Reed has reduced the circulation of EPN from 60K to 50K. The magazine still retains a large print distribution of 32K, whilst 18K readers receive the digital version. E-mail newsletters circulation has also dropped slightly from 20K to 17K in the latest media pack. That magazine retains its BPA audit, and therefore continues to be the European electronics title with the highest audited circulation. Given the challenges faced by the whole market, and recent cutbacks at Reed, the fall in circulation is not surprising although it would have been nice if more readers could be convinced to take the digital issue, rather than dropping off the circulation.

Tags: EPN, Reed

Hot on the heels of the announcement that Reed is getting out of the French language electronics market, the Paris-based publisher has announced that it will launch two new EPN blogs covering industrial automation and automotive electronics. Both topics will be covered by blogs in English and German.

The move into German-language content is interesting, and appears to be somewhat opportunistic as the blogger for both topics will be the excellent Marisa Robles Consee, who can write excellent English and German articles.

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a more determined foray into the overcrowded German market, or if it turns out to simply be a 1-off to take advantage of great editorial talent. Either way, it’s good to see that EPN continues to recruit bloggers that can match the very high standard of the existing Distribution and RF blogs.

Tags: Blogs, Electronics, EPN, Online, Reed

Reed has decided to close EPE and EPN France, as well as switching EDN Europe to an all-digital circulation. I’ve written separate posts on each of the titles, but the extent of these cutbacks is shocking. It’s now time for new online titles with low-cost business models to launch: all these publications were able to generate a significant advertising revenue that would no doubt could be profitable for a different set-up.

At Napier we’ve seen the IT industry transformed with great online publications that generate great traffic and strong revenue. I hope there are entrepreneurial editors who can make the same thing happen in the European electronics media.

Tags: Advertising, Editors, EDN Europe, Electronics, EPE, EPN, EPN France, ESE, Europe, France, Online, Reed

Although not as high-profile as the closure of EPN France, Reed has also announced that they will be closing EPE at the end of the year. Whilst this decision still leaves Spain with a reasonable number of titles – unlike France – this is another disappointing move, particularly as the industry appears to be emerging from the economic downturn.

Tags: EPE, EPN, EPN France, France, Reed, Spain

Although not the first title to have 100% digital circulation (Electronic Design Europe has been digital-only for some years), the decision by Reed to switch EDN Europe to all-digital distribution will have a major impact on the European electronics media.

It’s disappointing to see Reed make such major cutbacks at a time when the industry appears to be recovering, but at least EDN Europe has escaped the fate of EPN France. Reed has also taken a realistic look at advertising rates, slashing them by two thirds, although the title will charge a premium for rich media and video content in the advert.

Of course the cut in advertising price is initially demanded because the circulation will, at first, fall dramatically (the digital circulation is currently only around 11K), but Reed confidently predict the circulation will more than double by the end of 2010. The good news is that Reed will continue to invest in high-quality circulation, promising that they will retain a BPA audit.

If Reed can create a business model that provides a significantly lower cost-per-thousand than print titles – and they certainly should do as the cost of digital distribution is so much less than printing and posting a hard copy – the move to digital circulation could be a success.

Tags: Advertising, EDN Europe, Electronics, EPN, EPN France, ESC, Europe, France, Reed, USA, Video

Reed has decided to close EPN France at the end of this year, despite the merger of Electronique and Electronique International from the beginning of 2010. This leaves just one major French publication. The EPN France website will also close at the end of 2009. The news was also announced at the same time Reed said they would distribute EDN Europe only as a digital title from January 2010.

I’m amazed that Reed feel they can’t make money with one of just two French titles. Although the German electronics market is somewhat larger than the French market, the vast disparity between the number of publications in each market makes no sense.

At Napier we saw a similar collapse in the French IT print media, but this resulted in a number of new online publications. The electronics market has yet to see many online titles driven by “real” editorial content (rather than simply taking press release content). It will be interesting to see if online electronics sites are launched to create new vehicles to reach French engineers: I’d certainly back any new launches as it seems any reasonable site would be almost guaranteed to succeed!

