Thought you might want to see the link below, plus my company's chairman sounding off about it! I think his remarks could be applied to digital books/vooks, too
"Print is still king" is 100% the wrong headline. The true story should say:
"Newspapers still screwed, and moving to the web won't save them"
Salient points are: · Newspapers are dying slowly, because more people want to get their news free via the web (and indeed want to shop from the web, not from local newspapers)
· Newspapers are trying to parlay their offering to the web in an attempt to stop the circulation slide...
· ... and as this research is showing, their web editions are a flop. The 3% web readership is 3% of a declining readership.
· Conclusion: for many people (especially I guess younger people) newspapers are just not that interesting and engaging any more, and they don't even think about newspapers if they want to find out what's happening - so an online newspaper is of as little interest to them as the papery version.
As previously discussed, magazines (especially our B2B trade and technical magazines) have more resilience than newspapers a) because their basic premise is entirely different (i.e. huge amounts of heavily targeted and reasonably timeless information designed to appeal to a specific audience with a specific interest, as opposed to newspapers' mission to deliver a lot of varied and very time-driven stories to a very wide audience with a huge collection of varying interests) and b) because news is well-suited to a couple of moments in front of a screen, but magazine content is a pain in the arse to read on the web, because there's so much of it.
That said, we can't assume magazines will be immune from the web effect forever, which is why we need to get our heads around matters digital and why I in particular need to get me head around 'proper' digital magazines (FTAOD, a YUDU edition is not a proper digital magazine - it is a web rendering of a product meant to be printed on paper. It is inferior to the paper magazine in all respects but two: the fact that you can click through links in text and adverts, and the fact that you can search through it [and archived editions] for keywords).
started by Louise Izadi on 08 Oct 09
Thought you might want to see the link below, plus my company's chairman sounding off about it! I think his remarks could be applied to digital books/vooks, too
http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/04/print-is-still-king-only-3-percent-of-newspaper-reading-actually-happens-online/
"Print is still king" is 100% the wrong headline. The true story should say:
"Newspapers still screwed, and moving to the web won't save them"
Salient points are:
· Newspapers are dying slowly, because more people want to get their news free via the web (and indeed want to shop from the web, not from local newspapers)
· Newspapers are trying to parlay their offering to the web in an attempt to stop the circulation slide...
· ... and as this research is showing, their web editions are a flop. The 3% web readership is 3% of a declining readership.
· Conclusion: for many people (especially I guess younger people) newspapers are just not that interesting and engaging any more, and they don't even think about newspapers if they want to find out what's happening - so an online newspaper is of as little interest to them as the papery version.
As previously discussed, magazines (especially our B2B trade and technical magazines) have more resilience than newspapers a) because their basic premise is entirely different (i.e. huge amounts of heavily targeted and reasonably timeless information designed to appeal to a specific audience with a specific interest, as opposed to newspapers' mission to deliver a lot of varied and very time-driven stories to a very wide audience with a huge collection of varying interests) and b) because news is well-suited to a couple of moments in front of a screen, but magazine content is a pain in the arse to read on the web, because there's so much of it.
That said, we can't assume magazines will be immune from the web effect forever, which is why we need to get our heads around matters digital and why I in particular need to get me head around 'proper' digital magazines (FTAOD, a YUDU edition is not a proper digital magazine - it is a web rendering of a product meant to be printed on paper. It is inferior to the paper magazine in all respects but two: the fact that you can click through links in text and adverts, and the fact that you can search through it [and archived editions] for keywords).