Print Dies And Yet Sites Start Printing Their Content.

This is Daily Candy's print guide to L.A. and from what I've heard it's really well done. Aside from the fact that I would absolutely read a Daily Candy guide to a city there is another really interesting thing going on here. Websites printing their content. Right after all of the old guard magazines started falling like dominoes and the whole world bought a Kindle and the New York Times Turned it's Sunday Paper into a joke. Here it is, a new guide book.
Oh, and look which of my favorite brands is right there on the cutting edge of it.
So why would websites want to start print versions of their content when print hasn't been doing so well and their websites can distribute their content for free?
I'd wager a guess that it's because websites have something regular print doesn't and that's an idea of what people are liking right now. For example, Daily Candy has a constant stream of outgoing content that they know almost immediately if people are liking or not. They have a good grasp on which articles people like, the way they like to read them, how long they are reading, and all kinds of other data that a magazine just doesn't have. Yes, a magazine can have a focus group or create a survey but a website knows who is reading what and if they like it. So they are going to put that content together, print it, and it will likely sell.
Another company getting into the game in the same way? Reader's Digest. That Titanic half sinking has got a whole load of cool websites that you probably didn't know they had like Allrecipes.com and my guess is that they re content testing there more and more. There is a really interesting article on how Reader's Digest plans to completely re-brand this year here.

So after all of the "print is dead" trouble this year there appears to be a glimmer of light coming from an unlikely place. It will be interesting to see if the web surfing crowd will buy their favorite site's content in a book or not.