Google traffic is overrated

PLUS: Shorter attention spans haven't put a dent into the book industry.

Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

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Quick hits

The Origin Story Of #1 Sports Podcast Pardon My Take

Regardless of what you think of Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy as a person, you have to admit he has an amazing capacity for spotting creator talent. He reminds me of Gawker Media founder Nick Denton in that regard. — Pardon My Take

Court documents reveal how MrBeast pitches brands on sponsoring his YouTube empire

One of the biggest challenges facing MrBeast is that his audience is too big — which means he either needs to drastically lower his rates or only do business with the tiny number of brands that can afford him. That's why he's invested big recently in developing his own products that he can sell to his huge audience of young male viewers. — Business Insider

Dog Man Movie Is Here to Swoop In and Rescue the Children’s Book Business

"Despite an uptick during the Covid-19 pandemic, print sales of children’s books have declined since 2022. In the first half of 2024, print sales of middle-grade books, intended for readers age 9 to 12, fell by 5% from the same period last year, resulting in 1.8 million fewer units sold." — Bloomberg

How Newsweek became world’s fastest-growing English language news website

Newsweek has 200 people in its newsroom and is currently experiencing a huge surge in traffic. Most of it is coming from search products like Google Discover, however, which means the outlet probably doesn't have much of a core readership. — Press Gazette

Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom

At my last legacy media job all the way back in 2012, the editors were focused on having writers pump out articles about hours-old stories because occasionally Google News would pick up one of those articles and send a short, intense burst of traffic. Pretty much all of these visitors bounced off the page immediately and did nothing to enhance the publication's brand. — Press Gazette

The Rise of Creator-Led Product Lines in Mainstream Retail

The biggest creators no longer just push their products online. Large physical retail outlets like Walmart are increasingly carrying more and more creator-launched products. — Passionfruit

Creators Still Don’t Know What Threads Is For

Threads may have 275 million users, but a lot of creators still don't bother posting there, There's still a perception that the platform isn't part of the cultural zeitgeist. — The Information

I am my own legal department: the promise and peril of “just go independent”

An independent journalist who covers crypto scams wrote about what it's like to deal with legal threats when she doesn't have the support of an actual legal department to back her up.

"Had I been a journalist at an outlet like the Post, this likely would never have required any of my time at all. Outlets like that have teams of actual lawyers who are in charge of handling copyright complaints. They also vet journalists’ stories to ensure they are carefully written so as to minimize the chances of defamation lawsuits, and defend the publication and its journalists from any claims that come in anyway. They handle all of the many other types of legal concerns that impact journalists and publishers." — Citation Needed

How Android Intelligence built a thriving paid membership

When JR Raphael launched his Android Intelligence newsletter in 2018, it was mainly a roundup of news meant to complement his Computerworld column of the same name. But as the newsletter amassed an audience, it began to take on a life of its own, so much so that JR eventually built a thriving paid membership that now provides the bulk of his income.

In a recent interview, JR walked through every aspect of his membership strategy, including why he lets in new members only a few times a year, how he built a thriving community forum where members interact with each other, how he reduces churn, and why he decided to launch two new newsletters focused on Windows and internet tools.

You can watch, listen to, or read the interview over here.

More quick hits

Who’s Really Writing Celebrity Novels?

It's pretty widely known that a lot of celebrity memoirs are ghost-written, but there's a growing number of celebrity-authored novels, and, surprise surprise, they're largely ghostwritten as well. Usually the celebrity comes to the table with a vague outline of what the story is about and the ghostwriter does all the work of filling in the details. — Vulture

Book Publishing Sales Stayed Hot in August

I think an under covered story in media is that the book industry continues to do well in an era when attention spans are supposedly shortening. People still want to be deeply immersed in a story or topic. — Publishers Weekly

Inside the strategy that grew Cristiano Ronaldo’s YouTube account to 1M subscribers in 90 minutes

Cristiano Ronaldo launched his YouTube channel in July and it already has over 65 million subscribers — making it one of the fastest-growing YouTube channel of all time. It's part of a growing ecosystem of athlete-led content verticals that are changing the way athletes interact with and monetize their fan bases. — Digiday

Three YouTube podcast results that blew my mind

The New Statesman experimented with producing polished documentaries for its YouTube channel, but it wasn't until it started posting video versions of its podcast that the channel actually took off. "Our assumption at the time was: 'who would want to watch a video of two people just talking?!' But as it turned out, that was precisely the content that drew the biggest audience and delivered the longest watch time. " — Podcast Strategy Weekly

Rise of the Reasonably Priced, Moderately Successful Blockbuster

Sony's been engaged in an interesting experiment over the past few years: can it make super hero movies without spending truckloads of cash to produce them? The strategy is sorta working. — Puck

Who Gets the TikTok in the Divorce? The Messy Fight Over Valuable Social Media Accounts

With the Creator Economy now generating over $250 billion a year, the legal system will have to increasingly grapple with who owns valuable social media accounts that can generate income into the millions. For instance, what happens if you start a podcast with a friend and then that podcast goes on to become incredibly valuable long after that friend stopped co-hosting it with you? Can they claim any equity? — WSJ

How Saveur magazine is rebuilding a ‘couture’ print presence for superfans

One of Saveur Magazine's staffers bought the publication from Recurrent Ventures and is now re-launching a print version. This time, however, the magazine will have a higher price tag and be targeted more toward its super fans. “Frankly, the old-school, high-volume print model isn’t sustainable” — Media Voices

The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot

A film criticism website claims that a tweak in the Google algorithm caused it to go from generating 20 million visitors a month to "a few thousand." After 16 years of publishing, it's shutting down its web operations and doubling down on its YouTube channel, which is still seeing growth. — Giant Freakin Robot

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