Tags: EDN Europe, Electronics, Electronique, EPN, EPN France, Europe, France, Online, Reed

In a widely-expected move, Electronique and Electronique International are to merge, forming a new title, ElectroniqueS. Given the state of the advertising market, and other factors specific to France, the move is a logical one, with the new title resembling a relaunched Electronique, although the editorial content will be bolstered with material to appeal to management, purchasing and other non-design engineer readers.

The good news is that the frequency will be higher than Electronique, with “at least” three specials enhancing the basic 11 issues per year. The publishers also promise a free digital version, and I wonder whether this might be a route to expand the circulation beyond the relatively modest 10,000 that are planned for the launch.

In the French market it’s no surprise that ElectroniqueS is not going with an aggressively low-priced rate card. In fact advertising rates are higher than Electronique both in terms of the page rate and the cost per thousand.

The website electronique.biz is already a single port of call for everyone in the French electronics industry, so there are only a few changes such as the addition of white papers.

Online display advertising continues to be offered on a sponsorship, rather than cost-per-impression, basis.  Disappointingly the online rates have also increased, whilst traffic growth appears to have slowed – May and June both showed a increase of less than 10% over the previous year, much lower than the previous few months.

The new white paper service offers a guaranteed number of downloads, with the contacts that download provided as leads., It’s great to see that there is a guarantee of a minimum number of leads, although at around €100 per lead, the cost is higher than many in the electronics industry are willing to pay.

The daily and weekly news emails will continue, and new vertical newsletters will be launched. Embedded and Display will both have monthly newsletters, whilst quarterly emails will be issued about automation and telecom/RFID.

Overall I think that the print and online offering looks good. It will be sad to see France drop to just two mainstream titles, with no news title, which must offer great opportunities for someone to launch an online-only title in the country. I’ve seen this happen in the French IT press, so it would not surprise me if we see some new launches. It’s disappointing to see the prices edge up, and arguably value for money drop when measured in terms of cost per impression. ElectroniqueS will doubtless be the premier title in the market with a strong editorial team, and so I’m sure it will be a success. The high rates, however, may present an opportunity for an aggressive push for market share from EPN France.

We are still waiting for the editorial team to be finalised – check back at Napier News for all the latest!

Tags: Advertising, Digital Magazines and Print Publications, Electronics, Electronique, ElectroniqueS, Email, EPN, ESE, France, Newsletters, Online, USA

Didn’t product books die out years ago?
Engineers have always been interested in finding out about new products. Look at the amount of pages that news and other titles give to new products. At EPN, we have made new products our speciality! It’s what we do best and so we focus on delivering new products from around the world to readers across Europe. The large amount of responses we receive to ‘bingo’ numbers via the web on each story supports this approach of give the people what they want!

What does a magazine deliver to engineers that they can’t find when searching the web?
Magazine editors are the ultimate spam filter! We choose the products that are of interest, that take the technology up a notch or which are truly new and different. The beauty of a magazine is that sometimes you didn’t know you are looking for something until you see it in the pages of EPN! It is also impartial and measured information about products, not the marketing department’s idea of a good story, which can be reproduced on some online sites churning out content. Editor’s ask questions on behalf of their readers, i.e. engineers, to make editorial particularly pertinent to their daily working lives; again, you won’t find that on a company’s website.

How do you balance your time between writing for the print publication and writing for epn-online.com?
Product stories that appear in the magazine also appear online so most of my time is spent writing these. I write some online-only product stories too. I also write some content for the online section, Industry News. These are news stories about a new Alliance or Industry body; a merger/acquisition or technology collaboration. However, EPN is all about products, so while these stories are of interest to engineers there is no product in them and are not as prominent on the homepage as Top Products. I conduct an Interview of the Week, another online feature, occasionally. This is a Q&A with C-level executives or technology experts; although I can only claim to dabble – Mick Elliott is the man for probing questions!

In similar industries such as IT, independent blogs have become a significant medium. Yet in electronics there are few independent blogs, with most blogs part of the online presence of a large publication. Why do you think electronics is different?
I must confess I hadn’t thought of the electronics industry being different. Writers become associated with a target audience. National newspapers have blogs of their columnists which are accessed through the newspaper’s home page. Perhaps with IT, blogs are opinion-pieces about whether a new OS is any good or more corporate news with what Google or Facebook is up to. Maybe electronics journalists aren’t as opinionated as IT ones! The audience is different. Engineers don’t get het up about whether one FPGA is more stylish, they clinically compare attributes and make informed choices. The electronics industry seems to have ploughed its own farrow, reporting intelligently via blogs on magazine homepages. At the risk of sounding immodest, EPN has two of the most qualified in their field bloggers, Mick Elliott reporting on distribution and Helen Duncan reporting on all things RF and Wireless – their posts are certainly independent!

