The Periodicalist: Recent Episodes

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Tom Standage is the digital editor of the Economist, responsible for its appearance in many electronic forms: web, native apps, digital audio, and more. Tom also regularly writes fascinating non-fiction titles that teach us about the present through the lens of the past, such as The Victorian Internet about the business and culture of telegraphy and Writing on the Wall, about the first 2,000 years of social networking.

Host Glenn Fleishman spoke with Tom about finishability, completism, and the raging endless river of content. We also discuss the reasoning behind the Economist's new bite-sized daily Espresso app, pulling back from blogs, and the importance of audio — both podcasts and the professionally read-aloud versions of every article.

The Periodicalist is an irregularly produced series looking for a sponsor to help underwrite regular production of episodes. We would love to find a partner that wants to feature the podcast as part of their larger efforts at looking at the future of publishing. Get in touch if you're interested.

Links to items discussed in this episode:

• Somethin’ Else runs six studios in parallel on Thursdays for the Economist audio edition.
• Phil Gyford coined the term "finishability."
• Tom wrote about wet-plate photography on Vantage, a collection at Medium: "A First-Timer’s Foray Into Wet-Plate Photography."
• Economist editor John Micklethwait, the 16th since its founding in 1843 and in charge for the last nine years, is departing after nearly three decades at the newspaper for Bloomberg News.
• My blog entry about Twitter friendship was mentioned by company founder Biz Stone and the link heavily retweeted, and yet had only modest readership.
• App-download completion rates vary by app size in megabytes and the country in which it's downloaded.
• Mark Zuckerberg explained the rationale for splitting messaging function into a separate mobile app
• Why are The Economist’s writers anonymous?

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Jason Snell just left his editorial career of 20 years, most of it spent at IDG, and most of that at Macworld magazine. He's happily retooling his professional life to meet his interests: expanding The Incomparable network of pop-culture podcasts; launching Six Colors, his editorial site featuring reviews and reporting about technology, centered around Apple; and co-hosting the Clockwise and Upgrade podcasts on Relay.fm. He tells us about rebooting and starting new things.

Glenn Fleishman, your loyal host of The Periodicalist, is shutting down The Magazine after 18 months of ownership and trying to make it thrive. He's learned a lot that he shares in this episode. He's also recently put The New Disruptors podcast on hiatus after nearly two years of weekly episodes, when sponsorship flagged. Glenn talks about the joy of ending things when the time comes, and some of his thoughts about the future.

Jason and Glenn spend the first half of this episode reviewing why periodicals, including the IDG empire, couldn't escape the innovator's dilemma, and see the freight train of the Internet bearing down on them; and the second half, looking into the limitations of the current methods of reaching readers and listeners. Their conclusion: email newsletters and podcasts still have a lot to offer.

The Periodicalist is an irregularly produced series looking for a sponsor to help underwrite regular production of episodes. We would love to find a partner that wants to feature the podcast as part of their larger efforts at looking forward at the future of publishing. Get in touch if you're interested.

Show notes * Pat McGovern was the beloved founder of IDG, genuinely well liked and respected. He died in early 2014. * Glenn's long-time editor at the Economist, Tom Standage, wrote Writing on the Wall: Social Media — the First 2,000 Years (2013), which explains the remarkable predecessors of what we think of as modern social networks. * This marvelous obituary of Carl Schlesinger, a New York Times typesetter, tells of his role in capturing the last night of hot-lead typesetting at the Times. He later became an amateur tap dancer. * Subscribe to Lisa Schmeiser's newsletter, "So What, Who Cares?" * Ben Thompson has built a nice business, Stratechery, on writing smart things and offering an affordable subscription to his analysis. * The death of the Web/rise of apps news cycle featured the Wall Street Journal's Chris Mims' provocative "The Web Is Dying; Apps Are Killing It"; a rejoinder at Quartz by Zach Steward, "The web is alive and well"; and John Gruber's dissection of Mims' story at Daring Fireball, "Native Apps Are Part of the Web." * Marco Arment created the Overcast app for podcast discovery, subscriptions, and listening. I highly recommend it. * Monument Valley is a lovely game that recently added an expansion set of levels. * The Magazine adopted TypeEngine as its app in the summer; TypeEngine is an periodical publishing platform that pushes to custom apps. * Windows 93 is an excellent parody of what Windows 95 would have looked like in 1993, constructed entirely in JavaScript.

