What is this FREE newsletter all about?
And how much does it cost?"
It is purely a very "personal" and slanted collection of news gathered daily over the Internet, which to me seems relevant and useful about the publishing industry.
I do this as a labor of love and to keep myself as up to date as is possible with the ever changing and advancing "Information Distribution Industry" formerly known as "Publishing".
The price for this service is nothing. It is Free. It is just as easy for me to copy three or four of my industry friends as it is to carbon copy the current list of 6,725 publishing professionals.
I do not write many of the articles, but have been known to add caustic comments when and where it seemed appropriate. After all, as the Japanese proverb goes, "If you believe everything you read, you better not read."
The articles come from publications around the globe that release their information on the Internet.
I have my address book categorized and broken down into six separate areas of focus. I can add your name to any and all of these sections.
Please let me know which list(s) are of interest to you.
1) Prepress/CTP/Digital
2) General Production Information
3) Paper/Mill Information
4) Print Sales related Information
5) Publication Business Information
6) E-Media - The New Business and Economy f Information Distribution.
Bosacks Speaks Out:
Just Because Something works…
Does that mean it isn't Broken?
A Candid Look at the last Remaining Mountain of Publishing Inefficiency
There is a debate going on in the industry whether the newsstand business model is broken. I've been wondering if "broken" is the right word. I have been saying for 35 years that there needs to be an overhaul. In fact, I think it needs to be totally re-thought and retooled. But I will acquiesce on one point: that we have a system that is actually functioning. Functioning, but not very efficient. Does that make you circulators feel better now? It's not broken, only squeaking and groaning under the great mass and stress of its antiquity. A crusty, Victorian, analog business model in an increasingly speed drenched digital world.
All publishers have been attempting to squeeze the manufacturing model until it hurts. The production, editorial and infrastructure staffs of most, if not all, magazines have been trimmed to the painful maximum. Internal technology has been upgraded and digitalized until the very instant the printing plate is made. Everything in the publishing cycle has been honed to 211st century standards of efficiency. That is, until we have the actual product. Then it seems we are at the mercy of the "buggy-whip formula" of magazine distribution. Does it really take 21 days in the 211st century to ship and do the accounting for a monthly magazine? Should we really have to wait months for sell-through results? And do we really need to throw away 70 percent of what we print?
My question is: Do we wait for the natural business laws of supply and demand to fix the problems of newsstand sell-through? Why are we waiting to do the necessary self-analysis and self-correction?
BILLION-DOLLAR WASTE
The statistics are that we actually throw away seven magazines for every 10 that we print. That equates to a billion dollars a year in the dumping grounds of America. That does not include the lost machine time that could be put to more effective use for other publications. It does not include the redundant man-hours first to get the preordained dead edit garbage to the newsstand and then to track, go back and pick it up again.
The procedures for the successful redeployment of our aged edit, now garbage, is long in the tooth and deep in the pockets of all publishers. Why is this last remaining mountain of inefficiency allowed to stand so tall and unassailable? Why have we demanded the utmost in efficiencies everywhere in our industry but here? Why?
One of my best friends, and a long time professional in the industry, says that "if a publisher can make a magazine that pleases his advertisers enough to make them come back next month, pays the bills and gainfully employs the people who make it happen, and all that with a newsstand sell-through of 25 percent, then that's his business, in every sense."
It's hard to dispute when expressed in those terms. But dispute it I will. It's my experience that most of those 25-percenters are really living off their advances from the distributor. And that kind of business model is usually only sustainable for short periods of time. A few months of non-25-percent sell through and history shows us that the publisher is in deep trouble, and deep debt with his distributor. Yes, that system is the publisher's business choice, but I recommend it only for the very brave at heart. I've seen it done and I've done it myself, but the stress levels are intense and the long-term prospects are usually very limited.
We need to be thinking large and small about the sustainability of our industry. Our desired longevity will not be possible to achieve by an extremely slow, costly and wasteful distribution process. I know the system is going to change, I just don't know when. My recommendation is to seek that change now while we still have the power to control our own destiny. If we don't, we will be blindsided by our inability to modernize and hence experience the same fate as the buggy. A buggy is a nice, little antique and still around, but not very practical as a reliable mode of modern transportation.
The distribution of printed magazines needs to be very quick, reliable and extremely cost-effective. In the new world order of limitless digital information distribution, the successful printed magazine publisher will live and die by the ability to have addictive content and a totally efficient delivery system of that content. Nothing else is or should be acceptable.
