Really Strategies Blog

Put paid content in context

There has been quite a bit of buzz around the decision of the NY Times to remove their subscription barrier and make their content free.  Many expect the Wall Street Journal, one of the first and most successful paid newspaper sites online, to follow. Even in the non-newspaper world of scientific publishing, Elsevier rolled out their new free, ad-supported oncology site, www.OncologySTAT.com.

Underlying some of these discussions is the somewhat broad pronouncement that paid content is over.  Publishers need to make their content free and determine other ways to make money from it.

While it is true that the trends are certainly shifting that way, a post from Joe Espisito on Yale University Library's Liblicense discussion list caught my eye by putting the decision from the NY Times in perspective.  Although I don't totally follow Joe's economic mathematics (he questions how much advertising is out there to support this expanding model) because I mean, all of those hundreds of cable television stations still find advertisers, I think there is some truth in his statement that offering free content by using advertising for revenue "may work for the Times or South Park, and Elsevier has a shot with its new portal, but the fate of most advertising-supported businesses is oblivion.  Only the strong, the huge, and the totally distinctive survive."  (The "totally distinctive" in the last sentence is really the key...)

Although we may look to the NY Times and the WSJ to see which way the paid content winds are blowing, we should not blindly follow their actions.  Not all publishers are leading national news sites that can attract millions of eyeballs.  Every publisher needs to look at their own situation to determine the balance between charging for content or offering it for free while looking for other revenue opportunities, including advertising.  I don't want to dismiss the trend or the need to find new ways to monetize content beyond subscriptions.  It's not an easy challenge to solve. But although it is certainly worthwhile to monitor the actions of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and Elsevier, they should only be inputs into the decision making process, not a final stake in every publisher's plans for paid content.

Going online first

We've started to chronicle moves to abandon print editions in favor of sole digital delivery in our new Demise of Print blog.  On the other side of that coin are publishers who skip the print version of a new publication entirely. There certainly are publishers who have opted to create a new product, which 5 or 10 years ago would have been a print product, in an online only format.

CQ Press, a DC-based publisher who has dealt with some of these print vs. online challenges (a few years ago they stopped the print edition of the Supreme Court Yearbook but still produce the content, which feeds several online products), recently launched a new newsletter product. In doing so, they made a decision to launch it online with no print counterpart. However, and at first I found this somewhat ironic, the product offers a PDF version of the content that mimics a printed form.

I found this interesting. Even when we can free ourselves from "the tyranny of print" we sometimes still find that we need to offer a print-like PDF version of the content. Why? I decided to ask Mary Grace Palumbo of the CQ Press product development team (thanks to her for sharing the insight) about first, the decision to go online without a print counterpart and second, why offer a print-like PDF.

Ed: First off, can you give me some background on the new product?

Mary Grace: It is the Global Researcher, which is based on our venerable CQ Researcher weekly report, which is published in print and online.  The CQ Researcher covers timely issues and topics, such as energy regulation or immigration reform.  The Global Researcher is modeled off of that and covers global issues from an international perspective.

Ed: So, why did you decide not to offer this new product in print?

Mary Grace: We actually didn't make that decision.  What we decided to do was to first offer it online.  If it is successful, which it looks to be, we may also offer a print companion.  So it is not that we are not going to do print.  Rather we want to be practical in how we launch new products. This product covers a new area for us so we want to test the waters online first.

Ed: So, and this may be obvious, the barrier to entry was lower for an online product.

Mary Grace: Certainly.  There are no print production costs and we already have the online infrastructure set up.  Sure there are costs with that as well, but we also feel our audience would expect an online version.  We knew we would have to have an online version—there is no question about that—so we started there.

Ed: Ok, but being an online only product, at least for now, why did you still feel the need to offer a print-like version through a PDF?

Mary Grace: The entire production process is based on the CQ Researcher production process, which is set up to support both print and web. It’s a traditional print production process with a conversion to XML at the end.   We are using the same model to produce the Global product because, (a) it was already there, (b) the editorial staff is already used to it, (c) when a decision to create a print product is reached, it can quickly be done as opposed to creating a new process, and (d) to answer your last question, it is already set up to quickly create a PDF.

