Book People Are So Damn Stone Age

To be clear, this is not Don Linn’s idea. He’s just passing along what he heard at one of those many “conferences” book publishing likes to put on. Those sad groups where a few tell the many and the many leave and forget all that they’ve heard.

http://twitter.com/#!/DonLinn/status/29589615417495552

That is what book people would consider an innovation.

And that’s why they lose.

Tablet Periodicals Links #2

Continuing to collect these links I’ll need later.

B&N boast 650 thousand digital magazines sold in the past 2 months
Nook Newsstand Sales Exceed Expectations
Barnes & Noble:150 Percent More Subs Since Xmas Than Previous Year
B&N: Nook Color sparks sales of periodicals
— the thing not to ever forget is that these magazines exist only in NookColor format. It’s not like they’re also for sale for the iPad or Android tablets too.

Why digital newsstands stink
The iPad newsstand that works
Google Digital Newsstand Aims to Muscle In on Apple

Forget apps, OnSwipe is the future of publishing.

@Themediaisdying: The Brutal Truth From Two Years In The Twitterverse

SCOOP: Wizard Magazine To Close Immediately
Wizard Magazine goes public and digital, ends print edition – UPDATED

Digital Magazine Features & Benefits
10 Takeaways from the SPD Judging
A Recipe for Hotcake-Selling Magazine Apps

Issue 1 of Hackers! is here!

Previously here:

Tablet Periodical Links #1

Magazines, Meet Your Doom, Part Two

EXCLUSIVE: Former Wizard Employee Speaks

iF: What was Wizard’s online strategy, if you knew of it, while you were employed there?

FWE: It is really funny that you ask about the online strategy; as far as I knew, there was none. A few weeks ago, I heard some talk of having our magazine published on the iPad through Comixology. Having had some experience with digital publishing, I suggested to the editorial director and most senior member of the editorial staff that pages might need to be re-thought to fit the format. He seemed very confused as to what that even meant as far as workflow, etc.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

I can’t speak for the rest of the interview but that part, right there, is why magazines can’t jump to digital. They’re not even at the starting gate like print book publishers!

What you usually get is, “Well, why can’t we just do it as a PDF?”

At least print book publishing is past that point.

Previously here:

Magazines, Meet Your Doom

Magazines, Meet Your Doom

Wizard Magazine goes public and digital, ends print edition – UPDATED

At one time, Wizard sold more copies than any comic it covered but in recent years, despite several attempts to get a website going (including one over a decade ago) it just could not compete with the moment by moment breaking news of the internet.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

I can’t speak to Wizard. I might have seen an issue once, but my memory might be wrong or at any rate too dim to matter. So they might not have had any alternative other than this. But even now, having been ravaged by the Net, does the brand name have anything left to compete as a Net-only publication? Or is the brand name so bereft of its past cachet and heritage that it’s now just a brand name that is essentially meaningless?

This the future all periodicals are facing now. Back in the print-only days, when TV Guide was sold by Annenberg to Rupert Murdoch, it quickly changed into something that was no longer TV Guide. I wound up buying it out of habit then just dropping it altogether due to the free on-screen cable TV guide I had. TV Guide no longer had the contents that made it required buying. That was a judgment call by the tasteless Murdoch, who had no competition for the non-listings content — which made TV Guide worth buying — to worry about.

That’s part of the dilemma facing periodicals. To transition to digital, they will have to find out how to exploit their weakness. But doing that will be a jarring break from their heritage and they’ll lose many existing readers, because they will do a morph similar to that of TV Guide — only this time as a reaction to actual competition, not due to a tasteless new owner. It remains to be seen if they can woo new readers to make up for that loss.

TV Guide still hasn’t gotten me back. And probably never will.

Precisely Why I Despise Bean Counters

J.C. Penney closing some stores; Ackman on board

It’s an A.P. story, so I can’t quote it without those asshats sending me a bill for seventeen bucks or something.

But notice that the cast of characters there is a familiar one and they also have their paws on Borders and Target. And how has the health of Borders been lately?