This is an article by David Pilcher at Freeport Press in the US. Whilst it is predominantly an American example, it is still highly relevant to the Australian market too.
Thanks so much to David Pilcher for letting me share his articles. They are a wonderful source of knowledge and education. Its also lovely to see how passionate people are about Print!
It’s probably superfluous to even mention this, given recent success stories like Porter and Monocle and marketers’ continue love of print. But let’s reiterate, folks: Print is not dead.
So says Imagine Publishing exec Damian Butt in an interview with What’s New In Publishing. As one of the UK’s fastest growing companies in both 2013 and 2014, Imagine Publishing is a specialist publisher with 90% of its revenue from print sales.
According to Butt, the market has changed, and those who change with it are doing well.
“Many people forget just how strong print publishing continues to be. The decline in print publishing has seen many of our rivals struggle or retrench, whereas for IP the decline has been largely mitigated by our growth in the bookazine format and the success of our new launches & acquisitions,” says Butt. “Last year’s premium copy sales accounted for the majority of our revenue.”
Those Bookazines are big business for the publisher in a world that is hungry for trustworthy and reliable knowledge content.
“Tapping into the consumer trend for knowledge has also been advantageous to IP’s global expansion. In a market where the consumer’s thirst for knowledge continues to trend, our educational titles are proving increasingly popular with affluent parents,” Butt notes.
“The parents who are eager to educate both themselves and their children with trusted titles that provide expertly written, well researched, accurate information presented in a way that’s accessible, fun and safe for their children.
“We’ve noticed a growing parental concern that the Internet is becoming increasingly unsafe for children and unreliable as a research tool. Our knowledge titles deliver information in a way that’s entertaining, trustworthy and safe. This trend has meant our knowledge titles sell in 54 countries across the world,” he continues.
From fashion to lifestyle to education, print continues to provide what the customers want. We’ll continue to bring you good news about print, and hopefully the whole “print is dead” thing will just stop.