You should have received your copy of the July/August issue of InPublishing magazine this week. If you’re not on the mailing list and would like to receive future issues, please register here.
There’s lots of good stuff in it; here are a few of the things that stood out:
- AI has the potential to transform marketing operations. Always on and everywhere, it can instantly identify and react to trends and patterns of reader behaviour that would take humans thousands of man hours to get anywhere near. The big risk is that publishers will squander the opportunity by deploying AI as a cheap alternative marketing department rather than seeing AI as a super-charged extra team member of it.
- And it has a big role to play in editorial too. If quality content is our big differentiator, then it’s critical that our star writers and analysts have as much time as possible to pen their golden prose. They don’t want to be bogged down with the bread and butter work of routine reporting. AI is increasingly being used to do this, but a word of warning – in the world of robot journalists, quality control is king.
- The big tech companies might be a ‘problem’, but tech itself certainly isn’t. Those that succeed in the future will be those that marry great journalism with great tech.
- Improving reader engagement is down to continuous monitoring and improvement. Think incremental steps over time, not overnight solutions.
- It’s now a truism to say that publishers’ biggest competitors are not other publishers, but all the other calls on potential readers’ time. The iPod and iPhone are seen as the manifestation of this, but it all really began with the Sony Walkman, 40 years old this year. It was a transformational device that could turn daily life into a form of make-believe. Thank-you Sony… I think.
