Not Exactly Bonus Content: Are You Multi-Platform? - Issue #65
Anthropologist Margaret Mead is said to have defined the earliest signs of civilization in ancient cultures by the discovery of broken bones that had been healed. In other words, if a culture could take the time to heal a person who had been so terribly injured, then the culture was developed enough to care for others.
The business of magazines in the post Covid-19 world can be a dangerous place. Our supply chains shattered and are far from healed. Paper mills that used to have the luxury of creating unique and interesting papers for their printers are streamlining supplies. Printers have less flexibility for their run times. Magazine categories that used to support multiple competitors are now winnowing the survivors down to one, or maybe two titles.
Subscription growth is plateauing. Ad revenue may be stagnant or declining. Prices and wages are rising. And I'm going to spare you all of the links to these points because chances are you've already seen it.
In his most recent launch monitor, Dr. Samir Husni (aka Mr. Magazine) notes the launch of 22 regular frequency magazines in the third quarter of 2022 and 62 titles during the first three quarters. By comparison, we saw 81 in 2021.
If the world of magazines is like a civilization, is it crumbling? If you're working in the daily grind it may certainly feel like that. The newsstand accounted for less than 4% of all paid circulation in the last AAM report. Ad sales continue to drift downward. Paper prices continue to rise. Legacy titles are being shuttered, shunted off to digital only websites and apps or converted to occasional SIPs. Small and medium sized publishers are being bought out by much larger legacy operations and legacy companies are being snapped up by "digital first" companies that want access to their "brands."
Or...maybe...
Maybe my opening analogy is not so good because capitalism, in it's purest 21st century form doesn't really care very much about organizations or people.
To be a successful in magazines in 2022, you should be multi-platform. If you're going to succeed in print, you'd better know how to get paper, negotiate with your printer, attract readers to your subscription page, let your readers know where to find the magazine on the newsstand, get subscribers to renew. Show your readers that you can do e-commerce and that you have interesting related products for them to purchase. Have engaging content on your social sites that encourage visitors to be more than passive viewers scrolling by and at the most, clicking "like."
Yeah. Multi-platform.
Quite a few years ago, when there was a whole debate about what a magazine was, industry consultant BoSacks set out a pretty explicit set of parameters that defined a contemporary magazine:
Overall, I think that this is a pretty good description. Most of the publishers I work with have the printed magazine that fit all of the traditional parameters. But they also have websites that are updated with multiple articles that may or may not have originally been published in the print edition. There is often an app that replicates the web experience on a portable device. Many include podcasts, e-commerce, live events. All of them have social media sites, sometimes on all of the different platforms.
There's a tendency in the human experience to always presume that in the past, things were better. That our country, culture, industry is in decline. If you work in today's magazine media, and have been here for more than a few years, that's an easy emotional trap to fall into.
But I'm going to challenge that even though I sometimes find myself thinking that way. The reality is that the industry is changing. It is always changing, and we can either adjust with the change, or not. Companies, bosses, user experiences can be great, or terrible, or just OK. How we react to that, how we deal with that, it ultimately up to us.
Your Moment of Magazine Zen...
That’s it. That’s all I have for you this week. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please give it a boost by clicking “Like” and then subscribe. You’ll get a brand new release in your email in-box every Tuesday. Or sometimes you'll get this sort of "bonus" content.
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I'm out! I smell popcorn burning in the break room. I hope you have a great week!