Dropping tomorrow: eCommerce in Publishing — trends + strategies

A new eCommerce report for What’s New In Publishing updates the story I first told in two reports back in 2019–20

Here’s a sneak peek at the intro of this new report coming out tomorrow on What’s New In Publishing.

“eCommerce, also known as electronic commerce or internet commerce, refers to the buying and selling of goods or services using the internet, and the transfer of money and data to execute these transactions.

eCommerce is often used to refer to the sale of physical products online, but it can also describe any kind of commercial transaction that is facilitated through the internet.”

Definition via Shopify

Back in late-2019 and early 2020, I authored two reports for What’s New In Publishing looking at the impact — and potential — for eCommerce as a revenue stream for publishers.

With the exception of outlets such as Marie Claire UK, Dennis Publishing, BuzzFeed, Future and POPSUGAR many of those efforts still felt quite embryonic. I felt that the potential for media players to more effectively harness the relationship between their content and commerce was often going unrealised.

The original report identified 10 key strategic lessons for publishers large and small alike. These include the importance of adapting internal culture; the need for different skill sets; the importance of partnerships; and, as some publishers have found to their cost, knowing when to walk away. You can download it here.

Because of this, a key goal of those initial reports was to highlight these possibilities and to provide inspiration and insight that might, in turn, help more publishers to see how eCommerce could feasibly work for them.

My sense was that eCommerce would only become more important to publishers, as they sought to diversify their revenue streams and look for new sources of income.

Two and a half years later, catalyzed by COVID (and not my reports!) the situation could not be more different. Initial scepticism, wariness and…