Not long ago, a friend e-mailed me a link to a website that made available, as free downloads in PDF format, print magazines from around the world. Some I recognized -- they sell on newsstands in Canada and the US -- but many are published in other nations and are probably sold only there. I was astonished not only at the number of titles offered, but also that many weren’t due to hit the newsstands for a week or two. What’s more, this site was selling subscriptions -- not for individual magazines, but for how many issues of any combination of titles you could download at a time. With no subscription, though, you could still download one magazine every 30 minutes for free.
At first, I was confused. As a former business student, I like to analyze how businesses operate, and I couldn’t understand this one. First I asked myself, "Are print magazines in such a desperate state that they’re now giving it away for free through someone else’s websites?" I called the publisher of one of the magazines offered, and he explained that the site I was looking at is an illegal one that pirates the content of his and other magazines: what this site does is, in a word, theft. But here’s the thing: The publisher can’t seem to stop it from happening. Most of these pirate sites are overseas, which makes taking legal action against them difficult -- and even if they’re shut down, they simply start up again under another name. This isn’t unlike the situation the music and film industries have been in for years: they’ve been unable to stop the pirating of their content.
At first, the Internet posed a threat to print publishers because of competing content, but now pirate websites are putting online bootlegged versions of the magazines themselves. Yet another nail in publishers’ coffins? Perhaps not -- I think these pirate sites may indicate an opportunity that can actually help the print-magazine industry, and that could promote the growth of some magazines. But to understand this requires thinking outside the box -- something rarely taught in business school.
I think it’s fruitless to try to stop the pirates. Legal action is expensive, and usually futile. The key is for publishers to take the power completely away from pirate sites by themselves offering downloadable content for free. This is a hard concept to grasp for many print publishers, who traditionally have thought only of selling each issue. What’s more, many magazines do sell digital editions on the Internet, sometimes through third-party services. In my opinion, that won’t work in any important way.
From what I can see, many people are willing to pay for a magazine only if it is printed on paper -- only if it’s a physical item, which obviously cost something to produce and thus is worth something. But because there’s nothing tangible about a digital magazine, they want it for free. I haven’t seen sales figures of digital editions of magazines via the Internet, but I’m willing to wager it’s a paltry amount. After all, free access to information is what the Internet is mostly about.
Still, publishers have to make money, and no one can blame them for that. With the model I propose, money can be made by increasing the cost of advertising in the magazine when the number of free downloads increases. I think such downloads will increase a magazine’s readership; the content -- and ads -- are available not only in the country of origin, but worldwide, and they are free. The potential audience is much, much larger. Nor are there any postage costs. Furthermore, the print edition needn’t disappear entirely -- many readers will still want to buy magazines and carry them around, and there are still print-based subscriptions to fulfill.
Does this sound too simple to work? I don’t think so -- many online magazines have for years used such a model of free content, and have flourished. Now it’s time for the print publishers to come on board.
Some people might consider me naïve in thinking this could work. Others might think it foolish to openly discuss such tactics -- as if giving away obvious trade ideas is bad business practice. I don’t think so, and the future is pretty clear. The Internet is already huge competition for print magazines -- since the ’Net took off in the mid-1990s, magazine sales have gone steadily down, down, down -- and now print publishers must contend with pirate sites that they can’t seem to shut down. I think it’s only a matter of time before some magazines try the model I suggest; otherwise, if their sales keep plummeting, they’ll be forced to close up shop. And all along, those pirate sites will only be making it worse for them.
There’s one more thing: This concept might provide opportunities for online publishers such as the SoundStage Network. After all, print publishers aren’t the only ones who can benefit by offering PDF editions of magazines for free download. Obviously, this has already crossed my mind . . .
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstagenetwork.com