The Future Overview

With the economic “turning point” felt to be in 2010/2011, recovery still seems some way off. Yet publisher confidence is robust, given the difficult environment.  The general feeling is that the future for most publishing operations holds fast and challenging change rather than a dramatic transformation of the business model.

Online is both a friend and an enemy, and is founded on an elusive business model, but it is opening up more opportunities than it is closing off. Yet its real challenge is that it demands a focus and a knowledge beyond many companies' resources.

The recession is forcing most companies to take a long, hard look at the way they do business and to be ruthless about the real value and return on investment of activities which may have been taken for granted in the past. That means cutting headcount and squeezing costs, but it also involves training staff (or replacing them with people who already have the right skills) to operate in a fast-moving, multi-platform world. It is also making publishers look at new areas – new markets, tighter niches, new revenue streams and more international opportunities.

The repeated hope running through the survey is that recession will force weaker competition out of a market which is quite simply over-supplied in terms of the number of magazines, newspapers and websites available to both readers and advertisers.

Do all publishers have the resources and the expertise to turn their creative ideas into profitable practice? The simple answer to that is “no” and that is the real challenge of the coming two years. It comes down as much to positive and lateral thinking as to money.