Thad McIlroy - The Future of Publishing

Steve Job is considered one of the great showmen in the business (showpersons?), and the reputation is, I think, well-deserved. I’ve watched him live many times, and saw that the secret of his success on stage is no accidental talent. As one first hand, in-depth article points out, in U.K.’s The Guardian:

Steve starts his preparation for a keynote weeks in advance, reviewing all the products and technologies he might include. Although development and release schedules are set far in advance, he still has to satisfy himself that the chosen products are keynote-ready. For software, this can be hard to decide: the engineering work is usually still underway, so he will make a preliminary determination based on seeing unfinished software. More than once this has caused some tense moments in rehearsal when programs haven’t behaved.

Several reporters at the recent iPad launch wrote that when the doors opened they were nearly trampled by the crowd forcing its way into San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, hoping for front-row seats.

Despite this success, I cringe at one thing that Steve also launched into the business. He has mastered the overuse of superlatives, designed mainly to get the docile, loving audience whipped into a frenzy of belief that what they are seeing truly is “amazing,” “fantastic,” “magical,” “revolutionary,” and more. With thanks to my colleague Jon Robinson, I saw this lovely YouTube video today, which well-illustrates the point:

Steve can get away with this stuff, and keep ‘em coming back for more. Some of you have no doubt had occasion to cringe watching similar efforts from lesser presenters.

Steve has reached the treasured pinnacle that most presenters can only dream about. Even if you find yourself doubting that the launch will be a success, and remember that Jobs has never batted 1000, you’ll soon be reminded by a colleague, blogger or journalist that “It rarely pays to bet against Steve Jobs.”

When we evaluate new technology I believe that the key equation is “push or pull.” It is the rare new technology product released to the public where the reaction is an immediate: “I want that.” I suppose Facebook and Twitter are recent examples of “I want that” being a very common refrain. It certainly didn’t hurt that they were free. Microsoft pushed Vista for years without much success. Windows 7 is being pulled by consumers and businesses in record numbers.

Many new products need to be pushed hard onto the public, with the vendor hoping that it will catch on, “cross the chasm,” and thereafter an eager public will pull the product close, egged on by great reviews and great word-of-mouth.

In the case of Apple’s new iPad, was the public looking for something that met an unfulfilled technological requirement, or just hoping that Apple would provide a newfangled “must have” device?

I imagine that most (myself included) were looking for the latter. Did Apple fulfill that promise? I think not.

As Steve Jobs clearly stated in the hyped-filled product intro, he too recognizes that Apple’s task is to offer a must-have product. Jobs positioned the iPad as a pioneer in a new genre of computing, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone. “The bar is pretty high,” he made clear. “It has to be far better at doing some key things.”

With the exception of a large and beautiful (albeit LCD) screen, we are apparently being offered a very large iPhone, without built-in telephonic features.

We can now access iBooks, a late and thus far weak entry to the eBooks foray (albeit in color).

The pricing is better than expected, although if you sign up for the whole package, the price does exceed $1,000 in year one (and most consumers will be drawn to get all the storage available as well as 3G).

Is Steve Jobs delivering on our needs or hopes? David Pogue points out in today’s New York Times, “My main message to fanboys is this: it’s too early to draw any conclusions. Apple hasn’t given the thing to any reviewers yet, there are no iPad-only apps yet (there will be), the e-bookstore hasn’t gone online yet, and so on. So hyperventilating is not yet the appropriate reaction.”

As a general observation Pogue makes a good point.

Based on the rumors of what the Apple tablet would offer I planned to buy one. Having looked fairly closely at the iPad, I’ve put my credit card back in my wallet.

Where Steve Jobs Says that Apple is Positioned

…except that you can’t use it as a phone (not out of the box, at any rate).

The iPhone Gains Weight; Becomes Deaf

And it’s not really a computer, because it runs on the iPhone OS. So yes, as Steve Jobs pointed out, there are currently 140,000 applications for that OS, but most of them are better described as “applets” rather than “applications” because they do so little (as makes sense when trying to work on a small phone). Jobs introduced several developers working on either expanding their existing applets for the iPad or developing new ones. Most were games. Apple has re-crafted its own iWorks for the iPad, which provides a modicum of mature computer-like functionality, but with OS X out of sight, the real Mac and Windows applications will also remain out of sight, unless some expensive development work gets underway to convert existing apps to the iPhone OS, assuming that would be possible.

