152: Three thoughts to help magazine publishers succeed in a tough market

Publishing a magazine is a hard business. But there is hope.

James Evelegh wrote an article that Bo Sacks posted on Friday. It’s titled “Large magazine companies – how they can get back to winning ways.”

That caught my eye because some of my clients publish magazines, and I want to know how to advise them.

I’m going to comment on 3 of his 10 points. I’ll provide a link below to the entire article.

#1 – “Empower your workforce” -- reminded me of a story.

Daughter #3 was reporting for duty at an Air Force base. I had to wait in the kitchen while she was doing whatever they do. There was a sign on the wall in the kitchen that said "If you see a problem...."

Okay, stop right there. How do you expect that sign to continue, based on your office experience? You probably expect something like "report it to maintenance," or "tell the office manager."

No. This is the armed forces. The sign said "If you see a problem, <b>fix it.</b>"

I laughed out loud.

Yes, that's the way you treat adults. You're not training people to complain, or to notice problems for other people to fix. You're training them to take responsible action to make things better.

Expect your employees to act.

#5 is “See your company as a house of brands, and not as a media or publishing business.”

As I’ve said in previous podcasts, the magazine business is very hard these days. The cost of printing and mailing keeps going up, and consumer expectations on price keep going down.

However, magazines are very effective as a front for a brand, so one ticket to success is to find a way to accept that the magazine might be a loss leader and to monetize the audience another way. Sell products. Sell events. Sell expensive memberships. Etc. If you have questions about that, give me a call.

#8 implies that the word “magazine” is equally at home in print and online. I don’t agree with that.

Can you buy a magazine rack for your digital magazine? Can you swat a bug with your digital magazine? Can you put your digital magazine on your coffee table?

I’m being a little silly, but there’s a point here. The word “magazine” is associated with a print publication in many, many different ways.

But the more important point is that digital does some things very well and print does some things very well, and the intersection between the two is not that large.

If you think of your “magazine” as a product that can be distributed in print and online, both versions will suffer. Your print publication won’t be everything it can be, and your digital publication won’t be everything it can be.

I think it makes much more sense to think of them as different products and to make each the best that it can be in its medium.

Let’s push this a bit to make the point even more obvious. What if you had an audio version of your magazine? What would audio, print, and digital all have in common?

Don’t even be tempted to think that way. Make the best audio product you can make. Make the best digital product you can make. And yes, make the best print product you can make. Don’t shackle all three of them by calling them “magazines.”

Links

Large magazine companies – how they can get back to winning ways
https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/large-magazine-companies-how-they-can-get-back-to-winning-ways-22573

Can you swat a bug with that magazine?
https://krehbielgroup.com/2022/09/12/can-you-swat-a-bug-with-that-magazine/