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Cartooning (and more broadly illustration) has a long history on the Internet: people seem to have figured out how to send images in part to send comic strips and other cartoons to each other before LOLcat photos became dominant.

Glenn Fleishman is joined this episode by Matt Bors, a long-time political cartoonist and illustrator, a Pultizer finalist, the recipient of the presitigious Herblock Award for political cartooning. Matt is part of the team at Medium that is redefining online publishing, and is where he runs the section called The Nib.

• Funny Times software
• Matt Wuerker
• The Los Angeles Times wiki editorial disaster
• xkcd
• This Modern World by Dan Perkins a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow
• Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North
• Machine of Death

Kate Beaton

• Her Tumblr page
• Her Book

Erika Moen

• Oh Joy Sex Toy
• New Disruptors episode
• Book Kickstarted

Allie Brosh

• Her book

Jack Ohman

• Sacramento Bee

Rich Stevens' Diesel Sweeties

• Kickstarter Success
• The Oatmeal
• Patreon
• Vox
• Vice
• Buzzfeed
• The Intercept
• FiveThirtyEight

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Glenn Fleishman is joined by Jason Snell, the editorial director of IDG's consumer division and impresario of The Incomparable Radio Network, to talk about how publications can appeal to people who aren't the most obsessed about a topic. Cultivating a community of slightly interested people, who represent the largest potential audience segment, is hard to do.

Sponsor: This podcast is made possible through the generous support of MailChimp, which is underwriting our first six episodes. MailChimp lets you manage email lists of any size. They also make hats for cats and dogs.

Let us know what you think and your ideas for future shows: send email to listen@periodicalist.com.

Show notes Jason has a rich background in experimenting with web sites and early content-management tools.

• Jason started the short-fiction online magazine Intertext in 1991.
• He was also one of the folks behind Teevee.org.
• Jason created a version of TeeVee run by NetCloak.
• TidBITS was fed from a FileMaker database.

Glenn once helped try to put the Yale course catalog online (in 1990), and Prodigy was a reasonable suggestion as a place to host it.

Film.com was incubated by Glenn's first Internet company, and later purchased by Real Networks. (The domain was sold at some point to MTV.)

Back in the day, subscription revenue had high margins for a few reasons:

• Captive market for advertising (no other places to advertise).
• Second-class periodical mail was cheap.
• Newsstand prices weren't unreasonable for single issues.

The publication cycle used to be frenzied as one approached the date (weekly, monthly, etc.).

Jason describes changing from a punctuated cycle to a continuous one.

• Originally there was separate print and web staff.
• The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer had this odd joint venture run by the Times that handled the web side for both.
• Wired Digital was run and owned separately from Wired magazine for eight years.

Glenn: "A blog is a ravening maw that demands to be fed." Jason: "The process monster will eat a month's worth of food in a day."

Glenn helped produce the 1991 Time magazine man-of-the-year cover.

Jason and Glenn both came from backgrounds involving enthusiasm, whether professional, consumer, or personal.

The gadget sites might have set the tone for how news sites developed.

• Gizmodo posted constantly.
• Posting all your stories at once, one time doesn't work.
• You have to spread out posts across a day.
• But that creates a medium in which "enthusiasm for a subject is required on some level."
• Dozens of stories every day.

The old value proposition for publications was based on yield. You paid a small amount of money and got a thick bunch of stuff, only some of which was interesting to you.

New York Times Innovation report was leaked, maybe strategically.

The current approach drowns out those with mild interest.

Yahoo Tech's launch caused tech writers to roll their eyes, but it's aimed at a general audience.

