Online publishers and subscribers not always walking the talk.

Newsletter publishers are perplexed and uncertain as to how to handle the new medium of electronic publishing. Many are scared that it will cripple their print publications. All realize that it presents opportunities, but most are struggling to adapt to the challenge and to integrate an electronic publishing plan into their business.

The publisher and the editor of NL/NL have spoken with scores of newsletter executives during the past months and will continue to do so. From time to time we will report on the views expressed by them and describe how some newsletter publishers are responding and coping in the electronic era. Here is one observation:

* There is still only a limited demand to receive publications electronically except for those B2B publishers in the technology field and those that provide data and financial information that are needed on a daily basis. Yet, most publishers have or are taking steps to make their publications available to subscribers online.

Publisher Mike Gerecht of CD Publications in Silver Spring, Maryland, said he put his publication in the disability field online because some people they were serving "were upset that we had a publication in this field but that we hadn't made it available electronically.

"Our expectation was that we would have a rush of people wanting to get it electronically.... but it's been just a trickle. For whatever reason, we have not found much of a response from subscribers wanting to receive the information online," he said. CD Publications publishes more than 20 titles but currently otters only three or four electronically.

Mike Quinlan, of Quinlan Publications in Boston, finds that there is "little demand" for online delivery of his newsletters even though he has four publications which focus on the internet and has launched a free online newsletter.

Quinlan publishes more than 35 newsletters in the range of $70/year to the high $l00s. He has an in-house webmaster. He said that his firm is spending "a lot of time in web development" but he is not "seeing great results so far." He plans to proceed cautiously.

On the other hand, there are some publications that are delivered only electronically.

One such publication is the newsletter Energy Insight published by Financial Times Energy out of their Denver offices. Publisher Cynthia Carter, located in Arlington, Virginia, reports that the newsletter, which sells for $365/year, is available only online and is delivered Monday through Friday. No print version is available.

Another observation:

* Promotion of conferences through e-mail and web sites has worked extremely well for many publishers.

Financial Times Energy -- which promotes more than 15 conferences, mostly in the $1,000 to $1,400 range -- finds that nearly 90 percent of its registrations come over the internet.

"The web is working very well for us in the conference side," Carter said.

The same view was expressed by publisher Thomas G. Woodall of Garrett Communications in Rockville, Maryland. His company publishes five high-priced newsletters ($500+) in the travel field and also runs conferences.

"Our web site is utilized more for conference promotion than for the newsletters," Woodall said. "People can register online and make their hotel reservations at the same time. They can review the whole conference agenda online and after the conference they can see the texts of the talks."

NEPA survey results

The Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Assn. recently released the results of a member survey of web practices. Among them are:

Do you have one company-wide web site or multiple web sites for different products?

* One company-wide site -- 71% B2B, 42.1% consumer.

* Multiple sites -- 27% B2B, 57.9% consumer.

The 2 percent that answered "other" included one who has one site for marketing and another for subscribers only, and one who has three specialized sites linked together, and one who has a company-wide site with links to individual services.

Following are the delivery methods currently being used. Note the clear majority that paper still holds:

* Paper only -- 77.6% B2B, 75.7% consumer.

* Paper & electronic -- 8.6% B2B, 10.6% consumer.

* Electronic, via e-mail attachment -- 6.6% B2B, 6.5% consumer.

* Electronic, via site visit -- 3.3% B2B, 6.8% consumer.

* Electronic, via site license or intranet -- 1.8% B2B, 0.0% consumer.