Comments on: Harper’s publisher doesn’t understand how the internet works, blames Google

By: claudenougat

claudenougat — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:58:46 +0000

The New York Times uses a subscription model with a variant: you have to pay only if you start reading more than a tot number of articles/month (I don’t remember now the exact number).

That seems to be a good idea and I’m surprised that not more magazine publishers and newspapers are exploring it…

In any case, thanks for the excellent article. Very informative.

By: Tim Acheson

Tim Acheson — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 14:00:12 +0000

This article is a master-class in Google propaganda and corporate fanboy apologetics.

By: Tor Cummings

Tor Cummings — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 02:07:20 +0000

Magazine publishers are trying to impose the same model on their web business as they did with print–subscriptions. The great thing about the internet is that you can search thousands upon thousands of articles, but if you can only read the ones that are in the sites you subscribe to, what good is it. For those magazines that yu wnat to read from cover to cover (metaphorically, since this is epublishing), subscriptions still are useful. But a better model is inexpensive article by article charges or some coupon system share throughout the magazine business so that the reader can choose to read whatever articles he or she wishes to from as larger a variety of sites as they want. The internet makes it possible for us, the public, to better inform ourselves if we use it and if we are not block from access to the information.

By: Larry

Larry — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:45:03 +0000

They should just sell T-shirts, obvs.

By: Calhan

Calhan — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 01:41:42 +0000

That model was never dead. You and the Internet advertising companies want it dead so they can be the conduits through which all of the world’s information passes through and so that you and these companies can collect your tax – toll tax that is – from the passersby. This model is unreal, monopolistic and most importantly is not free access as claimed. A change in technology does not equal forcible change in ethics of business.

By: teresameek

teresameek — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:11:19 +0000

As Peter Hobday said, the print business model is dead.

But the online model doesn’t really work yet either.

Sure, everybody wants to get content for free. But producing quality content requires time and know-how. Someone’s got to pay the ” content producers”–writers and editors–for their time and work.

Print publishers can’t do it anymore, and you might think that online ads would fill the gap. But online advertising has so far failed to provide online publishers with anything like the revenue that print publishers used to get.

Will online ad revenue improve over time? Who knows? With ad-blocking software freely available, the entire advertising business model may itself need to change. And the only other model we have is subscription.

Perhaps that will be the model for the future. The Wall St. Journal does it, and now many other news sites are starting to charge for mobile content delivery, if not for desktop at this point.

In the meantime, it’s tough for content producers. The online model has also fostered a bidding system, with a preponderance of low bidders who undoubtedly provide low-quality work. But some website owners don’t care–they just want content the search engines will find.

It’s a chaotic publishing world now, and sometimes I can’t help but long for the good old days of print, when we used to get together and complain about the editors. Hah! If we only knew.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 03:22:48 +0000

Sadly, this is the continuing trend in publishing…content is king, only if, you know how to reach your audience.

Tech companies are putting mobile devices in consumer’s hands that aims to enhance their daily functions. Be it reading a book, magazine, listen to music, play games, cooking, etc. Whatever we are used to see and interact with in traditional forms are simply changing fast.

A few publishers are making an effort to lead and to reach those audience where ever they may be. Most just follows blindly and hope they don’t fall too far behind the magic eight ball. Sadly, I work for the latter group and is watching this unfolding slowly with most people around me simply are glad to still have a job.

Majority of publishing Instead of trying to innovate, we only follow and then complaint why the future isn’t here yet… it is here already, we are just too blind to see it clearly and understand it wholeheartedly.

By: Vasken Hauri

Vasken Hauri — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:53:21 +0000

I remember reading an article in Harper’s about how intellectual piracy has existed for thousands of years and has helped build many legitimate publishing empires as a result of increased exposure of material to the public, etc. As a subscriber to Harper’s, I have access to the online version of the story, but when I wanted to share it with a friend (who might’ve consequently bought a print or online subscription as a result of being exposed to the magazine’s site), I discovered the only way to view a single article online is to purchase a year’s subscription to Harper’s. All this for a story extolling the virtues, ubiquity, and timelessness of intellectual piracy.

The only way I can even come close to summing up my feelings on this is to quote the namesake character of the brilliant animated sitcom Archer: “Ironic? Ironic?!? That’s like Alanis Morissette and O. Henry had a baby and they named it ‘What happened just now’”

By: Peter Hobday

Peter Hobday — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:17:05 +0000

Publishing, like music and movies, must adapt, but quickly or its decline will continue. Otherwise does anyone not believe magazine publishing is a dying industry?

Publishers have delegated distribution to newstrade and subscription agencies. They will fail because, unfortunately, publishers do not control their distribution – it’s a critical part of their business model.

Their business model is broken.

By: John C Abell

John C Abell — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:13:44 +0000

I wonder if occurs to MacArthur that his publication’s lack of prominence (for the sake of argument) on Google is because of its irrelevance, as computed agnostically by Google, which prioritizes in a way which reflects how impactful a site is based on how many independent links there are too it.

By having let us call a poor web strategy — one that doesn’t leverage the crowd by encouraging sharing — his conclusion may be correct, and self-fulfilling.