By: Steve Outing The reprint business is just beginning to come out of the "old world"
and into the new. Instead of consumers calling a newspaper to get
reprints of an article, they will increasingly use or be referred to the
Web - where the sales and delivery process can be handled by
automated systems.
But more than taking something old (selling reprints) and making it new,
the online reprint business also presents new opportunities - such
as charging consumers for making photocopies of articles (instead of
losing revenues when they do it themselves); charging for Web links to
an article (which are typically made for free); and easily allowing
other Web sites to republish articles for a fee (instead of having a
human staff member deal with permissions).
Online reprint sales may not float a news Web site, but they do
represent an interesting new revenue stream and a way to reduce
resources devoted to selling reprints the "old-fashioned" way. You can
also gain insight into how people use your publication's content.
Industry leader
Seattle-based iCopyright.com is
the leader in this trend, and it's beginning to expand its services to
smaller publishers. The company is still relatively new, and thus far
has only a few media partners. In the newspaper world, iCopyright works
with the Los Angeles Times, Indianapolis Star-News and the
American City Business Journals chain.
iCopyright partners include a reprint tag at the bottom of their
articles on the Web. With stories in the Star-News, for instance,
site users have these options:
Buy formatted PDF (Adobe Acrobat) copies of articles for
self-printing. A single copy is free, but additional copies cost $1 each
(with a drop to 75 cents if over 1,000 copies are ordered). Buy
formatted e-mail copies of articles for 20 cents each. (To send an
article to up to five friends, it's free.) Buy a photocopy license
for an article, based on the number of copies you wish to make. (Free
for a single copy, otherwise 75 cents per copy.) License the right
to display articles on their own Web sites for $100.
Some sites also sell links to their articles, allowing another Web site
to include a headline linked back to the original story. That may look
like an odd model - charging a fee for something that's generally
considered to be free to do on your own - but it seems to work.
BizJournals.com (American Cities' Internet subsidiary) executive vice
president Tim Bradbury says the idea is simply to allow people to
pay to get a verified link to his publications' articles. A community of
users that seems to be comfortable paying for links is the public
relations profession, he says.
While BizJournals articles are stored on the Web with "permanent" URLS
(that is, the link should work long term), other news sites move current
articles into paid archives after a set time. For such sites, including
the Star-News, the idea of selling links makes sense -
because permanent URLs can be sold that will always work even after a
news site has moved an article into its archives. Link buyers pay for
that added value.
For most publisher deals with iCopyright, revenues from content reprint
sales are shared between iCopyright and the client publisher. Often,
there's no set-up fee to start the service.
Do the right thing
iCopyright vice president of content services Bill Burger says
one core idea behind his company's model is to make it economically
viable to sell low-volume reprints digitally. Physical-world reprint
departments (especially at magazines) typically don't want to deal with
a reader who calls in wanting 100 copies of an article that mentioned
his company. So they price that amount prohibitively high, which turns
many small buyers away.
By automating the process, says Burger, the price can be lowered and
it's still possible to make money on small orders. That business person
can use the Web to buy 100 copies of a Star-News article, which
he can print out himself after buying the right to do so, for $100. By
offering a reasonable price, a publisher can entice payment. Inflated
physical-world reprint pricing for low volumes by contrast can turn away
potential customers, who either do without or copy an article by
themselves and skip any payment.
The core principle behind iCopyright is "allowing the customer to do the
right thing," says Burger. The system does not emphasize security, but
rather convenience - making it easy for an online user who wants
copies of an article or wishes to use it on his or her own Web sites to
pay for a licensing agreement. But any purchase is basically voluntary.
It's simple enough for anyone to e-mail an article to a thousand
friends, or print out an article from the Web and photocopy it for a
hundred people in their office.
The business model here is that if you give online users the means to
easily pay for what they want, most will. Sure, a certain percentage
will cheat. That's life. But the net gain is new money that you
otherwise wouldn't see.
News archive implications
This model is used today primarily on current articles on content Web
sites, but where it gets interesting is when the concept is applied to
news archives. On most Web newspaper sites today, when a user finds an
article, he pays $1.50, $1.95 or $2.95 (the most common pricing right
now) to download it.
