Amazon launched the Kindle DX reader yesterday in the US. This new device is being touted by some newspapers as a device which could help save newspaper publishing. Amazon said that three newspapers, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, will offer the Kindle DX from mid this year at a reduced price to subscribers who sign up for long-term subscriptions.
The New York Observer quotes Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times:
Mr. Sulzberger called the Times Company’s embrace of the Kindle DX “an important milestone in the convergence of print and digital.”
“We at the New York Times company are delighted to make use of the Kindle DX,” Mr. Sulzberger continued. “We know that the e-reader can offer the same satisfying experience [as the print edition].”
The Kindle is not currently available here as it operates through a wireless network and the Australian marketplace reportedly presents some challenges in this regard.
Looking at the US situation, newsstands and other newspaper vendors play no role in the new distribution model. In a Kindle relationship, the publisher offers the subscription through Amazon. Production costs beyond the first copy are nil. No wonder publishers see the Kindle DX and other e-reader type devices as crucial to their future business plans.
I would expect publishers to say that customers accessing newspapers through the Kindle are different to those purchasing print. Film, TV and music producers said that too many years ago. The iPod changed that. Only time will tell whether the Kindle is the iPod of print and changes distribution forever.
In the meantime, my view is that no newsagent should sign up for a shop fit which includes purpose built newspaper or magazine fixtures. These parts of our shops need to be able to be changed without any capital expenditure. we have a tremendous opportunity here compared to our counterparts in the US, an opportunity to lead change.
PaidContent has good coverage of the launch of the DX.
The photo is from the Amazon website.
Why is it that you write about this and the anf magazines doesn’t? How worried should I be about newspapers being affected by this? I did the anf training last year and they didn’t say anything about this and now I find your blog and it seems these devices are popular overseas.
Kelly, Good question. What I am writing about is happening in the US and Europe. It will play out here. The ANF should have been writing and leading about this for years.
So the doyen of the newspaper industry Rupert Murdoch is going to start charging online fees to read the previously “free” newspaper from next year, subject to prelim test results.
This will affect the Kindle 2,the Iphone and Blackberrys etc.
He did make some good valid points as to why people should pay.
The article is in today’s( 8th may 09) Financial Review page 49.
watching the overnight news alot of people have replied that they will get the “free” content elsewhere but if Rupert is going to have a go at it ,i suspect a few others will try it cause they are losing a lot of money and we know where they will end up if they don’t do something soon, to recoup their costs.
Cheers
In the medium term, newsagents are doomed.
Take a look at bricks and mortar record shops; effectively dead. The only ones surviving deal in rarities, or specialise in Vinyl and limited releases.
You have less than 10 years, and there’s literally nothing you can do to avert it. Once eBook readers become good enough (and sooner or later they will), there is simply no need for a physical middle-man.
Bye bye.
Captain, I share your concern. The key is for us to reinvent ourselves so that we are relevant.
Me again. It’s 6:20 pm, and I’m in the Adelaide train station. I wanted to buy a copy of ‘the Week’. I can’t. The newsagent in the station closes at 6.
So basically, I can’t give the newsagent or magazine money, even though I want to. I can’t go to another newsagent, because ALL the ones on the way home are closed when I pass them.
In the meantime, I’m writing this post on an iPhone.
Honestly, I can’t see how newsagents can possibly survive the next ten years.
CaptainReality,
The one thing newsagents have going for them in terms of the move online is that it is not as simple as the move by the record industry. They simply moved songs online in a digital format. The mechanics were not difficult for the content creators.
The move of journalism online is very different. There are so many unknown variables to take into account (even the publishers don’t know how they’re going to facilitate it). This will make the move much slower than that of the music industry which was changed virtually overnight in comparison. Newsagents still have time to reinvent themselves as long as they start now.
Ten years is a VERY VERY long time in retail. Im doubtful that it will take that long, but still, even half that is a reasonble chunk of time to reinvent.
Captainreality, were you on your way home after finishing work when you wanted the mag? So you can finish work at a respectable hour but the newsagent cannot. Why did you not buy the mag in your lunch hour or on the way to work?
You cannot please everyone or else you would need to open 24hrs, just to make $1 on a mag. We close at 5:30 because the profits are not there to stay open, if they were then we would be open.
Maybe you should go back to work and service your own customers until 6:30
Luke! What were you thinking?
