Bootstrapping the publishing biz (addendum)

Filed in archive Bootstrapper News on September 30, 2006

O.K., some extra thoughts here after I've had about a day to run all this through my cranial processor again.

(I guess we'll call this "Bootstrapping the publishing biz (addendum)" to kind of avoid upsetting the symmetry of the last four posts.)

The real problem with the traditional publishing business, be it magazines, newspapers or books, can best be explained by again turning to the September issue of Wired Magazine.

In a personal aside during his article on "Pitchfork", the online music review site, former Spin Magazine contributing editor Dave Itzkoff confesses:

The trouble we had at Spin was that although there were still new and emerging indie-rock acts worth getting excited about, none would ever be big enough to sell a magazine that had to reach half a million consumers every month just to stay alive.

When you think about this evaluation, you quickly realize it applies not just to the publishing world versus the Internet, but to the advantage of the bootstrapper over the established competition in any field.

How to you compete with a business that has built its model on being leaner, more agile, more decisive in a quickly evolving market than you? It may explain the tendency among some serial entrepreneurs to sell off companies as fast as they created them and move on.

Hmmmmm....Something to think about.

Anyway, blogger and publisher Joe Wikert had this to say in a Sept. 28 response to my last rant:

I wonder if Google News will eventually create virtual newspapers for each major city and leverage something like NewspaperDirect for print distribution...

YIPES!!! Better get into another line of work.