The Guardian: The dotcom print boom
If you reckoned print was on the way out in the new economy - think again. David Rowan reports on the expanding market for periodicals dealing with business on the web
Here's some bad news if you like to keep up with the new economy: your reading list is about to get even longer. You won't merely need to catch the monthly print editions of Red Herring (482 pages in a typical issue), Fast Company (404 pages), Business 2.0 (410) or Upside (290) - not forgetting Wired (merely 266), and weeklies such as the Industry Standard, Revolution and New Media Age. Prepare now for the next global burst of internet brands - a raft of new local editions of established magazines. If you're lucky, you'll get through August's editions by December.
Future Publishing has just imported Business 2.0 from Brisbane, California, in a slimmed-down localised UK edition, soon to be followed by German, French and Italian versions. Haymarket's Revolution is about to launch a Hong Kong edition, only months after entering the US market. And, in an ambitious global expansion that is causing some twitching among local competitors, San Francisco's Industry Standard - a trade title that happened last year to sell more display-ad pages than People magazine - is about to launch a pan-European edition from London, as well as a series of local-language versions from Scandinavia to South Korea.
"The new economy is both an American and a local story," explains Michael Parsons, London-based editorial director of the Industry Standard Europe. "This is all about the flow of investment into the tech sector. A lot of money is now coming into the European theatre, and people here are desperately hungry for information about where the deals are, where the money is going. That interest won't go away as the American money won't go away."
Parsons has been with the Standard since its launch in April 1998 as a mere 64-pager; today the issue size has to be capped at 365 ad-crammed pages "as the printer can't cope". He is busy recruiting big names in net journalism for an October launch: Mike Butcher from New Media Age, Chris Nuttall from the BBC and Georgia Cameron-Clarke from the Telegraph will be among 25 journalists working on the European edition under editor James Ledbetter. Up to half of the magazine will comprise material from the US edition, allowing access to the material produced by 130 people in the US. "The success of First Tuesday shows there's clearly a tremendous interest at a grassroots level about what people can do in their own markets," says Parsons. "We will be a bridge between the experience of the US entrepreneurial and investment community and the rest of Europe. UK web companies are thinking of themselves as European - everything else is provincial."
Several US net magazines have long been cult items among UK net entrepreneurs, offering the lessons - lately, the mistakes - of west coast start-ups, and hundreds of pages of intimidating advertising from financial institutions boasting of $2bn mergers and follow-on offerings. Comag, the UK's largest magazine importer, now handles 20 internet magazines among its 500 titles. It estimates the internet magazine sector's annual market value at about £11m - compared with £5.6m in March 1999. "Generally when there is a UK edition we stop importing the US edition as they compete with each other," says Sarah Marshall of Comag. "The arrival of a local edition is a sign that the market is picking up for that sector."
And picking up it is. Research from Future Publishing points to increasing demand for tech-market coverage in the UK - led by advertisers as well as subscribers. "The American market is clearly important in this sector because of the development of new technology, but the European market is becoming important in its own right," says Jessica Burley, publishing director of Future Publishing's business and internet group, whose titles include Business 2.0, .net and PCPlus. Despite the downturn of tech stocks, venture capital continues to move into Europe in the quest for that successful business model. And that means booming advertising for what Burley calls "indigenous-facing" magazines as start-ups - and the banks and software firms seeking their business - try to make noise in their local marketplace.
Business 2.0 currently claims a US circulation of 270,000. Future Publishing is guaranteeing advertisers 50,000 for the UK edition's first ABC, and is planning Italian, French and German launches later this year. "You'll see us roll out the brand into large countries around the world," says Burley. Britain, she says, is currently "an emerging market" with its own needs. UK consumers may not favour the "fat books" of the US titles but we do apparently demand specific coverage of web businesses where Europe appears to be leading the US, notably in mobile technologies.
There are clearly risks in localising titles that earned their reputations in the US, where the new economy is still generally held to be months, if not a year, ahead of Britain. The UK version of Wired, backed by the Guardian, folded after what some said was its premature arrival in a market where not enough of note was happening.
"One of the reasons people buy American magazines is to see what's happening in America - but the number of these people is quite small," says Richard Lord, editor of Revolution. "To make a publication succeed in the UK, you need to strike a balance between this and mass-market demands." Revolution has recently taken this publishing trend from the other direction: selling its knowledge of the European market to US consumers. Its solution has been to go "micro-niche" - focusing purely on internet marketing. An early lesson Revolution learned in New York was that design templates do not travel: "Americans can't stand sans serif body faces, so they had to go, and we had to increase the leading to improve readability."
Lord believes Business 2.0 has "made an admirable attempt to localise itself" with its UK edition, and is not too bothered about the competition. "There is a market for us all as long as we realise what we're good at and focus. Red Herring is serving an audience that cares about the financing of companies." Besides, Lord notes, there is no sign of a slowdown in the ad market: "We grew in six months to take weekly what we had taken monthly."
Keeping up as a reader, however, offers a broader challenge. "It's simply impossible to read through all this stuff," says Mike Nutley, editor of New Media Age - a mere 76 pages this week. "People value NMA because it's a quick read. Who wants telephone-directory-sized magazines?"
