By Robert Silverstein
I read that the company that publishes Reader’s Digest magazine is filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Citing a decline in circulation and an inability to fully finance its debt, the company will undergo a corporate reorganization and hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in a strong enough position to continue to survive.
But, the question that those of us in the publishing business should ask is, why did this venerable print product lose so much of its customer base, both subscribers and advertisers? I am sure that there are many complex business factors that got them to where they find themselves today. However, one look at their website gives one possible indication of what might have gone wrong.
It appears that a paying subscriber to their magazine no longer needs to buy the print product because there is valuable and interesting content available for free from the Digest’s own website. In fact, there is more depth and breadth of content available on their website than is found in the typical print issue of their magazine.
I am a devout believer in print media and believe that a magazine can have a strong position in a publishing company’s lineup of products. But, the publisher must take a strategic approach to the relationship its flagship print product has with its electronic and face-to-face content deliverables. Reader’s Digest struggles, perhaps, because it does not have an effective strategy which merges the print product with its online content. Their website stands alone as a source of content and information and a visitor to the site has no reason to ever purchase a subscription to the magazine as long as the company continues to provide all of the information it does at no cost.
The lesson in this is that content delivery must be an integrated process in which the material published in one product drives the audience to the content of the others. There are many fine examples of publishing organizations which are successfully doing this, most notably the Wall Street Journal. I am not suggesting that Reader’s Digest charge for content on its website (although that is one model they could consider). What I am suggesting is that they might reduce the amount of free content available on the website and make more of it available in a subscribers-only section of their site as part of a paid subscription to its print product. They have a multi-generational history of providing content that has broad appeal to a clearly defined segment of the population. They should do what they do best: generate content to build their core business but deliver that content in a multi-media integrated strategy.
Comments or questions? Robert Silverstein is at www.AdSalesExperts.net.