The reaction from the press and public has been mixed thus far. Those who feel Apple can do no wrong feel, for the most part, that Apple has done no wrong, and many think it a home run. Those of us who, while admiring Steve Jobs, consider him still as human, not deity, suspect he’s well short of a home run on iPad V1.

More to follow…

“The McGraw-Hill Companies reported a 43.2% increase in fourth quarter EPS,” says today’s press release.(Log-in may be required).

The big gains were in McGraw-Hill Education at 2.6% and in Financial Services at 10.6%.

“Information & Media” declined by 11.4%; you’ll have to dig deeper than I have to figure that one out.

The major message I’m receiving is that a very old media company is weathering the storm with some aplomb.

Good for them.

I cheerfully admit to being a short-term economic pessimist, and a long term optimist.

But I have been appalled recently to read the all-too-numerous accounts that happy days are (for sure, probably, or at least nearly) here again.

My question is: What if they’re not?

I believe that there is a tremendous amount of data that supports a far more grim short-to-mid-term economic prognosis. I do not deny that this is but one of three likely scenarios, from the very chipper, to the slightly melancholic, to the rather depressed. But to ignore the many facts that suggest at worst a double-dip recession or slightly less onerous, a long period of insignificant economic growth, cannot be ignored. And so I’m in the midst of revising my section on Current Economics.

Tonight I laid out my thesis in that section of the site. In the days ahead I’ll fill in the detail. The future of publishing is not just tied to the web, but also very much to the broader economic climate.

I know that we all want to look on the bright side of life. But this potential dark challenge is too large to ignore.

No press release was issued by Adobe, but a few press outlets caught the story. I found it the other day in PrintAction’s weekly enewsletter. Clive Chan, PrintAction’s associate editor, tells me that he picked up the story from Macworld UK.

Further searching brings me to a blog entry from January 4, 2010 by the excellent journalist Cary Sherburne at PrintCEO.com. She had received notification from Adobe’s PR agency of the news, and it’s from her report that emerges the obsequious statement, “the print segment continues to be important (to Adobe).” Yes, and what a great way to share the love.

Adobe has no release on its site, but if you go to the Print Service Provider page on Adobe.com, you’ll be tersely informed: “The Adobe Partner Connection Print Service Provider Program has been discontinued. If you have any questions, please contact the Partner Programs Helpdesk (log-in required).”

Sherburne’s column produced 18 comments. Several were of the “oh well” variety, but more typical is:

The discontinuing of the program is a trend in marginalizing print. They dropped the printed Adobe Magazine, brought it back for a short term in electronic form. That too is gone. Seminars at trade shows, especially when new software was rolled out, was eliminated well before Seybold folded. The ASP logo gave the potential client some assurance of competence.

And:

For Adobe to do this now, in this economy, is a stab in the back, since it was really the printing industry (that) helped get Adobe on the map. If it wasn’t for printers, graphic artists and prepress, Adobe wouldn’t be where it is today. So thanks Adobe for shooting us when we are down….This is the thanks we get for supporting Adobe all these years.

And finally:

I’m shocked to have to find out about it online as opposed to a letter from Adobe to its members. Is our loyalty of so little importance that we don’t even rate that? I have personally pushed Adobe InDesign over QuarkXPress to my customers for years in part because I felt Adobe was sensitive to the needs of print providers while Quark took a ‘here it is take it or leave it’ attitude….Watch out Adobe, snubbing customer loyalty is how Quark lost the top spot!

That last comment is I believe apropos and reveals what I can only imagine is Adobe’s thinking:

1. Adobe InDesign has essentially vanquished QuarkPress. Yes, there are quite a few legacy QuarkXPress customers, but Adobe wins the vast majority of new installations.

2. Print is an ever-declining source of revenue for Adobe, while as I’ve often noted, Adobe has a very clear strategy for moving forward on the web. No, Adobe is not abandoning print, it has merely dropped quite a few rungs down the ladder in Adobe’s list of priorities.

3. Don’t cry for me, print! I don’t blame Adobe for recognizing the reality of print’s rapid decline and placing its corporate priorities where it must. I just wish it would indeed recognize in some tangible way that these folks that it is tossing overboard did indeed help to launch the company into the enormous success that it has become. Of course eventually we have to pull the patient off life-support, but it can be done with dignity.

