BoSacks Speaks Out: I have long held the theory and prophesized in this newsletter and elsewhere, that digital magazines will save our industry. Aggregated data and web sites are not the solution to our woes; paginated performance and delivery is. If there is a future for magazine publishers and you have a part in it, it is that simple.

There are many companies that provide digital magazines today and there might be many more on the horizon. Some will make the test of time and prosper and others will not. But those that survive will be part of our new infrastructure for a long time to come. In magazine geologic time, we are finally minutes away from the right-reading, easy-to-use digital substrate. When that happens, the brilliance of the digital magazine format will become clear to dullest of luddites. The magazine industry needs to be working on competent easy-to-read digital editions now that are built for the substrate that they live in.
There are good digital editions and there are terrible digital editions out there right now. The publishers that have retooled their content and designed their product for ease of use and ease of the reading experience are doing quite well.

One of the best examples that I know of is VIV magazine. They are pioneering the non-zoom-in digital edition. If you haven\'t seen it, please check it out. Look at the ads, look at the edit and look at the amazingly pleasant reading experience. Any topic can be covered this way. This just happens to be woman\'s fashion. Popular Science has done the same thing with their Popular Science Genius edition.

In the article below you see that Google is getting onto the digital magazine space. We had best as publishers prepare our own editions of paginated media before someone else takes that space away from us. If we don\'t do our best to absolutely own that turf, someone else will.
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Reaganhttp://www.observer.com/2009/media/google-books-whacky-magazine-archives
Google Books has just launched a digitized magazine stand. In their never-ending quest to archive all media, from Web sites to books, Google is taking on the publishing world and scanning entire issues of magazines, ads and all. Most issues are usually two or three years old--or even a few decades old. It\'s kind of like heading into your parents\' attic and checking out all the yellowingLIFE issues--only online.

Jeffrey Pang, a software engineer at Google Books, built the new feature. He kept getting requests from friends and family to allow them to browse all the magazines available on Google Books. Before, they had to search for them individually. "Someone even created a Facebook group called Get Google Magazine Search to provide a list of indexed titles," he wrote on the Google Book\'s official blog yesterday. "The group has 45 members and growing, so before it reached millions of members and there were protests in front of my house, I decided that I better act fast."

Users can browse magazine covers or look at an alphabetical list of titles. There\'s also links on some issues\' tables of contents, so users can go directly to specific articles.

There\'s plenty to click through, but here are a few titles and issues we suggest you check out:
Mother Jones\' January/February 2000 issue - Read Ian Frazier\'s tribute to pay phones and how they "recall a commonality in our culture." Or Richard Dreyfuss on how Agent Orange continued to affect the Vietnamese 25 years after the U.S. originally dumped the chemical weapon on their land.

New York Magazine\'s Dec. 22, 1997 issue - Oh, David Denby onTitanic! MOMA\'s expansion, Daniel Boulud\'s Daniel restaurant, Ted Turner\'s Media Magazine are all there. And, Janeane Garofalo, Leigh Feldman, Jerry Speyer, Stephen Stondheim are featured as New Yorkers of the Year. Ah, the good ol\' days.

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Future of Publishing Explained

In just the last few months, I have delivered many lectures to many groups involved with the publishing industry. I have been to Santa Fe to speak to the International Regional Magazine Assoc. and to San Diego to speak to RISI, representing the global forest products industry. I have been to Washington, DC to speak to ASBPE (American Society of Business Publication Editors). I have been to New York for the BPA and to Boulder for the MPA. And today I will be speaking at The Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference (DPAC 4) in New York City.

No matter where I go or who I talk to the essence of what everybody wants to know is the same thing - what is the future of publishing, and what is going to be my place in that future? Without all the details, my message is and has been that we are headed into the next golden age of publishing.

That being said, I wanted you to know that one of my other companies,mediaIDEAS, announced the launch of a new comprehensive report analyzing and quantifying the opportunities for e-paper e-readers over the next decade. This might sound like a plug on my part, but it isn\'t. What I want to do is share some of the broader insights of the report and key in on what I see are some of the opportunities of our industry.

