BoSacks Speaks Out: 3 Concepts for Every Publisher's Success

This article comes from the most recent issue of Publishing Executive Magazine.

This is not one of those usual tips and tricks issues, because the editor, managing editor, and most of the writers are personal friends of mine, and from my perspective that means that they know "stuff" worth knowing. The fact that I'm a monthly columnist for said publication has nothing to do with my aforesaid observation.

"You are the embodiment of the information you choose to accept and act upon. To change your circumstances you need to change your thinking and subsequent actions."
Adlin Sinclair (British born Businessman, motivational speaker and Humanitarian,)


3 Concepts for Every Publisher's Success

By Robert M. Sacks
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/

My friend Dr. Joe Webb is one of the graphic arts industry's well-known and outspoken consultants, economic forecasters, commentators and pundits. As director of WhatTheyThink.com's Economics and Research Center, he was pontificating and predicting in a recent online column the future of our industry, and he threw out the following ideas.

1. "Managing" content is not the issue; deploying content is.

As my readers know, I have been suggesting similar concepts in this column for years. I think we can all agree that today's print publishers have attained and acquired an excellence in creating and managing vast amounts of content. In fact, nobody does it better than we do, and that is why we get paid the big bucks to continue plying our chosen trade. But, as we move forward, we will be continuously challenged and even threatened by the need to deploy our content. These deployment tactics will require increasing needs for greater global reach, efficiency and accountability. It is/will be the deployment of this well-managed content that will be at the core of any successful franchise.

2. Reaching desired targets is not as important as having targets find the content.

This has always been an intriguing exercise for print publishers, but now it gets harder. There was, at one time, a finite playing field for print publishers. You had either the newsstand circulation or subscription circulation or, in the best of both worlds, you had both. Here, you were limited to the actual number of newsstands available to you and the efficient use of the U.S. Postal Service. In the new and future tier of publishing, you enter the infinite world of global digital publishing.

Now, instead of trying to maximize a limited number of newsstands to attract loyal readers, you have to attract them in the forest of unlimited competition of the worldwide Internet. This shouldn't scare any publisher; it can be just a matter of perspective. You now have the ability to reach a far greater number of potential readers than ever before. That is the good part of the equation.

The down side is that, where once you had, at best, 7,000 consumer titles to compete with in a limited newsstand arena, you now have an unlimited number of writers, bloggers and publishers seeking the attention of as many readers as possible, just as you are.

3. Rules may change, but the objectives do not. Long-term profitability and innovation never go out of style.
This, my friends, is what we must take to heart. We have always had the content, and we have adapted technologically quite well as an industry to bring superior efficiencies to content distribution.

Now we need to adapt once again to a new paradigm of content distribution. The rules are, indeed, changing-and changing quickly. But with creative innovation and smart leadership, any title or series of titles can not only exist in the new world order, but prosper as never before. Where once the best possible execution of a well-rounded business plan had somewhat narrow parameters of possible success, we can now pursue and sell our content to an unlimited number of readers.

The new performance possibilities, paralleled with new, innovative technologic practices, may yet prove to be the best candidates for initiating the biggest revolution in successful publishing since Gutenberg's moveable type.

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a consultant to the printing/publishing industry and president of The Precision Media Group (www.BoSacks.com). He is publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, cameraman, publisher, columnist, politician, volunteer fireman and well known corporate janitor.

BoSacks Speaks Out; Steering the New World Digital Order

Steering the New World Digital OrderBy BoSacks
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=83154&var=story

There is a book by Ray Kurzweil called "The Singularity Is Near." In this book, Mr. Kurzweil has a theory about The Law of Accelerating Returns, which states that in today's business environment, "Change happens faster than we are able to forecast or predict it." This is a departure not only from long ago, but from our more recent past as well. There was, in our lifetime, the possibility of accurately predicting technologic growth. Those days have gone up in digital smoke. Technologic growth that once took multiple generations to achieve now happens in months.