Jason walked away from comic books, but returned in recent years. But no site is focused around the casual visitor who wants to know what happened in the lst month: "we roll stories onto the site, and roll them right off."

Where is the revenue pipe for making a site that is casual? Compared to a magzine that was general in focus but appealed to narrower and broader audiences at once.

Publishers love:

• People who come all the time.
• Those who have a specific need and come and find a single page.

Glenn has three examples of publications that may fit a more casual, but interested audience:

• TidBITS has a long-running weekly mailing list that grew into a web site, but its mailing list continues to remain very important. Take Control Books as a division of the publication is outside the churn of Web publishing, plus the patronage model for supporters.
• The Magazine is fully subscriber supported and we publish every other week. It's a general-feature publication. Finding the audience has been maddening.
• Medium commissions material and works as a blog platform, but it has no chronological focus. The stuff bubbles to the top that is most interesting to readers.

Podcasts have become the broad overview that we can't find on web sites! They are weekly, fortnightly, monthly, and remain popular.

Accidental Tech Podcast:

• They air their live recording.
• People participate in the audience (the chatroom).
• 75,000 listeners per episode.

Slow sites:

• The Wirecutter
• gdgt, which was folded into Engadget after it was acquired and doesn't exist as a separate thing
• This Is My Next at The Verge, which doesn't have a dedicated section or landing page.

Boing Boing shifted from a firehose to a slower pace: firehose (the old blog style feed) is on the left, and the main part of the page is a slower-moving set of features.

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Modern publications — print, born digital, and hybrids — survive typically with a small amount of staff and small to large armies of wordsmiths for hire. In this episode, co-hosts Glenn Fleishman of The Magazine and Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin of Scratch magazine talk the freelance life with guest Jen A. Miller, a successful technology, medical, and running reporter. Can people make a living as a freelancer? And what’s the different between a freelance writer and a freelance reporter? Have rates really not gone up at some publications for 30 or more years? And much more.

Sponsor: This podcast is made possible through the generous support of MailChimp, which is underwriting our first six episodes. MailChimp lets you manage email lists of any size. They also make hats for cats and dogs.

Let us know what you think and your ideas for future shows: send email to listen@periodicalist.com.

Show notes How has freelancing changed recently?

• Growing realization that most high-quality reporting is done in-house

Newspapers had 25% or more profit margins, which allowed for:

• A huge staff
• Ability to fund investigative journalism
• Relied on stringers who were spread across the country/world

Freelancing is on-demand and is often paid a better hourly wage than in-house staff

Big publications have stringers do some news reporting nowadays

Taken to court

• Tasini v. New York Times
• National Geographic lawsuit against photographers

Contracts now insist on perpetual electronic rights

First North American Serial Rights

Worthwhile to buy non-exclusivity

When you aren’t an employee, the employer is not obligated to take care of you

Pay rates for online work is now much less

• Jen’s Notes from a Hired Pen
• Check the per hour rate
• Jen’s best paying client is 50 cents a word
• Newbies tend to work for lower rates
• See yourself as a premium brand

Be sure to define your terms!

Newbies are getting social media/content marketing jobs

Is freelancing now more marketing than writing?

Ethics

• New York Times Ethics Guide
• Use common sense and take questions to your editor
• Protocol with accepting freebies and gifts

ACA/Obamacare’s effect on freelancers

• Now guaranteed coverage, if you can pay
• As a freelancer, you are starting a company of one
• Today’s high student loan debt is a major issue

Are many publications open with their pay rates?

Rise of digital publications

• Yahoo News
• The Atlantic’s Quartz
• Vox
• The Intercept
• Grantland
• Bleacher Report

“Don’t save the newspaper, save the news”

The CIO.com gig taught Jen that:

• Her major selling point was being proficient at concise and clear copy
• Passion projects can be funded by other types of writing

How to specialize?

