4 ms·
Ask HN: 1k magazine titles, 10m readers, no digital. Can we fix it?
I had a chance encounter with a medium-large printing company in the US that is looking for a digital solution. They print 800-1,100 distinct magazine and trade publications per year and have exclusive or non-exclusive options to the digital publication rights to those magazines. The estimated readership is ~10,000,000, mainly US subscribers.
All of this content is digital, and is available in PDF and XML formats. Much of it is pretty niche, like the top three nail salon industry publications, or the leading root vegetable farmer magazine. Very long tail for some of these publications.
They have no current strategy for the content, outside of eventually posting it to a website and placing Google Ads there.
Is there a better business model here? Magazine publishers have struggled over the move to digital. Hearst, Conde Nast, and Meredith were working together on standards, I believe, but I haven’t seen it go anywhere. Adobe just released Adobe Digital Publishing as a content delivery mechanism.
Can we disrupt this industry before it settles down? I’m committed to building a team from the HN community—you’ve taught me so much already.
So, assuming we could secure the online rights for this portfolio, what revenue model and content delivery system would work?
Please discuss below and email me directly if more information is needed or if you have specific experience you’d like to offer confidentially.
The plan is to (1) build a pitch for this printing co. with your help, in order to (2) get funding to finish due diligence and create the MVP with some fellow HN members.
- destraynor 15y agoI would propose having a look at Treesaver http://treesaverjs.com/ http://treesaverjs.com/
- ggpublish 15y agoThanks! That's a very clean reader compared to what I have seen from other offerings like Zinio.
- stonemetal 15y agoI could see adding a +digital subscription(for an extra dollar or two) that allows access to the online version of the magazine. This would be complete access to the magazine's archive complete with full text search and ability to comment on articles. As far as the Ad revenue goes I don't think I would go with Google ads. These magazines are fairly targeted, and run ads in their print edition. You should build on their ad sells. I would do this by including some amount of free online advertising when buying a good chunk of print ads. Have them sell on line ads then split the revenue with them.
- ggpublish 15y agoThe digital subscription makes sense for paid subscribers for certain of the publications. Other publications are completely ad supported. This is where the existing advertising base for the print publications could be leveraged. That's a benefit to the publication owner, but the printer and the digital team would need to find a way to benefit. Possible through a digital publishing fee to the publication, which the publisher charges through higher ad rates. Other ways possible?