Another of Mr. Kurzweil's concepts is that the rate of technologic change is not linear, but exponential. This is not a new concept to anyone in the publishing field.

Everyone knows that I love technology and the possibilities that it holds, especially for those in our industry. We are, no doubt, on the bleeding edge compared to most other professionals. Retailers, lawyers, cabbies, mothers and most others, although impacted every day by the new world digital order, are affected somewhat less visibly than those of us who transmit information in the forms of magazines, newspapers, newsletters and the like. We are pushing and prodding the system to go ever faster.

Over the past decade, publishers have digitally married the electronic workflow. It occurred to me this morning that a magazine can no longer be produced without a computer. This is not a shocking discovery, but it did make me stop and think. From the written word pecked out on a keyboard, e-mailed and clipped by the editor, formatted and manipulated by the art director, spun with great skill and digital alchemy by the production elite, and converted by the printer magically to CTP, there is no longer any step in the process that is not fully and completely computerized. The presses are controlled by digits, the bindery is efficiently automated, and the bundling and shipping is all tagged and directed by database files. In the near future, magazines will likely have little computer chips called RFID imbedded into them for further electronic enhancement and accountability.

But what exactly have we produced with all this speed and technology? We have precision-engineered a book, a magazine or a newspaper--all three printed on paper. We have created a product that requires no electricity to operate. You don't need to plug it in or even attach a cord. In fact, if you do have a cord, it won't fit. It is not sensitive to magnetic surges or system failures of any kind. If left alone, it retains its imagery indefinitely. It can be dropped, stepped upon and will still be totally functional. And if, God forbid, you should spill coffee on it, for a few bucks you can get an exact duplicate. Basically, the format can never become outdated.

So now that that is out of my system, I can move on. Mr. Kurzweil is right about the dramatic speed of change, and that change has affected society as well as technology. And although the printed product is near perfection, there is one thing that it just cannot do, and that is refresh, change and update itself. Once, these were unnecessary, unsought-after functions. Now, we may have a society that demands them.

Here is another interesting thought on technology and our new society that comes from the findings of an in-depth, seven-month study by MTV and the Associated Press on happiness and young people: How happy are they, what makes them happy, and what are they doing to ensure future happiness? The results are that cell phones, the Internet and other technologies are woven into the lives of today's young people, and nearly two-thirds say that technology makes them happier.

What we have now in "screenagers" is a generation that has the ability to be in touch with each other immediately starting at earlier and earlier ages. This new generation of kids is naturally adept with technology and the speed of its change. They are comfortable with having virtual access to friends, family and the world at large. This is a generation that is just as comfortable with digital delivery as it is with bound books.

My conclusion from all this is that there is a very positive and robust future for publishers. We have the technology to print perfect books and magazines for those who desire them. We also have the ability to reach out to new generations of readers in new formats such as e-paper, cell phones and PDAs, and who knows what is right around the corner. All that matters is that we monetize our franchise and deliver our product to readers everywhere and anywhere they would like it.

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a consultant to the printing/publishing industry and president of The Precision Media Group (www.BoSacks.com). He is publisher and editor of a daily international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, cameraman and often called a new age corporate janitor.

Bob Sacks: In an Iconoclast By Himself

Bob Sacks: In an Iconoclast By Himself
By John Parsons
The Seybold Report
Volume 7, Number 21 · November 1, 2007

Bob Sacks ("BoSacks" to his readers) is an outspoken columnist and lecturer to the
media and marketing industries. A veteran of many printing and publishing ventures since the 1970s, Sacks has been an advocate for innovation and change, as evidenced by his popular e-newsletter, "Heard on the Web" (www.bosacks.com), and the BoSacks blog.

