I have just read an interesting article on Haymarket Publishing that suggests Haymarket are far from the revenue goals they seek as on-line publishers and might be going on a buying streak to gobble up the opposition.
With over 1,600 employees, Haymarket is somewhat of a heavyweight when it comes to traditional print publishing, having built up a huge portfolio of magazine titles since Heseltine created Cornmarket Press and forged a partnership with Clive Labovitch. Haymarket was formed in 1964.
Magazine titles in the group range from cars to horticulture and motor racing to public relations.
Heseltine says, far from convincingly, that Haymarket does make money on the web but says of pure internet start-ups that might be of a threat "you either fight them or you buy them. And if you’re a big enough company, you don’t hesitate. If you see someone ahead of the game, you buy them.”
Heseltine also seems to concede that HP might be a little behind and have been shaken by competition, saying: “I think there is a criticism about a lot of the industry that we were slow to realise what was happening and the pure-play people shook us,”
Indeed Hort Week, Haymarkets flagship gardening magazine, as an on-line publication, was slow to cotton on to the web and for ages had a rather bland and un-inspiring website.
I know from conversations with Hort Week that Landscape Juice has woken them up to competition but I am also aware that they have responded to my challenge. Some with grace and others less so.
Printed media is in a mess and there is only one way forward and that is on-line. However, Haymarket as well as many others will need to streamline their businesses and adapt models so that they can operate with only a handful of key staff.
Photography is an absolute must to sell horticulture and landscaping and for Hort Week not to feature photographs with their news items is a tragedy.
I would offer a few cautions to Heseltine as he and his company seek to monetise their key content sites.
Applying a subscription model could well be a recipe for disaster; There is only one first opportunity to get it right and I fear the thinking of charging for content is flawed.
The Wall Street Journal is moving to a micro-payment subscription model this autumn in a move that could make or break the on-line seller of content.
Managing Editor of WSJ told the Financial Times that they [WSJ] will launch "A sophisticated micropayments service" in a bid to claw back revenues lost through dwindling advertising.
One of the major challenges a specialist publication like Hort Week faces is move to connect with the reader which, until recently, was not part of their set-up.
Moves to add blogging and forums to their site have really been slow to take off and, despite offers to write content as a blogger on HW myself, decided to grow the blogging base from within and in doing so, retain ownership of their site and content is still dominated by employees.
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