Are the number of “hard copy” subscribers crashing?
Yes, but they can all go digital.
I know that personally, pre-internet, I subscribed to 3 daily newspapers, 5 magazines and 1 weekly newspaper. Currently the only one I still subscribe to is the weekly newspaper. [the daily newspapers: I live half-way between two metropolitan areas; the third was the Wall Street Journal]
IMHO (I know, wrong forum), Digital is a death sentence.
Every magazine I used to subscribe to that has gone digital-only I’ve dropped. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
The number of subscribers is not the issue: the number of advertisers are.
Print magazines are like print newspapers and network television. They exist only for advertisers. Content is the subterfuge to get eyeballs to the ads. And advertisers are trying desperately to figure out ways to monetize online content.
For the most part, magazines are the walking dead, just like newspapers are and just like network television is. They will stay around for a while, but their audiences are shrinking, and aging (a less desirable demographic for advertisers), and discovering better ways to get information about products. Without a tremendous and totally unforeseen innovation in advertising, magazines will shrink down to the niche mode of vinyl records.
[quote=“Exapno_Mapcase, post:4, topic:723038”]
The number of subscribers is not the issue: the number of advertisers are.QUOTE]
That is the classic chicken-egg dilemma.
I prefer the old school print format, however, “digital” renditions seem to be the current rage. As you posit, advertisers will follow current trends, thereby bolstering non-print formats.
Here are some numbers from the well respected Poynter Institute.
In 2005 print advertising revenues were $47.7 billion. By 2012 it had dropped to $22.3 billion.
Newspaper editorial staff numbered more than 50,000 in 2006. By 2012 it had dropped to below 40,000.
There are a lot more numbers, none of them particularly good for print.
Oddly, many local small town type papers are still doing okay. It’s the big city papers that are in the most trouble.
Watching our paper shrink and shrink and shrink is sad. The Monday paper is a mere wisp of a thing. I expect a reduction to 4-5 real papers a week to come soon. They’ve already significantly reduced the distribution area.
There still are an incredible number of new magazines starting each year. I don’t get it. The main thing to be successful in the magazine business is to have a highly desirable segment of the population as your readers. You don’t want to be a general readership magazine. Having a big segment that targeted demo oriented advertisers care about is bad.
So some magazine with rather large subscriptions bases (Reader’s Digest) are in deep trouble while others with small bases are doing okay.
I’ve heard the above described as:
Subscribers are not the customer. Subscribers are the product. Advertisers are the customer.
our local paper put in a pay wall a few years back. Anyone over the age of 9 can get around it. So I don’t think they make much money from the web version.
Also a lot of the big city papers pay walls are very easy to get around.
Ads look better in large size. Smartphones are horrible platforms for ads. That is the one thing keeping niche magazines alive. Fashion magazines - which are ads all the way through, including the layouts - aren’t easily reproducible online and they are fat with advertising, and a model for other industries with visually desirable product. Make them reproducible online at hugely reduced costs and everybody wins. That’s what I meant when I said that advertisers are furiously looking for ways to make online ads more attractive.
They will succeed eventually. And publishers want them to succeed. The cost differential between paper and photons is too great.
Right now you can’t make money with paper and you can’t make money with photons. All the potential upside is with photons, though. That’s the way to bet.
Also I emailed the editor of our local paper. I asked him why I should pay for online access. He told me there was no need to pay. So I give him points for being honest.
I don’t quite get that. Are you telling us the editor of that paper told you you didn’t have to pay, even though the very same paper implemented a paywall? If that is true, why don’T they just get rid of the paywall altogether? I have a feeling that he might have meant something different.
yes, he told me I did not have to pay after he put up a paywall. Unless he’s dumb he knew the paywall was very lame and easy to get around.
I guess he figures there are some people who are more “honest” and will pay and not go around the wall. BTW, the way I read the paper is to open the link in a private window.
I get the weekend subscription for our local newspaper. But on Friday, I get a weekly issue that contains a handful of advertising supplements.
I’m not sure how much longer the supplements will last.
The digital edition is doing well it seems.
The demise of print has destroyed the total number of eyeballs but advertisers still have the same needs so ad rates are going up. Remember, each person still only has a limited number of hours per day and not all of them will be staring at advertising so as the number of brands proliferate, the harder it is to grab any of those hours of attention.
Because advertising has become increasingly saturated and it’s harder and harder to reach anyone these days, if you can deliver a well targeted niche of high spending users to advertisers, they will pay $$$ per impression and you’ll be able to survive on a fairly small user base.
?? I think you’re missing a thought in there somewhere. 
BOE, the “National Bulletin of Spain”, is the periodical which publishes all laws, regulations, annoucements… from the national Spanish government and from any others that don’t have their own Bulletin.
It went digital a couple of years back and was the last one nationally. When lawyers were polled on the proposal the general response was “about bloody time!” I don’t think anybody has ever accused lawyers of being particularly fond of them newfangled shiny machines, but searching on properly-indexed pdfs is so much easier than doing so on paper that even those nototious Luddites like it best.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m always on the move. I can read my favorite magazines online; I may be getting a subscription to the Economist (digital only please). I’m already a subscriber of several magazines for which the default is “digital only”: if you want the paper version, you have to ask for it specifically; some charge extra.
We’re both anecdata, but it seems to me like we compensate each other.
I’m still not convinced. If it’s the paper’s own policy that you don’t have to pay, then not paying is perfectly honest, since the paper controls the conditions under which people get access to their content. My guess is that either the editor BS’ed you, or you misunderstood what he really said or meant.