Sacks straddles the past, present and future. "I've had every position there is to have in our industry," he said. He's been an editor, a publisher, a columnist, a director of manufacturing and distribution and a chief operating officer. He's also been a pressman, sold advertising for print and radio and worked for International Paper, "selling dead trees to major publishers." Sacks is sometimes cast in an adversarial, Jeremiad role, usually opposite the optimism of Prof. Samir Husni ("Mr. Magazine") in the debate over magazines and their fate. Far from being a prophet of doom, however, Sacks views technical innovation as the key to successful publishing - in whatever forms it ultimately takes. He consistently challenges past assumptions and his measured skepticism, combined with his vast expertise in media of all kinds (his first publishing venture used hot type), make him a valuable voice in the publishing industry. We asked Sacks about the future of publishing as we know it.


TSR: On your Web site, one of your lecture topics is something known as "El-Cid."
What is that?

BoSacks: It's all about the future of publishing. El-Cid is a key component to what
I'm trying to project. It means electronically coordinated information distribution.
It's imperative that we no longer consider ourselves as just publishers. We are information distributors. El-Cid is the ability to deliver information anywhere instantly, which is where our business models have to be. The future of publishing is the ability to access any information - all the time, effortlessly and accurately.

TSR: So you're talking about all forms of media, including browsers and readers?

BoSacks: I'm totally indifferent to the platform. Our franchise is information, and we shouldn't be hung up on atoms. That's a good way to distribute it; it's just not the only way.


TSR: Speaking of digital distribution, there are a number of digital edition vendors, the equivalent of a turn-the-page book or magazine on your screen. Do you think people are ready to turn virtual pages instead of paper ones?

BoSacks: I'm uncomfortable with your phrase "ready." We're getting there. It took us 600 years to perfect the magazine, and it works. It's easy to read, usually beautifully designed. How many Web pages can carry that description? Electronic magazines are improving every day and they have something else that no other Web page can emulate: a beginning, middle and an end. That's critical. Once the correct platform is developed for the digital magazine experience, it will readily be adopted.

TSR: What do you think the correct platform needs or what is it missing right now?

BoSacks: Touch-screen e-paper. When you can emulate the magazine experience, fly
your hand across your page and it will flip for you - what the iPhone does today -
that's the correct platform. A sheet of plastic, polymer, e-paper - looks like paper,
feels like paper, smells like paper but it isn't paper. It's a screen that works on reflective technology. Light doesn't shine through it or from it. It uses ambient light, which makes it a pleasant reading experience. It needs to be four colors, it needs to be wifi connected and it needs to be scalable.

TSR: Does size matter?

BoSacks: Yes, for some, but the beauty of publishing platforms of the future is that we don't care. You want it little? I'll deliver it little. You want it medium? I'll do that. You want e-paper? I'll do that. Would you like dead trees? I've got plenty of them, too.


TSR: The old print advocate saying is that they want media they can take to the beach
or read in the bathtub. Is that realistic? Is e-paper going to get there eventually, and how do you think it's going to happen?

BoSacks: I predict in five years we'll have a workable e-paper solution, commercially
affordable. We're predicting under $50 in five years. Comfort level, ease of readability is really important. It's interpreted as wanting paper and books, but that's a learned exercise. What they really want is to get their intellectual fix, the information that they're addicted to. It could be news, it could be about Britney, it could be wooden boat building, whatever your focus or passion is. People want that and that want it in an easy-to-read, portable format. This could be e-paper or something we haven't invented or thought of yet. E-paper seems like the most likely next mechanism of change. There is also nanotechnology, which is not what e-paper is about currently. Nanotechnology might jump ahead of e-paper or follow behind it, but I see e-paper as the next defining moment in information distribution.


TSR: What do you see as the future of printing on dead trees, as you put it?

BoSacks: I see it just like vinyl records. That used to be the way people used to listen to music, and the majority of the public now uses MP3s and MP3 players. There is still a market out there for audiophiles who swear by records and they still make some records. Collectors are out there. My friend Samir Husni is a collector, and I think that's a part of his philosophy. He's a dead-tree hugger. He loves his magazines, and he's a vinyl record collector.

TSR: How long do you think there are going to be printed publications on paper?

