Publishers' push towards digital pays off
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

Abstract

The switch from print to digital publishing seems to be working. The FT shows an increase in digital subscriptions, and business-to-business publishers are also experiencing success with their digital strategies.

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Following on from Nancy Davis Kho’s round-up of publishers’ 2011 results, there is evidence from other publishers’ announcements that their print to digital strategies are paying off.

As reported on LiveWire at the beginning of the year, the Financial Times has decided to actively push its readers towards its digital edition, away from print, confirming predictions of the eventual demise of printed news. Little wonder then that parent company Pearson was able to announce that the paper’s digital subscriptions – now standing at 267,000 – make up 44% of total paid subscription. In fact, in the US there are now more digital than print subscribers to the FT.

As we have reported, the paper’s popular app has played an important part in the company’s digital fortunes and has allowed the paper to weather the downturn in advertisers’ spend. As paidcontent reports, advertising now constitutes the smallest part of the FT’s revenue, with digital accounting for 47% and content sales for 58%.

Results from business-to-business (B2B) publishers also show that adopting digital strategies is the way forward. Informa, the owner of Datamonitor, Pharmaprojects and Lloyd’s List amongst many others has posted positive results for 2011. Profits were up by 7.3% to £336.2 million on a turnover of £1.28 billion. Digital publications and databases now account for an impressive 74% of the company’s turnover.

Informa is of course also a well-established academic journal publisher and is, via its ebook division an old hand at digital sales. In fact ebooks now account for 12% of its academic book sales.

Another UK B2B publisher, Centaur Media, is rapidly expanding its digital business via acquisition. It recently completed the purchase of Profile Group, a news and contacts service for marketing and PR companies.

Centaur, which is known for its trade magazines such as Marketing Week, The Lawyer and Employee Benefits, is not quite as experienced in the online business as its competitor Informa. However, it is trying to make up for lost time and is obviously keen to experiment with new platforms. It recently advertised a soon-to-be launched iPad app for its Creative Review journal, promising additional features to the print edition such as video.

The Centaur press release on its 2011 second half results shows that digital accounts for 32% of revenue, an increase of 10% over the first half of the year. However, the digital trend cannot hide the fact that publishers are still facing challenging times. Centaur’s revenues over the same period in 2010 were down by three per cent, while the half-year loss was £1.5 million.

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