What changes do you expect to see over the next three years in the European electronics media?
You are not the first to have asked! At the risk of disappointing you, I cannot prophesise a paperless office with online or digital editions soon. A few companies seem to value appearing in print above all else, so, I am not convinced that print will disappear by the time of the London Olympics! Maybe in another five to 10 years, when all the graduates today who are more web-dependent for information sources are in engineering jobs, the emphasis for content delivery will change.
However, I may be like the Hollywood director who dismissed Fred Astaire’s audition with the words, “Can’t sing, can’t act, can dance a little”! The real crux of your question is that no-one, if they are honest, knows what will be most popular and effective for everyone……

What is the one thing you’d like to change about the way companies do PR in the electronics industry?
You’re going to limit me to one? ! OK, use someone who knows about publishing AND electronics. A knowledge of both will eliminate the following sins: putting management-speak or eight words instead of one in a presentation/press release; suggesting meetings without thinking what will the editor get out of this? (A story, should be the answer, not a cup of tea and a chat!); sending a press release containing all the information, and an image with the highlights superimposed on it – trust me, I’ll know to mention that it consumes only 8µA in sleep mode
And that’s me being restrained!

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
Horse-riding. I live in London, but there are some stables nearby and when hacking across the lower fields, you would never guess that half of London was racing to get to the other side of London, a few feet away! When I go away with work or family, I always try and book up a horse-ride – you see nature differently on the back of a horse!

What’s your favourite gadget?
I am very attached to my Blackberry, but it’s a bit like chocolate – I have to lock it away sometimes!
Is a microwave a gadget?!
I might have said sat-nav, but I have had a few arguments with it lately when it takes me in a circle or the long way round!
Personal DVD players keep the kids quiet on journey which makes them worth their weight in gold!
Years ago, I had a solar-powered calculator that converted metric to imperial measures and Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa – that was invaluable! It’s probably an iPhone app now. I wish there was a portable barcode reader that could convert the world’s currencies in real-time so that I could confirm that it really is a bargain!

Tags: Editors, EPN, Interviews, UK

EPN has launched its second blog – the RF & Wireless Blog. The blog aims to provide daily posts on the world of RF/Microwave & Wireless components, technology, systems, standards, applications and events from a European perspective and is written by RF specialist Helen Duncan.

If the RF & Wireless Blog can match the quality of EPN’s first blog, Mike Elliott’s must-read EPN Distiblog, then the site will definitely have another winner!

Tags: EPN, Online

EPN has gone a little Google-esque with their new contextual adverts. Rather like Google AdWords that are run on many different sites in their “content network”, you can define keywords that will trigger display of your advert. Unlike Google, however, you know that the chance of inappropriately triggering an advert is minimal, as you not only know on which site the advert will appear, but you can even restrict the channels on EPN in which the advert is active. This is going to be a boon to advertisers – for example the manufacturers of power supplies that have ads for “AC/DC” supplies running on rock music websites!
Unlike Google, however, the adverts are pay-per-impression, rather than pay-per-click. Hopefully this will come in the future, and presumably if this happens EPN would highlight the very targeted nature of the traffic to their website to justify higher CPCs than Google.

Tags: Advertising, EPN, Online

You were editor of EPN, the largest circulation electronics title in Europe, and you decided to leave. What could be better than editing EPN?
EPN was great to work on, but after nearly 9 years with the RBI publishing group (a great deal of that time working on EPN), a change of scene was long overdue. Also being managing editor meant I really had a struggle on my hands to make time for writing articles that interested me. Too often you tend to just get tied down with all the admin and political stuff. Working on ECN and Wireless Design I get to write a lot more about the issues affecting the European market and that is much more fulfilling.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, when you’re not writing about electronics?
Well as you know I have had a couple of books published, and so this has been a quite a big part of my life over the last 4 years or so. I have also been studying at Cardiff’s Art College, and have just completed the first stage of a degree in fine art. I love travelling, doing a variety of sports, and all the usual socialising stuff. I also follow the rugby, but being Welsh that is mandatory.

