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.