128: The death of "the death of print"

It’s time to get past platitudes and talk honestly about print. We’re always hearing about the death of print and digital transformation. All the fun, exciting stuff seems to be happening online, and print titles are dying left and right.

At the same time, if you try to move your print subscribers to digital, most of them will leave you. That’s the sad fact. People love print.

And there are some stories of titles going back into print, and new print magazines that are succeeding.

But let’s face it, the economics of print are terrible. Printing and mailing costs are through the roof, they keep going up, and there’s constant downward pressure on prices. People expect to get a glossy, 80-page magazine mailed to their house once a month for $8 a year. It’s crazy. You can’t sustain a business with those kinds of numbers.

I know someone is thinking, “just get over it for God’s sake! Why agonize over this? The world has gone digital. Get with it and stop trying to sell buggy whips.”

Okay, create digital-only products. Have at it.

But unlike buggy whips, people do actually like print. Even younger people. There is a preference for digital, but it’s not as if young people all prefer digital. That’s a common misconception.

The problem publishers face is that people don’t like to pay for print, but they still want it. So there is a market to be served here. The question is whether we can be clever enough to make it work.

So what can you do? Here are some options.

You can move your printing to China. For some reason, they’re able to print things cheaply and we’re not. Maybe they’re not subject to the same environmental and human resources restrictions as American companies, but however they’re doing it, they are cheaper. So if it doesn't bother you that it's probably not fair competition, and if you can wait 6-8 weeks for the product to arrive, that’s an option. Trade paperback books can go that route, for example.

You can raise prices to cover costs. Most magazines can’t do this. They’d lose 80 percent or more of their subscribers, and the numbers just don’t work. But you could re-imagine your product as a luxury item, or create a new luxury product, and sell it at a premium price. It’s worth considering. Some titles have done this successfully.
You can accept that print is a loss leader and create other business opportunities around it. For example,

Sell a cheap investing newsletter to entice people to subscribe to your really expensive investing newsletter.

Find the enthusiasts in your market and sell high-ticket items to them. Cruises. Special events with the editors. Dinners.

Monetize the audience itself. I don’t mean in the creepy way that Google does, where they give us something for free and make us the product. Get consent. Tell people what you’re doing. Don’t be Mr. Creepy. But if you can honestly and decently get data from your audience that’s valuable to other partners, try it.

For example, if you have a magazine about fishing, your subscribers might be perfectly willing to give you information that would be very valuable to people who sell boats, or rods and reels, or fishing lures.

And there are other ways to use your money-losing print magazine to build a money-making business.

The economics of print are bad and they’re getting worse. But people still love print. For good reason. Print is simply better than digital in many ways. Digital is better than print in many ways too. They each have their benefits.

But consumers aren't going to pay for magazines and other periodical print products the way they used to. Those days are over, and every print publisher is facing this problem. Who’s going to come up with the right formula to make all this work?

Or … do we just give up and admit that everybody’s going to be playing on Tik Tok all day? Do you want to give your granddaughter a smart phone, or a hardback copy of Goodnight Moon?

I love technology, but I don’t want to live in a digital-only world and I don’t want to be assimilated by the Borg. So I would very much like to help you find a way to make a successful print business even given the horrible economic realities of print.