Category Archives: publishing

GigaOm: How Chartbeat wants to help save the media industry — Tech News and Analysis

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"Online, every click and interaction can be tracked and charted and graphed over time, to create a picture of what is happening at any minute of the day. .,.. Chartbeat ... has just launched a ... service called Newsbeat to help provide that data.Chartbeat ... provides real-time analytics for websites of all kinds, with a dashboard that shows how many people are reading a particular page at any given minute, as well as where they came from and how long they have been on the site. ... The way publishers think about analytical data, Haile notes, is very different from the way that e-commerce companies do. Anyone who is selling something is obsessed with 'funnels' — in other words, how well their site moves someone to the point where they will buy the product. Publishers, however, are more concerned about where their traffic is coming from and maximizing that (as well as engagement with readers), because for the most part their business is advertising-based. "

WWD.com: E-commerce Luring Top Editorial Talent

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More on trend of retailers becoming publishers: "A new kind of magazine has indeed arrived online and its bringing editors into the sales business. For the last year, fast-growing online retail companies like Gilt and Net-a-porter in the U.K. have been scooping up orphans from the magazine world with the idea that editorial content can help them drive sales. To date, Gilt has hired fewer than 20 employees from publishing companies, according to Jen Miller, a spokeswoman for the company who herself came from Condé Nast. She said “about five” of those employees are in editorial roles. "

AllThingsD: Fortune Keeps Apple Story Off Web, On iPad and Kindle

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"In the past, Fortune would have published the Apple story online last Thursday, at the same time the magazine was showing up on newsstands and in mailboxes. Instead, the magazine teased the piece with a post from Fortune.com Apple blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Saturday, telling print subscribers they could read the full story on Fortune’s iPad app for free. And that everyone else could either sign up for a $20 subscription–which would give them access to the app–or buy an individual iPad edition for $4.99."

The Wall Blog: Facebook is not about brands getting fans it is about engaging with them

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Pete Davis: "Can [brands] really create the engaging content that will have their followers believing that their brand in someway reflects their lifestyle choices – whether that be through association with fashion, culture, music or general interest. Unless they happen to be another Natalie Massanet or a brand like Sony that has its own editorial team, the chances are the answer is no. The content generated on Facebook and other branded content ventures cannot be sales or PR driven; it has to be more subtle than that. It needs to reflect the lifestyle choices of the brand’s target audience. ... To my mind there is an opportunity here for brands to associate themselves with key content creators, such as magazine publishers to create this material on their behalf."

psmith, journalist: Demand Media: The $114 million content machine that has nothing to do with news

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Patrick Smith: "As the debate continues as to how the media industry might sustain news and original journalism, I increasingly wonder if legacy print-based publishers should somehow use all the revenue tools and models available as online publishers and simply make enough money to cross-subsidise their journalism. So it’s less about 'making money from news', as 'making money from whatever works'. This is why Will Lewis and the Telegraph’s ill-fated Euston Project was such an exciting idea."

Steve Yelvington: Online separation? Newspapers have been there and done that

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"There were many cases in which local newspapers set up internal online groups that operated independently. Several years ago, a Borrell report showed a strong correlation between that organizational form and revenue performance. But it's not as simple as that. Correlation is not causation. I would argue that the organizations that used that structure had an intent that was missing from most of the newspaper industry at that time. They simply intended for their Web operations to succeed. The rest of the industry didn't really give a rat, and it showed."

Econsultancy: Five killer tips for successful paid content businesses

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A great post from Econsultancy. My favourite bit: "Great web techies will give you agility, a competitive advantage and an IP asset that is really important. Interestingly also, the best editorial people I’ve been able to recruit have been open to leaving their previous roles because of their frustrations with the tech infrastructure where they were. Great web content folk are massively attracted by great web techie folk."

Quill & Quire: Is Kindle the environmentally friendly option?

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"A recent report from the Cleantech Group analyzed the environmental impact of traditional publishing as measured against e-book publishing, and declared the latter to be the clear winner on environmental grounds. Calling the publishing industry “one of the world’s most polluting sectors,” the Cleantech report asserted that a concerted move to e-book publishing could drastically reduce the negative impact the industry has on the environment."