What do you use Publisher for?

[PaoloT]

Hi,

When I was young, careers in desktop publishing where a good amount. You could work on newsletters, magazines, company reports, technical manuals, advertising, books.

Tasks involved writing and editing texts, layout, care of printouts.

What about our days? As far as I can see, newsletters have been replaced by Facebook posts. Company reports by YouTube live videos. Technical manuals are more and more replaced by video tutorials, and I’ve seen big companies making manuals in Word.

Printed advertising is still a thing, in that supermarkets still print their leaflets. But with the advent of Amazon in the groceries, I expect advertising to be dematerialized.

Printed magazines are nearly disappeared, replaced by web sites.

Books: how many small publishers still exist? Do they pay for their collaborators' job, or is it all student's voluntary work? Do people still read books, apart for fantasy cycles released by major publishers?

I've still a job in the area, and hope to expand it to other directions. But how's the general situation? Is Affinity right in following the steps of InDesign, or is that world a dying one?

Paolo

 

[Guest]

16 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Hi,

As far as I can see, newsletters have been replaced by Facebook posts. Company reports by YouTube live videos. Technical manuals are more and more replaced by video tutorials, and I’ve seen big companies making manuals in Word.

Yeah, email newsletters, Facebook posts, shared Google Docs, Notion, YouTube videos and other digital media have replaced printed media in many areas. I think it's natural for us to look for easier/cheaper ways to do things when technology changes.

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Printed magazines are nearly disappeared, replaced by web sites.

Media websites are also on the decline. With the increased use of ad blockers and privacy controls the revenue generated from ads today is a fraction of what it was a few years ago. Many publishing companies were struggling then, but with this drop in ad revenue media on the web will likely not be sustainable in the ways we've become accustomed to. Subscriptions (and paywalls) will likely be the only option for many.

Quote

Books: how many small publishers still exist? Do they pay for their collaborators' job, or is it all student's voluntary work? Do people still read books, apart for fantasy cycles released by major publishers?

Books (of all kinds) are surprisingly doing very well. Even smaller publishers have seen an uptick in sales. Much of this is likely due to the pandemic, but it's unclear yet whether these behaviours will persist when things return to whatever the new normal will be. Also, ebooks continue to grow their market, but aside from PDF Affinity Publisher sadly offers nothing in this regard. That said, I'm seeing lots of PDFs (books, manuals, tutorials, RPG games, templates, stock assets, etc) being sold on-line in various marketplaces as they tend to be easier to sell than a website, and don't require subscriptions for ongoing access.

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I've still a job in the area, and hope to expand it to other directions. But how's the general situation? Is Affinity right in following the steps of InDesign, or is that world a dying one?

I don't think InDesign is dying, but it needs to evolve. There's a saying in Canada "don't skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck is going to be (Wayne Gretzky)", and this is something that Affinity desperately needs to do with Publisher (and all their apps IMHO). Having a new print page layout application is great, but in 2021, with Instagram, Kindle, iPads, YouTube (there's videos of folks reading books, especially children's books), Audible, Wattpad, Canva, etc it would be even more amazing if it felt like Publisher was ready to embrace this new world. If print/PDF remains Publishers only realistic publishing/export formats (aside from various image formats) it's not really a publishing app in the modern sense of the word.

[Catshill]

Menus, leaflets, free community magazines etc are still abundant.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Catshill said:

Menus, leaflets, free community magazines etc are still abundant.

That's a bit like building a supercar for folks to pop round the grocers and do the school run.

[PaulEC]

15 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Printed magazines are nearly disappeared

Pop into W. H. Smith sometime! 😀

[Sofa Gas Rue]

I use it extensively for:

– invoices, quotes and pitch documents.
– Contact sheets and project presentations.
– send-out portfolios.
– publishing projects ( I print annually portfolios of my work for client show )

 

[Catshill]

17 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

That's a bit like building a supercar for folks to pop round the grocers and do the school run.

I very much disagree. Good design is as important and should permeate the examples I gave. Free magazines can be sponsored by advertising and many advertisers require these to be created either from scratch or my using existing artwork or photos for example.

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Catshill said:

Good design is as important and should permeate the examples I gave.

I agree these printed materials deserve good care, and the need for them is still there. However, I’m not sure we can call that an industry. It would be a very niche artisan sector, with very low rewarding, deserving excellent tools, but not able to pay for them.

Among the Adobe publishing applications, InDesign is the one that deserved less attention from the developer in the latest ten years.

Paolo

 

[PaoloT]

19 hours ago, PaulEC said:

Pop into W. H. Smith sometime! 😀

I don't how it works in Britain, but here in Italy printed magazines are now only sold in shops like the ones you cited (but usually privately owned, and not part of a big chain).

At the same time, what was the most common selling point - the newspaper kiosk - has disappeared. Some areas of the towns don't even have a sale point anymore. Sales have plummeted, and most remaining publications are either travel magazines with beautiful photos, to be read at the beach, or magazines for mature women, still accustomed to that kind of publication supporting their hobbies.

There is then a lot of fake publishing, made to justify public contributions and the status of publisher. An obscure publisher of 1-euro priced improbable magazines has recently been able to take the main political newspaper of the country (Il Corriere della Sera).

Publishers associations' data are pretty clear in how this is a sector in full dismissal. In any case, I don't see a startup wanting to invest in magazine publishing.

Paolo

 

 

[Old Bruce]

My view on the print publishing industry is that as turnaround time and production cost both decreased due to technological advances the market shrank. Just odd that it has been going on like this for pretty much my entire life (from the 50s). Every decade has seen more (literate) people in the country yet fewer newspaper readers.

