M-bossed Print Media Blog

Stopped but Not Dead

2012-01-23T22:43:47Z

The SOPA and PIPA bills to regulate piracy and sharing of copyrighted materials has been shelved, stopped, suspsended. But the media companies who push for such far reaching legislation are not stopping. Until Congress adapts copyright and IP laws for this century, the ideals of SOPA and PIPA will never be dead.

Here Clay Shirky walks us through the history of these laws and begs us to never stop our vigilance.

The Entrepreneurist is the New Small

2012-01-23T15:15:36Z

Last January, I proposed a few new business models that could take print forward for the near term. I gave these types of print shops names like the Specialist, Localist, Technologist, Leanist, and the Entreprenuerist. All, with the possible exception of the Leanist, challenge the status quo through the effective exploitation of technology.

Fast forward to this January where I found myself reading Phil Simon’s The New Small. Simon talks about a new breed of small businesses that take advantage of what he calls the “Five Enablers” — cloud computing, SaaS (software as a service), free and open source software, mobility, and social technologies. Although these topics are a mainstay on this blog, the printing industry is just now starting to here many of these terms as we lead up to Drupa.

Anyone who needs a primer or refresher on these topics, along with 11 profiles who business that embody the “new small”, should buy and read Phil Simon’s book. Over the past two years, it is one of the most apt and timely books I’ve read for those in graphic arts. Go read it and prove me wrong. I dare you.

Book Trailer for The New Small from Phil Simon on Vimeo.

Random Note: To my surprise, Phil Simon and I happen to live in the same town. It’s a small world indeed.

Tell Me Your Company’s Story

2012-01-23T16:54:49Z

We buy stuff from people, businesses, and brands that we like and trust, at least on some level. There is a familiarity, ritual, and comfort to the transaction. For online buying, we take the “wisdom of the crowd” approach to find reputable people and businesses to buy from. Craigslist, eBay, and Etsy could certainly not succeed without a ranking and review system. Even if you are not selling directly online, your first interaction with your potential customer is happening there without your knowledge. How are they supposed to know who you are?

You need to tell them your story. Tell them how you started, why you are in business, what makes you different. Let them “meet” your employees. Give them guidance and tips to make their jobs and lives easier. Highlight technology and possibilities they may be unaware of. Lift that company shroud and try to start a conversation.

You can share your story through blogs and Twitter but these are just snippets of your entire story. Get creative. Apple just released the iBook Author application for free. Create your story as an interactive, free-to-download eBook. It’s easy. You’ll learn something in the process in terms of technology and the ongoing digital challenges toward print. Upload it to the iBook store and create and slap a QR code on your business card directed to the download. Better yet, place “search iTunes or the iBookstore for XYZ Printing to know more about us” on all your communications.

See video on the iBook Author app.
Read the FAQ on creating an iBookstore Account

photo: umjanedoan

Conscious Shrinking

2012-01-20T16:17:41Z

Youngstown, Ohio shares some parallels with any mature industry faced with the possibilities of constricting. The town sits on the bank of the Mahoning River about halfway in between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Steel made Youngstown a relative economic boomtown until the domestic steel industry started to decline through the 1970′s. Nothing, with the exception of a nearby GM car factory, has replaced the former economic engine and as a result the population has been in steady decline.

In search of a replacement, the town has grasped at any idea to stimulate growth no matter the improbability. First came the hopes of a Nascar track. Next a riverboat casino. What about a balloon factory? But faced with dimming prospects the city chose an even more audacious plan, to consciously shrink the size of the town. Since 2006 the city has offered economic incentives for those left in sparse locations to relocate. If the city’s population is more centralized, then the thinking goes that the cost of services to its residents will be less.