BoSacks: I could foresee there are a couple of generations left. The number of titles is clearly going up, but the number of printed pages is clearly going down. Magazine circulation is going down. Printed products will be around for quite some time, but I think the right question is, how long will printed products be the dominant source of information distribution? The answer is, not that long.

TSR: A couple of generations?

BoSacks: It doesn't matter. The inevitable conclusion is that digital media will be the dominant way that we distribute and monetize our franchise, and printing will be less dominant as we move forward - not disappear, but be less dominant.

TSR: What about the business of publishing bothers you the most? What's your pet
peeve about magazine publishers?

BoSacks: It's the distribution model, which once worked and once worked well but is
archaic. Today, for newsstands, we print 10 copies and sell three. This is not a successful formula to compete with the digital world. I want to distribute 10 copies to the 7-Eleven and sell 10. I don't want to have the infrastructure to go back and pick up seven out of the 10 and take it back and shred it. It's inefficient. Compound that with the circulation side, where Samir and I are in agreement. We basically tell our newsstand readers that they're stupid. Here, you just spent $6.95 for this magazine on the newsstand, but we'll give you 12 issues for $4 if you subscribe. What is going on there? That is a model that only exists in this country. In Europe, newsstand and subscriptions are the same price, as it ought to be.


TSR: What is it about the magazine world that gratifies you the most?

BoSacks: I love being in the thick of it. This has to be one of the most exciting times in the history of information distribution. My first magazine was typeset in hot lead, pretty much what Gutenberg did and we've done for 600 years. Now, in one lifetime we're making these technological evolutionary jumps. It's exciting. I love being around and involved in this part of publishing history. In my lectures, I say, "What Gutenberg did was democratize knowledge." I think this digital process is doing the same thing, democratizing knowledge all over again, empowering and teaching people, giving them access to information that they never had before. The libraries of the world are now available to damn near everybody. Admittedly, you have to have an Internet connection, but the barriers to that connection are fewer and fewer. I love that about what we can do.

TSR: Don't we have a ways to go with finding all that information? It seems to be
pretty well buried.

BoSacks: You're absolutely right. But I'm not sure that anything has really changed.
Before the Internet, let's say 10 or 15 years ago, there were literally millions of books: hard, dead-tree books. How did people find them? They went to a bookstore and asked for recommendations. You need experienced professionals. In those days it was
the bookstore manager, and now you have Web sites and editors of Web sites who
can make recommendations to get you the information you want. Search engines also
are only going to get better. I'm not daunted by the amount of information out there. I think it will continually improve the filtration process, and this may be fee- based, because everything has to revolve around revenue. How do we monetize our information? That's what we do. We own information. We distribute words. How do we place enough value on those words to monetize it?


TSR: So it'll be democratized for those who can afford it?

BoSacks: It's democratized now without the structure. It takes a certain skill set to really find what you want. Anybody can get on Google, put in the name "Bob," and they'll probably get 2 million hits. You want to find Bob Sacks, you have to have the skill set to say, "I want Bob Sacks," and you'll only get 1,000 responses. Of course, if you do put in my name, it will be top of the list. That's just my ego talking.

So it's out there, but as we move forward, I think the question is, what's the next business model going to be? One path may be the cable TV model. People will pay and publishers will sign them up for programs. You can get the basic package, which might include your local newspaper and a magazine of your choice for $6 a month. Then you get the silver package, the gold package, all the way to the platinum package - everything that's been ever printed - for $79 a month. You refine your research, you refine your sources, much like the 500 channels we have now, and combine that with the value of editors. Editors can help you sort and deliver the information that's relevant. I do that for the industry. For my newsletter, I'm the editor, the sorter, the filter. Based on 37 years in the business, I decide what's important to know and I pretty much have a successful handle on what's worth knowing. That's a human intervention.


TSR: What's your long-term prognosis for publishers of information and their business?

