like an exciting conference with a great lineup of speakers and sessions. What I have been less impressed with is the show sponsors’ approach to marketing.

For instance, one day last week I received 22 pieces of direct mail from sponsors of the event (and 5-10 most other days). This was spray and pray marketing in its most virulent form, overwhelming me with a barrage of on stand competitions. The typical “win an iPad” competition seemed to be at

“The Changing Face of Back to School Survey” of the K-12 education market found that 77 percent of respondents think publishers will go out of business if they do not move to multichannel publishing. And the same percentage think that day is not far off, predicting that within five years printed materials will become less important to their business than digital content.

Even books written recently by contemporary novelists, that can be picked up for the cover price in a book store, can appreciate in value a lot. Hard cover first printings of the first editions of novels by acclaimed authors, particularly those that are signed and in pristine condition, are the most sought after.

A first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” of which just 500 were printed in 1997, was sold by Christie’s in 2007 for over $40,000.

Figuring out which book was actually the ‘true first’ printing and edition can be tricky, but those editions tend to be

Ipsos MediaCT’s “2012 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey” shows that “affluents” (household income of $100,000+) continue to reaffirm the power of the hard copy print publications in their lives, even as tablet and smartphone penetration grows disproportionately in this demographic.

Recently, I have been hired by corporations to review, analyze, and comment on the performance of a multitude of integrated cross-media marketing programs. I have discovered a lack of post-program review and assessment, particularly from the print end of the business.

Fully 55 percent of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 (nicknamed YA book) are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44, according to the “Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age” study by Bowker Market Research.

In 2009, I was a freshman at RIT’s School of Print Media with a major titled “New Media Publishing.” As a graduating senior this spring, I could not be more excited to enter the industry as a media architect.

Total advertising expenditures in the second quarter of 2012 increased 0.9 percent from a year ago and finished the period at $34.4 billion, according to data released today by Kantar Media, the leading provider of strategic advertising and marketing information. Total spending for the first six months of the year grew 1.9 percent to $67.1 billion.

For many years, Folio: and Readex Research have conducted a survey of magazine production professionals—noting their preferences and tendencies on the subject of creating a finished product. As the magazine industry struggles with technological and financial chaos, it is important to hold the proclamations of industry pundits (including this writer) at arm’s length, and look for data supporting actual change.