Business Management - Industry Trends

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced Tuesday that he will push for legislation to create an online, open-source library to reduce the cost of course materials for college students across the state. Under his proposal, materials for 50 common lower division courses would be developed and posted online for free student access. Ordering a paper copy would cost $20, compared to the $200-plus price tag that some books carry.

The book publishing industry bristles at complaints of rising costs, arguing that advances in the digital realm have already reduced the cost of books for students nationwide.

There’s a simple way for North American mills to prevent the prices of coated paper from collapsing next year, the “Paper Guru” pointed out recently. Simple, but it won’t work. Responding to last week’s Dead Tree Edition article about the possibility of declining prices, Jack Miller wrote, “Uncoated freesheet producers have reduced capacity, balanced supply and demand, and maintained prices.”

“With U.S. coated mills still under cost pressures from pulp and chemicals, and with margins where they are,” he suggested coated mills might take out capacity to keep the market in balance. But what works for uncoated freesheet will be hard

In August, Consumer Reports started generating more revenue from digital subscriptions than from print—a feat that must make it the envy of the print world struggling to make that transition. Even more amazingly, Consumer Reports has enjoyed success on the Web without losing print subscribers—those have held steady since 2001 at around four million.

Consumer Reports started its Website in 1997; by 2001, it had 557,000 subscribers. That number has grown to 3.3 million this year, an increase of nearly 500 percent in 10 years.

Subscribers who sign up for access to the Web site pay $26 for a year

The issue, of course, is supply and demand. While some may disagree on the precise numbers, there is little doubt that demand will decline next year. The supply side is much more complex. Will coated mills chase prices lower?

View the year’s hottest magazines, newspapers, (broadcast and cable) TV and digital media brands. The hottest properties overall—Time, The New York Times, CBS, AMC, and Facebook—are an elite class of media powerhouses that take chances and embrace change with proven results.

North American prices for coated paper will decline and more paper machines will be idled next year, according to a leading industry analyst. Even supercalendered paper, currently in short supply, could see declining prices by the middle of 2012, Reel Time Report editor Verle Sutton said in a webinar recorded a few days ago.

Sutton’s forecast runs counter to the brave talk coming out of the mills and the more bullish analysis from rival forecaster RISI. He noted that his and RISI’s 2012 price forecasts are as much as $120-per-ton apart. Sutton, always the iconoclast and often spot-on with his predictions,

Even as more readers switch to the convenience of e-books, publishers are giving old-fashioned print books a makeover. Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions—deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

“When people do beautiful books, they’re noticed more,” said Robert S. Miller, the publisher of Workman Publishing. “It’s like sending a thank-you note written on nice paper when we’re in

The good news? Publishers on both the consumer and b-to-b sides are more satisfied with their digital editions than last year when Nxtbook first conducted the survey. However, there is some growing frustration as publishers continue to struggle with how to actually monetize digital editions.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents are “aggressively moving forward” with mobile devices, up 25 percent from last year.

Meanwhile, 25 percent say they plan to move to these devices, but feel no rush; 6 percent say they’re uncertain if their digital magazine needs to be on these devices; and 5 percent say they’ve decided to not worry

According to Epsilon Targeting, despite direct mail’s reputation for being “old school” or expensive, it is the top choice of U.S. and Canadian consumers for the receipt of brand communications in almost every category. Among the findings, 50 percent of U.S. consumers and 48 percent of Canadians said they pay more attention to postal mail than e-mail.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. has signed on to become a “premier advertising partner” in the Meredith Engagement Dividend program, which provides advertisers with a guaranteed increase in sales performance for their brands advertising in Meredith’s industry-leading portfolio of women-focused magazines.