The Great White Hope for Monetizing Print Media
Steve Rubell, one of the smartest commentators on communication trends, has seen the future of print — and it is digital. More specifically, it is the Kindle. Just as the iPod encouraged people to pay for digitized music, the Kindle will ease people into paying for digitized print, says Rubell. "This could be your last chance to monetize content," he warns publishers. "Please do so now before tangible media evaporates," he adds.
The post is titled "The Amazon Kindle is the Great White Hope for Monetizing Print Media" and it contains enthusiastic observations such as: "Now with my Kindle, the media comes to me and it's available offline. I love that Fortune magazine shows up on my device whenever a new issue is published. The same is true for the New York Times." Rubell's advice for content owners: "offset part of the cost of the Kindle and get them into the hands of your loyal readers with your content pre-loaded." But the music companies didn't subsidize the iPod, did they?
Comments
Oh, for fuck's sake, not this again.
Digitized music is a delivery method for music, which people are accustomed to paying for.
Digitized print content is a delivery method for content, which has always been ad-supported. (The price of a newspaper has long since stopped being a large contributer to the income of an editorial office, and with TV and radio content, the user never did pay.)
I do so get tired of people trying to use the word "paradigm" in conversation. Digital technology is an efficiency multiplier; there is no fundamental difference between paying for an iTunes file and paying for a Walkman cassette. It doesn't mean the model will translate to other media.
Incidentally Eamonn, when will I get out of this bloody moderation queue? :P
Posted by: Andrei Tuch | March 10, 2009 9:50 AM