The internet is all aflutter today with news that the Hearst Corporation — publisher of venerable print publications like Esquire and the San Francisco Chronicle — plans to launch an e-book reader to compete with Amazon’s surprisingly successful Kindle
This is a big deal because print media (and newspapers in particular) have been taking such a beating from the internet. A slick new technology, coupled with — no doubt — a subscription program, could open a path back to profitability for the struggling print media.
I spent over 10 years working for magazines, and let me tell you, it’s the manufacturing and distribution costs that really cut into the bottom line. Because of archaic and inefficient distribution methods, magazine publishers routinely print three to four times as many issues as will ever be sold — because that’s the only way the current system will allow them to sell any at all.
Moving to a product-on-demand system while maintaining the portability of printed media would be a very good thing for the business model as a whole.
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