TweetReaders are voting with their wallets: The eBook is winning. In the US, eBooks sales are now topping hardcovers for the first time (story in TechCrunch). Not everywhere of course. According to the Bowker Global eBook Research, the global market for eBooks is driven — in that order — by India, Australia, the UK and [...]
TweetThe digital advertising equation is outlined in the Nielsen graph below. The Global Trust in Advertising survey released this month (summary on Nielsen site and PDF here) underlines one key finding: For the vast majority of digital users, trust lies first and foremost in recommendations and opinions from their peers. As for the bulk of [...]
TweetThe New York Times Company’s latest quarterly numbers contain a rich trove of data regarding the health of the digital news industry. Today, we’ll focus on the transition from traditional advertising to paywall strategies being implemented across the world. Paywall appear as a credible way to offset — alas too partially — the declining revenue [...]
TweetFifteen years ago, Louis Gallois, the SNCF (French Railways) chairman decided to change the company’s lexicon: passengers were to be referred to as “customers” instead of the old bureaucratese “users” (in French: “clients” vs. “usagers”). The intent was to convey notions of choice and consideration for the rider. This being France, the edict led to [...]
Tweet(Second of a series) Last week, we looked at the ebook’s Giant Disruption. A new ecosystem in which Amazon eats publishers’ and agents’ lunch by luring authors into self-publishing. Today, we examine the new regime’s impact on book-making and distribution processes. The outcome will surprise few readers: Over time, the new book publishing business will [...]
February 19, 2012 – 9:33 pm
TweetHow should large media organizations handle their blogs? As editors struggle to increase their news coverage, to generate the indispensable serendipity and raise the “fun side” (much needed for legacy media that are often too stiff), how do they strategize their use of blogs? For an online media, is there an optimal number of blogs [...]
January 29, 2012 – 8:10 pm
TweetLet’s come back to the business model question. My January 15 column featuring a Simple Model for digital newspapers triggered a number of emails and comments, many questioning my assumptions (my thanks to readers of the Monday Note who take the time to make insightful contributions to the discussion). Let’s see if we can sort [...]
January 15, 2012 – 8:16 pm
TweetAdvertising still dominates the newspaper revenue model. Depending upon the particular country, it is not uncommon to see print dailies getting 70% to 80% of their revenue from advertising. In the early days of the digital era, when business plans were driven by “eyeballs”, everybody hoped to replicate the tried and true print advertising revenue [...]
December 18, 2011 – 11:00 pm
TweetWhen it comes to cracking the digital media code, 2011 involved more testing than learning. Media companies seem to be locked in a feverish search mode. Their sense of urgency is reinforced by the continuous depletion of worldwide fundamentals: digital advertising’s encephalogram remains flat (at best); and when audiences grow, revenues do not necessarily correlate. [...]
December 11, 2011 – 10:43 pm
TweetI love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of developers who wrote neat applications [...]
