Print publishing death watch

[MightyB]

Our recent shift from bimonthly to quarterly reflects the plummeting print economy. I will hold on as long as possible but can only do it with your support - please subscribe or pick us up at the newsstands.

Just did the 2 year. Hopefully you'll be able to keep on keeping on for a bit longer.

[GeneChing]

Just did the 2 year. Hopefully you'll be able to keep on keeping on for a bit longer.

Thanks MightyB! We appreciate that.

[GeneChing]

Ha! We aren't the only ones forced to shift to quarterly now.

Funny how Playboy has become such a barometer for the print publishing industry here. At the same time, the Playboy club is reopening and Playboy is moving back to deeper content. Too bad we can't manage a Kung Fu Tai Chi club.

'Playboy' To Become A Quarterly Publication In 2019
by Sara Guaglione , September 12, 2018



Playboy magazine, which publishes six issues a year, plans to become a quarterly publication starting next year.

Earlier this year, Playboy CEO Ben Kohn told TheWall Street Journal the company may shutter the magazine eventually. But in a new interview with The New York Times, he said "the magazine is not going to stop printing."

Kohn said he plans to make the magazine a quarterly.

The company’s licensed products — from shampoo to backpacks — bring in over $1 billion annually, according to the Times report.

Soon, the company will reopen a Playboy Club in Midtown Manhattan.

The brand has undergone a number of changes this year under the leadership of Cooper Hefner, Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. and the youngest son of the company’s founder, Hugh Hefner, who died in 2017.

The magazine featured a transgender Playmate on one of its covers for the first time in its 64-year history and updated its slogan from “Entertainment for Men” to “Entertainment for All.”

In April, Playboy unveiled a new website. Now, all site visitors are required to register. They can become a Playboy Club member for access to exclusive content and events.

Migrating content online is part of Hefner’s plan to "shift away from putting a lot of effort into the magazine,” he said at the MediaPost Publishing Insider Summit last fall.

Playboy reached a peak of 5.6 million subscribers a year in 1975. Today, the magazine has a circulation under 500,000 and publishes six issues a year.

[GeneChing]

Our Spring 2020 issue was already on newsstands when this happened but all the stores closed so it will have a major impact upon our sales.

Barnes and Noble will stop selling new magazines
April 26, 2020 By Michael Kozlowski 43 Comments



Barnes and Noble has shuttered over 500 of their 600 bookstores in the United States and the bookseller has announced they are no longer going to be ordering new magazines and will cease carrying them altogether.

“It will probably be a bigger deal for smaller publishers who count on the money they get upfront from B&N,” said one industry veteran, who noted that big newsstand titles, like Hearst’s Cosmopolitan and Meredith’s People, are far more reliant on other retailers.

The lack of new magazines at Barnes and Noble will likely drive people to Target or Walmart to purchase them. Overall, magazine sales through Walmart and Target have jumped over 3% this year, while supermarket sales are up 12%. Walmart accounts for 17% of all magazine sales in the United States in 2019.

Update: Alex Ortolani, Director, Corporate Communications at Barnes and Noble told Good e-Reader
“We have temporarily paused magazine orders due to store closures related to COVID-19. When we reopen stores we will once again sell magazines.”

Although the statement is appreciated, people who want to buy new magazines at the 100 remaining stores that are open, will not be able to. New magazines will likely not be appearing anytime soon, nor will the B&N reopen their closed stores in the immediate future.


Michael Kozlowski
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

THREADS:
Spring 2020
Print publishing death watch

[GeneChing]

Will there still be the online content?

Yes, for now. As long as MartialArtSmart can stay in business, KungFuMagazine.com and this forum will stay online. I'll still be active here part time. It's all still being sorted however. Putting the print mag to rest has a lot of factors. But both KFM and this forum are tremendous archives (over a thousand articles on KFM and I can't even begin to tabulate what's stored on this forum) so I'm going to do my best to fight for it. However, I gotta pay my own bills too.

There is a chance that the SUMMER 2020 issue might still be produced. We were almost done with it when the Shelter-in-Place order was given. I'm looking into doing some sort of fundraiser like a GoFundMe to complete it.

Publishing has been a struggle and this fate is inevitable for every niche mag. Remember, I've been charting the decline of print mags in our Print-publishing-death-watch since 2009.

Thank you all for your continued support.

[GeneChing]

READ Kung Fu Tai Chi 1992-2020 by Gene Ching



THREADS
Kung-Fu-Tai-Chi-is-ceasing-publication
Print-publishing-death-watch
Summmer-2020

[GeneChing]

Here's a twist. Den of Geek just went to print with a quarterly and you can get the issues free.

I've been freelancing with Den of Geek a lot lately. It's been fun.

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SUBSCRIBE TO DEN OF GEEK MAGAZINE FOR FREE!
The Den of Geek quarterly magazine will be packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews, and deep dives into geek culture. We’ll focus on the hottest movies and TV shows, explore the latest in games, books, and comics while also bringing you retrospectives on your favorite classics. Our new magazine will celebrate the buzziest releases on the entertainment calendar with beautiful layouts, exclusive imagery, and in-depth long reads in 68-page full color pages. It will be published four times a year and the first issue will be launched in February. We’re pretty sure you’re going to love it…

How do you get your hands on a copy? For readers based in the United States, it’s as simple as filling in the below form telling us the address you’d like the magazine shipped to. That’s all there is to it! We’ll send you a copy every quarter in 2021. Exact shipping dates are to be determined. For our international readers, we’ll have more information on how you can snag a copy in the coming weeks.