BoSacks: The most important thing that publishers need to know is that their franchise is nothing more or nothing less than words and ideas. They don't own paper companies. Publishers don't own computer companies. They sell words. If they put the words in the proper order, those words have value. So they shouldn't care about the distribution path; all they should care about is monetizing their franchise, their franchise's words, and words aren't going to go away. We've been at this a long time. To go way back in history, we used to do cave paintings. That's how we communicated and took out-of-brain memory and shared it. Then we scratched on bones or wooden sticks and passed them on from generation to generation 25,000 years ago. Those were the first books. Then we get into parchment, then Gutenberg, now we're into electronic transmission. We're doing the same thing we've done for 25,000 years. We're reading words. The platform doesn't matter.

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is Very Important

BoSacks Speaks Out: This is Very Important
by Bosacks
www.bosacks.com

I have received a few letters of late asking me if I could distribute news items that are upbeat and constructive to the printed side of information distribution. That seems a fair request made to a guy who has spent 36 years putting ink in just the right place on a formulation of dead trees, starch and assorted fillers.

My answer is thus: You have no idea how very hard I try to find upbeat, balanced and thoughtful information about our industry. I spend many extra hours each week pounding the internet to find a modicum of "good news". Please make special note here, that there is actually some good news out there once and a while, and when I find it, I pounce on it and send it out. There just isn't enough good news for the dead tree guys, these days.

At the end of the day the truth is the truth. We are a diminishing race. We are not, nor will we be extinct. But we are getting smaller every day. Niche titles will be around for a very long time to come. But they will not be mainstream communication devices. It is never going to turn around and be like it was. There just is no turning back. As my buddy Omar Khayyam once wrote:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

So in my writings and my daily newsletter, I am offering a new kind of hope. Nature abhors a vacuum. For every job that is eliminated in print there are even more new jobs created in the digital arena. Look it up. It is in the US census bureau data. Graphics jobs, editorial jobs, production jobs, and jobs we have never heard of. Those jobs are the new frontier. And it is growing by leaps and bounds.

I can't help those that are at the end of their career in a dead industry, who won't help themselves. I too am a dinosaur of sorts. But I have reinvented what I was and have transformed myself into something else. Forward thinking and not wistfully wishing I was still a VP at McCall's Publishing. I will never be a Director of Manufacturing at McCall's again. It is DEAD. gone, finished.

But there is hope for others. There is a huge future out there for those that can see the forest for the trees.

My readership on the most part seems grateful for my honest portrayal of where we are and even more importantly, where we are going. Sometimes I get a note that has a depressed angle to it. I do my best to respond with hope and encouragement.

I have a worldwide audience. I take that as a responsibility to deliver the best most accurate information I can, regardless of the implications.

I make several claims as to who I am and what I know. What I am dead sure of is the future direction of information distribution. The king of the information forest is not tree based life, but silicon based information distribution.

BoSacks Speaks Out: Why the Newsstand is Dead

BoSacks Speaks Out: Why the Newsstand is Dead
www.bosacks.com

I'm still on the road today after Thursday's big event, but wanted to report in about the successful Periodical and Book Association of America Convention in Philadelphia. I have been to a few PBAA conventions and I always find their focus and energy to create the strong and necessary dialog and idea exchanges between publishers and distributors a noble cause. In my opinion, there are too many important issues that have long been left unanswered, unattended to, and other wise left to linger and rot. The PBAA attempts to correct that general industry oversight.



The big debate between Samir and myself, if I can judge by the ovation at breakfast the next day as a clue to its success, went very well, and I am hoping to receive some unbiased reports from readers as to which side was more convincing. If you were there please send me a report.



Another highlight for me was a conversation and presentation with some Russian distributors. It was a terrific hour of exchanges and insights.



That's some good news of the event. The bad news is that I have seen a damning demonstration of the death of the newsstand in a forum on the last morning. This panel had a national distributor, a national wholesaler, a national retailer, and a publisher. I applaud the open dialog and for that I am very grateful. We need more conversation, not less, about supply-chain and you have to start somewhere. But, why here?