My partner and the report\'s author, Nick Hampshire, stated that "E-paper e-readers will be one of the major disruptive technologies of the early 21st century." He said, "It will change the nature of publishing and related print industries forever, ushering in a host of innovative ways to present, market, and distribute content."

The report shows that since the first e-paper e-reader came onto the market in 2004, these devices, with their "green" credentials of reducing paper consumption, have already proved very popular with consumers, and the market for them is booming. By 2006, there were 3 types of devices available, by 2007, there were 5, and currently there are over 40. This number will more than double in the next twelve months. Unit sales are also booming. In 2008, 1.1 million e-paper display-based e-readers were sold. In 2010 that number will rise to about 6 million. And by 2020 global annual e-reader sales will reach 446 million units with a value of over $25 billion.

Therefore, if we can all agree that the digital universe that we now find ourselves embedded into is not going to go away, then I think we have to seriously consider what the primary reading substrate is going to be. If Nick is right in his research and there will be 6 million e-paper display-based e-readers sold in 2010, the publishing community has to stand up and take notice. We have to know and recognize that people will be reading on those platforms and they will be reading our words, thoughts, and ideas.

The questions that will obviously come to mind next are, how will we make money and what is the correct business platform? I will admit that like everybody else I am still working on the answers. I have proposed the Cable TV model of consortium publishing for a decade, and I have read that Time Inc. management is now focusing on that idea. We have all heard that Rupert Murdoch and all the newspapers are trying to develop a pay-for-copy model. I am not too certain of the success of that approach, but I am sure that people will write and people will read and that it will be a lucrative business to put the reader and the writer together.

So the platform will clearly be digital e-paper and any business model may have to follow the cart. But to think that there will be no successful business model for digital publishing is ludicrous. There are hundreds of billions of dollars for grabs in the information distribution business. I do not guarantee you a piece of the action, but I know damn well that plenty of people will do very well in the new digital age of publishing. Think fast, think courageous, and think digital.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Are any of you actually shocked by this news of venerable magazine closings. Is this a repeat of the bible story of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and seven years of lean? Well, we have had our years of plenty in decades of successful profitability for the magazine industry leading to what appears to be an excess saturation and duplication of our product. I think that after some introspection we as an industry will arise healthy and perhaps a bit leaner as in the biblicalallegory, but also better able to move onward and forward. These cycles are, sad to say, normal. I think when we get a chance to look back at this point in time with the perspective of history it might even be perceived as good for the industry. That is no doubt incredibly hard to take right now if you have just been laid off and your magazine has closed. But five years from now when you will be doing something else, you will look back at your career and you will have the perspective of history to help you see that all this was inevitable and, in an odd sort of way, perhaps necessary.

"A man\'s life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures- figurative" John Keats (English Romantic Poet. 1795-1821)
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The end of the venerable publication and three others underscores the swift and brutal fall of the once highflying business amid a steep drop in ad revenue. Two years ago, Conde Nast\'s Vogue published its biggest issue, an advertising-packed behemoth that symbolized the prosperity of New York\'s glittering magazine industry as it rode the twin booms in the economy and luxury spending to dramatic heights. Generous expense accounts were de rigueur at glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines. Some top editors and publishers enjoyed clothing allowances and mortgage assistance. Even lowly assistants flitted about in chauffeur-driven town cars. But that culture has been turned on its head as the magazine business reels from the battered economy, the drop in advertising revenue and restraints on expenses. Conde Nast\'s unexpected closure Monday of venerable Gourmet and three other magazines underscored the swift and brutal fall of what had been one of the city\'s most elite and free-spending industries.

The folding of Gourmet, in particular, shook up the insular magazine world. The 69-year-old arbiter of culinary taste was edited by Ruth Reichl, a bestselling author and former restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The closure caught Reichl herself flat-footed. "Like everyone else, I found out this morning," she said. "I can\'t talk about it now, it\'s too raw. I\'ve got to pack up my office."

For Conde Nast, surviving the recession and a steep drop in ad revenue was paramount in the decision to close Gourmet, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie magazines. "These changes, combined with cost and workforce reductions now underway throughout the company, will speed the recovery of our current businesses and enable us to pursue new ventures," Chief Executive Charles H. Townsend said. Among those new initiatives, to be detailed in the coming weeks, he said, are digital versions of the company\'s brands using "new devices and distribution channels."

