What are the biggest challenges facing magazines today?
Now-a-days usage of internet is growing rapidly. All the latest news, articles, information is freely available on net and can be shared easily to people in less time. So people generally avoid to buy magzines for such purposes. The adverstising field is also concentrating more on online advertising instead of advertising in local magzines, news-papers. That is why scope for publishing magzines is reduced significantly. But now Magzine publishers are also publishing their magzines online which are known as e-magzines. Most of the E-magzines need subscription but as online publishing make that magzine globally available so it is beneficial to publishers also. I have seen few e-magzines published by Agency Fish which is an award winning publishing compny. Those magzines were really good and very interactive to read.
Husni: The biggest challenge is how to efficiently reach the audience you’re looking for. The days of marketing magazines using the shotgun approach — where you just throw it out there and hope your audience will see it — are long gone. We have over 5,000 magazines now, which is almost three times the amount we had just 20 years ago. And newsstand space is limited. So we need to figure out the best way for magazines to reach their specific audience. It’s a major challenge. The odds of remaining in business after 10 years are 1 out of 10. Magazines are published for what I like to call the three F’s of publishing: fun, fame and fortune. A lot of people find fun; sometimes they find fame. It’s fortune that’s been elusive. IWM: In a report about the current advertising slowdown, Mediaweek said: “Magazines will ultimately feel a domino effect from the cuts that hit other media this year.” Are magazines, as a medium, somehow particularly vulnerable? Husni: When the economy has a downturn,