• Start by finding your niche
• Community driven by the internet age
• Start with something you already know, but with an edge

Art of Nonconformity

Kathleen Tinkel co-produced a fax newsletter for years, MacPrePress, that was extremely valuable and lucrative

The Information by Jessica Lessin

Your blog can be your calling card and an important platform

How to keep up with “the next thing”?

Integrate the global with the specific

Should we get a degree in journalism/writing?

Final thoughts: Make your own path and don’t go into debt

How do freelancers get paid?

• Who Pays Writers
• Katie Lane episode of the New Disruptors
• Deposit your checks
• Consider taking a deposit at the beginning of the project
• Vet publications and their paying history
• ASJA

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Publishing your own work has never been easier, but easy is a relative term as co-hosts Glenn Fleishman and Matthew Amster-Burton discuss. Glenn recently produced a hardcover book with ebook and print-on-demand editions. Matthew has a series of ebooks underway. The two have both worked with conventional publishers in the past. The devil is in the many thousands of details: one wrong move and countless hours can be wasted.

Sponsor: This podcast is made possible through the generous support of MailChimp, which is underwriting our first six episodes. MailChimp lets you manage email lists of any size. They also make hats for cats and dogs.

Let us know what you think and your ideas for future shows: send email to listen@periodicalist.com.

Show notes The Magazine: The Book ultimately appeared in three editions:

• Hardcover
• Ebook
• Createspace (print on demand)

The fork is your enemy.

Matthew's story

• Started with Hungry Monkey
• Turned rejection into self-publishing
• Fan base from Spilled Milk Podcast
• Freelance food writer

Things publishers consider:

• No guarantee of sales
• Niche market is tricky and risky
• Profit and loss

The Magazine: The Book:

• Subscribers help as patrons
• Kickstarter lessons learned: long post-mortem published on Medium
• Dance troupe analogy

Know your audience:

• Don't overestimate the size of your audience
• Don't underestimate the size of your audience

Non-perishable books.

Why crowdfund and not self-fund?

• Copyediting expenses
• Cover design expenses
• Vanity project
• Is there another way?
• To gauge interest
• Pre-sales are awesome
• Looks are pretty damn important

Pages from Apple is pretty decent.

The quality of bookiness

• Codex
• Type
• Interface to words and thoughts

Project Gutenberg

Budget needs to cover

• Copyediting
• Developmental editing
• Cover design
• Interior design
• Software

Glenn's tip: Choose the correct trim size!

Forks galore!

Matthew and Glenn's Saga of Unintended Budget Consequences

Print budget additionally needs to cover:

• Printing (for offset)
• Shipping (for offset). Note: International shipping will cost a million dollars.
• Startup costs (for some print-on-demand providers)
• Additional cover and interior design
• ISBNs (may also need for ebook)
• ISBNs image (EPS, typically)

Kickstarter price discrimination

• Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools
• Tidbits Publishing
• Rewards

Glenn's thoughts on The Magazine: The Book, Year 2.

Amazon's inertia, power and domination

• Createspace
• Fulfillment by Amazon
• Kindle Store

Thoughts on distribution

• Print on demand option
• Ingram Spark

Glenn's New Disruptors podcast episode with Ada's Bookstore owner

Matthew's new ebook: Child Octopus

Book thoughts: Matthew vs. Glenn

For immortality, choose wisely.

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EPUB and its derivative Amazon MOBI format are the lifeblood of electronic readers and ebook software. Mastering the details of getting a good workflow and a consistent result requires arcane knowledge and remarkable patience. Joining host Glenn Fleishman of The Magazine on this episode to discuss perfecting EPUBs are Tonya Engst of TidBITS Publishing; Michael E. Cohen, an ebook guru; and Serenity Caldwell of Macworld magazine.

Sponsor: This podcast is made possible through the generous support of MailChimp, which is underwriting our first six episodes. MailChimp lets you manage email lists of any size. They also make hats for cats and dogs.

Let us know what you think and your ideas for future shows: send email to listen@periodicalist.com.

Let's define the format

• What is EPUB?
• IDPF

Are all EPUBs created equal?