There had been rumors that Gourmet might be in the cross hairs because Conde Nast also owns its chief competitor, Bon Appetit, based in Los Angeles. Bon Appetit has more readers than Gourmet, 1.3 million to 950,000, Conde Nast said. Gourmet also had a reputation for being expensive to publish, with long features by well-known writers. Bon Appetit was focused on recipe-driven content.

The industry contraction is being driven by the plunge in ad pages -- the lifeblood of the industry. Ad pages have slumped 22% industrywide this year, and some publications have suffered far worse, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Vogue is off 33%, Architectural Digest is down 49%, and Esquire has fallen 27%. At Conde Nast\'s two food publications, Gourmet saw a 46.9% drop in ad revenue and a 50% decline in ad pages in the second quarter from last year\'s April-June period, while Bon Appetit\'s revenue fell 36% and ad pages declined 40%, according to Publishers Information Bureau.

It\'s unclear whether the drop in advertising has hit bottom, but throughout the industry employees and experts are bracing for more job cuts. "There is fear everywhere," said Samir Husni, who heads the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. "Fear of losing jobs, fear of losing entire magazines." The culture and spending at BusinessWeek are far more subdued than at Conde Nast\'s glamour magazines, but employees\' fear for their jobs is palpable. Owner McGraw-Hill Cos. put the well-regarded but money-losing magazine on the block over the summer, and its writers, well-versed in chronicling corporate America\'s downsizing, expect deep cuts regardless of who buys the magazine. "There\'s a sense of the inevitable," said one employee who did not want to be identified for fear of antagonizing bosses. "However this shakes out, a lot of people are going to be out of work."

The cutbacks carry a particular sting at Conde Nast because of the company\'s famous spending habits and the imperious manners of some top editors. The main character in the movie "The Devil Wears Prada" was a thinly veiled knockoff of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. And prized editors and publishers are as recognizable for their appearances at the trendiest restaurants and fanciest parties as for the stewardship of their publications. Conde Nast had hired management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to review its operations, and McKinsey recommended roughly 25% budget cuts at some magazines.

More temperate spending has been showing up in ways large and small. At last month\'s Fashion Week in New York, a must-be-seen event for the glitterati of New York glamour magazines, some Vogue editors hailed cabs rather than hopping into waiting town cars as in years past, according to one observer. That\'s a far cry from the 1999 launch party for Talk magazine -- a flashy but short-lived publication headed by celebrity editor Tina Brown and bankrolled by a joint venture of Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Magazines. It was an extravagant affair for 800 guests at the Statue of Liberty. "It was one hell of a party," Garfinkle recalled. "You don\'t see that anymore."

Are any of you actually shocked by this news of venerable magazine closings. Is this a repeat of the bible story of Joseph and the seven years of plenty and seven years of lean? Well, we have had our years of plenty in decades of successful profitability for the magazine industry leading to what appears to be an excess saturation and duplication of our product. I think that after some introspection we as an industry will arise healthy and perhaps a bit leaner as in the biblicalallegory, but also better able to move onward and forward. These cycles are, sad to say, normal.

I think when we get a chance to look back at this point in time with the perspective of history it might even be perceived as good for the industry. That is no doubt incredibly hard to take right now if you have just been laid off and your magazine has closed. But five years from now when you will be doing something else, you will look back at your career and you will have the perspective of history to help you see that all this was inevitable and, in an odd sort of way, perhaps necessary.

"A man\'s life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life - a life like the scriptures- figurative" John Keats (English Romantic Poet. 1795-1821)
Conde Nast\'s closure of Gourmet shakes up magazine industryBy Walter Hamilton and Russ ParsonsReporting from Los Angeles and New Yorkhttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-conde-nast6-2009oct06,0,7266456.story The end of the venerable publication and three others underscores the swift and brutal fall of the once highflying business amid a steep drop in ad revenue. Two years ago, Conde Nast\'s Vogue published its biggest issue, an advertising-packed behemoth that symbolized the prosperity of New York\'s glittering magazine industry as it rode the twin booms in the economy and luxury spending to dramatic heights. Generous expense accounts were de rigueur at glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines. Some top editors and publishers enjoyed clothing allowances and mortgage assistance. Even lowly assistants flitted about in chauffeur-driven town cars. But that culture has been turned on its head as the magazine business reels from the battered economy, the drop in advertising revenue and restraints on expenses.

