With traffic from Facebook and X to news publishers’ destinations in decline, distribution is shifting to other platforms where they have more control, such as feeds served on WhatsApp and newsletters on LinkedIn

There is no one silver bullet platform to replace Facebook, on which certain publishers became overly reliant, or X. News publishers are trying out a myriad of platforms to see which work best for the specific audiences and use-cases they are cultivating

WhatsApp and LinkedIn are still platforms that are mediated for news publishers, so risks remain. These platforms have highly differentiated alignment with the needs of enterprises producing journalism
 

Big news publishers are pursuing licensing deals with AI companies, chiefly OpenAI. Not all publishers will see a substantial return; while some news may be important for training AI models, not all publisher content will be.

Litigation is a threat point when negotiations stall (see the New York Times), but the copyright status of Large Language Models (LLMs) is uncertain. In the UK, there has been no government intervention (on copyright or otherwise) that could facilitate licensing.

Publishers’ bargaining position is strongest when it comes to up-to-date material that could be important in powering some AI consumer products. They should seek deals to support their journalism, while bearing in mind the risk that new products may get between them and their readers.

Book pricing has stagnated over the past two decades, leading to severe real-term declines in price per book. Nominal prices are now on the rise, but they are still swamped by inflation, and there is no prospect of them catching up to where they were.

The cost to produce books has been hit by many of the same inflationary conditions affecting companies (and people) across the board, leading to tough conditions at publishers, particularly small ones.

Fortunately, books offer many ways for publishers to price discriminate, charging more to price-insensitive, motivated readers.