• Fixed Layout EPUBs
• Flowing EPUBs

EPUB's directionality:

• Everything flows in one direct
• Think of it as a collection of web pages

Could be tricky for users used to PDF?

EPUB is designed for portable readers

• Limited resolution
• Limited size
• Good for novels
• Bad for photo journals

Glenn's blast from the past

• Go Live

Can't you just choose Export? Cue laughter. Watch Serenity's talk at the Çingleton Deux conference in 2012.

Ebooks are an immersive experience

TidBITS Publishing

• 24 years of internet publishing
• 11 years of Ebooks

TidBITS' blast from the past

• Microsoft Word and PDF
• Apple's Pages

TidBITS workflow

• Uses NisusWriter Pro
• Supports automation
• Gets converted to Markdown
• Leanpub uses Markdown to create EPUB and MOBI

Markdown is becoming more and more useful across the web.

You can create content in Markdown or use Scrivener to convert

Keep it simple, stupid

Rule of thumb: Fork as late in the process as possible

Michael's workflow

• Leanpub and Take Control
• Side effect: made books easier to write
• Even previously worked with Automator
• Apple's Book Proofer

Macworld's workflow

• Started with PDF
• Indesign's EPUB export
• Pages EPUB support
• Finally, Indesign with CS 5.5
• Building CSS style sheet

Kindle Previewer

KF8 file format works with almost all devices

iBooks Author

• iPad currently only device supported
• Pages is being improved and could provide an answer in the future

More apps and services

• Vellum has great text but no images

This whole process is in the adolescent stage

Working with ebookstores

• Starting out
• Numbers tapering off
• Pushing out new books
• Pushing out updates

The Metadata Problem

Reader expectations, demands and deliverables

A look back at lessons learned

• Time savers
• Pitfalls to avoid
• Advice

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In our premiere episode, Glenn Fleishman and Jane Friedman talk over the concept of the "Netflix of ebooks": can one or more online services accumulate enough books of interest to allow subscription-based access that's interesting to readers, produces more revenue for publishers, and has a business case for survival?

Sponsor: This podcast is made possible through the generous support of MailChimp, which is underwriting our first six episodes. MailChimp lets you manage email lists of any size. They also make hats for cats and dogs.

Show notesHow can we keep up with the constant change in publishing?

Existing subscription-based ebooks servcies

• Oyster
• Entitle

Can these services:

• Provide a value and service?
• Provide sufficient revenue for authors/publishers to invest?

Are libraries suffering from Blockbuster Syndrome?

Rights to books seems to be much more complicated than other media channels.

Is there a gatekeeper for the overwhelmed reader?

The biggest problem with subscription services:

• Gym membership phenomenon
• Books are not a mass media business
• Heavy readers may not be their audience

Big Head and Long Tail

Safari Books by O’Reilly is a specialized market:

• Books are plentiful, but perishable
• Books are constantly revised
• Books in every category
• Books could be commissioned to fill in the gaps

Industry background:

• How are royalties calculated?
• Why are consumers interested?
• Good for authors besides a paycheck?
• The book club effect
• Print vs. e-book profits
• Beware the power of the Amazon empire

Where does an e-book go when it dies?

Other book-based models

• Book Mooch
• Audible.com
• Kindle Lending Library

Do publishers even know what is going on?

Glenn predicts a new dystopian future with algorithm created books based on demand.

Ultimately, e-book subscription services have a big struggle ahead of them.

Recommended articles:

• LifeHacker article “Are E-book Subscription Services Worth It?”
• “Books will be like Netflix, with Revenue as Cliffhanger” by Jonathan Blum
• “Everybody Wants a Netflix for Books” by Joseph Esposito
• “Subscription Models seem to be for Ebook Niches…” by Mike Shatzkin
• “Explaining my Skepticism about the Liklihood of Success for a General Subcription Model…” by Mike Shatzkin
• “8 ways Oyster Books can Rule the Ebook Subscription Market” by Andrew Pantoja