Magazines exhibit bipolar behavior over digital editions

Five leading magazine publishers—Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media, and Meredith—are about to spend $90 million on a "power of print" campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.

One ad will say, "The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive," while another will feature Michael Phelps alongside the cringe-worthy headline, "We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines." The ads will start running in May.

Meanwhile, a completely different and disconnected department of Condé Nast has revealed the first five magazines that will be available as digital editions on the Apple iPad. From all accounts, they're pretty excited about it.

Confused? Me too. One half of the magazine publishing industry is scared witless about the future of traditional print. The other half is excitedly prepping new technology that will recreate the immersive print experience on e-readers and delivered by the "fleeting" Internet.

It appears that the traditional print camps are actually attacking their digital counterparts—not to mention their own websites—with this "power of print" campaign.

As a consumer, I'd like to say something to the traditional print factions inside these publishers. Listen up, you guys. I've been a huge supporter of magazines for, well, my whole life. I've had subscriptions to more magazines than I can remember. I get what you mean when you say that magazines are "immersive". They certainly can be, but that's not a result of the paper they're printed on. I've read some horribly-designed magazines that couldn't be less immersive if they tried. The method of printing on paper has little to do with how engaging a magazine is; It's all in the layout, design, and concept execution.

Digital publishing isn't going away. It's not "fleeting", and it's probably in your best interest to stop throwing money at a complaint campaign. Instead, spend some of that time, energy, and money learning about the new tools you have at your disposal. They're really quite amazing.

This is your chance to revolutionize the magazine industry! The rules are about to be written for a whole new generation of publishing, and you're in a unique position to help shape the future of electronic periodicals. Of course print can be immersive. But digital publishing is catching up quickly, especially as e-book readers become cheaper and equipped with higher-resolution, color displays.

When did this become an internal competition? Nobody thinks print publishing is going extinct overnight. But you need to be realistic and look at the entire entertainment spectrum. Movies, music, television, and books are all going digital. The magazine industry is not immune to the trend.

If you don't believe me, check out this Newsweek article from 1995. Clifford Stoll seemed to think the Internet wasn't going to catch on, and essentially laughed it off. Do any of his arguments sound familiar?

So here's a little advice. Walk over to the offices where the iPad and e-book developers work. Introduce yourself. Make nice. Right now, they're the ones taking your magazine into the future, no matter how deep you bury your heads in the sand. Running some weird luddite-sounding campaign that slams your own company's digital business model smacks of desperation. Fifteen years from now, how do you honestly think we'll look back on this anti-digital "power of print" campaign?

Just sayin'.

Update 1: I added the campaign's logo at the top of this post. I'm still searching for the ads themselves.

The future of magazines

[Photo: nicolasnova]

Over the weekend, I gave my apartment a long-overdue cleaning. I was a bit shocked to discover that I had three full trashbags' worth of useless clutter scattered around the place. There was a lot of junk mail that, for some reason, never made it into the recycling. There were empty boxes left over from when I moved in August. And there were magazines, some that moved with my from my old place.

I took stock of the magazine stacks. I currently subscribe to four different periodicals—two weeklies and two monthlies. I rarely read all the articles, and generally don't mean to hang on to the back issues. Somehow, they sort of stick around and pile up.

There was a time when I'd keep a library of old Wired or National Geographic issues on my shelf, but then I began to worry I was headed down the path to hoarder land. These days, for the sake cutting down on clutter, I toss them in the recycling when the new issues arrive. (Except for The Believer. That magazine is simply too gorgeous to part with.)

I wondered about the future of periodicals. The Kindle offers text-only subscription options for many popular magazines and newspapers. Sadly, I've tried it, and it's not nearly as fun an experience you get from reading printed pages.

The iPad is just around the corner, scheduled for release in March, and will include a full-fledged bookstore at launch. It's full-color screen seems perfect for periodicals, but there has been no mention of a magazine counterpart to the iBookstore.

The New York Times unveiled its iPad app at Apple's event last month, and it looks like a fantastic marriage between the functionality of its website and elegance of the dead tree edition. If the Baltimore Sun were to create a digital version that slick, I'd subscribe to it for the first time in my life.

I'm not suggesting that the iPad will single-handedly save the newspaper industry, but I know that I'm not the only one willing to pay for a high-quality digital newspaper that recreates the print aesthetic.

Sports Illustrated does exactly that with a mockup of its magazine, and it looks amazing. If they are able to deliver the same look and feel of the printed version with the interactivity of a website, I would subscribe in a heartbeat.

Still, there's a pretty sizable technology barrier to overcome. The big publishers with more money to toss around, like Condé Nast, will build digital versions first. They'll figure out how to distribute issues. They can afford to make mistakes the rest of the industry will learn from. All the publishers will start experimenting.

Will Apple open up a magazine section to their bookstore, or will the big publishers create their own digital newsstands? How will the magazine reach multiple devices and a wider audience? Will the advent of digital magazines save niche publications from going under, the way Gourmet did last year?

Personally, if I could switch all my magazines to digital subscriptions, I'd be delighted. There would be far less clutter in my apartment, and I'd be able to keep a library of back issues. That's my dream scenario. I wonder how long it will take technology and the publishing world to get there.