I knew that magazines, as a rule, don’t get it when it comes to the web. But I didn’t realise it was this bad:
Fewer than 10% even draw as many people online, where their content is free, as they have paying offline, according to Format, a magazine consultancy. The industry, in fact, averages 0.3 uniques per paid print copy.
I’m not sure what the rule of thumb is for readers per paid print copy, but if it’s three then the average magazine has literally an order of magnitude as many readers of its print version than of its website. Talk about wated opportunities and shooting themselves in the foot: if magazine publishers had embraced the web rather than fearing it, they might not be also-rans in the internet content business today.