The new South African Publisher

The 2008 Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) figures indicated that publishing, in South Africa,  has suffered in the last quarter of 2007, mostly due to the weaker economy which resulted in less disposable income for the consumer. In other words, people just can’t affrod to buy magazines anymore.

The fall in the value of the rand means that the cost of printing and distribution will increase. Magazine publishers and companies need to rethink their communication tactics and adopt a ‘360 degree media capacity’ in order to stay ahead of the game. The ability to deliver attractive content on old and new media platforms will increase their chances of saving their publications and retaining their readership.

The AMPS survey results (March 2008 -AMPS 2007B) released 13 March 2007 showed that  internet usage has risen significantly over the previous AMPS period (September 2007 -AMPS 2007A) with 6.9% of respondents accessing the internet in the past 7 days over the 6.0% in the previous survey and from 7.1% to 8.1% accessing the internet in the past 4 weeks.

At the recent ‘Business of Magazines Annual Conference MPASA 2007’ Donald Kummerfeld, president and CEO of the International Federation of Periodical Press said “Publishers who remain print-centric (print dinosaurs) will eventually disappear.” Neal Farrell, of Ramsay, Son & Parker, echoed Kummerfeld’s sentiments, “Content will win at the end of the day. Remember, we are no longer magazine publishers, but content publishers. Because content is everything.”

“Print-centric organisations are inherently unable to compete successfully in the fast-moving, volatile online world. And integration of print and online in the same organization is virtually impossible,” Kummerfeld warned. Publishers and other organisation should consider outsourcing digital publishing and online publishing to companies that have the capacity to support them in reaching this changing market and increasing demand for content on various platforms.

The Harrison group recently said that according to a recent survey 80 percent of digital magazine readers are very, if not extremely satisfied with their experience. Readers who subscribe to digital magazines feel that they engage more with the advertising in a digital magazine. Although many magazines are not yet using the full capability available in digital publishing and are still only using the same adverisement as in the print version. Publishers need to start using dynamic animated interavtive advertisements in their digital editions instead of static two-dimesional ads. The benefit of this is that readers can now interact directly with the advertiser through email links or links directly to the advertisers website. From an editorial perspective it is possible include live news feeds as well as include sound and video clips in the articles which will allow the reader to interact with the article.

The added benefit of a digital edition is that publishers and advertisers can retrieve statistics such as uniquie visitors, links followed and page views. Most systems will generate an equivalent html version which can be used to enable auto read services, web browsing functionality and SEO optimisation.

Today it has become essential for all companies not only publishers to reassess how their marketing communications or publications are delivered to their audience. In an effort to meet this need Sapphire Dawn offers the following services; Design, Print publishing, Digital publishing, Online publishing, Project management and Consulting.