Editorial Pricing Now & In The Future... Shifting Sands

Photographer's consultant cum law student Leslie Burns-Dell'Acqua has published yet another timely blog post today, providing much food for thought for those of us providing images to editorial clients in this new age of digital media. With printing & paper costs going through the roof (not to mention the important trend of being viewed as "green"), rising postage costs, falling advertising revenues diminished readership of hard-copy print as more and more editorial consumers turn to online delivery of their favorite reads, the shape of editorial content delivery is now changing rapidly and in a big way.

The video posted here is from the folks that bring us Wired magazine and deals with the publication's new electronic publication geared towards users of the recently unveiled iPad.

At the Burns Auto Parts Blog, Leslie writes:

"More importantly, note how they talk about this change is (very possibly) the one that will result in an experience users will want to pay for. Wired isn’t going to be giving their work away for free, it sounds like, even though there will be plenty of ads in the iPad edition.

Also note how they are encouraging sharing the content via social media tools. I’m assuming this means clips and links, not wholesale shifting of the content, but whatever it is, it means that your images will be seen by more and more people."

Yes... there is a small upside here... increased exposure of your work. Does that outweigh the obvious downside of some potential loss of control of your image/content distribution? Only time will tell, I suppose.

The point of Leslie's entry today is that we need to look at editorial pricing models NOW... the future is upon us. The folks at Wired seem to think that users of this new interactive media environment will be willing to pay for this new, enhanced experience. They also go on to say that the electronic forms of their publication will also be chocked full of advertising, the traditional revenue stream of print publications. Publications around the globe today are struggling for survival and have embraced electronic publishing as a new method of delivering the goods to readers. Subscriptions for online versions of their content may just be the model for salvation. It is, however, another source of revenue and once the economic downturn abates, could result in profitability beyond what had been previously realized prior to the downturn.

Good points for consideration, dialog and discussion among those of us working in the editorial realm.

You can read the blog HERE. And be sure to check out the video from Wired too.It appears directly above this entry.