Envision the iCopyright model applied to newspaper archives. Find an
article, then you are presented with other options. Pay to e-mail copies
to colleagues, or to present the article on your own Web site or
intranet, etc.
iCopyright's system is not currently hooked into newspaper archive
systems, but should be in the future (most likely via relationships with
systems commonly used by newspaper Web sites, like Mediastream's
Newslibrary service).
How much to charge?
In terms of pricing for digital reprint or forwarding rights, there are
yet no solid guidelines. One client started out charging $250 for a Web
reprint permission, Burger says, but later realized that that was too
high and lowered it. He suggests that lower rates will bring in more
customers, and ultimately more revenue.
In contrast, another client started charging $5 for verified links to
its stories, and succeeded in selling quite a few of them. But these
links turned out to be valuable and the price was raised several times
over. The result: a net gain in revenues because customers appreciated
the value of the links enough to keep buying them even at a higher rate.
(Burger acknowledged that selling links has not represented a large
amount of money, but there were enough orders to recognize the
trend.)
In general, keep pricing low. Because such sales are voluntary and
honesty-based, too-high pricing will just encourage potential buyers to
cheat and pay you nothing.
Burger says that publishers' natural inclination seems to be to price
too high - but as they gain experience, many realize that lower
prices are to their benefit.
What can you make?
Frankly, news publishers aren't overly optimistic that offering online
reprints will bring in a ton of money. Star News online services
director Bob Jonason says the iCopyright-enabled sales have been
modest so far - but the service has been live only since mid-June.
Last month, between 1,400 and 1,500 users purchased reprint rights to
articles (and in many cases just forwarded single copies of articles to
friends for free).
Sports content has been among the most popular purchases, and he's seen
a lot of activity from corporations and colleges, whose people want
copies of articles that mention them.
In the past, the Star-News and its Web site have been contacted
daily by readers wanting to put a story on their own Web sites or link
to a story. So part of the motivation for automating the permissions
process is to eliminate that drain on staff time. Jonason says the
company also felt it was important to signal to readers and online users
the value of its articles, by flagging them as copyrighted and putting a
price on their re-use.
BizJournal's Bradbury says he too didn't get involved with iCopyright
expecting to make lots and lots of money. The motivation was to meet
customer desires (many people requested it), and to gain knowledge of
how the company's content gets used (that is, how and to who does it get
distributed beyond the newspapers' readers and online users).
Bradbury also says that at this time he's not all that interested in
promoting digital reprint sales. If they find it, great, but the
company's approach is "very passive" about marketing the
iCopyright-enabled reprint purchases.
Bradbury thinks that the print-based reprints business will continue to
thrive - and not be cannibalized by digital reprint services. But
other observers suggest that Web-enabled reprints could eventually
obviate the need for traditional print reprint services departments at
newspapers and magazines.
Enabling the little guys
The next phase in iCopyright's strategy is to open up its services to
smaller publishers. Earlier clients have had to work with the company to
integrate iCopyright's services into their publishing systems -
which sometimes took weeks or months to implement. At this writing,
iCopyright was close to releasing a new "self-serve" system that will
allow any publisher to sign up and start selling digital reprints.
According to a company spokesman, this solution will work even for those
news sites that publish only a small number of articles weekly or
monthly. Clients go through a Web form sign-up process, and at the end
are instructed to insert snippets of customized code into their HTML
pages.
iCopyright's principal competition comes from the Copyright Clearance Center. That
entity handles licensing of various forms of content. Like iCopyright,
it automates permissions, but the CCC does not actually deliver content
on behalf of client publishers as does iCopyright. Nor does CCC promote
itself as specializing in working with news publishers.
Other recent columns
In case you missed recent Stop The Presses!, here are links to
the last few columns:
You're Probably Charging Too Much Online, Wednesday, November 8 OK,
It's Time to Get Serious About Audio, Wednesday, November 1
Is Now the Time to Start Charging for Your Content?, Wednesday, October 25
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note.
---
This column is written by Steve
Outing for Editor & Publisher Online. Tips, letters and feedback
can be sent to Steve at steve@planetarynews.com
Copyright 2000, Editor & Publisher.
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