While listening to the Youngstown story unfold on NPR’s Planet Money, I wondered if a similar structure could work for businesses? Not a single company comes to mind as having intentionally shrunk its customers, employees, overhead, revenue, et al., to a point of stabilization. Usually these are knee-jerk reactions from plummeting financial conditions that lead to actions supporting the minimal viable option. In other words, putting a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound. Too often the patient, to continue the metaphor, bleeds to death in the form of bankruptcy filings.

What if an industry or company facing continued economic difficulty went radical? What if it cut 70% of its payroll and focused on 1% of its product portfolio? The risk is usually more than C-type leaders are willing to stomach. But at least some think that this type of swinging-for-the-fences approach might be a viable option, in this case for Kodak.

Do you know of any company that has consciously shrunk itself? If so, tell us in a comment.

photo: stu_spivack

iBooks 2 and Print

2012-01-20T16:16:43Z

iNation

Last week Apple unveiled an update to iBooks and an easy-to-use iApp for anyone to create interactive books. Up to this point Apple has had little success with iApps that were not about organizing ones digital lives. iTunes and iPhoto are raging successes. iMovie, iDVD, and Garageband, while popular, require a different level of interest and skill in content creation not needed with the other two. Let’s not forget, like most already have, about iWeb — the app that was supposed to revolutionize creating web pages.

Although iWeb is painless for creating passable website, Apple handicapped its potential by attaching it to a pricey MobileMe subscription service. But the Web, with its democratic openness, gave users an abundance of options to create their online presence. Blogger, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress, Tumblr, Flickr, and all of the other “social” platforms made it easier and less restrictive. Apple could not tame the Web.

The iBook Author app is not iWeb. The interactive books you create with this app can really only go to one place — the iBook Store. Apple owns, controls, and sells the only creation tool, the distribution point, and the consumption devices. Once again, they have created a blue ocean to swim in where the take is 30% from content they do not even create.

Apple Gets

A publishing army to feed its iBook store
30% of your books sale price
More Macs and iPads sold

With that said, the consumer does get a powerful and free tool to digitally self-publish. iBook Author is dead simple and while Apple has originally positioned it as a way to publish textbooks, the bigger market is in the consumer market. Apple can cross-pollinate features perfected in other iApps to make this an awesome tool for consumer books, whether digital or printed.

The Next iBook App

No doubt, Apple will add more starter templates geared toward the consumer market like photo books in later updates. By integrating with iPhoto, your picture library can be shared in a digital iBook or can still be printed as a memento for the coffee table. Since iPhoto is also aware of your pictures meta data (location, time taken, etc.) and has built-in facial recognition, the cumbersome process of designing your photo book could be streamlined. Apple already does this with iMovie and iDVD, and iPhoto could have a magic picture book option too.

Not everyone who creates an iBook will want to publish it to the iBook Store, but instead would like to share with a smaller group. Now that Apple has built out a cloud platform for music matching and streaming, the same cloud could be used to distribute your digital photo book to Grandma and Grandpa’s iPad for $2.99. After all, anyone who uses an i device has a registered, trackable account with Apple.

Printers Take Heed

Did Apple, yet again, steal your pulp? Not much changes in the short-term. K-12 Schools historically have been second only the federal government in their bureaucratic quicksand. There are budget constraints, teacher unions, and parents to navigate through. Indeed it may come down to simple mathematics. If a textbook costs a public school district $100 and can be used for up to 5 years(as the Apple video suggests), then the cost is $20 per student and year. The costs of these first digital textbooks are $14.99 and cannot be reused by multiple students. Then there is the cost of the actual iPad which at volume educational pricing would still be more than the $5 per year to match the costs of the traditional textbook. The higher education textbook market where students purchase their own devices and books is where the disruption will happen first.

Printers or platforms that cater to self-publishing should keep as watchful an eye on what happens in this space, especially if Apple continues to develop the author application’s feature set toward the consumer side.

As Apple has shown with the music and film business, it is prudent to plan for a world already disrupted by their technology. So the question to start asking is “What will I do when Apple does steal all my pulp?”

photo: Apple, Inc.