The disconnect for me was amazing and not in a good way. Not if you are hoping for new ideas and the creativity necessary to drive our businesses out of their lengthy doldrums. Although I paraphrase, the conversation went something like this:



We acknowledge that the ship is sinking, but, dear friends and business partners, it is sinking very slowly. We take great pride that we have been sinking slowly for fifteen years. We are adrift on the seas and sales have been flat for so long that flat is starting to look good, something like up, only different. And flat is good, isn't it?



Do you know that when the wholesaler described an interesting and well-thought-out program of efficiency in the newsstand arena that successfully reduced wasted product, yet convincingly provided real data of same percentage of sales, someone on the panel, I don't remember who, was angry that such an operation was even being discussed, let alone put into operation. Yes, that someone had the nerve to say openly the tired, old, mantra, "lower the draw, lower the sale." To that I say, fine, buddy - you go down with the ship. I'm getting off the Titanic and creating a newer, more stable, efficient business model. Anyone that tells you there absolutely cannot be improvement in the print-ten-copies-and-sell-three model is leading you towards a big iceberg in an increasingly digitized sea. Get off now or get off later, it's your decision, but I guarantee you are getting off that ship or sinking with it.



So, this is the death of the magazine newsstand business right before our eyes. The collusion on the stage of non-aggressive thought, the inability to recognize the icebergs, the captains yelling, damn it all, this business is the Titanic and nothing can sink this ship. BoSacks says this ship is headed in the wrong direction and needs to turn mighty quickly.



Would you entice your children to join an industry, any industry, that is barely treading water for a decade and a half and has completely lost the ability to detect up from down.



As I sat there at the breakfast table, I was shocked at some of the inflexible positions and the thought of clinging on to the same business models that have keep us stagnant and without growth for over fifteen years. Yet as annoyed as I was, here was a panel that was attempting to discuss problems long kept in our dark boiler rooms in the bottom of our perspective ships. Here were some industry professionals, in an open forum seeking answers, and in front of their peers. They must get some real credit for that. They agreed to meet again and with that perhaps there will be progress. I can only hope for it.



This industry needs new ideas, new distribution models, greater efficiencies and above all else appropriate leadership for the times. We need captains that are willing to turn the ship and not hit that damned iceberg head on. Only an insane person keeps repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results. So, I'm asking the industry at large, are you insane or just getting paid too much.



Upton Sinclair said it much better than I, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".

BoSacks Speaks Out - Printed Magazines as Plastic Records

"To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser."
Robertson Davies (Canadian Journalist and Author. 1913-1995)


Printed Magazines Will Follow the Path of the Plastic Record
By BoSacks
Publishing Executive Magazine
http://www.pubexec.com/story/story.bsp?sid=64337&var=story



To paraphrase the sages, publishing is a journey, not a destination. We have been on a very long journey, reaching out to more and more readers as our business models, our technology and our society have progressed and morphed to the challenges and changes of the reading public.

There are enormous new pressures on publishers now, and I think a case can be made that they are different and more complex than ever before. As I stated in a previous column in this magazine, we have been storing out-of-memory text for more than 25,000 years-a very long and noble tradition of teaching and sharing. But where once we had functionally slow and predictable growth strategies, we now seem to have almost instantaneous structural change and a mandatory global outreach program.

As far back as you can go, publishing was always local. Whether it was books, newspapers or magazines, it was a locally constructed, man-made event that required a certain amount of craftsmanship. (Is that term even used anymore?)

That localization included, in almost every case, the "thinking" as well as the physical product. If there was a broader distribution, in most cases it was an aftereffect, not a planned affair.

Until very recently, publishing, writing and printing were handmade products. Until the advent of the typewriter, authorship was constructed by hand with ink and paper.
Even the use of the elegant typewriter was still a process of pecking on a keyboard, which used a mechanical and understandable process of levers and gears to affect the keystroke. I wonder how many of my readers have ever used a typewriter? No, not you geezers-the question really is directed at the younglings.

