My print publishing business, Dial Publishing, is currently in exploratory talks to buy a small, but established print publisher of nonfiction books. This is still at the confidential, due diligence stage, so no names or pack drill.

If the buy comes off it will bring a solid backlist of steady sellers to Dial’s inventory, plus a fund of experience and connections impossible to create overnight. Dial Publishing is a totally separate business from Syntagma Digital Limited, which is our digital publishing company.

These events have ballooned out over the Easter period and have led me to reflect on the essential differences between print and digital publishing. With 20 years of print experience and two years of digital publishing behind me, I’m only now beginning to see the wood from the trees.

Let’s state from the outset that we’re talking profitable projects here, not worthwhile artistic efforts which gain critical acclaim but lose money — they are more in the province of personal blogs. In the commercial sphere, it’s the money that determines the outcome in both cases, as always.

Digital and print publishing are surprisingly complementary over a range of possible output. Speaking very generally, the money in digital publishing is in :

Bite-sized reports on events and products that command large-scale interest.

Most essay-type sites don’t make any money at all. The way still to earn income publishing online (not social networking) remains in a few mega-niches : finance, automotive, gadgets, gossip and miscellaneous products and services. Looking across Syntagma’s 50-60 sites the ones with large numbers of text link ads stand out a mile. That’s a very good test of financial viability. All our projects going forward focus on these areas.

The gold in nonfiction print publishing comes from :

Lengthy exposition and detailed information on essential topics and useful techniques.

Most writers find one of these branches easier to accomplish than the other. Just a few may be good at both.

So, in terms of cash and results, there are two discrete environments — print and digital publishing — to work with. Both are capable of bringing results, but the need to consolidate and move on is ever present, especially online.

Other Considerations
To succeed in digital publishing you need to play the market and its highly volatile readership with a certain degree of cunning. Traffic is driven by keywords and buzz — what we used to call “word of mouth”, but now in a different context. To win online you have to get down and dirty with search engine optimization and a measure of gaming of the system. Google benefits too, so there’s real scope for the dark arts here.

Some people don’t really like that aspect of digital publishing — I confess to being a bit chary of it myself. However, to win a war you have to kill people. There’s no other way.

Print publishing is much more congenial to anyone with scruples, although the scope for shenanigans is increasing by the day, especially as the number of titles being published grows beyond the public’s capacity — and wish — to purchase. Content and reputation count above all in today’s busy marketplace.

Complementarity
If you indulge in both arms of publishing, what are the cross-fertilizations you can call up to improve both businesses?

There are many, but in brief :

* You can sell books online and use websites for publicity.
* Books can contain a list of web addresses to get a new audience logging on.
* Multiple cross-references can drive traffic both ways.
* Websites can provide an introduction, while a book develops the whole picture.
* Books can refer readers to websites for more up-to-date information.

These are real benefits and, used smartly, can make a great deal of difference to success on- and offline.

The convergence of digital and print publishing is therefore more of a complementarity than a merging. That the same people are now often doing both is a sign that a mature marketplace is developing which successfully crosses the seemingly large ravine between the two outlets for publishing.

Which, though, potentially yields the bigger return on investment?

That will have to be left to another post, so stay close.

To all of you who have emailed inquiring about my absence from the Syntagma battlements in recent weeks, thank you.

I’ve been completing the last of my contract obligations for a media company with strong ties to the retail sector. Now that it’s complete, I can concentrate totally on Syntagma’s weighty world affairs. Exhaustion, however, may slow me down in the first few days. Bear with me if I don’t get round to you immediately.

We do, though, have a fast-track channel for anyone wishing to pay us.

Apart from the routine operations always present in a large network, we have a huge slew of new projects and maturing older ones to tackle after Easter. Here’s a taster :

* Moneyizor network magazine to be designed and launched, including three new webtitles to be set up.

* Final proofread of Syntagma Media’s first print book of the new season : Naked Tales — Stories By Writers Who Blog, which is being published by Humdrumming in May.

* Complete switch over to new Windows Vista systems for all activities. We’re also making the move to Microsoft Office 2007 in one fell swoop. I’m really looking forward to all the glitches.

* Work on Dial Publishing’s new edgewise general trade imprint. The first print title will be Steve Newman’s brilliant fictionalized biography of Ernest Hemingway, currently being serialized here by Syntagma Digital.

* Initial work on our Retailz USA retail portal, due in May/June.

* Something called “real life”. What can that be?

One morning I’ll wake up with absolutely nothing to do all day. Then I’ll know I’m dead.

In the meantime, raise the bugle and signal the advance.

This is to announce our new consultancy business, Dial Consultants, which covers digital publishing, online content creation and management.

The business is separate from Syntagma Digital and is part of Dial Publishing, our print publishing house.

On offer : 20 years experience in magazine, general, and educational publishing — see here, here and here – and, in particular, one and a half years building Syntagma Digital from scratch into a 50 website content creator, divided into four network magazines. Add on a career as a full-time author and journalist and that’s the swagbag now dangling at the door of Syntagma Towers.

To contact Dial Consultants, email : John(at)dialpublishing(dot)com. It’s as simple as that.

The final step in our reorganization has been taken. Syntagma Media is now a redundant name, except in the URL of this webtitle, where it will remain. It may, though, be resurrected as a holding company when Syntagma Television appears on your screens in 2008.

Dial Publishing — the print arm — has been completely separated off from the online business, which will now be incorporated in the UK as Syntagma Digital.

We’ve introduced these changes gradually to see how they feel in practice and whether we can live with them. The answer is, yes. Apart from the internet address of this site, all references to Syntagma Media will be eventually removed from the inventory.

The reason is not that we cease to be a media business, just that there are a lot of them out there. Anyone blogging about blogging these days refers to themselves as a media business. We are following our own path and the new titles reflect that.

Okay, it’s not such a big deal, but names are important as they become brands over time. Syntagma is the brand, digital is what we do, “media” is a given and doesn’t need stressing in the company name.

As for Dial Publishing, it will take on a life of its own as a print publisher of business and digital-publishing books. It will also cover our consultancy business and all other offline activities. Dial will no longer be referred to as the print arm of Syntagma Media.

So the process of reconstructing the business that began three months ago is almost complete. In a week or two we can get down to some real work at last — producing large amounts of quality digital content.

Note : Some domain names are currently pointing to this site. They include : SyntagmaDigital.com, SyntagmaTelevision.com and SyntagmaTV.com. These properties will be built in due course.