4. Adobe’s claim that membership was dropping and the cost to Adobe was becoming too high somehow doesn’t ring properly for a profitable $5 billion company that does manage to offer numerous other support programs, many directed towards web-related technologies (although there is a support program for the multiple media Creative Suite).

Enough of this. I rest my case.

Update: On January 20th Quark very wisely stepped into the breach, announcing,  “In continued support of the print community, Quark announced today special offers that allow eligible printers to join Quark output provider programs at no cost. Adobe Service Network (ASN) members, current QuarkAlliance members, and printers interested in Quark Promote are invited to take advantage of complimentary QuarkAlliance and Quark Promote memberships. Membership benefits can include priority technical support, a free copy of QuarkXPress 8, increased market visibility, and potential revenue opportunities….”

A fine blog post from Joe Esposito that I wish I’d written…a small excerpt:

Empires, by definition, begin their decline at their peak. Today Amazon bestrides the publishing world like Caesar, and it may seem far-fetched to think of this company slipping from its dominant position. There is some doubt, however, that Amazon can continue to augment its control over so many facets of the industry. Although there may be more growth ahead, the environment Amazon operates in is evolving and rivals may force their way through cracks in the fortress.

Check the link.

The Publishers Information Bureau has released its tally for 2009 (based on 250 members) and U.S. magazine ad sales were off by 18.1% last year while the total number of advertising pages dropped 25.6% compared to 2008. BusinessWeek points out that the revenue decrease is “more than twice as steep as a year earlier…The drop in 2008 was 7.8 percent. Ad pages fell 26 percent.”

Discovering a silver lining in a very dark cloud, Ellen Oppenheim, EVP/Chief Executive Officer, Magazine Publishers of America pointed out that “While marketers’ skittishness continued through the fourth quarter, magazine spending showed improvement compared to earlier in 2009. Magazines experienced an uptick in food spending and relative improvement in other areas, especially in automotive.”

I’m unable to find comparable Canadian data. Some anecdotal reports suggest that Canada has fared poorly; others that it has largely escaped the carnage in the U.S. magazine industry. But numbers are scarce.

Regardless, the picture at ths point for magazines in North America, as it is or newspapers, remains bleak.

It is the bane of the current eBook mania that I must, as your humble servant, continue to give this subject far more coverage than I would like to. At the Las Vegas (”City of Disappointment and Personal Bankruptcy”) CES (Consumer Electronics Show) which ended today, there were a slew of new eBook reader introductions. This lead the U.K.’s Financial Times to run a headline, “E-readers Face Risk of Saturation.” My first thought was that surely this means that those who read about eBooks would soon rebel and refuse to read any more articles on the subject. But no, it was a reference to the devices themselves, which prior to the show, I understood to stand at 40 different chunks of mostly E-Ink encasements. If all of the introductions planned in Las Vegas come true, there will be roughly 60, many of them featuring new display technologies. They will be more specialized, as several will focus closely on periodicals rather than books, and other on flower display techniques (OK, kidding).

Regardless, the story will obviously be playing out for quite some time in 2010. I wanted in the meantime, as a reader service, to offer you one web site’s notion of the top 10 eBook devices.

I know that I need not remind you that any review site that includes a “Buy” button near the top of its review should be considered as potentially biased. But for what it’s worth, if you must buy an eReader, this site may perhaps offer guidance.

Update, January 11: ZDNet offers its view of “CES 2010: Top 10 new e-book readers”

Another update: a wealth of information here.

Above is the headline in a tiny article in today’s New York Times.

I reference it because it states what I believe to be true: “Stuck between the still-evolving smartphone and the emerging tablet computer, the netbook computer would seem to be doomed.”

It’s not so much that I necesarily feel that the NetBook is doomed, but I am certain that the evolution in portable computing devices is increasing at a very rapid pace.

There have been a slew of announcements of new eBook-type devices this week at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. And a slew of other tablets, and other types of non-traditional portable computing devices. When I first heard the iPhone called “a portable computer” I thought it was hyperbole. Now that I use one, I see that it is true. But changes to the form factor are still required, and those changes are imminent.

By the end of 2010 our notion of a portable computing devices will have changed drastically.

Stay tuned.