How many readers understand that paste-up of mechanical boards was just that? Artists took galleys--paper that had typography or ink on paper in columnar, long sheets--spread glue on the back and actually, by hand, pasted the type onto a cardboard sheet, hopefully in an artistic and readable style.

This handmade construct then was photographed by craftsmen, and their product was turned over to a different set of tradesmen, who would, by hand, make printing plates. Then the plates were put, by hand, onto a printing press, and the color adjustments were set, by hand, by a pressman who also was a craftsman of the trade.

So, where am I headed with this nostalgic trip down publishing's man-made history? Magazines are unquestionably printed better and more precisely than ever before. What was once typed or even penned by hand now is instantly spell-checked and corrected without intervention by the author. And the speed of global delivery can be instantaneous if so desired.

In the 21st century, we have a new breed of craftsmanship learning an ever-widening path of information distribution. Where once the written word only was available as ink on paper, we now have a universe of distribution models and methods. There is a debate in our industry about the life and/or death of the printed page. In my opinion, it is an unnecessary debate.

Let me use the music industry as an example. Once, the recorded music industry depended on pressed plastic--records--to reproduce music. Then in 1982, the CD was launched. There were years of transition as the listening public graduated to the new storage system. Now we have MP3s, and the same transformation is taking place. Did you know that there are still audiophiles that cling to the old records as preferable? They are known as the "collectors." And yes, there is still an industry that supports them.

To bring that perspective to the magazine industry, I think we always will have printed magazines, much like we still have plastic records. But the majority of readers eventually will move on to the digital delivery of the printed word with new technology and a globally instant reach. Dead trees with type on them always will be available to the collectors who can afford them, while the general mass of the reading public most likely will pull out their e-paper, and read anything and everything they want to their hearts' content. It's not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when. PE

Bob Sacks (aka BoSacks) is a consultant to the printing/publishing industry and president of The Precision Media Group (www.BoSacks.com). He is publisher and editor of a daily, international e-newsletter, Heard on the Web. Sacks has held posts as director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager (paper), chief of operations, pressman, cameraman and corporate janitor

BoSacks Speaks Out: Selling Ads on the Front Page

BoSacks Speaks Out: Is it just me, or is the selling of prime real estate on your front cover a betrayal of principles? Whose principles you might ask? Good question. And I don't claim to have the answer. No really, as hard as it is to believe, this time I only have questions.

There are many reasons to be in the publishing business, and surely one of the top two is to make money. I accept that fully, and that is one of the reasons I went into the business in the first place. That being said there should, it seems to me, be some room left over for publishers to exhibit principles, patience, strength of character and display some sound business practices.

Now why do you think the industry is having accountability problems? Could it be because we have long ago abandoned strong principles, reasonable patience, a modicum of character and any resemblance of sound business practices? Well, yes, I think it could.

The selling of the front cover is just one more step in the pitfalls of publishing greed and continuing the downward spiraling loss of integrity.

What's with you guys? Somebody strap a 2x4 to the publisher's spine. What will you sell next - your grandmother? And if you do, will that be an off-rate card sale too?

The reason we are in this mess and have lost our integrity has nothing to do with the Internet. These problems are all self-made. The problem is that somewhere in the past we as an industry sold our affections to the lowest bidder like a street walker. And once down that road, it is very hard to regain your personal integrity or the respect of your past John's.


"Thus were they defiled with their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions."
The Bible


Fashion Paper Joins Bottom-of-the-Front-Page Club
By PATRICIA WINTERS LAURO
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/business/media/07adco.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
With today's issue, Women's Wear Daily, the longtime chronicler of the fashion world, becomes the latest newspaper to sell a piece of valuable real estate: advertising space on its front page.

Women's Wear Daily is running a front-page advertisement, a slim banner promoting a bracelet by Cartier.

