Good news first: May was a record month for Bauer's digital magazine sales. For obvious reasons, I can't tell you the exact figures (a letter entitled 'P45' may well wing its way through my front door if I did!) but I can tell you that our portfolio saw more paid downloads and incoming associated revenue from Apple, Google and our own platform, Great Magazines, than any month since I took ownership of this area of Bauer's business.
Upward trending graphs are rare in media right now, so when they do happen, they make our hard work worthwhile and demonstrate that there may be some light at the end of the print-decline tunnel. There is a long, long way to go: as I’ve mentioned before, ePublishing is still a formative industry (and only a small part of the overall Bauer business) so much work lies ahead. There are no guarantees and no easy wins, so I'll take the small victories when they arrive.
These last few weeks have seen me attending meetings with our tech partners, specifically Apple, Samsung and Google. I enjoy these meetings immensely: the conversations, the debate, the strategy that gets discussed. For me, three things really stand out as being worthy of discussion right now – Samsung's new Tab-S device launch and its associated new digital magazine store; Google's stance toward publishing on its Play Newsstand and Apple’s new iOS 8 operating system, which is due for release later this year.
Samsung first. A long while back, they approached us with a simple proposition: 'We're launching a new, premium tablet with its own digital magazine store, would Bauer like to be involved?' With around 22% of the global tablet market in Q1 2014 (according to Forbes) the answer was ‘yes’, we wanted a slice of the Samsung action!
I've always seen Samsung as the one tech manufacturer that could potentially crack the Android market and take the fight to Apple when it comes to monetising digital content. So the news they were setting up their own digital magazine store on a new, premium tablet was interesting.
They're claiming the Tab-S is the first 'premium' tablet for the Android market. I'm not going to get in a debate about that, as I've not used all the high-end 'droid tablets out there to compare (I’ve always been more of an Apple man, ahem) but there is no doubting that it is a quality bit of kit. It's thinner and lighter than anything Apple has produced yet, with a terrific HD display. Animated digital magazines, with HD video, will look superb on it.
Papergarden
We soon found out the store was to be called Papergarden. An interesting choice of name: I assume it means something significant in Korean that is lost in translation, but at least it’s more imaginative than 'Newsstand'. Also, we were told the software used to create Papergarden’s digital magazines was to be exclusively Adobe DPS, at least to start with, which was bitter-sweet news to me.
Why? Well, although I am a fan of DPS – I think it results in the best-looking digital magazines, which is precisely why Samsung and Adobe have teamed up – it is a pain from a publishing perspective. Having to redesign each issue separately (more or less) for each device is resource-heavy and not conducive to profitability.
While I wanted all our DPS titles to launch with Samsung (there are six in total), realistically it made more sense to start solely with Empire, as it has the most resource. The plan? To test the water, rather than commit already stretched design teams beyond the limits of digital endurance. Once we see what kind of revenues come in from Empire, we can make the decision whether or not to expand the titles available on the Papergarden platform. Sometimes in digital, it’s advantageous to sit back, observe the market and not jump in with both feet.
Empire may be live on Papergarden by the time you read this. We'll see how it goes, though a lot is dependent on what Samsung decides to do strategically. If they can help us monetise the Android platform, if they market the absolute hell out of it, expand to other devices and persuade habitual Android users to actually buy digital content (and not just ours) then fab! But that’s an easier-said-than-done kind of scenario, with more ‘ifs’ than certainties.
We’ll market it too and give it every chance of bringing revenue in. If it doesn’t, I won’t have any hesitation in pulling Empire from Papergarden as soon as we’re contractually allowed to do so, as I won’t continue with an initiative that isn’t profitable. It may take 18 months to establish itself, but another route to market for publishers cannot be a bad thing. If nothing else, Samsung deserves credit for giving us a decent Android platform to work with, where we can promote and extol the beauty of the well-produced, designed-for-tablet digital magazine. They might have to look beyond the realms of Adobe DPS to get the range and breadth of titles the consumer wants, but it is a start.
So today, I am optimistic. I’m going to keep fighting the fight. Bauer’s digital mags are on an upward curve and now we have an Android tech partner who might – just might – help us crack the Android marketplace. What’s not to like? As for Google’s more contentious plans for Play Newsstand and Apple’s iOS 8 release and its implications for publishers… I just ran out of word count. They will just have to wait to my next column!