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[GeneChing]

Feb 9, 2022 8:50am PT
Entertainment Weekly, InStyle Cease Print Publications

By Jordan Moreau

Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly
Dotdash Meredith is ending the monthly print publications for Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and People en Español, Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel said in a Wednesday memo to staff, obtained by Variety.

The publications will go digital-only effective today, and the transition is expected to terminate roughly 200 positions on the print side, Vogel said. The April editions of the print magazines will be the brands’ last, and the 200 eliminated jobs represent less than 5% of Dotdash Meredith’s total staff, according to Wall Street Journal, which broke the news.

“This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead,” Vogel’s memo says. “We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential.”

Dotdash, the digital publishing division of Barry Diller’s holding company IAC, acquired Meredith for $2.7 billion last year. Vogel, then CEO of Dotdash, took the reigns of the combined Dotdash Meredith company. Dotdash, formerly known as About.com, was acquired by IAC from The New York Times in 2012 for $300 million in cash. The media company houses 14 brands across health, finance, lifestyle, food and beauty, including Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Byrdie, Liquor.com, Treehugger and Brides. After acquiring Meredith, it also brought in People and Better Homes & Gardens.

Read Vogel’s full memo below:

Team,

Effective today, we will no longer be printing monthly magazines for EatingWell, Entertainment Weekly, Health, InStyle, Parents, and People en Español. This is an important step in the evolution of Dotdash Meredith, and I want to be clear with everyone about what we are doing and what is ahead.

We have said from the beginning, buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites. It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. As such, we are going to move to a digital-only future for these brands, which will help us to unlock their full potential. These brands are among our most successful, important, and fastest growing digital properties – the online audience for Parents, InStyle, and EatingWell are each up over 40% year-over-year – and all of these brands have a bright future.

The decision to evolve these brands to digital-only means that some jobs – roughly 200 roles primarily supporting our print operations – will be eliminated. Transitions like this are very difficult, impacting colleagues and friends, some of whom have been with the company for decades. I can’t thank these employees enough for getting these brands to the strong place they are at today. Brand leaders have already notified those impacted, and we are taking great care to help ensure a smooth transition for these employees.

Today’s step is not a cost savings exercise and it is not about capturing synergies or any other acquisition jargon, it is about embracing the inevitable digital future for the affected brands. We are very serious about investing for growth – in 2022 alone we will be investing over $80 million in content across our brands. We currently have over 100 open positions in editorial, engineering, product, design, and ecommerce, some of which we hope to fill with people impacted today.

Naysayers will interpret this as another nail in print’s coffin. They couldn’t be more wrong – print remains core to Dotdash Meredith. From PEOPLE to BHG to Southern Living to WOOD, and all our other beloved print publications, we continue to provide incredible value to readers in print, and we will proudly print over 350 million magazines in 2022. Beginning today, we will be investing in our print-forward brands and products: everything from enhancing paper quality and trim sizes, to ensuring world-class editorial and beautiful photography. We are infusing fresh energy across these print-forward brands in all formats to make sure they can meet both the moment and the needs of their readers in new and innovative ways.

These are difficult decisions but we believe they are the correct decisions. We remain as enthusiastic as ever for the future of our brands and our company.

NV

Wow. I didn't think EW would fold so soon. Another nail in the coffin for print mags.

While I was publisher of KFTC, I was privy to industry reports and assiduously followed the newsstand trends in some flailing hope that I could stave off the inevitable. We should’ve gone down in 2009 when the great purge happened and hundreds of print newsstand mags folded (and this here thread began) so I’ll take some credit for keeping us alive for another decade past our expiration date.

Celeb mags like EW were consistently doing well. Why? They transcended newsstands to the checkout racks. Those were the strongest genre of periodicals. It’s very telling to see EW go down.

I imagine the pandemic played a part. KFTC went down because the newsstands shuttered. Publishing periodicals are deadline driven and the supply chain disruption moved all publishers that were printing abroad (books mostly - mags need domestic printers to make deadline) to shift here and overload the system. All YMAA’s 2021 titles - books & DVDs - were delayed due to this. Mag deadlines couldn’t take it - those delay distribution - it’d like dominos when that happens and a publisher can lose a ton of money very quickly.

Sad to see EW go down too but somewhat relieved I’m not alone as a former print mag publisher.

[MightyB]

Question for you Gene:

I'm curious, do you believe there's any opportunity for a print-on-demand niche magazine similar in content to Kung Fu magazine? One that bypasses the bulk print distribution model that magazines traditionally used and instead is printed on-demand and distributed directly to subscribers.

(basically like Den of Geek is now doing)

[GeneChing]

Good question!

The Den of Geek model is quite different. They started by publishing mags that were distributed for free at San Diego Comic Con and New York Comic Con. If you've ever been to one of those, you know how massive the haul of tchotchkes is, so to stand out, they did a very professional publication.

When the pandemic hit, DoG pivoted to a distribution model at comic stores where you can get the issues for free. We had a similar model through Kung Fu schools, but you still had to buy the issue.

Initially, DoG offered the print mag for free during the pandemic shift, but now it's a paid subscription.

DoG has the magnitude that they do sponsored special issues that sidecar with their regular issues. I worked on two of these for Netflix: Vikings-Valhalla & Jupiter-s-Legacy. Those special issues were basically paid ads, and there's no one in the martial arts industry that even has a fraction of the bank to afford something like that.

DoG just did a special issue for SXSW so they are expanding their scope.

There's simply no comparison between the scale of a pop culture publisher like DoG and a niche publisher like KFM.