publishing

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Publish This!

December 8, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

I’ve been talking to a number of people in the publishing business lately – website owners, newspaper strategists, newsweekly VPs, trade publishing executives – and one thing they share is a deer-in-the-headlights gaze. “How are we going to make money?”  “How are we going to stem losses?” “How do we fight off citizen journalism?” 

Let’s face it, there has been a perfect storm of events helping to gut the publishing business.  For me the solution to the storm lies in the very roots of publishing.  People don’t want to search hit or miss for the best news, analysis and entertainment — they want it aggregated, categorized and curated. And they want it from sources with whom they’re in synch.  I read The New York Times because its one place to get what I need.

Publishers do need to worry about paper vs. digital and ad revenue vs. headcount but first they need understand what they do best – what their readers want.  Then they can think about innovation in delivering the content. Too often, they’re thinking innovation first and it is resulting in me-too delivery tactics.  (Can you say Podcast?) Once publishers understand the consumer need they fulfill, the content and content wrappers will emerge. They will stop thinking like newspapers, or magazines, or websites and start thinking like publishers – and the gleam will return to their eyes. Peace!

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Writers, writers everywhere.

November 13, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

windfarm

I met with a friend yesterday who is with a very big magazine publishing company. She told me most magazines today are filled with editors but few, if any, staff writers. This approach keeps overhead down, plus the pool of writers out there is so vast, so talented, and so specialized, that the written product is often better. The pay for these writers is a dollar a word. Can you say “game changing business model?”

There are small countries of subject matter experts (SMEs) out in the ether who are ready, willing and able to write for your company at reasonable prices. These are not copywriters, they are writers. You wouldn’t want them to write an ad but they are great for your website or your brochure.

Millions of new and updated websites go live every day, and they all need to be professionally written. Who’s doing that? If a small business, it’s the business owner or her husband. If a mid-size company, it may be a newly minted journalism graduate in the marketing or sales department. At a large company? An ad or digital agency copywriter. Fail. Fail. You need a SME. It’s faster, cheaper and, likely, more effective.

If my company needs 800 words on solar power for my windfarm website, I’d prefer a writer who knows the market. I’ll provide a brand brief (or briefing) and let writer do his or her magic. The piece will be crafted by someone with contextual smarts and assembled by a true wordsmith. Did I mention it will cost a buck a word?   So where is the well filled with all these SMEs? Stay tuned.

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