Andrea Weinfurt
An one-stop shop for magazine content is just around the corner. With e-readers emerging as a hot topic in the magazine industry, the idea of selling content in one centralized location has become a priority.
A new publisher’s consortium was recently announced and includes publishing big wigs Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, Time Inc. and News Corp. The group will work together to sell digital content from a single hub, similar to Hulu.com.
While this new product may be more accessible, it could spell doom some magazine staffers. Like iTunes, where individual songs are available for purchase, this new product could separate a magazine’s content and sell it in a single serving.
Users could sift through material and purchase only the articles of interest to them. Excerpts from articles seem a likely way to lure consumers to purchase the entire article but it raises the question: what happens to those struggling writers without an established following?
The prospect of having success measured by individual story sales is daunting. With magazine staffs dwindling, this new product could serve as a scorecard for writers. If a story doesn’t sell well, is the writer’s job in danger?
Gawker infamously implemented a pay scale based on page views and the site, and particularly its owner Nick Denton, were widely criticized. Editors quit in protest and complained content was being sensationalized in order to attract page views. Magazine writers could face the same pressure of attracting sales but at the risk of sacrificing credibility.
Since it is only in its planning phases, it’s hard to know what the end product will look like for consumers and could provide content across many digital devices. With content so accessible, magazines could see a considerable upswing in sales and it could jumpstart the struggling industry.
What do you think this new product means for consumers? What does it mean for writers and editors at these magazines? Will this new product drive a difference in the content provided?
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Tags: Conde Nast, Hearst, Magazines, Meredith, News Corp., publishers consortium, Time Inc.
Thanks for this post Andrea. The phenomenon of magazine writers being held accountable for individual article sales will surely have an impact on how PR pros interact with them. How that shakes out will be interesting to watch.
This publisher’s consortium is interesting, to be sure, but I’m not sure exactly how it will work in practice. In theory it would work like iTunes, but the major difference is that iTunes provides value in the form of being able to replay a song over and over, thereby creating ownership of the content. Magazines do not offer a product that people want to own and replay over and over again. If magazines hope to recreate this model, I think that it will have to be in the form of an all-inclusive subscription to all of the content available from that media source.
I mean, when was the last time you read a magazine article twice? I would be hesitant to buy a single article unless A) it was literally pennies per article or B) if it meant that I would be able to access similar articles for free after paying.
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I tend to read the type of Magazines where re-reading articles can actually be common. Some literary magazines do offer that kind of product; Mystery, Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines to name a few. In those fields the struggling writers may actually find more readership than they do currently, as excerpts from the stories may entice people to read them. Likewise there is no sacrifice of credibility when it comes to fiction. When discussing magazines it is always wise to remember that fiction also comes in magazine form.
Editors will still have the difficult task of figuring out what to publish, now they’ll have to also figure out which format they wish to publish it in.
Is an on-line magazine still a magazine or should there be another name for that method of delivery?