A slim banner, about an inch-and-a-half wide, runs across the bottom of the cover and promotes Cartier's Love bracelet, a popular gold band. Not only is the image a familiar one - particularly to fashion-oriented readers of Women's Wear - but the sight of a strip ad on the face of a daily paper is becoming increasingly common, too.

Indeed, the latest debates in journalism seem no longer to be about whether or not it is prudent or ethical to run ads in places they haven't historically appeared, but how to do so in a way that makes the most of the property being sold.

"Women's Wear Daily has had a heritage of creativity when it comes to advertising, and this is moving it to an entirely new place, " said Daniel Lagani, president of the Fairchild Fashion Group, the unit of Advance Publications that owns the paper. "We are making our best real estate available for our best advertisers."

The paper, he said, is following the leads of other newspapers that have opened their cover pages to ads in recent months. The trend was apparent just yesterday in New York, where the free daily Metro New York had a strip ad for Avalon Communities, a rental housing chain, while its rival, amNew York, another free paper, had a so-called cover-wrap - an overleaf featuring the paper's logo and advertising content by a sponsor, in this case, Starbucks. The New York Observer, meanwhile, which recently switched to a tabloid format, arrived on newsstands with a banner ad for Wempe watches and jewelry.
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So many newspapers are now running advertising on either the front page or the front pages of sections within the newspaper that the phenomenon was labeled "A Fading Taboo" in the headline of an article in the June/July issue of The American Journalism Review. Among the papers that have started accepting front-page ads are The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Hartford Courant, the article said. Papers that now run ads on section fronts include The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Journalists lament the trend as a potential sign that the boundaries between editorial and advertising content are weakening, and because the advertisements reduce the amount of prime space for news and feature articles. But front-page ads seem destined to stay, given the declines in advertising and circulation that newspapers have endured in the Internet age. Prominent ads command premium prices.

Edward Nardoza, editor in chief of Women's Wear Daily, said that while journalists would prefer commercial-free front pages forever, ads are acceptable there as long as they are well conceived and pose no ethical conflicts. "We've come to terms that it's part of doing business today," Mr. Nardoza said. "I can't stress enough that it will have no effect at all on the independence of our editorial coverage or our decision-making process. There will be a strict delineation of all editorial material."

Most readers do not find front-page ads intrusive, said Gilbert Bailon, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the publisher and editor of Al Día, a Spanish language newspaper in Texas.

"People are bombarded with advertising every day, from their cellphones to the Internet and every other way - seeing a front page ad strip isn't going to move the earth," he said. "I think some hard-core readers won't like it, but they get adjusted very quickly."
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Timing, and not desperation, led Women's Wear Daily to its decision to introduce a front-page ad, Mr. Lagani of Fairchild said. The paper did run smaller black-and-white ads called tombstones at the bottom of the front page until the 1970s, for companies like Jantzen and Peter Pan Fashions. In 2000, it ran some cover-wraps with ads for Gucci. The new front-page banners will be limited, Mr. Lagani said, to prevent overexposure.
"In the case of Women's Wear Daily, business has never been better," he said. "This is simply a smart business decision."

He would not say how much the Cartier ads cost, but said the paper charged a premium for the prime space and required a commitment to a package that included a full-page ad inside the paper and a series of ads on the Women's Wear Web site.

The Web site component was a draw for Cartier, which strives to be a trendsetter among luxury retailers on the Web, said Frédéric de Narp, president and chief executive of Cartier North America. Cartier advertises on Yahoo, MSN.com and other sites, and the ads on wwd.com link to Cartier's own site, where the company plays up its designation of June 8 as "love day." On that day, Cartier will give 10 percent of sales of the Love collection to charity.

Mr. Bailon of Al Día, who started accepting front-page ads shortly after starting the paper four years ago, said that journalists should look on the bright side of the trend. "Every company has to find new ways to develop revenue, and this is an opportunity," he said. "If this is the new way, then you have to give a serious look."