FW: Outsourcing Circ: "Bad short-term thinking."
Nobody is cracking the real story here Bob. Once upon a time, IDG pushed their head of circ out, presumably to save costs, and replaced her with lower level people already on the team. Ziff Davis did the same thing with Charles Mast. Now both IDG and Ziff have realized those moves were mistakes -- as those heads of circ were amongst the best in the game with long, successful histories at both companies. Now all the buzz is about how two tech publishers decided to outsource their circulation to consultants -- but the real story is that those original moves didn't work out and that circulation veterans still have real value in this market. Without proper succession planning and transition, the stripped down (from defection), leaderless teams at both companies failed. So now both publishers are really going back to their original, veteran stars to get back on track. Albeit with a more effective pricing model. No FTE's on the books, no benefits, no rent/overhead and no need to meddle with how each leader decides to staff up and get the job done. Thoughts?
(Submitted by an anonymous circulator)
RE: Outsourcing Circ:
Hi Bo-Outsourcing affords publishers large and small the opportunity to draw on the experience and talent they can not get in today's market.
This experience brings forth knowledge which is applied to the Publisher's circulation function. In fact, Outsourcing in many cases brings talent in both single copy and subscription sales combined.
Therefore, a cost savings that cannot be duplicated by putting employees in that function.
Publishers will find out that in today's market Outsourcing is the only way to go to apply the talent that is both affordable and smart, and I am surprised this has not been done to their advantage 15 years ago.
(Submitted by a Circulator)
Re: Thanks, old boy, you taught us well
When I was a kid, I thought of Esquire as a sex magazine. We, my friends,
had to sneak a look at the magazine stands. And it was a WOW.
(Submitted by the Father of BoSacks)
Re: Thanks, old boy, you taught us well
What a travesty not to mention Men's Health magazine with the likes of Esquire, GQ, Details, & those others? (are you kidding me---Ebony Man, Men's Vogue].
Sham on you Mr. Burnett.
(Submitted by an Executive Director)
Re: MagCloud: The Future of Magazine Publishing?
Of course all of this keeps going back to editors/publishers who have ideas, yet need more economical, creative ways to publish/print... but no one addresses how to find your readers in a cost-effective way.
(Submitted by a Senior Circulator)
RE: Time Anthology Reaffirms the Printed Word
How quaint, is it available for the Kindle?
(Submitted by a Senior Director of Manufacturing)
Re: Can Consumer Mags Profitably Transition To Digital?
i really liked this one.
magazines are good because they don't have a high margin classified business which has been declining severely in newspapers.
newspapers are drowning in competition from other media, including magazines, who can run cross platform programs while newspapers cannot.
let's go back 20 or so years . . .
newspapers are better than magazines because they can generate content that is more timely than magazines
newspaper organizations are making substantial investments in new technologies like cable, text delivery (remember videotext, folks?) along with continuing investments in broadcast media, unlike magazines
let me see if i understand this . . . .
magazines would not do as well because they did not have the resources or the timeliness of newspapers
now, magazines will do better than newspapers because . . . well . . . . ummmm . . . . because they're not newspapers!
does anyone else get the irony in all of this?
newspapers always acted to protect their supposed core business, and only made half hearted investments in the others (scripps howard is a notable exception). so of course, the got half-hearted results, and most missed the information explosion and instead fought against google and others to protect their legacy turf
(Submitted by an Industry Pundit)
Re: What Mainstream Publishers Don't Want You to Know
Yeah, well, there's *another* reason not to use agents. What a travesty. I figure, if someone
wants to subscribe to my magazine, it's easy enough to find me, so I use NO AGENCY subs. None.
Zilch. In the days before the Internet, this silliness made a modicum of business sense. Not anymore.
(Submitted by a Publisher)
Re: BoSacks Speaks Out: Resisting Google
Bob, have you noticed that Google is constantly adding storage capacity and enlarging the personal storage allowances for all their users? For free? I have hundreds of photos, emails not deleted, etc., and gmail says I'm still only using 4% of my allowed (free) storage capacity. A far cry from the $24.95 per month I was paying fifteen years ago for early AOL . . .
As Google continues collecting our electronic data trails to learn everything about all of us, I wonder if they also keep track of our whereabouts? Wouldn't it be easy for them to note the locations from which our Google accounts are activated, via wireless or other web portals that we connect through when travelling? If so, they know exactly where I am, and have been, for virtually every day of the past three years. Now THAT possibility is really frightening.
(Submitted by a Senior VP MFG)
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