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Feature

Redefining Book Publishing & the Media

A Conversation with Howard Libin

by Nina L. Diamond

If you want to have a good conversation about pretty much anything, call Howard Libin. He’s one of the smartest, most insightful, and wittiest people in the business and media world, even when you don’t agree with him and get into a debate that could go on for hours: he’s respectful and funny, so nobody comes away mangled.

Howard Libin was my first editor. In 1982, I wrote a media article for Business to Business, a Florida business newspaper. He was the Editor, and he went on to publish 13 magazines, produce two TV shows, and run a couple of his own companies.

All the while, he’s also been a writer, a media critic, and a business maven. He was a stand-up comic while he was still in college, but that’s another story.

Howard’s business column appears once a month in The Tallahassee Democrat, the daily newspaper in Florida’s capital city, and also appears in papers around the country. And, although on his business card it says Supreme Commander, he’s actually the President of Adventures in Advertising, a promotional marketing company.

We talked about the challenges media and publishing companies face not only during this recession, but in a world that’s redefining their very existence.

ND: What’s the question you are most asked about running a business and promoting a product during a recession?

HL: Everyone asks – recession or no recession, because people still have to engage in business – "What should I do about my business?" And then, they ask, "How can I grow my business in spite of the recession?" The recession is merely one element of it. Some businesses actually thrive during a recession. Change brings opportunity as well as risk.

If a publisher put you in charge and said you could do whatever you wanted to in order to guide them through the recession, what would you do?

First, I’d make sure they’ve hunkered down with cost-cutting. Then we take a look at trends within the industry itself. Publishing is undergoing tremendous changes beyond the current recession issue, in particular with the growth of the electronic media and electronic publishing. A publisher has to take this into account. They have to look at both print and electronic media in redefining their products and find the synergy between the print and the electronic. Your choices hinge on what market you’re in and what you’re trying to do.

There are tough times ahead, but it will ultimately all work out. Right now, U.S. News & World Report, a long-time news weekly, just went monthly. And if that trend continues, then Time magazine will become monthly, and I don’t know what’ll happen to Newsweek because if it went monthly it would become Newsmonth.

People who talk about the death of publishing, well, it’s just not true because people will always need information organized and presented in a professional manner. But, right now, it’s like the Wild West when it comes to the media online.

Everyone’s all excited, but there’s not a lot of measured thinking when it comes to online media or electronic book publishing.

Everyone’s trying everything. There are two things that will help this settle down: 1) People will eventually tire of the unedited, unthoughtfully presented, collage of drivel that permeates most of the Internet today. Thoughtful, professional people will provide well-organized, reliable material from reliable sources. Just as The New York Times is far more credible than a handbill posted on a subway wall.

2) A new financial model will develop, allowing for content originators to capitalize on their product. They will be able to charge for and protect their content. The laws and legal system haven’t caught up yet with the realities of this new market.

The change, while it may be painful now, will settle down in the years ahead, creating new opportunities. So, what do you do now? The key is to break away mentally from your old image of your old business model. You have to embrace the changes. You will have to reinvent your business and your product. You have to embrace it because it’s not going away. Stop fighting it. The future belongs to those who successfully transition from an all-print world to a hybrid world.

There are a lot of variations of these hybrids.

I’ve heard about a major daily newspaper that’s going to switch to online only during the week, but print on the weekends in addition to online. Another daily has begun to make certain content only available in print, not online. So you have to buy the print version in order to read comprehensive coverage of big stories.

You’ve brought up an important issue. The biggest mistake that everyone in the media has made has been that in their effort to show everyone they’re Internet savvy, they’ve inadvertently discouraged people from their print version by offering far more online than you could see in the print version, and promoting the hell out of that fact. The media is solely responsible for creating an environment in which people have come to think, “Well, what do I need print for? They’re offering so much more online than in their print edition!”

The media responded to the presence of the Internet with a stupid, knee-jerk reaction that has cost them dearly. They should’ve always protected their print product by using their online product as a side dish, not the main course. Now that one of the dailies has realized this, I hope other newspapers and magazines do, too. And I hope it’s not too late.

That’s right, and just as we’re seeing the disruption in newspapers and magazines, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the disruption the book publishing industry is going to be faced with. You’re going to see books going straight to electronic distribution, having never come out in print. There will be The New York Times Bestseller List of Online-only & Electronic-only Books. The only reason it hasn’t happened yet is because there isn’t a perfect electronic way to read a book yet. But, they’re getting close.

Then, what happens to bookstores? It’s going to be a bad day to be in the bookstore business. But, here’s the good news: publishers, editors, and writers who do embrace the future of publishing will find tremendous opportunities in online media and books. Right now, any piece of crap thrown up on the Web is considered a publication. But, as the public’s taste matures and becomes more demanding of this new medium, there will be just as competitive a battle to provide the best design, reporting, writing, storytelling, and relevance online as there always has been to make the best magazine, newspaper, or book.

While the move to electronic publishing has left in its wake thousands of casualties, the survivors will benefit because it will be a different business model with lower productions costs – no paper costs – and lower distribution costs, as well as access to previously unimaginably large audiences.

They will be able to create products – media and books – that will be able to reap tremendous profits.

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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

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