Hello. The design business is reeling from the end of Met Home....but the publishing world is reeling from greater pains than that. I have said TIME AND TIME again to magazine sales people - sell me packages - don't sell me a printed ad page! Today, I received this from Dwell's publisher. It says it all. Please pass it along - we need to support those who have supported us and the industry who feed us! Feed us - emotionally, passionately and financially!
After 35 years Hachette has closed Metropolitan Home in an effort to bolster its global franchise in the Elle brand (fashion and home). The New York Times reported that the reason was “the bad housing market and a lack of disposable income for redecorating.” I submit that the housing market certainly contributed to the situation, but the problem goes much deeper than that. Simply put, the foundation is crumbling. The underlying reason is a complete dependence on advertising revenue rather than a healthy balance with subscription revenue. Why aren’t publishers charging a fair price for their products anymore? It DOES cost money to produce a high-quality magazine. Some of us are and we wish everyone did! I am not interested in taking on the trade press in this letter, but it is high time for an investigative report that digs deep into the magazine publishing industry to root out the causes for this widespread malaise. The simple fact remains that if a title is RELEVANT and has an AUTHENTIC voice that resonates with a COMMUNITY it understands and charges a fair price, it will be a SUSTAINABLE brand. It sounds self-serving, but I know of several titles cross-category that live by this premise.Until the economy went south and the cost of goods for producing and distributing magazines went far north, the one-legged publishing model was still meandering along. Now we are all paying the price because we are losing titles that had an audience and dedicated editors who served them. So, who is to blame? The truth is we all had a hand in this one. Advertisers and agencies still want MORE readers for their money because they have not figured out how to be comfortable with engagement metrics and place value on the editorial voice. Publishers keep feeding that beast and driving circulation levels to unnatural heights that are only sustainable by giving away a significant percentage or charging a few cents for each subscription. It really isn’t any more complicated than that. To prove my point, just ask yourself how much you paid for your last subscription to your favorite magazine. If the answer is $20 or more, you may have that magazine for some years to come. If it’s less than that you may lose that one too!Metropolitan Home was a fine publication and everyone at Dwell is sorry that HFM did not give this magazine a fighting chance. By building out the brand for the community it served and charging that community a fair price for the voice it created so many years ago it might still be here. I contend that the housing market and the lack of disposable income for redecorating are the scapegoats, not the culprits.In this particular case, I do hope you will join me in the campaign to move the print model to healthy ground by advocating for healthy circulation practices, reasonable rate bases, projectable engagement research and above all, integrated media buys that give strong media brands the credit they deserve. As always, I look forward to your comments (and I read every one of them!)
Best,
Michela O’Connor AbramsPresidentDwell Mediamichela@dwell.comTwitter: @MichelaAbrams
2 comments:
oh that's all it would have taken to save the magazine? Charge $20.00? why didn't they think of that!
And, why don't the furniture companies JUST CHARGE MORE!! WE CAN SAVE EVERYTHING THAT WAY!
By the way, I notice I can cash in frequent flyer mileage for a sub to dwell. That's got to be great revenue for you.
You sound nice but stupid.
Damian McGlynn
The business model for magazines may be an issue, but the business decision to close Met Home seems both stupid and bound to create an avalanche of closings.
Here is their logic:
If we eliminate all the competition to our one remaining shelter magazine, it wins. Hachette (and that name should have been a warning) didn't try to sell the magazine or extract any value, they wanted it out of the way. And the decision to keep Elle was all about a 'brand', which is in fact just a name similar to some other magazines, not really a brand to the shelter magazine market.
In the process of 'winning' they hasten the demise of the entire category. Elle Decor, I predict, will not be far behind, even if it is the last mag standing.
If all the restaurants in a neighborhood are closed except one, that one loses, too. No one goes to a neighborhood with only one choice; restaurants thrive in close proximity. So do magazines.
So no reader will go to that neighborhood anymore. They will go online, to more polished (and more expensive) international magazines, and, while they last, to the next best thing. And Elle Decor is hardly the next best thing for a Met Home reader.
Met Home had, by design magazine standards, a highly respectable circulation of over 500,000 and 2M views. The decision that a consistent base of that size should be risked, alienated and likely lost, is alarmingly bad judgment in my view.
The personal side of the closing is sad, the loss of a potent point of view is very unfortunate, but the failure to see the long term effects of this decision is tragic. The publishers seem afraid of cannibalizing their own market, but they have sacrificed their remaining assets (and lots of others as well) just as surely as if they had killed them off at the same time.
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