Is print dead? [infographic]

Author: Piotr Kowalczyk •
Date: September 9, 2010 •
Category: English, Shared
via sketchee.com

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  • http://twitter.com/kanderson Kent Anderson

    These infographics are a problem for a few reasons. First, “print” includes catalogs, political mailers, direct marketing materials, instruction manuals, and legal notices when you’re talking about the “printing industry.” As for “reading” magazines, there’s a difference between reading a magazine at the barber’s or dentist’s and paying for a subscription or buying a newsstand copy. As for book sales, the graphic cites an increase in book sales — is that on a revenue basis or a unit basis? how much of that was driven by e-book sales? I suspect it’s on a revenue basis and was driven by price increases in the textbook market and e-book sales.

    The premise is wrong (print isn’t dying, but it’s becoming peripheral in key areas of information consumption), the graphic is misleading or incomplete in key ways, and overall this isn’t all that helpful.

    • http://twitter.com/queryfreewriter Jennifer Mattern

      What these kinds of questions never seem to address is the overall economic situation. People act like the print industry exists in some little bubble. It’s ignorant at best to not account for negative changes in relation to how other industries are faring. Publishing / printing isn’t the only area where people are losing jobs and companies are becoming leaner. Look at the full picture, or it’s not worth commenting on the issue at all. Kent – Actually I wouldn’t say the numbers are driven up by the textbook market and e-book sales. If you look at AAP reports each month you’ll find that while those segments of the book market have been on the increase, so have others (and yes, some have gone down). They do some nice breakdowns in their reports showing trends in areas such as children’s books, adult hardcovers, mass market paperbacks, etc. You should be able to find information about previous months’ book sale numbers on their site at http://publishers.org.

    • http://sketchee.com Sketchee

      I was only trying to highlight some key and more interesting stats with the graphic. Full references and contexts are available at http://sketchee.com/blog/is-print-dead-infographic.html

      The pie chart includes direct mail, marketing material, product package printing, FedEx Kinkos and all of that. And clearly those aspects is the largest part of the business right now. However, when asking the question “Is Print Dead” I think a focus on magazines, books and newspapers is appropriate. I did think putting them in the context of everything you mention is important. :)

      As a magazine designer, I feel that most magazines don’t care about subscriptions. They want readers, pay or not. If they have readers, they can tell advertisers that people might see their ads and sell against that data.

      Yes, infographics generally do require editorial choices by the creator are limited by the data available. But it’s a good thing that you’re thinking about it!