1 - The year of Direct-to-Consumer sales
Several major publishers have experimented with systems to sell online magazines directly to the consumer. All these efforts have -- in terms of comparable revenue generated at a physical bookstore -- completely failed.
Many publishers provide "Digital Editions". These are marginally more fun to read then a pdf on a screen. Digital editions are helpful to give readers an idea of what the magazine looks like in print. But they are not what the consumer wants to read online (otherwise they would sell better, showing comparable sales to bookstores). The truth is that many publishers use digital editions because they are relatively simple to create from the files sent to the printer. It may not take much time to create a digital edition, but publishers who mistake this to be their online strategy are going to be in big trouble (see the final prediction in this blog posting).
The consensus in the industry is that publishers need a system like iTunes and delivery devices like Apple's soon-to-be-released Tablet or the Kindle to deliver an enjoyable reading experience. Which brings us to the next prediction ...
2 - Apple Tablet
The Apple Tablet will be released this year. Steve Jobs is famous for saying that he's proud of all the things Apple didn't do, which translates to: "We will launch it when we are ready or not at all if we think we can't get it right." Since the publishing industry hasn't created anything even remotely close to iTunes for the delivery of online magazines, when Apple releases this product, tightly integrated with the iTunes infrastructure, things will get very interesting.
3 - Amazon: It's not the Kindle. It's your revenue sharing model.
Why is it so hard for Amazon to simply copy Apple's simple and easy sales model?
Publisher sets the price, Amazon does the billing and delivery and takes 30% for doing so, the rest goes to the publisher.
So what's with the cryptic FAQs and non-answers to questions about revenue distribution? The device is fine; the distribution isn't. This is mind-boggling considering that Amazon gets so many other things right. If Amazon doesn't shape up this part of their business, they will lose it to others.
4 - Innovation will come from niche (usually small) publishers, not big enterprise publisher consortia/trade groups
See prediction 2. When several big companies have to agree, things tend to be discussed in depth with no real decisions made and no new products created. Unfortunate but true.
5 - Small publishers and niche magazines will either seize the online opportunity to establish their brand or soon be faced with also-ran status online, seeing their market taken away by new online-only players.
Vanguardistas, the enterprise consultancy that runs the Metro Publisher service and this Magazine site, is watching the European, North American and now African market closely. New magazines and newspapers can now start with a Twitter feed, become a Facebook group, then launch a regularly published website. We have seen this happen in countries ranging from Nigeria to Germany. And for print publishers who think their print products are safe, we would like to add that in both these cases the previously online-only publishers then launched a print edition as well!
Therefore, our last prediction:
2010, more so than any year before it, will be a year where markets are launched or lost.
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