Ed: So it’s easy to do, a byproduct of the process.  But was the market need discussed?  Is your audience asking for the PDF?

Mary Grace: It really was just assumed in the beginning.  The editorial group came in assuming a PDF output would exist. And yes, since the reports are over 20 pages long, people find that PDFs are useful as “take-aways” from the website – they just look nicer than printing out the HTML pages.  Since we based the workflow on the existing print CQ Researcher model, it was very easy to do.

So to recap, CQ Press used an online version of the product before print to confirm success before investing in print and offered a PDF because, well, it was easy to do and the editors expected it.  I am going to try to find some other stories of publishers who either do online before print or online only for new products, and if they offer a print-like PDF, I'll ask why.  Stay tuned.  If you fit this criteria and would be willing to share, please let me know.

Educational publishing - a parent's lament

So my kids are getting older - and starting to move through school.  I haven't seen a textbook come home with them yet, but those massive, weighty, colorful, and engaging things are going to come soon, no doubt.  Aside from needing small forklifts to move their books around, what's the problem?  And there are nice PDF facsimiles of the printed pages online if you want to print them out - or just read online.  There are also fun supplemental educational games and some online multimedia to look at.

Well, as I sit at my laptop writing this, I'm occasionally alt tabbing between a few online newspapers The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc., and this blog (not to mention the new 'Demise of Print' blog).  And I think to myself, if I use online publications as a primary source of content, why don't kids use online publications as a primary source of content?  The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal don't put up facsimiles of their printed edition (that would be a laugh).  Why should I settle for that for my children?

When we also look at what is happening in publishing elsewhere, with magazines and newspapers ratcheting up their capabilities to publish simultaneously or web first, with layouts that are ready for  web first consumption, I have to wonder how long educational publishers can hold out.  They are certainly not in the forefront - and they need to be.

The question may hinge to some extent on how kids will consume content and learn online - what is an appropriate web format for say a social studies book?  It will be very different from a newspaper layout, certainly,  but It is probably not something that *is* a print textbook page.  So this is hard, particularly for established editorial staffs that have been producing books all their lives.  It's new territory.  But newspapers and magazines have successfully moved forward and developed compelling web layouts for their content.  It's time for textbooks to do the same.

Some are concerned about equal access for kids to computers.  Poorer kids might still not have computers.  This is an important issue certainly, but this has been an excuse for 10+ years - I'm sorry, but what level of access is required?  Certainly the print editions won't go away for a while, but don't make the entire country stay with print while the last 10% or less of the population gets online.  It is well past time to take the plunge - and it would be nice to have it happen before my kids graduate, thank you.

Everyone knows that today's kids - and now young teachers - are more than ready for the online world.  If we are teaching our children to learn to manage information as they would in the workplace and real life, then don't give them an 800 page hardcover book for each subject - let them log-on instead.  By chance I recently shared a plane ride between a teacher from Iowa and an education consultant.  We talked shop and found ourselves discussing this very idea.  The consultant was not convinced.  But then I asked how she got her news and it dawned - she had been reading newspapers online for some time.  And that was food for thought.

The case against competition? The tech angle.

With four big US PreK-12 educational publishers becoming three, the question for a small number of  publishing technology professionals may be how the industry shakes out with regards to editorial and production workflow systems.

There now seem to be two systems currently used by the big PreK-12 publishers - in various states of adoption.

Does this mean there is healthy competition among editorial and production system vendors?  Mmm...maybe there is competition, but I'm not sure how healthy it is. 

Regardless, there are a few big reasons why 2 systems divided among 3 companies is a problem:

First, multiple systems cause problems with the few specialized publishing services vendors in the PreK-12 publishing space.  If a single vendor staffer needs to work on two non-competing projects from two different publishers, each with a different technology then:

- Staff will need to know how to use each technology.  While a more tech savvy generation of editors may be better able to handle this, those who are already finding it difficult to put down their red pencils will find adjusting that much harder.

