The time is right to put article-based publishing at the front of publishing strategies.
An ever-increasing audience is consuming well-written stories that are illustrated with appropriate images. I look specifically at Magazine Media 360 data to confirm this. For most publishers the traditional print magazine and their digital replicas are declining but the digital audience overall is increasing, driven primarily by mobile readers.
It is past time that publishers let go of the print product sensibilities when it comes to digital and adopt a much more flexible approach. Article based publishing will give publishers many more options and therefore opportunities to engage with current and future audiences. Don’t get me wrong here, the print product still has a major role to play and can maintain a viable audience but increasingly this is only true if enhanced by the magazines digital activities.
If you start with the idea that an article is created for multiple destinations and not specifically print then the challenge becomes how to get that story in front of the appropriate audience and how then to monetise it.
The workflows can be surprisingly complex but I believe can be summarised in this simple diagram.
The ‘manage’ and ‘publish’ blocks hide a multitude of complexity but can, through use of a competent CMS or publishing system be largely automated. These tasks can be handled manually and currently in most publishers are, however this is at best a short-term workaround. As distribution continues to grow and the finesse of final destination increases the use of staff will not only slow things down but also push costs up. It is time to truly establish multiple outputs of stories at the heart of publishing, not just the add-on to a print process.
Remember magazine media consumption overall continues to show growth of between 7% and 10% year on year. With the digital destinations growing and evolving now is the right time to place article-based publishing at the front of magazine media strategies.
Sean Briggs – Creative Workflows Ltd.