Conde Nast\'s unexpected closure Monday of venerable Gourmet and three other magazines underscored the swift and brutal fall of what had been one of the city\'s most elite and free-spending industries. The folding of Gourmet, in particular, shook up the insular magazine world. The 69-year-old arbiter of culinary taste was edited by Ruth Reichl, a bestselling author and former restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. The closure caught Reichl herself flat-footed. "Like everyone else, I found out this morning," she said. "I can\'t talk about it now, it\'s too raw. I\'ve got to pack up my office." Reichl elaborated in a Twitter message to readers: "Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support. It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I\'m packing. We\'re all stunned, sad."

The moves mark a new cover story: Cost cutting is suddenly in style. Publishers have closed numerous magazines this year, reduced the circulation and frequency of some publications and tossed dozens of journalists out of work. The result is a downsizing of the industry\'s larger-than-life character. "I don\'t think we\'ll ever see the heyday again," said Roberta Garfinkle, director for print strategy at TargetCast tcm, which buys advertising for large companies. "The business will come back as the economy starts to rebound, but certainly not to the levels it was once." The carnage at Conde Nast -- the queen bee of New York glossies with such marquee titles as Vogue, Vanity Fair and the New Yorker -- shouldn\'t have been a surprise given that Conde had two food magazines and three bridal titles. There had been rumors that Gourmet might be in the cross hairs because Conde Nast also owns its chief competitor, Bon Appetit, based in Los Angeles. Bon Appetit has more readers than Gourmet, 1.3 million to 950,000, Conde Nast said. Gourmet also had a reputation for being expensive to publish, with long features by well-known writers. Bon Appetit was focused on recipe-driven content. The industry contraction is being driven by the plunge in ad pages -- the lifeblood of the industry. Ad pages have slumped 22% industrywide this year, and some publications have suffered far worse, according to Media Industry Newsletter.

Vogue is off 33%, Architectural Digest is down 49%, and Esquire has fallen 27%. At Conde Nast\'s two food publications, Gourmet saw a 46.9% drop in ad revenue and a 50% decline in ad pages in the second quarter from last year\'s April-June period, while Bon Appetit\'s revenue fell 36% and ad pages declined 40%, according to Publishers Information Bureau. It\'s unclear whether the drop in advertising has hit bottom, but throughout the industry employees and experts are bracing for more job cuts. "There is fear everywhere," said Samir Husni, who heads the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. "Fear of losing jobs, fear of losing entire magazines." The culture and spending at BusinessWeek are far more subdued than at Conde Nast\'s glamour magazines, but employees\' fear for their jobs is palpable. Owner McGraw-Hill Cos. put the well-regarded but money-losing magazine on the block over the summer, and its writers, well-versed in chronicling corporate America\'s downsizing, expect deep cuts regardless of who buys the magazine. "There\'s a sense of the inevitable," said one employee who did not want to be identified for fear of antagonizing bosses. "However this shakes out, a lot of people are going to be out of work."

At last month\'s Fashion Week in New York, a must-be-seen event for the glitterati of New York glamour magazines, some Vogue editors hailed cabs rather than hopping into waiting town cars as in years past, according to one observer. That\'s a far cry from the 1999 launch party for Talk magazine -- a flashy but short-lived publication headed by celebrity editor Tina Brown and bankrolled by a joint venture of Walt Disney Co. and Hearst Magazines. It was an extravagant affair for 800 guests at the Statue of Liberty. "It was one hell of a party," Garfinkle recalled. "You don\'t see that anymore."

BoSacks Speaks Out: Google Offers Digitized Magazines

BoSacks Speaks Out: The Future of Publishing Explaine

BoSacks Speaks Out: Are More Shutdowns Expected?