- IT complexity increases for vendors.  In an age where vendors are expected to improve productivity (e.g. keep costs low), they are being forced to increase their IT management - to switch users from one technology to another.  Does this mean having users work with two installations of InCopy or InDesign?  One for each publisher/technology?  Does it mean they need two machines altogether?  Does it mean a reconfiguration every time a new project comes along?

Secondly, the systems were initially built for magazine and newspaper publishers.  This means that, while there was an effort to make them technically optimized to work with the larger ed pub workgroups, their feature sets are still not fully geared to large educational book publishers.

One example is licensing, which is locked to specific InCopy and/or InDesign serial numbers.  This means that if a publisher is hosting the system, pub vendors cannot use their own InCopy or InDesign licenses.  It means that vendors need to be assigned licenses by each publisher for use with their particular system.  Therefore, the small world of creative services vendors has an IT headache from the beginning of each project.  A more easily adjustable lock to serial numbers, that allows publishers to temporarily assign a vendor's own licenses to the publisher's system (for the duration of projects) would be much more useful.

But how will PreK-12 ed publishers push this and other feature requests on the systems vendors?  In order to be heard among competing requests from magazines, newspapers, trade book publishers, and others, ed publishers need to have purchasing power - found in the total number of licenses and maintenance paid on them.  If total PreK-12 publishing licenses are divided among two systems, then ed publishers will have less power, and ed specific features will be less forthcoming from either system vendor.

In a world where neither vendor is really competing on PreK-12 publishing features, there is a case against competition and for consolidation behind one vendor.  Of course if a systems vendor made the plunge to invest in truly catering to education (healthy competition), then they might just take the whole market anyway.  The problem for the systems vendor in the relatively small education market: Is there enough money in it?

Requirements, the publishing manager, and accountability

Senior publishing managers: do you have a clear idea of your role in publishing systems projects?  How about in requirements gathering for publishing systems projects?  (By senior publishing managers, I mean the publisher and direct reports or the equivalent - print or web).

BAs & PMs: How clear are the lines drawn between your business requirements, your functional requirements, and your system requirements?  Are you encouraging your senior publishing managers to take the appropriate project roles?

I'm thinking of two major projects I've come into contact with over the years where it was clear that the dividing lines drawn were wholly inappropriate to the intended constituencies, particularly for publishing managers.  I've also seen one major project where the requirements gathering was rigidly compartmentalized by the consulting company, probably as a means to ensure that each constituency was dealing with the appropriate subject matter. 

Some problem indicators:
1. Publishing managers reviewing quasi-technical diagrams in a functional requirements session (yes, we need to use XML; yes, we need a digital asset management system!).
2. Business/financial managers making top down decisions on specific systems. (Though there are cases where this could be appropriate)
3. Technical teams being left to determine how much time a task should take.  (What’s the matter? it only takes 10 minutes to process...)

Each to their own:
- Publishing managers should be concerned with functional requirements, which determine the effects of a system on staff work, including how work gets done by editors, etc.  They should also include setting standards for performance.
- Business/financial managers should be concerned with business requirements, or the overall financial effects of a system including related process changes.
- Technical teams should be concerned with systems requirements, systems, and architecture, to meet publishing manager needs (within financial constraints)

Publishing managers can have an important impact on a project.  My advice is not to get your hands dirty with specific technology.  Falling in love with a particular system or even a type of system, is a baaaad idea, trust me.  Falling in love with improvements in performance and ease of getting work done for your staff is a much healthier idea.

Senior publishing managers often consider the following:
    - We need to create this new online product
    - We approve doing this publishing technology project. 

They can more positively impact a project by making a few simple accountability statements and holding on to them like a pit bull.  They might sound something like this:
    - We need to create this new online product, and make content production for it take only this amount of staff time.
    - We approve doing this publishing technology project.  This project must reduce time spent on these non-editorial tasks, this amount, by this much, and decrease overall time in our production process, this amount, by this much.