Do you prefer writing books to editing magazines?
I think they are both pretty good really. All of us in the electronics press like to have a little bit of a moan now and again, but in reality it’s a pretty good way to earn a crust. There aren’t many occupations that allow you to have such varied work. Meeting people doing cutting edge research, learning about new innovations, getting to speak to the industry’s real decision makers, and then being given a platform on which to voice your opinions about all this sure beats the monotony that a lot of my friends have to put up within their workspace. Books are a bit different. Obviously they are far bigger projects to embark upon, so they take a lot of leg work, and the process can be frustrating at times, but the rewards of getting something into the bookshops make it well worthwhile.

What are your plans for your next book?
Well, actually I am currently working on a third book, which looks at the relationship between art and science. It looks how these two subjects have interacted over the centuries; from the Quatrocento through the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods right up to the modern day.

Your books are only available in print, whereas you’re the European editor for Wireless Design and ECN, which have launched digital-only titles here. So what is the future – print or online?
For most of the time I was with EPN the main focus was on print, and though later on there was an increasing emphasis on web-based offerings, it was still the paper version that made up the majority of the readership. I think that there should be room for both print and digital. The editions of ECN and Wireless Design which are emailed to the readership here in Europe have a number of advantages. They are easier to search through, they can be archived, and they have less of an environmental impact. Also there is a lot more room to develop new ideas in terms of advertising. To complement this web-based editorial services are obviously far more immediate, and allow readers to get involved (in terms of commenting on blogs, etc). I still personally enjoy getting print magazines through the post, and I think a lot of other people feel the same, but it seems likely that the emerging generation of engineers and tech management will prefer digital and on-line publishing.

Why do you think people would read a digital magazine like Wireless Design Europe when there are competitors available in print?
I would say it is not so much a matter of how they get it, but more what they get. As Engineers want editorial that can help them in doing their job, what source that comes from is not something they worry about. Also, as mentioned, digital editions have several added convenience factors.

What is the one thing you’d like to change about the way companies do PR in the electronics industry?
I have been dealing with the PR community for a long time now, and for the most part have had good experiences. I think, like most journalists, my biggest pet peeves would be when deadlines aren’t kept on material (although, to be fair, this is usually more down to the company being represented rather than the PR firm themselves) and when requests for information or interviews aren’t responded to in a timely manner. Another one, that I know a lot of my colleagues would agree with, is that firms often think in terms of just ticking boxes. For example, a PR manager will make a big thing about getting as many editors to meet with them at a show even if they have nothing new to say at that time. It means they can go to their bosses and show nice statistics and metrics with which to gage their success, but in reality it is just counterproductive. If you ‘cry wolf’ too many times, people won’t want to know any more.

As you are now writing for a number of titles, does this let you be more focussed on the technologies that interest you?
Yes, I would say so. ECN has a broad based editorial remit, but I really tend to concentrate on the technologies and application areas that are of particular relevance to Europe, or where European companies are leading the innovation. With Wireless Design it is great to be involved in a telecom-based publication again, as it is still a really interesting field, with plenty to write about.

What’s your favourite gadget?
It’s a little ironic I know, but I am still a bit of a Luddite at heart really. I am a lot more enthused by technological advance that can improve healthcare, enhance vehicle safety, or provide us with sustainable energy resources, than what is currently on sale in the high street shops. I’m not one of these people who just buys up any new consumer device on a whim, I really have to see the value in it first. But I think that having an element of scepticism is a good thing sometimes, as you can give an objective view of whether the technologies being touted are actually going to make people’s lives better. While at magazines like EPN, Telecom-Plus, and Hyperelectronics I had to sit through quite a lot of PowerPoint presentations where it was hard to see what real benefit would be gained, companies were trying to solve problems that were not there in the first place. Anyway, I guess my MP3 is the gadget that I get most use out of, though it is getting a bit battered now.

Tags: Editors, EPN, Interviews, UK

In a move that presumably helps reduce costs, EPN and EPN France will shrink by 0.5cm in width and 1.5cm in height. The first issues of the new format will be the April issue of EPN and the April/May issue of EPN France.

Tags: Digital Magazines and Print Publications, EPN, Reed