Creative industries have struggled to provide consumers with an incentive to purchase their products, as the same content is available for free online. ‘Sales of celebrity titles, such as Heat, Hello! and Closer have plummeted, squeezed out by celebrity websites and the Daily Mail’s sidebar of shame’ (Rowlands 2013).
We have seen the consumption of free content affect the music and movie industries, and we don’t want the same to happen to print magazines. ‘Summer films grossed $4.27bn, down 2.84% from last year’s $4.4bn’ (Cunningham 2012). The decrease of revenue has resulted with an increase of cinema ticket prices. This approach backfired as it encouraged consumers to watch movies through other mediums such as Netflix—this shows that the consumer’s response relative to price is elastic. As consumers want their content for free, are magazines profiting?
Looking at the 2013 UK magazine ABCs, out of the 503 magazines audited, print sales lost on average 6.3% in the second half of 2013 (Ponsford 2014). The struggle to create value through print is becoming harder by the year, however The Bookseller have been successful at implementing a subscription based business model, which generates profit for both online and print. They provide their readers with an incentive to pay for a full online-subscription to access articles from both online and print (The Bookseller 2014).
Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire charges their consumers’ fees, for access to their online content. When newspapers give away their content for free, it leads to a drop of sales in the hard copy, and when circulation drops, so does advertising rates (Branston and Stafford 2010). This has been risky on Rupert’s behalf, especially in such a competitive market, where consumers can easily go to another source, but it was necessary for them to generate an income to continue running.
Whilst magazine publishers have been deciding what content they should publish on their website, book publishers have been fighting with issues such as piracy and open access. I talk about piracy in a previous post ‘ Pirates attack publishers, but what is their defence?’ However, Open Access is also affecting sales, particularly for out-of-copyright, backlist books, which are available through Project Gutenberg.
Content becomes out of copyright ’70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies’ (The UK Copyright Service 2009). When content is legally made available for free, publishers’ must add additional value to their print products. Penguin has done this by re-releasing limited-edition hardbacks and collectable ‘Penguin Classics’, with extra focus on the paratext, which have been sold at a price premium of between £20-£30 (Penguin n.d.).
Turner G. argues that ‘young people appear to consume almost no news or current affairs from any medium or platform’ (Turner 2010), therefore by creating pay walls, we will further discourage the generation from consuming news. Conversely, economist, Milton Friedman believes that the only social responsibility a business has is to ‘use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits’ (Grant 2013). I agree with the latter, as for print to survive, publishers need to remain profitable, and that cannot be done by giving away content for free.
Word Count: 528
Bibliography
Branston, G. and Stafford, R. (2010). The media student's book. London: Routledge.
Cunningham, T. (2012). Summer Movie Ticket Sales 100 Million Down From Decade Ago - TheWrap. [online] TheWrap. Available at: http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/summer-movie-ticket-sales-100-million-down-decade-ago-54496/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
Grant, R., 2013. Contemporary Strategy Analysis: Text Only, United States: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.
Penguin, Hardcover Classics. Penguin Books. Available at: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,,00.html?strSearch= [Accessed October 25, 2014].
Ponsford, D. (2014). UK magazines lose print sales by average of 6.3 per cent - full ABC breakdown for all 503 titles. [online] Press Gazette. Available at: http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/uk-magazines-lose-print-sales-average-63-cent-full-abc-breakdown-all-503-titles [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
Rowlands, B. (2013). The fall and rise of magazines from print to digital. [online] The Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/07/fall-rise-magazines-print-digital [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
The Bookseller, (2014). FAQs. [online] Available at: http://www.thebookseller.com/faqs#q7 [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
The UK Copyright Service, 2009. UK copyright law. Available at: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law [Accessed October 17, 2014].
Turner, G., (2010) Ordinary People and the Media, The Demotic Turn, Sage, London
We have seen the consumption of free content affect the music and movie industries, and we don’t want the same to happen to print magazines. ‘Summer films grossed $4.27bn, down 2.84% from last year’s $4.4bn’ (Cunningham 2012). The decrease of revenue has resulted with an increase of cinema ticket prices. This approach backfired as it encouraged consumers to watch movies through other mediums such as Netflix—this shows that the consumer’s response relative to price is elastic. As consumers want their content for free, are magazines profiting?
Looking at the 2013 UK magazine ABCs, out of the 503 magazines audited, print sales lost on average 6.3% in the second half of 2013 (Ponsford 2014). The struggle to create value through print is becoming harder by the year, however The Bookseller have been successful at implementing a subscription based business model, which generates profit for both online and print. They provide their readers with an incentive to pay for a full online-subscription to access articles from both online and print (The Bookseller 2014).
Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire charges their consumers’ fees, for access to their online content. When newspapers give away their content for free, it leads to a drop of sales in the hard copy, and when circulation drops, so does advertising rates (Branston and Stafford 2010). This has been risky on Rupert’s behalf, especially in such a competitive market, where consumers can easily go to another source, but it was necessary for them to generate an income to continue running.
Whilst magazine publishers have been deciding what content they should publish on their website, book publishers have been fighting with issues such as piracy and open access. I talk about piracy in a previous post ‘ Pirates attack publishers, but what is their defence?’ However, Open Access is also affecting sales, particularly for out-of-copyright, backlist books, which are available through Project Gutenberg.
Content becomes out of copyright ’70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the last remaining author of the work dies’ (The UK Copyright Service 2009). When content is legally made available for free, publishers’ must add additional value to their print products. Penguin has done this by re-releasing limited-edition hardbacks and collectable ‘Penguin Classics’, with extra focus on the paratext, which have been sold at a price premium of between £20-£30 (Penguin n.d.).
Turner G. argues that ‘young people appear to consume almost no news or current affairs from any medium or platform’ (Turner 2010), therefore by creating pay walls, we will further discourage the generation from consuming news. Conversely, economist, Milton Friedman believes that the only social responsibility a business has is to ‘use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits’ (Grant 2013). I agree with the latter, as for print to survive, publishers need to remain profitable, and that cannot be done by giving away content for free.
Word Count: 528
Bibliography
Branston, G. and Stafford, R. (2010). The media student's book. London: Routledge.
Cunningham, T. (2012). Summer Movie Ticket Sales 100 Million Down From Decade Ago - TheWrap. [online] TheWrap. Available at: http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/summer-movie-ticket-sales-100-million-down-decade-ago-54496/ [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
Grant, R., 2013. Contemporary Strategy Analysis: Text Only, United States: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.
Penguin, Hardcover Classics. Penguin Books. Available at: http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Search/QuickSearchProc/1,,,00.html?strSearch= [Accessed October 25, 2014].
Ponsford, D. (2014). UK magazines lose print sales by average of 6.3 per cent - full ABC breakdown for all 503 titles. [online] Press Gazette. Available at: http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/uk-magazines-lose-print-sales-average-63-cent-full-abc-breakdown-all-503-titles [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
Rowlands, B. (2013). The fall and rise of magazines from print to digital. [online] The Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/07/fall-rise-magazines-print-digital [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
The Bookseller, (2014). FAQs. [online] Available at: http://www.thebookseller.com/faqs#q7 [Accessed 24 Nov. 2014].
The UK Copyright Service, 2009. UK copyright law. Available at: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law [Accessed October 17, 2014].
Turner, G., (2010) Ordinary People and the Media, The Demotic Turn, Sage, London