[Catshill]

21 hours ago, PaoloT said:

I agree these printed materials deserve good care, and the need for them is still there. However, I’m not sure we can call that an industry. It would be a very niche artisan sector, with very low rewarding, deserving excellent tools, but not able to pay for them.

Among the Adobe publishing applications, InDesign is the one that deserved less attention from the developer in the latest ten years.

Paolo

 

The printed market has evolved but is still there. COVID has not helped but I don’t think generalisations are particularly helpful. Specialist can be far more lucrative than mass market in business.

[Catshill]

21 hours ago, PaoloT said:

I don't how it works in Britain, but here in Italy printed magazines are now only sold in shops like the ones you cited (but usually privately owned, and not part of a big chain).

At the same time, what was the most common selling point - the newspaper kiosk - has disappeared. Some areas of the towns don't even have a sale point anymore. Sales have plummeted, and most remaining publications are either travel magazines with beautiful photos, to be read at the beach, or magazines for mature women, still accustomed to that kind of publication supporting their hobbies.

There is then a lot of fake publishing, made to justify public contributions and the status of publisher. An obscure publisher of 1-euro priced improbable magazines has recently been able to take the main political newspaper of the country (Il Corriere della Sera).

Publishers associations' data are pretty clear in how this is a sector in full dismissal. In any case, I don't see a startup wanting to invest in magazine publishing.

Paolo

 

 

Widen your horizons beyond paid for magazines. Hard copy is very much alive, it’s just in a different market to the one you seem to be considering.

Good business strategy looks at new untapped markets and being creative is a great skill to have. It is why so many successful business startup during a recession leaving the dinosaurs to do what dinosaurs do.

[PaoloT]

2 hours ago, Catshill said:

The printed market has evolved but is still there. COVID has not helped

Actually, COVID has been a great help for the printed magazine market. Last year has been one of increased sales, temporarily inverting the descending trend. (Not so books, with bookstores closed due to the pandemic).

2 hours ago, Catshill said:

Widen your horizons beyond paid for magazines. Hard copy is very much alive, it’s just in a different market to the one you seem to be considering.

I would be very grateful for some hints on where printing publishing is going. None of the analysis I’ve seen are showing an increase in any of the known sectors. Since this thread is mainly meant to make a point about the status and perspective of printing publishing (to which AfPublisher is dedicated), having some views about these alternative markets would be very useful.

Paolo

 

[wonderings]

On 7/10/2021 at 4:43 PM, PaoloT said:

Hi,

When I was young, careers in desktop publishing where a good amount. You could work on newsletters, magazines, company reports, technical manuals, advertising, books.

Tasks involved writing and editing texts, layout, care of printouts.

What about our days? As far as I can see, newsletters have been replaced by Facebook posts. Company reports by YouTube live videos. Technical manuals are more and more replaced by video tutorials, and I’ve seen big companies making manuals in Word.

Printed advertising is still a thing, in that supermarkets still print their leaflets. But with the advent of Amazon in the groceries, I expect advertising to be dematerialized.

Printed magazines are nearly disappeared, replaced by web sites.

Books: how many small publishers still exist? Do they pay for their collaborators' job, or is it all student's voluntary work? Do people still read books, apart for fantasy cycles released by major publishers?

I've still a job in the area, and hope to expand it to other directions. But how's the general situation? Is Affinity right in following the steps of InDesign, or is that world a dying one?

Paolo

 

Printed magazines have definitely gone down, had a few regular ones that moved to all digital.

Newsletters are definitely not being replaced by facebook posts, at least from my experience, we are going strong with them. Same with company reports, a youtube video does not cut it. Tech manuals as well, these have never slowed down for us and personally I would question a company that sells anything beyond consumer goods that does not include technical manuals for operating. 

Affinity is making software that does close to what Adobe does. Affinity Photo = Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Designer = Adobe Illustrator, and Affinity Publisher = Adobe Indesign. 

Personally I do not think they can replace Adobe at the moment, but they are a fraction of the cost and will accomplish a lot, maybe even enough for some pro needs, just not mine and many others at the moment. I would at least try the demos and see if they do what you need to do. Take that most difficult jobs you have and do them in Publisher, if it all works and you can live with it then you have found a really great, feature rich, affordable application suite. 

[PaoloT]

13 hours ago, wonderings said:

I would at least try the demos and see if they do what you need to do. 

Thank you for your feedback!

I've been an Affinity user since 2018, and have already switched nearly all of my Illustrator and Photoshop tasks to AfDesigner and AfPhoto. For what I do, the first one has still some issues in the layers workflow, but also some advantages. But at this point I only use Illustrator to open obsolete .ai files the mechanical engineers are sending me, and AfDesigner can't recognize.

As for the second one, I find it much superior to Photoshop in working with technical materials. The Export Persona just let me replace an original master image, and quickly re-export all the details derived from it. I don't know if this could be done with Photoshop in some other ways. If not, this is an enormous advantage of the Affinity in speed and precision.

AfPublisher is still far from my needs as a technical writer. I guess it can already do great with some smaller jobs — and I could experience it recently, when it allowed me to do a draft work starting from a PDF file. But I still miss the fundamental non-Roman languages support, long publications features, conditional text, and export to a format that CAT software can understand (namely, IDML).

However, the aim of this thread is not that of seeing if Publisher can replace InDesign, but if Publisher and InDesign are software ready for the current and the forthcoming times.

Paolo