Magazines to ROMs
4 messages in this thread
I'm interested in an overview of costs involved in producing multimedia
CD-ROMs. I'm investigating this for a magazine publisher who is interested in
alternative publishing technologies for some of the 18 magazines they produce.
What kinds of costs (personnel, etc.) can be expected to add video, sound,
animation and so on to existing text and photos? Just some typical figures
would help. Are there text search/hypertext engines already available?
What kind of production time are we talking about? Six months, a year?
What are sales figures for the more popular titles? Thousands or tens of
thousands?
What are the price points for suggested retail pricing (39.95, 59.95, etc.)?
What kinds of advice do you have for any publisher thinking of being ready for
market in two years — when the critical mass of players may be high enough.
/ed
Ed,
Interesting questions, and some that I'm researching myself at this time.
The basic question to ask is if publishing a "magazine" digitally will add
value to the magazine. The successful titles will not be a replication of the
magazine in CD-ROM form, but something new.
Personnel will depend on whether your client wants to handle the production
in-house or work with a developer. If s/he chooses to work with a developer or
software house, then there will be no additional personnel required other than
someone to manage the project from the client end.
If in-house, be ready to put on (full-time or free-lance) programmers,
audio-video people, animators — if that's what you want. I'm assuming from
your post that you are re-using text and photographs from the magazine, and
that both are in digital form already. (If not, the photos will need to be
scanned.)
There are text search/hypertext engines already available, I believe, although
I'm not qualified to give you any suggestions here. Some of the authoring
packages contain these, I think.
Production time will depend on how complex the magazine is. My guess is that
you should allow a good six months or more to develop the first one, since all
subsequent issues will build on this first one's foundation. The later issues
will take less time. Newsweek Interactive has decided to publish quarterly,
but that is due to the nature of their product.
You might publish more frequently, but be prepared for lots of people working
full-time on this. NI hired Software Toolworks to do the "producing."
If I'm not mistaken, sales figures can number in the tens of thousands for
popular titles. The installed base, I think, is in hundreds of thousands.
Advice for publishers thinking of being ready in two years is "Start Now."
There is a rather steep learning curve, especially if this will be done
in-house, for digital publishing as your client envisions. Even if they only
do prototyping now, it will help in the development in the future.
How long did it take them to start a magazine from scratch to the first issue?
jay
Jay,
Thanks for the response. Because I'm not sure exactly what the final product
would be like, I have no way of knowing how many hours of programming,
animating, etc. time would be necessary. I definitely agree that the CD-ROM
version would have to have significant added value over the magazine itself.
I have the feeling that we might be talking about $50K or more for development
of one CD-ROM, which might contain dozens of issues of a magazine plus added
enhancements — sound, video, animation for added value. Without knowing the
return on investment in terms of potential sales, and without having a fairly
firm idea of what the costs will be, the only thing I can do at this point is
hope that others who've actually done this sort of thing can provide some
general numbers.
/ed
Ed,
Have you looked at existing MM periodicals on CDROM? Nautilus has been
publishing for the Mac and PC for several years already. You can find out more
about them in the CDROM forum — there's a section and library for/about
Nautilus there.
As for costs, timelines, etc., I don't think you'll find "typical" figures —
it all depends on how you do it, and how elaborate you want to get. There are
existing search/retrieval things. You can try the CDROM forum again for those
— Section 8, CDROM Production, has a number of files in the library that can
guide you. If you're interested specifically in hypermedia, you are welcome to
ask me, since that's my specialty.
Kathy Cochrane
Section 6 sysop