Dr. Egon Spengler: Print is dead.
-Ghostbusters
[Via Businessinsider.com]
It is no secret that the New York Times is in major trouble. Sales have dropped and costs have grown to such a level, that according to insider sources, the paper could go bankrupt by May 2009 if they do not take drastic measures. Business Insider crunched the numbers, and found that the New York Times print costs are so high, that they could give a free Amazon Kindle to every subscriber and it would only cost them half of what it costs to deliver their papers for a year.
This has been the trend for many print publications. January saw PC Magazine, one of the longest running technology magazines go 100 percent digital, stopping the run of their print magazine. So will the granddaddy of American newspapers soon follow?Of course the Kindle idea is just an illustration to show how expensive print is compared to digital distribution, but it gets the mind wandering...
If the NYT made a partnership with Amazon, bought Kindles in bulk, and promised to convert a percentage (not all of course) of the most wide subscription base in print media to Kindle customers, I am sure Amazon would drop the price of Kindles even further for the Times. Amazon is a content store first and they make their money on the Kindle customers buying electronic books, not on the devices themselves. The more people with Kindles in their hands, the more prospective Kindle E-book buyers.
"Subscribe to The New York Times for 18 dollars a month, and get a free Amazon Kindle!"
That would be a tempting offer for current subscribers and an even more tempting offer for the New York Times. They would eliminate costs to deliver to their Kindle Customers and after about a year, they would have the initial cost of the Kindle back and be making pure profit off of them. The offer of a free device would even increase subscriber-base.
Of course whether this plan would work is very risky. When asked what he thought of the Kindle, Steve Jobs said:
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Ironically, this was in an interview with The New York Times.With the amount of iPhones, Blackberries, and G1s being sold, within reach is a time when the majority of people have web-enabled large screened devices in their pockets and the teen/college-aged facebook generation are the adults of the world. To these communication-obsessed individuals, paper is wasteful, outdated the second it is printed, and frankly not all that exciting. Truthfully it is only a matter of time for print publications, they have a limited window to evolve or die. 2009 may go down as the year it all changes, the question is on what medium will that history be recorded?
