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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:14 pm 
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TheFuzzy wrote:
Publisher marketing, historically, has primarily focused on selling the publisher's books to bookstores, and counting on the bookstore to sell to the reader.


Ah, very interesting point, one I overlooked (well, more forgot). They should go talk to RIM and Nokia about that problem, or all the legacy cell phone makers whose real customer was the service providers, not the consumer, and who made and sold phones to the providers. They have been learning that lesson very very hard, even though that market is still partly provider driven (MS has been learning that part... it isn't all consumer driven due to the whole contract thing). I wouldn't expect the publishing companies to do better. As I understand, it was one of the great frustrations some music companies had with Apple, who wouldn't (at least at one point, I don't know now) accept money to push an artist/track to the front page. Apple was making them market directly to the consumer. And weirdly I still see music ads with "Available in music stores everywhere" and the like; even if a shocking amount of music is still bought on shiny disks, it is a bit demographic driven and this music was "young", who buy their music in more ephemeral form almost exclusively.

It has been an interesting chat.


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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 8:25 pm 
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I'm not surprised that Tor would push to go DRM-free. A significant part of their readership views DRM in terms more rabid than Sarah Palin discussing the welfare system. Also, I'm sure TOR realizes it is exactly the sort of publisher that could really clean up with e-books. For one thing, their readers LIKE tech. For another they publish "embarrassing" fiction. While it certainly isn't the case in my milieu, some folks are still shy about being caught reading Rippley McMusclemaster and the Planet of the Top-Heavy Women in public. I'm sure they took one look at what e-readers did for Romance sales (They don't call it the "Nookie" for nothing.) and decided they wanted a piece of that action. After all, nobody knows if you're reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Fifty Shades of Grey on that Kindle.


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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:21 pm 
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JB,

The publishers at TOR are also very internet-saavy. If Tor wasn't joined at the hip with MacMillan, I'd peg them as one of the publishers most likely to do well out of a move to eBooks.

Coincidentally (or ... NOT?) All Things Considered tonight was on the move to eBooks.

ANYWAY ... back to something related to the original topic. I don't know the economics of magazine publishing, but I suspect that they could be publishing electronic versions a lot cheaper if they would take the platform seriously. Maybe not BCP, though.

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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 6:36 am 
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TheFuzzy wrote:
I don't know the economics of magazine publishing


From recent news, it seems simple enough: Lose money. A couple I read have been doing handstands to drive traffic to their paid websites (especially FWW, a Taunton publication) and also things like conference/trade shows, books, on-line plans, etc. Most media pundits predict the death of the magazine and not due to publication costs, but due to very sharply decreased readership due to people using the web (or web-ish things) instead. Of course, I imagine there will be clear exceptions. CI doesn't look to be suffering, though also isn't very public about its operation. It looks like some genres, like news and entertainment, will die very very quickly; the time lag alone is totally killing them (and newspapers too). Mags like CI get a big break there, being more like buying a chapter of a book per issue. Well, once you have bought a CI book, you realize the magazines *are* chapters of a book....


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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 1:11 pm 
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Paul,

Actually, rumor has it that BCP is insolvent. Not due to the CI magazine losing money specifically, though.

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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 1:28 pm 
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Some light searching couldn't find a chapter 11 filing for them or America's Test Kitchen (it is unclear which their legal name is). Mind you, there are other recourse opportunities, or they may not yet quite be officially insolvent, just not meeting their net-90 type stuff on time or the like.


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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 6:41 pm 
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I'm going to continue to copy and paste favorite recipes to my computer from CI's website... :o


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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 11:13 pm 
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Fuzzy and Paul,

I saw this article that made me think of your chat. It was part of a larger article, about the 10 biggest tech items in the news of 2012.

The Department of Justice sues pretty much everybody over e-book price fixing

The DoJ doesn't play when it comes to price fixing!

2012 was a bad year for e-book publishers, who saw one of their chances to break Amazon’s stranglehold on the market slip away. Afraid that Amazon was driving e-book prices too low, the publishers allegedly collaborated—conspired, you might say—to push wide adoption of an "agency" model, where the publishers set the price of e-books and retailers received a cut of the profits.

Apple allegedly encouraged the move, wanting to secure higher 30 percent margins on e-book sales rather than being forced to lower prices with competitors like Amazon, who were all too willing to offer e-books at lower prices (and lower margins). Under agency pricing, the cost of best-selling e-books leaped from Amazon's early $9.99 selling price to between $12.99 and $14.99

The Department of Justice was none too fond of this “collective effort to end retail price competition by coordinating their transition to an agency model across all retailers,” which would assuredly result in higher prices for consumers. The DoJ filed suit against 5 major publishers, as well as Apple, who was accused of colluding with the publishers out of a desire to raise profit margins on e-books. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette agreed to settle right away, while Penguin agreed to the DoJ's terms in December. Apple and Macmillian continue to fight the case in court.

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 Post subject: Re: ATK Kitchen Equipment Buying Guide 2012
PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2012 8:14 pm 
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Dave,

FWIW, the publishers deny any kind of collusion. They say that Apple just offered them a deal they liked and they took it. The DOJ put a lot of pressure on publishers to settle instead of taking it to trial, to a fairly questionable extent (according to the publishers, of course).

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