This should set up a good interplay between subordinate publishing managers/staff and the technical team as they participate respectively in the creation of functional requirements and system requirements.

What I want from Adobe - x-ray file formats

Consider The big content system integration diagram (draft 1).  What are the bottlenecks for the content stream?  Well if what I'm doing is any indicator, importing and exporting from InCopy or InDesign still has a little friction to it.  This is being addressed by Adobe progressively - see CS3 (yay!) for example over CS2.  Also being addressed by Softcare and other companies, again progressively.

But is there a fundamental change that can happen here?  Can we get XML that can pass through Adobe formats frictionlessly like Superman can see through walls with his x-ray vision?  (Digression here: There is a surprising amount of controversy on the Web about Superman's powers - many self proclaimed pundits seem to say that his X-Ray vision is unrealistic!  Not science that it is caused by low gravity on his home planet?  Baloney!)

Maybe the problem isn't that content can't yet be imported and exported seamlessly, maybe it is that content shouldn't be imported and exported at all.  If Adobe considered InDesign/InCopy not to be a holder of data, but an aggregator of data for print layout, then we might start getting somewhere.  Already, images are externally linked, why not, we might then ask, have text objects be externally linked?  I'm not talking about the page geometry, etc. that might live inside of an InCopy document.  I'm talking about just the text - and as XML if you please.

If Adobe therefore allowed XML content to remain external as files, and it allowed all external content, XML or images, to be linkable via HTTP protocol or otherwise, then we might have a situation where media and XML management systems could maintain content continually - without having to messily import during print production and export after print production.

Think of all the advantages!  Tremendous.  Metadata could be added externally, preparation for web could happen simultaneously. And Adobe page apps would still manage page layout and editing within page geometries so no skin off their nose.   Of course, this is not an easy thing to accomplish - but it is the logical future state - each format to its own system, with specialized apps consolidating, editing, and arranging the last mile of content.

Print and web: one ecosystem?

Ah, content, what are you doing to our beloved work culture?  We were happy when the world was simple!

Print production, so well known, so comfortable in its methods of achieving uncomfortable deadlines.  It was so simple when 'this is how we do things here' easily fell from our lips. 

Web production, so comfortable in it's freshness and technical knowledge.  Yet it still had a world all to its own.

But now, maybe the idea of 'content' is just starting to bring each world into the other's focus.  The definition of content is not really tied to any medium - it lives outside of the reality of 'deployment', of paper & ink, or web browsers. 

Clearly the 'star' theory of content (circa 1999) is long dead, where content is produced centrally and sent seamlessly to different mediums.  Content cannot live completely outside of its context.  It must be edited to each medium.  It can start, end, and be stored centrally, in something like an RSuite (XML CMS), but it changes as it moves to print, or moves to web.

With today's tools, many publishers are living in a world where content flows from manuscript-to-print-to-web.  And where the most efficient content development ecosystem will only be achieved if upstream (print) production and downstream (web) production work to accommodate each other.  Its one ecosystem after all, where the same 'content' travels through both of these environments.

A content hand-off at the the dividing line between these worlds was the first step in fitting these two systems together.  Loosening and blurring that border seems to be the next step as we forge ahead.   A single content ecosystem demands it.

Content re-use 5 years later

Someone recently contacted me to ask if I had any new thoughts regarding an article I wrote in 2002 on content re-use approaches. First I had that shock of thinking, Was that really 5 years ago???

Then I thought about the question. Has much really changed since 2002? Here's a brief reaction. (We should probably do a full follow up article.)

1) The three main approaches being used - print-driven, content-driven, multiple drivers - are still in play and I wouldn't change anything I wrote.

