Friday, December 18, 2009 by Adrian

The recent news that Condé Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, Meredith, and News Corp have formed a U.S. digital magazine consortium has brought out the Mystic Meg in many of those working in the world of business publishing here in the UK. As we eagerly look into our crystal screens to find out the significance of this alliance, at Ouno Creative we're very interested and excited about the predictions for the future of digital publishing.

Early in 2009 and despite the economic downturn, the future for digital publishing across the fields was already looking very bright. The AOP's annual census survey predicted that digital revenues would increase by 16 percent during the year.

The AOP survey showed that digital publishers were pragmatic about the long -term futures of their businesses with 63 percent of online publishers planning to increase their digital investment over the year, in contrast to the 7 percent who were anticipating a decrease in investment. This was good news for everyone in the field. With further investment would come further advances in technology and innovation - and with it, must come the format to match.

Sure enough, it did, well in theory we're told it will - with almost weekly releases on the developments in the field of tablets (as discussed in our last post). The future of digital publishing has a reader for it, but just which reader will be the market leader, at this point, is ultimately unpredictable. Would B2B publishing be affected by the reader itself?

Back to the magazine consortium developments, and perhaps looking at the context in which this alliance has developed may help make sense of its initial focus. It cannot be a coincidence that this alliance has been formed at exactly the same time Rupert Murdoch and online newspapers are locked in discussions about the future of online newspaper publishing in order to resolve the issue of how to charge for content. In his article Lies, Half-Truths and Other Innuendos About Digital Magazines Marcus Grimm furthers this argument, pointing out that "There's no reason to believe that this will be a solution for trade publications. All indications are that this solution is aimed at charging for content." So ultimately, for B2B publishers, "there's nothing here to indicate a better future for you".

However, as Grimm also notes, even if the consortium's alliance proves unsuccessful, their formation is already highlighting the achievements of existing companies, enabling further developments for the future. The group states that one of their goals is to "to create a robust publishing platform that's optimized for multiple devices," something that Grimm argues companies like Nxtbook are already doing.

So if ultimately publishers are really more concerned with the future of digital publishing protecting what they already do - ie making money from publishing content through sales, rather than format, it seems right that the future of B2B publishing is to focus on making sure their content is read and a compelling reading experience.

With everyone running around, trying to predict and create the future of hardware, we can't help but feel that people are perhaps somewhat missing the point. A tablet device may allow the user 'touch control' but essentially it is a laptop and will be able to do what a laptop can already do. Compelling rich-media reading experiences are already available (ourselves and others are creating them) and they don't require a tablet to view them. Instead they require imagination and creativity at the design stage.

E-mags are a fantastic marketing tool if they are created well and when they are able to offer the reader more than a printed publication could. i.e the inclusion of video, animation and interactive image galleries for example. So perhaps the consumer press should be looking at their own digital offerings a little closer as opposed to just focussing on the manner in which they can sell them or feeling it is essential that the reader has a tablet to be able to consume them.

People will buy, or read, or pay attention to the offering if the offering is a good one.

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