Publishing and the Paper Industry

Pulp Mill
Paper Production
 

Studying the publishing industry aspects of paper also allows us to learn more about commercial paper, itself, --- an interesting little journey for those who take paper for granted and may not understand it fully. This will also shed light on why the physicality of a printed book is so much more intense than its digital, virtual  brother.

What would we do without paper? Think of all the things we use paper for --- from writing to making money of, all the way to ass-wipe and thousands of things in-between  --- not to mention the millions of things that paper is an integral part of.

Well, the publishing industry uses its fair share of paper and with the big move to digital has caused wild swings in paper prices the last few years.

But, according to inside analysts, good news may be breaking for the paper people.

Michael Rondon gives this insight in FOLIO magazine:

Paper Industry Begins to Stabilize

Things are beginning to stabilize after years of wild swings

It’s no secret that the paper industry has suffered through volatility as digital mediums wrest readers from print. The aggregate effects of publishers slashing pages and mills shutting down swung prices wildly over the past several years on yet another front of the battle between digital and print.

The market may be stabilizing though as paper mills adjust and page counts slow their decline.

For Terry Choate, president of Making Magazines, static pricing has been a function of the paper mill industry’s ability to manage their own supply.

“The paper mills have done a better job downsizing recently,” he     says. “[They’re at] the point where their capacity is pretty much in line with demand.”


(John's Note: CWT = 100 lb. weight; the 50,60,70 numbers in the first column above is weight (lbs) of a certain grade of paper in a standard configuration. Example from above table: #3 grade 50# paper costs $50 to $53 per 100 lb. weight) 

The other side of the pricing equation—demand for paper—has stayed relatively flat or declined slightly as of late, Choate says.

Ad pages, a generally reliable indicator of overall page counts, declined 8.3 percent for the industry as a whole in 2012, according to PIB. The numbers stabilized through the fourth quarter however, ending with a 7.3-percent reduction year-over-year.

The gradual stabilization of the paper mill industry, page counts, and therefore pricing, played out in last year’s fall increases. The 2012 catalog season saw a roughly $3/CWT bump across the board—a standard hike Choate says—but those prices have yet to come back down.

“It stuck,” he says. “Prices haven’t decreased since that [fall] increase. And that has to do with that consolidation of paper mills and bringing capacity in line with demand.”

Marie Myers, senior vice president of manufacturing at UBM, agrees. She’s seen the same prices holding in the market, as well.

“They haven’t really shifted one way or the other,” she says. “They’re holding.” The future is a little less certain though.

Read and learn more

A great related link: Printing is More than Reproducing Words and Images on Paper.

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Content - Linking Print To Mobiles

Who said you have to have either print or mobile? Why can't you have both experiences at once?

Well, you CAN.

'Publishers are literally driving engagement between the print product and digital platforms...'

"How?" you ask. One way is to link print magazines directly to smartphones and tablets via apps.

Tonight's post will illustrate one print magazine that has done this and will delve into the resulting impressive numbers.

By T.J. Raphael, FOLIO magazine, Publishing Technology section:


Connecting Print and Mobile

As more users interact with content on mobile platforms, publishers are directly linking print to phones and tablets.

Publishers are literally driving engagement between the print product and digital platforms by linking print magazines directly to smartphones. The idea aims to neutralize the “either-or” aspect of print and mobile and merge the strengths of both.

“We’re connecting print to mobile because we believe we’re well poised with our demographic—they are glued to their phone,” says Jason Wagenheim, vice president and publisher of Teen Vogue. “We did a study earlier this year that found that 9 out of 10 of our readers are shopping with their mobile phones. They’re not just making purchases, but using their phone while they’re shopping, searching for coupons and texting friends photos of dresses when they’re in a store.”

Attaching Apps to Print

Based on this, the magazine developed the Teen Vogue Insider app, which is a companion to the magazine. It allows readers to “like” and share brands on Facebook, Twitter and over email as well as map nearby locations to make purchases. Editorial or advertiser-based slideshows and videos are also available. Finally, discounts and special offers are pushed out through the app.

The app is updated to coincide with every issue of Teen Vogue, further tying the mobile experience to print. By having it as a companion to every single issue, Wagenheim says the brand is changing reader behavior that will enhance attachment to the print magazine.

“The app is promoted in every issue with advertising and editorial,” he says. “There’s also a directory featuring all of the pages within the magazine that can be activated with a mobile scan—we use image recognition, not QR codes. You can use the app to scan pages in the magazine to launch these engagements.”

As of press time, the app has been downloaded 80,000 times in the three months since its launch; there have been over 250,000 scans of magazine pages and over 550,000 user sessions.

Every Page Mobile-ized

Read and learn more

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The Association of Magazine Media

The main (and probably the oldest - est. 1919) professional association for magazine publishers is the Magazine Publishers of American (MPA).

Well, they have just changed their name to The Association of Magazine Media...which they still abbreviate or accronym as MPA?!

Why don't they just use AMM for Association of Magazine Media?

The reasoning for the new name, they say, is to get away from the words "print" and "publishing" which they figure are dead to the younger generation.

What a cluster muck of thinking! For one, they are still publishers regardless of the media format and secondly, print is not going away (changing yes, but not dying); on the contrary new print tech is here and more surprises are coming in print media.

This report from Reuters by Robert MacMillan:

They’ll always be the Magazine Publishers of America to me

The Magazine Publishers of America said on Friday that it is renaming itself the MPA — The Association of Magazine Media. The notable difference is the omission of the word publishers. Why?

“MPA is underscoring the fact that magazine media content engages consumers globally across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more.”

“More” presumably means “printed magazines,” but nobody in media is all that hot on associating themselves with words like “publish” and “print” because to young people (or young “consumers” in the parlance that people use when their sole desire is to make money from you) and investors those words smell like death.

When magazine publishers like Conde Nast and newspaper publishers like Advance Publications (like Conde Nast, owned by the Newhouses) have been forced to cut hundreds if not thousands of jobs and stop publishing some of their products, it doesn’t do much good in the public relations department to accentuate the part of your business that is fading, even if it still produces 80 to 90 percent of your revenue. Fortunately, Time Inc CEO and incoming MPA Chairman Jack Griffin manages to refer in passing to “print” one time in the press release quote.

Read more http://alturl.com/d6zrd