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Publishing tries leaping off page
An assortment of newspaper and magazine vending racks sit in an empty lot in San Francisco
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TEXT OF STORY
Renita Jablonski: If you've picked up a copy of your favorite magazine lately, you may have noticed fewer pages. Even though readership is up, ad sales are down. Amanda Aronczyk looks at new ideas publishers are flipping through right now.
Amanda Aronczyk: Think E Ink and more Spice. That's what people will be talking about at today's Publishing Business Conference & Expo in New York.
Noelle Skodzinski is the organizer. She says that there is some panic in her industry, but maybe it's productive. It's making publishers ask themselves essential questions:
Noelle Skodzinski: We have to figure out if what we're doing is the best way to do this. How can we bring in more revenue? It's really forced a lot of innovation out of the industry.
Publishers are looking at products like Harlequin's Spice Briefs: erotic short stories for your cell phone or iPod.
Both Harlequin and Esquire are winning innovation awards tonight. Esquire for using E Ink, or electronic ink, on the magazine's October issue.
Skodzinski: The headline was just flashing on the cover and it said the 21st Century is now.
While Skodzinski says publishing isn't dead, it might just need to think off the page.
In New York, I'm Amanda Aronczyk for Marketplace.
If the publishing industry thinks that a magazine’s flashing headline is an award-worthy innovation, then God help them in their quest to bring in more revenue. As with the bankers, the deflating bubble is revealing just how much college-educated dead weight survives — employed but unproductive. As owners realize that employees who are uncreative status-quo thinkers are dragging down the value of the enterprise, we'll start to see the real downsizing. There is much to come, no doubt.
