According to both PaidContent and PC Magazine itself, Ziff-Davis has decided that starting early next year, PC Magazine will kill its print edition and live completely online. The print magazine has been around since 1982, and the parent publishing company only recently left bankruptcy.
How in the world did a publishing company climb out of bankruptcy?
According to CEO Jason Young, who spoke to Paid Content:
On the online side, he wouldn’t disclose the revenues for the PCMag brand, but said it was in “tens and tens of millions” of dollars. He said the revenues on the online side have grown an average of 42 percent yearly since 2001; digital is about 70 percent of the revenues for the PCMag brand, and overall is profitable. He said that despite the economic situation, the PCMag brand revenues grew about 18 percent in Q308, and thinks that it will hold up despite advertising downturn due to the power of the brand.
The truth is that the cost of publishing online is so much lower than the cost of print publishing, especially for properties that focus on computers and technology, that carrying a legacy print product just doesn’t make sense.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
nathan hambley 11.21.08 at 9:27 am
Check out this article from AdAge–
http://adage.com/article?article_id=132742.
It highlights the growing effectiveness Web 2.0 marketing tactics.
Jason Preston 11.21.08 at 12:52 pm
Nathan - yeah, I keep seeing studies pop up that are starting to validate online ad expenditures. Now publishers need to grow some backbone and stop running CPC solutions.
Diane 11.24.08 at 2:03 pm
I understand that more and more people are using the internet to read books but I have to say that I am not one of them. I cannot understand how people can sit in front of their computer and read a full book and therefore I do not understand for magazines to find the need to go all digital. Yes it is cheaper but no matter what, you can make a digital magazine the same as a online magazine and I have to ask the question, will they not lose advertising revenue
Jason Preston 11.24.08 at 3:18 pm
Diane - I believe that online advertising is a volume game not a numbers game. Short term, they are going to lose some revenue, but their costs are going to take a nose-dive.
I’m pretty sure they’ve got some smart people crunching the numbers, and I’m willing to be they enjoy a net positive change in their balance sheet from making the all-digital move.