Submitted By: Ralf Schlozer on August 2, 2010
Media tycoon Robert Murdoch announced last year that he wants to charge for online content of his publications. The Times in the U.K. made the move to charge for site content a few weeks ago. Experian, a company tracking web hits recorded a decline of 66% after introducing the paywall, as measured by the Times’ share of web hits of all media companies. Hits have seen further slight decline but started to stabilise. Competitor UK newspaper The Guardian took the analysis a step further and found that all non-registered surfers were forwarded to a sign-in page and that only 25.6% signed up there and proceeded to the originally targeted Times page. Taking into account free pre-registration of subscribers of the printed issue The Guardian concludes that the Times online lost overall 90% of its traffic. Actually this is pretty much in the range of what was predicted by the Sunday Times’ editor. It could even be worse in the future. Currently The Times is running a low cost trial subscription of just £1.00 for 30 days, instead of £2.00 per week as planned. On top there is a hefty reduction in on-line advertising revenues, as these are calculated by the actual views made by consumers. It does not help that Murdoch’s newspaper titles did pull out of the voluntary page view auditing for news sites – somebody stopping in reporting numbers is usually not a good sign.
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Submitted By: Jeff Hayes on July 20, 2010
There were several interesting announcements in the publishing industry yesterday that have me thinking deeply about the future of print and digital content.
Books
In the book industry, Amazon.com announced some startling figures related to its Kindle and e-book sales.
- Amazon.com is now selling more e-books than hardcover books. Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. (The ratio is 100 to 180 over the last month!) These figures are across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and include sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
- Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009. During this period Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle to $189 from $259 (27% reduction).
- The Association of American Publishers’ latest data reports that e-book sales grew 207% year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales through May exceeded that growth rate.
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Tags: Advertising, Amazon.com, Books, cross media, e-Books, InterACT!, iPad, Jeff Bezos, Kindle, Magazines, new york times, Newspapers, Publishing
Consumer, Production | 
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Submitted By: Alan Bullock on May 11, 2010
InfoTrends’ Consumer Imaging group recently purchased a 16GB Apple iPad with Wi-Fi. Its main purpose, of course, is for us to learn more about the device as a business and photo tool, but it’s been hard not to have fun with it too.
Recent advancements in the quality of their cameras notwithstanding, mobile phones have become powerful digital imaging appliances, with applications for viewing, sharing, sending, and even printing photos. Add a beautiful 9.7” LCD touch-screen display with the intuitive iPhone/iPod Touch user interface, and even without a camera, it feels like a recipe for success. Read more »
Submitted By: Carrie Sylvester on February 26, 2010
The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. Based on its appearance, the iPad could be described as an oversized iPod Touch. Apple, however, describes it as its “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device.” The iPad is a 0.5-inch thick tablet device with a 9.7-inch diagonal LCD display. It offers 1,024 x 768-pixel resolution and features the iPhone’s signature multi-touch interface.
Submitted By: Ralf Schlozer on January 29, 2010
Steve Jobs can be sure of at least one success and that is the instant domination of all blogs around the world with one product launch. There have been many things stipulated, but I would like to get back on the influence the iPad could have on the publishing industry. There are remarks abound, about the great opportunity the iPad poses to publishers. But it should be spelled out explicitly: Steve Jobs is not interested in saving the publishing industry. He wants to sell iGadgets including software and everything around it. What will publishers gain?
Let’s have a look at the numbers: Assuming a consumer buys an iPad for publishing products it means a one-off fee of $500 and then every month an additional $30 (the web access charge) less to spend on publishing products. This money goes into the pockets of Apple and the network provider. Of course a consumer will expect a huge discount in return for the publishing content he reads on the iPad. That is the money the publisher is not getting. Sure, the publisher is saving money by producing e-content. Printing is only a small fraction though, about a seventh of the retail price. The biggest cost factor though is the retail channel which typically receives up to 50% of retail price. However this is the portion Amazon or iBooks are vying for and what they are already charging. In the end there will not be a lot of margin left after giving consumers the discounts they expect.
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