A THAILAND VIEW ON SHRINKING MAGAZINES
Both The New York Times and The Guardian have carried recent articles on the advertising page losses being suffered by magazines. "Are we about to see thinner and thinner glossy magazines ... ?" the latter story asks.
Thailand's publishing industry certainly isn't immune from what's being seen around the world, but whereas overseas publishers tend to try to maintain their rate card prices many Thai magazines will accept a lower rate just to get some kind of revenue. I know of one magazine that's getting just a quarter of the price per page it was achieving this time last year.
Another fact to remember is that trimming pages in a magazine from, say, 120 pages down to 100 pages is only likely to reduce overall production costs by between five and eight per cent. In real terms that might only be as little as 10,000 - 15,000 baht although the exact reduction depends on numerous factors including paper quality, number of copies printed, etc.
If publishers are looking to cut costs they probably need to look elsewhere.
3 comments:
Reducing the magazine quality is like burning the foundations of the house in winter to make it warmer.
And when the publishers decide that they cannot cut costs anymore, they will have to raise prices. If so, soon the public will reduce its buying of the product.
The most dangerous threat to the future of printed publications is now the world wide advertising loss.
And what crack me up is a lot of so called entrepreneurs are still starting up print based publications in Thailand. Their entire business model is based on a print publication with no web presence.
Ive seen a bunch of mags go broke over the years and people are still coming to thailand and starting up in the print business.
I give them no more than 2 years.
Bernard. Yes - totally, and to be honest I cannot see why most Thai magazines haven't already raised prices. Some have, but not that many.
Stuart. I'm going to disagree with you a little. I think Thailand is way behind in terms of internet advertising and I personally believe there are still opportunities to be had where print is number one, mainly because there isn't a lot of money to be made online (from advertising) in terms of publishing - yet.
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