I used to think that reference publishing was somewhat out of date; that nobody produces reference works nowadays, ever Wikipedia took over the encyclopedia market.

But it is clear that reference publishing is not dead. It has changed, with digital delivery, and it has different requirements, but there are criteria for evaluating reference works. I will therefore add occasional posts about reference works and where they succeed or, in my opinion, fail. These may be print or digital works, but in many cases the principle is the same.

A little example of customer support reveals what companies think about their customers. In the case of The Trainline, their website and customer support suggests a pretty low opinion. They don't reveal charges until the end of the e-commerce process, and their customer support is uncomprehending. Any online e-commerce site is based on a relationship of trust with the customer, and while it is easy to design a site with hidden charges, the breach of trust that can result is difficult to repair.

News of The Huffington Post’s sale to AOL for $315m was interesting for the details it revealed of The Post’s advertising revenue. The Financial Times revealed that HuffPost (let’s be nice to it and call it by its cuddly friendly name) has some 25 million unique users per month, and has a total advertising revenue last year of $30m. Assuming those monthly unique users are the regular visitors to the site, my arithmetic tells me that each unique user is worth $1.20 per year.

The magazine HR Future was recently praised for achieving an online circulation six times higher than its print sales ( What's New in Publishing, 2 Sept 2010). This is certainly an impressive achievement, but is it unique?