Interviewed by Larry Genkin

Steve Jobs was many things, but quiet and tolerant towards what he regarded as idiocy were not among them. Recently, I had the opportunity to do a wide ranging interview with him from heaven and surprisingly he had a lot to say about magazine publishers. Here are the edited highlights:

 

The Publishing Profit: Have you kept up on what's been happening with the Apple News app? Seems like the magazine publishers involved with the app have not gotten the readership they expected.

 

Dead Steve Jobs: I have not been surprised at all. Magazine publishers could screw up a one car funeral. 

 

The Publishing Profit: Why do you say that?  

 

Dead Steve Jobs: Look, up here I've learned to be much less judgemental, but I do have a pretty good vantage point seeing all of creation. The truth is that most magazine publishers are laggard f&$!tards whose idea of innovation is faster mail delivery.

 

The Publishing Profit: Good to see you haven't lost your knack for hyperbole. How about...

 

Dead Steve Jobs: It's not hyperbole, if it's true. Magazine revenue has been declining something like 17% a year for almost a decade. Eventually there comes a point where you can no longer layoff enough staff to get you to profitability. Publishers need to innovate to get out of this mess or they'll soon find themselves up here having 3 martini lunches, talking about the good 'ol days with "bingo" cards and French gate covers. Shoot me.

 

The Publishing Profit: Publishers would argue they have attempted many things to try and change the fortunes of their businesses, but they haven't found a solution that really worked. What is it that you would you advise them to do?  

 

Dead Steve Jobs: It's insanely simple. Let's go through them one by one... 

 

• Print. Really? The economics suck and nobody under 50 even wants it. Publishers would rather slowly ride the Print-Titanic down, than shift into a new business model that offers growth and opportunity. Magazine publishing used to be filled with swashbuckling entrepreneurs, it needs to get back that spirit and passion.

• Digital Replica Issues. I build you these amazing Mac's, iPhone's and iPad's and this is the best way you can come up with to display your magazines on them?? WTF??  If I hear one more publisher complain about their open rates, I'm going to come down there and make them all use Newton's. Newsflash: Your open rates suck because no one wants to have to zoom in on every page to read. Adobe gauges their customers, but their DPS solution is far better than all these replica page flipper abominations. MagTitan software is awesome too.

• Advertising Rates. Let's see: print readership is plummeting....while digital readership is growing. So what do publishers do? Give away digital ads for free to those that buy print ads?! Are you kidding me? How mind-numbingly short sighted can you be. Play this forward and where does it end up? Not pretty. How about instead, creating an insanely great digital edition and letting advertisers pay you for the privilege of putting their message in front of all the people that are reading it.

• Advertising Tech. Why do you only give advertisers in your digital editions the same amount of space they bought in print? It's not like print where there's a hard cost for an extra page. If I wasn't so dead right now I would create a magazine and give every advertiser an infinite amount of pages in their ads. I'd make them interactive so they could click a link and new page after new page of wonderful information or videos would appear. I'd love to see the competition selling static ads try and compete. They'd squirm more than Gates at prom. 

• Circulation. It's pretty simple, in the long run the more people that read your magazine, the more money you make. Look, I know we messed up the newsstand, but if you haven't sobered up and are still waiting for readers to discover your magazine among the millions of apps in our mess of an app store (yes Phil, it's a mess) you're nuttier than Yoko Ono. Tip: learn from the boys at YouTube. More YouTube videos are watched on 3rd party sites than on youtube.com. That's the power of the embed code. Work with associations, companies and other partners and let them embed your magazine on their sites. They get to make their site more valuable, and you get boat loads of readership.

• Automation. In the new world, publishers need to run a lean ship. There's few better ways to do this than automation. Why do you still have ad traffickers? How about creating a self-serve part of your website where your advertisers do the work themselves? Are your sales reps still creating and sending out IO's? Why not have an online agreement area that standardizes and automates the process. It's not the 50's anymore.

 

The Publishing Profit: I had no idea you had so much to say about magazine publishing. I'm sure many publishers will be thinking deeply about your ideas and vision for the future.

 

Dead Steve Jobs: It's my pleasure. Before I run, I've got a chess match with Al [Einstein] in 5, I was wondering if you would do me a favor?

 

The Publishing Profit: Sure, of course, anything.

 

Dead Steve Jobs: When you get back down to Earth could you ask Hef to look into my subscription. For the last few months I'm getting this weird PG-13 type edition.

 

The Publishing Profit: Uh, I'll see what I can do.