Robert Sacks recently penned an interesting article for Publishing Executive.  In his article he identifies 5 key trends in publishing and clearly articulates a call to action for publishers related to each one.  Digital delivery of magazine content is a cornerstone in his views on how the industry will grow and thrive. 

The 5 key trends he identifies include:

Key Trend #1: Magazines are not changing, how you read their content is.
What is a magazine? We at Media-Ideas believe that for a magazine to be a magazine, it must be metered, edited and have designed content, as well as be delivered periodically to the reader in a format that is date-stamped and permanent. We accept that a digital magazine with those six attributes is a magazine. We further believe that over the next 15 years, digital magazines will grow to become 30 percent of the magazine market. Within 25 years, they will represent more than 75 percent of the market for periodicals.

Call to Action: Publishers must create a specific road map today toward multiplatform magazine publishing and content distribution.

Keeping the structural integrity of a magazine online, with the six components necessary to be a magazine, will help to protect publishers from the leveling force of content aggregation that exists on the Internet today. This will greatly limit a magazine’s exposure to the content-dilution factor that is increasingly being played out in the realm of information distribution on the Web.

Key Trend #2: Costs are increasing faster than the traditional magazine business model allows.
Raw-material acquirement is causing paper, ink, printing and shipping costs to increase over the long term. These will be further impacted as ecological concerns grow. The lack of attention to ecology is going to be a major cost. Imagine having to pay carbon offsets for each copy returned.

Call to Action: Sky-rocketing costs will force publishers to become more efficient with distribution. The goal has to be 100-percent efficiency or zero returns (and zero returns means a massive reduction in a publisher’s carbon footprint).

Call to Action: Crippling costs will force publishers to offer better-quality, more-targeted print products at even higher price points.

Call to Action: Ballooning costs will force publishers to further espouse digital delivery.

Key Trend #3: The control and branding of digital content is a critical battle.
XML, content aggregators and search engines are growing in importance and acceptance. This type of online distribution should principally be considered as a marketing tool to attract new readers. Only the very largest magazine publishers and publishers of addictive niche titles will manage to retain their brand awareness through this information-
distribution model. Digital magazines must become a critical piece of a publisher’s digital content-distribution plans over the next two years. Because they preserve the core characteristics of a printed magazine, they are best equipped to retain reader loyalty in a digital world.

Call to Action: The formula construction of a magazine’s distribution will become a central battle for relevance. If publishers do not take an aggressive stance, outside forces will steer a solution away from the interests of the magazine industry.

Key Trend #4: E-paper is rapidly developing flexible, color displays.
Although the Amazon Kindle is not ready for prime time, it is a prime example of where we are headed. Our Media-Ideas researchers predict that by 2020, e-paper’s worldwide market will be worth more than $20 billion. We further predict that by 2020, the annual global production of e-paper displays will be 500 million units with a unit price of $50. Imagine a piece of paper that is a screen, plasticized at first, but becoming more and more like the pulp we have all grown to love.

Call to Action: If digital magazines have not made sense to you, your readers and advertisers, they will with full-color e-paper. Publishers must be acting on their digital magazine implementation plans today or risk irrelevance.

Key Trend #5: The corporate structure of traditional publishers cannot keep pace with technological changes, causing a misalignment between internal organization and business needs.
In every corner of the publishing organization, employees need a larger skill set—one infused with technology—such as writing a blog, shooting and editing video, and repurposing content. Today’s IT departments are ill-equipped to act upon consumer-imposed requirements. It must fall on the business unit to provide the necessary guidance and forward planning.

Call to Action: Type A publishers need to assign business-technology “visioneers” within each unit of the organization who report directly to a C-level executive.

Call to Action: Visioneers are responsible for planning necessary technology and functionality over five years. Both the business units and the visioneers must be partially compensated on each other’s success

Folio Magazine recently published an indepth overview of the current state and trends in digital magazines.  You can review the entire group of articles here, but some of the highlights I found most interesting:

• Digital magazines appear not to be the transitional technology that they were perceived as not too long ago but are, instead, a hybrid technology of choice for many publishing brands and consumers.

• “The number of publications that are moving into their initial digital effort is still very significant,” says Steve Paxhia, lead analyst in the Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice at The Gilbane Group. “While the base isn’t large, the number is actually growing quite nicely. It’s safe to say that it is growing in excess of 25 percent per year.”

• The digital-magazine market has been vibrant for less than five years, but it nevertheless has enough maturity to have developed some interesting and important trends. Publishers are starting to realize, for example, that this isn’t simply a plug-in technology. It requires focus and attention for the initiative to be successful.

• the technology has gotten much more robust in the last couple of years. Vendors can add RSS feeds, enhanced ads, and many more bells and whistles, while the publisher still needs to supply only a PDF of the magazine. That means that small publishers who can’t afford to dedicate the resources necessary to keep up with cutting-edge trends can also participate.