By Linda Forrest
There has been a lot of bad news coming out of the publishing sector in recent years and the latest segment of the publishing world to sound the alarm has been the business-to-business space, with the majority of high-profile publishers like Ziff Davis Enterprise, Nielsen and Penton announcing layoffs and restructuring.
This piece in Folio analyzes the recent spate of announcements and asks whether it’s time for B2B publishers to panic. The conclusion seems to be that those publishers that have already made a significant transition from print to online holdings will prevail, whereas those exclusively devoted to print will continue to struggle.
As noted in the article though, it’s important to realize that B2B readers behave somewhat differently than B2C readers in that they’re not sitting in front of their computers all day, meaning that print publications and portability play a more important role with these outlets.
Only time will tell how trade information is communicated in the long term. For the time being, however, there’s a healthy mix of both print and online outlets where our clients can receive valuable coverage and glean intelligence about their markets.
