Digital overtakes print?

Source: www.ajaxunion.com

Each day we move closer towards becoming a paperless society. That is wonderful for our environment and wallets, however, how is that affecting the publishing industry?

During the past several years, sales have continually seen a decline in print and publication sales.  In an article by Danielle Gream, her research showed that, “According to the State of the Media, newspapers saw a 10.6 percent decrease in daily readers and a 7.5 percent decrease in Sunday readers from September 2008 to September 2009.”

Frankly, this is not something new. Book publishers, newspapers, and magazines, have seen this future for over a decade.

Even though the bleak future of print has continued to decline, no one knew when that breaking point would happen… when “the switch” (as I like to call it) would occur.

Source: lewansolutions.wordpress.com

For many companies, it has already happened; that point when there are more online readers and subscribers than print. Just last year, publishers like Financial Times hit “the switch.”

In July 2012, Financial Times headlined an article that read: "Our Digital Subscribers Now Outnumber Print, and Digital is Half of the FT’s Revenue."

There are quite a few reasons that digital is the obvious way to go:

1.     Makes financial sense – the change to digital saves millions, if not billions, of dollars a year in printing fee, distribution and space.

2.     Faster - Time is of the essence. In an ever-increasing fast paced society, we want tantalizing news and we want it now. To wait for the next day to print something that just happened an hour after the newspaper was printed is just too much for us to handle. Meanwhile, digital news gives us the immediate gratification we need to satisfy our constant desire to be in the “know”.

3.     Advertising – Online publications have a larger source of advertising space that is constant and can change, and due to saving so much money in printing (especially in color), they can pocket more.

4.     Cheaper for consumers – For the customer, the price of a subscription drops as a direct result of the expenses lowering for the publisher. Win-Win.

Will we ever see the end of print?

Not so fast…while digital is clearly leading over print, that doesn’t mean print is extinct; at least not for a while.

Personally, I love to save paper and search digitally because of the aforementioned reasons; however, I prefer print books to e-books. There’s just something about holding a book, bookmarking it with a real bookmark, highlighting and writing in the side bar, that doesn’t quite match the sterile feel of an e-book.

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Clearly, the younger you are, the more prone you may be towards digital media than print since you’re practically born with an iPad in your hand, but even so, there's something wonderful to be said about print. 

As an avid reader, I have single-handedly refused to purchase a tablet for book reading purposes, because I love the smell and feel of real print. 

But...like everything, let’s see how long this lasts.