That wouldn’t work.. then the Captain of his own ideal Reality would have to work later, with the expectation that the newsagent would have to work later still…
Seriously, Luke’s right. Given that so many of us open so early by dint of deliveries, surely we can knock off at a decent hour, too.
And, like everybody else, if there are things we need from places open only during business hours, then we make time to get them then. Hello.
Suddenly your argument that there will be “no need for a physical middle-man”, turns into a lament about your friendly local physical middle-man not being open for your convenience.
You are right about the reality of big changes in the print media sector being a matter of time. But don’t whine that other people aren’t working enough hours to satisfy your personal schedule.
Captain,
One dimensional solutions that “fits all circumstances” rarely come true.
Your prediction that e book will elimanate newspapers and magazines is a bit over the top.
History proves that matters evolve rather than revolve. Take the Global Financial Crisis, has everyone gone broke over nioght? hardly, will newsapers cease to exist overnight, hardly. So, Dr. Captain Gloom, newsagenst and public will adjust as it unfold as they did when the afternnon paers folded World Wide..
Currently, with the disparity of media chioce electronic to print from 19 year olds to ninety ther is growth and decline.
Adjustments will me made to suit all markets and those that survive will depend on the product and how much people are will to pay for what they get.
Enjoy the ride and be contrusctive for the newsagency business is quite resilient as proven over time.
By the way circulation of product was at its highest when the number outlets and shopping hours were restricted.
The lack of time reorganised priorities with shoppers and gave them an urgency accordinglyly. Consumer arrogance is at an all time high when they expect something to be available on demand. This is NOT aimed at you, just a general statement for I did not miss your point re avaliability of alternate sources because newsagents ere closed i merely point out another aspect of proliferation of product and time available.
I am not putting a lot of credibility into Captain Reality’s post for the following reasons…
1: I don’t think that is his/her real name.
2: He/she lives in the Adelaide railway station
3: Worse still he/she lives in Adelaide
4: Works in a factory where they test bells on pushbikes so the opinion on the demise of newsagents has no relevance
5: Has visions of grandeur because of the title “Captain” and not just Mr Reality or Ronny Reality.
6: Lives in Adelaide
Anyway I’ve got 10 years left phew!
my plan was 10 years anyway and i have already served 2 of them ..wow looking forward to the last 8
Nice non-responses everyone.
Let me repeat. 6:20PM, in the Adelaide train station. For those of you who live on Mars, this is the main train station in the city. 6:20 PM is NOT an unreasonable time for something that is a convenience such as a newsagent in the central train station of a city with over a million people. Any retailer who thinks along these lines frankly deserves to fail.
I never go to newsagents, not because I dislike them, but because too many of them are only open during normal business hours, and guess what, I’m at work then, as are most other people under the age of 40.
The fact that some on this forum are posting about ‘reasonable hours’ is absurd, as newsagents really fall into the same convenience category as many types of convenience store.
As for my prediction about ebooks replacing newspapers and magazines… it doesn’t look so over the top now that the iPad is out and selling by the million. The new Kindle is $139 in the USA. These things are only going to get cheaper.
Honestly, reading this forum, you know what I’m reminded of? I’m reminded of someone in about 2000 predicting the demise of physical record shops because of MP3 players, followed by a set of responses lambasting that person because ‘MP3 players don’t hold enough music so they’ll never replace physical storage’.
captain reality , have you every thought about buying a newsgency as you seem to have way to much time on your hand to come back 12 months later to see if anyone responded to you …….see you next year on an update
oh and you would think after 12 months you would work out that the newsagent is closed at 6:30 …………
Actually Sean I, like you I’m sure, was pleased to find out that us newsagents only open during normal business hours. I shall inform all the other businesses in our strip that normal business hours is now 5:30am – 6:30pm. Heaven forbid is Captain ever needs to visit the Post Office.
Captain,
you ought to get out and about more. Most newsagencies I know are open by 6am and do not close until 6pm or later.
In a busy train station I would expect them to be open much longer. So, maybe the operator you speak of is not a newsagent like the rest of us.
Captain, i share Mark’s comments, I have never seen a newsagency open only for ‘normal business hours’. I for one open at 4am 364 days of the year, don’t criticise all of us just because you found a newsagency that didn’t work around your schedule.
Also if you dislike newsagents so much, why are you spending your time reading this blog? Get a life you clown, because the one you have now is clearly not ‘Reality’.