Digital Magazines: follow up

An ndustry participant who asked to remain anonymous, sent me the text below in response to Digital Magazines: That's a fine you got me into now, Stanley.

"Publishers are indeed looking at digital editions as a way to save money on hard-copy production costs. Some b2b publishers are using it to keep old names -- i.e., those who have not responded to renewals after 2 and 3 years. Some as well use digital editions to expand readership with more far from qualified subscribers. Most are involved because they feel they have to be just in case a technology breakthrough makes digital editions a be-all/end-all.

Vendors are only marginally a factor. Publishers can track click-thrus from digital edition ads. That's one of the few areas where they can exhibit true responses. Vendors, however, do not know what they want, even if they thunder as if they do. Further, most are clueless at dealing with the leads publishers deliver them anyway.

Personally, I think every digital edition sucks ... even the so-called cool page-turning ones. It's like DVDs ... I enjoy movies at home, but I love going out to the movies. The cinema's form-factor, so to speak, is a big part of the experience. A DVD and the greatest home theater ever can never replicate that eperience. Thus, I own few DVDs, prefering to borrow one for the night from my local library or rent one from a video store.

Similarly, I have a relationship with a book, a newspaper, a magazine that I will never have with a digital edition of something, even my favorite newspapers and magazines. Digital editions are lifeless entities, like the pod-people in the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Publishers need to get off of the digital edition fad and concentrate on making their hard copy worthy of your subscription. They need to invest in their other digital products -- web, enewsletters, etc. That latter investment needs to be divorced from everything they ever learned in hard copy. Digital and hard copy are two different media. As long as they keep thinking "digital version," they are not thinking of what's best for their hard copy or digital products. They are trying to mate frogs and princes. That only works in fairy tales."