(The Guardian, August 7, 2000)
Read more!
Here's some bad news if you like to keep up with the new economy: your reading list is about to get even longer. You won't merely need to catch the monthly print editions of Red Herring (482 pages in a typical issue), Fast Company (404 pages), Business 2.0 (410) or Upside (290) - not forgetting Wired (merely 266), and weeklies such as the Industry Standard, Revolution and New Media Age. Prepare now for the next global burst of internet brands - a raft of new local editions of established magazines. If you're lucky, you'll get through August's editions by December.
Future Publishing has just imported Business 2.0 from Brisbane, California, in a slimmed-down localised UK edition, soon to be followed by German, French and Italian versions. Haymarket's Revolution is about to launch a Hong Kong edition, only months after entering the US market. And, in an ambitious global expansion that is causing some twitching among local competitors, San Francisco's Industry Standard - a trade title that happened last year to sell more display-ad pages than People magazine - is about to launch a pan-European edition from London, as well as a series of local-language versions from Scandinavia to South Korea.
"The new economy is both an American and a local story," explains Michael Parsons, London-based editorial director of the Industry Standard Europe. "This is all about the flow of investment into the tech sector. A lot of money is now coming into the European theatre, and people here are desperately hungry for information about where the deals are, where the money is going. That interest won't go away as the American money won't go away."
Parsons has been with the Standard since its launch in April 1998 as a mere 64-pager; today the issue size has to be capped at 365 ad-crammed pages "as the printer can't cope". He is busy recruiting big names in net journalism for an October launch: Mike Butcher from New Media Age, Chris Nuttall from the BBC and Georgia Cameron-Clarke from the Telegraph will be among 25 journalists working on the European edition under editor James Ledbetter. Up to half of the magazine will comprise material from the US edition, allowing access to the material produced by 130 people in the US. "The success of First Tuesday shows there's clearly a tremendous interest at a grassroots level about what people can do in their own markets," says Parsons. "We will be a bridge between the experience of the US entrepreneurial and investment community and the rest of Europe. UK web companies are thinking of themselves as European - everything else is provincial."
Several US net magazines have long been cult items among UK net entrepreneurs, offering the lessons - lately, the mistakes - of west coast start-ups, and hundreds of pages of intimidating advertising from financial institutions boasting of $2bn mergers and follow-on offerings. Comag, the UK's largest magazine importer, now handles 20 internet magazines among its 500 titles. It estimates the internet magazine sector's annual market value at about £11m - compared with £5.6m in March 1999. "Generally when there is a UK edition we stop importing the US edition as they compete with each other," says Sarah Marshall of Comag. "The arrival of a local edition is a sign that the market is picking up for that sector."
And picking up it is. Research from Future Publishing points to increasing demand for tech-market coverage in the UK - led by advertisers as well as subscribers. "The American market is clearly important in this sector because of the development of new technology, but the European market is becoming important in its own right," says Jessica Burley, publishing director of Future Publishing's business and internet group, whose titles include Business 2.0, .net and PCPlus. Despite the downturn of tech stocks, venture capital continues to move into Europe in the quest for that successful business model. And that means booming advertising for what Burley calls "indigenous-facing" magazines as start-ups - and the banks and software firms seeking their business - try to make noise in their local marketplace.
Business 2.0 currently claims a US circulation of 270,000. Future Publishing is guaranteeing advertisers 50,000 for the UK edition's first ABC, and is planning Italian, French and German launches later this year. "You'll see us roll out the brand into large countries around the world," says Burley. Britain, she says, is currently "an emerging market" with its own needs. UK consumers may not favour the "fat books" of the US titles but we do apparently demand specific coverage of web businesses where Europe appears to be leading the US, notably in mobile technologies.
There are clearly risks in localising titles that earned their reputations in the US, where the new economy is still generally held to be months, if not a year, ahead of Britain. The UK version of Wired, backed by the Guardian, folded after what some said was its premature arrival in a market where not enough of note was happening.
"One of the reasons people buy American magazines is to see what's happening in America - but the number of these people is quite small," says Richard Lord, editor of Revolution. "To make a publication succeed in the UK, you need to strike a balance between this and mass-market demands." Revolution has recently taken this publishing trend from the other direction: selling its knowledge of the European market to US consumers. Its solution has been to go "micro-niche" - focusing purely on internet marketing. An early lesson Revolution learned in New York was that design templates do not travel: "Americans can't stand sans serif body faces, so they had to go, and we had to increase the leading to improve readability."
Lord believes Business 2.0 has "made an admirable attempt to localise itself" with its UK edition, and is not too bothered about the competition. "There is a market for us all as long as we realise what we're good at and focus. Red Herring is serving an audience that cares about the financing of companies." Besides, Lord notes, there is no sign of a slowdown in the ad market: "We grew in six months to take weekly what we had taken monthly."
Keeping up as a reader, however, offers a broader challenge. "It's simply impossible to read through all this stuff," says Mike Nutley, editor of New Media Age - a mere 76 pages this week. "People value NMA because it's a quick read. Who wants telephone-directory-sized magazines?"
(The Guardian, August 7, 2000)
Read more!