2) However, publishers are doing more and more electronic publishing and so the need for automation and speed in print-to-digital processes is higher than ever. Even more importantly, many more publishers are transitioning to the hybrid model of having some content start in print and some start in a neutral or online-first environment. This includes publishers whose staff don't consider themselves to be terribly technical - this is no longer something only the brave are trying. Because of rapidly evolving business models, publishers need even more flexibility to move among approaches than I would have guessed a few years ago.

3) Technology to facilitate all this has improved, but it's still hard. CMS tools for content re-use and repurposing have improved a lot (of course, we think RSuite is a good example of that). Print tools like InDesign and Quark are include capabilities that facilitate automation in and out, and promise to get better. At this point, IMO, the main lack is in the area of editorial tools (e.g., word processors) that allow for content to go to either print or online without much advance planning. This is a tough nut to crack, but we're starting to see some new options.

4) People issues are still more difficult than technology issues. But, very broadly speaking, publisher team members are now more comfortable with technology and seem to have somewhat fewer issues transitioning to newer tools and processes.

5) Bottom line, there's still no substitute for careful planning and - usually - a good deal of money when it comes to ensuring that content quality and product quality (print and online) are built into new systems and processes.

Print death watch

A small handful of publishers made recent announcements on their decisions to cease publishing in print and move to sole digital content delivery.

The most notable is, of course, InfoWorld's cessation of print this month. 

We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism --the Web -- at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You'll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) -- something more than a million of you already do every month.

We also heard Time's announcement that it will discontinue the LIFE newspaper supplement, but still look to build online product offerings under the LIFE brand.

(New York, NY March 26, 2007) – Time Inc. announced today that it will close LIFE magazine, but the company will continue to develop LIFE online and operate the brand's other successful businesses. The issue dated April 20, 2007 will be the magazine's last.

(A quick side note, in the interesting blog world, I read this on Bill Trippe's blog, who linked to PaidContent.org, which linked to a news release on Poytner Online). 

On a much smaller scale, but with a touch of irony, earlier this year the oldest newspaper in the world stopped print publishing.

The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.  The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.

And in a completely different world, although they still churn out their journal in print, 

The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) is considering discontinuing the print version of its journal Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBC). We welcome comments from the library community about the value of print journals and the adequacy of LOCKSS, Portico, and PubMed Central as archives of electronic journals.  We are also curious about whether librarians would be interested in a print-on-demand option for obtaining archival print copies if regular print subscriptions were discontinued.

This was posted by ASCB's director of publications to the Yale University Library's Liblicense-L discussion list.  The post prompted a flurry of responses.

So we've heard the demise of print for years and we are probably still a far way off from seeing this on a grand scale, but I imagine we could see more announcements this year.

For anyone who's interested, I'll be collecting stories related to the demise of print on my del.icio.us links at:  http://del.icio.us/estevenson/demiseofprint

And one final note: I wonder what percentage of InfoWorld.com visitors print out the articles to read?

A month to month lease on content

When looking at online pricing strategies, we hear and read a good deal about single purchase or pay per view, but some publishers are seeing success with something in between the pay per view and the traditional annual subscription: the monthly subscription. Monthly subscriptions are often priced not much higher than single purchase prices and don't feel like as much of a commitment as an annual subscription. So they are an attractive upsell to those who may have only made a single purchase but would never have signed up for a whole year. And some publishers are seeing very good renewal rates month to month.

The Online Publishers Association's Online Paid Content: U.S. Market Spending Report, Full Year 2005 reports that in aggregate for all online paid content (which includes music and gaming), "monthly subscriptions continue to grow and be the predominant revenue model, increasing 6.4% from 57.6% of total subscription revenue in 2004 to 61.3% in 2005." However the report also notes, "The trade-off is a 6% decline in annual subscription revenue, from 32.7% in 2004 to 30.8% in 2005." The report filters out music and gaming with some vertical breakdowns of monthly subscription revenue, which account for 51.3% of revenue in research, 49.8% in business content/investment, and 72.9% in general news categories.

This is a pretty good report on online paid content trends and worth checking out. Another resource for tracking online content pricing news and trends is www.paidcontent.org.