OhmyNews has accepted a second story on print and the web. This is headed 'Publishers Awaken to an 'E-Book Society' 2004-11-04 . The news angle of this is a report from AFAICS on e-books. They think the price for e-book hardware will drop to $35 over four years. Guy Kewney believes this will have an effect on paper publishing. 'Things change'.

The first story was based on the ABC decision to publish numbers for 'digital editions' along with print circulations for UK newspapers. This was headed Web Influence on Print Media Growing and was posted 2004-07-28. However since then I think no newspaper has 'opted in' so there are no actual figures.

I think it is obvious that part of the explanation of the decline of newspaper circulation is that more people use the web. Newspapers are now news organisations with a mix of income and cost over print and web. It is about time some accurate numbers were available. As Guy Kewney and others are reporting, publishing through mobile devices is beginning to happen. Newspaper articles on circulation that make no mention of the web will not be credible for much longer.

There will be some more on this in this blog and longer pieces for OhmyNews when more definite information is available.

Reading a couple of magazines picked up as samples from Digital Print World. Usually I rely on the dotprint website to keep up with Printing World. PIRA publications are fairly expensive but digital demand is interesting. The September/October issue includes an article on 'the future of print' that is fairly reassuring. 'The gentle downward drift of newspaper circulation is forecast to slow slightly over the next few years'. I don't find this convincing however. The web has still got a long way to go. And whether or not e-books take off within four years ( see previous post) to say that books will grow by 1.2% over the next decade is potentially inappropriate if technology is disruptive.

In Printing World Rod Hayes reports from Graph Expo and a presentation from William Smythe, vice president of NPES. "The print portion of a printer's revenue has actually been declining for several years now and this trend is set to continue. Unless a printer has been implementing diversification plans, the future is very grim." The decline can be traced back to 1992. The new ancillary services include mailing, fulfillment management, warehousing, DTP consulting, CD-Rom services and forms of database management. The article is titled 'The storm gathers' and fits well with an editorial from Gareth Ward-

"Many have battered down the hatches and have so far survived, but we need to understand that there is a changed landscape out there and that proceeding as we have over the last few years will not be enough to prevent companies being swept away with the next spell of bad weather."

Digital Print World is now an established event. It will influence opinion not just because digital print will grow in proportion to litho. JDF workflows will be standard for all forms of print. Print is part of communications based on the web.

There is almost nothing in Guardian media today about the web.

Since they dropped the bit at the back on 'new media' there has been less and less. But buried away in an interview with Martin Sorrell in a section on 'my media' is the information that 'I find I am reading periodicals less' and 'I consume more online'.

There is a letter from Greg Paine of AOL claiming that in broadband homes people are online 13 hours a week, roughly 12% of media consumption. "It's finally time to realise that broadband internet is both mass market and mass media"

This may be reflected in Guardian media reporting eventually. Still nothing in print about 'digital editions'.