PUBLISHER’S PAGE

Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines annually and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter from the July 2026 Annual Super Brands Issue print edition considers whether the heat treat industry’s roughly 10-year downturn cycle will repeat in 2028-2030, weighing low energy prices against the risk of a financial-instability-driven correction.

Feel free to contact Doug at doug@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment. 

Since the early 1990s, the thermal processing and heat treating industry has experienced a significant recession or slowing about every 10 years. The last great downturn happened 2008–2010. When 2018–2020 rolled around, everyone was optimistic that we had skirted the 10-year cycle. Then COVID hit, and there was a drastic and immediate downturn. It was dramatic; however, it was not typical nor caused by the usual mysterious economic causes. In fact, had COVID not hit, it seems likely we would have missed the 10-year cyclical slowdown.

Now we’re approaching 2028–2030 — hard to believe! The question is whether we will skirt the next 10-year bust.

Why We Might Miss It: Energy Prices

Economies are largely unpredictable. That’s primarily because economies are largely incomprehensible. They’re simply too big and too complex to be understood, much less predicted. Those believing that economies need to be managed and planned will find renewed vigor for their command and control theories with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). They’ll claim that AI can make sense of the millions upon millions of individual decisions that are made each second, and because AI can understand and make sense of it, mankind will once again be able to control and plan even the most complex economies. They will try — I predict failure.

That being said, it is possible that we will miss the next 10-year cycle because there have been some major shifts in the economy over the past several years. The primary shift has to do with energy prices. Manufacturing follows low energy prices. That’s the simple principle. Unless our policymakers mess it up, it is very likely that energy prices will continue to be relatively low compared to other industrialized economies. For that reason alone, I fully anticipate that these United States will see continued economic growth for the next 10–20 years.

Why We Might NOT Miss It: Financial Instability

On the other hand (because economists always have two, if not three, hands!), there is a very foundational reason why we may not escape a 2028–2030 downturn and that is financial instability.

For those familiar with the simplicity and beauty of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), easy money (i.e., an increase in the supply of money) leads to recession. What artificially goes up must come crashing down. Without going into the depths of the theory, suffice it to say that when the economy is artificially stimulated by inflation (i.e., an increase in the money supply, also known as “easy money” or “quantitative easing” or “lower interest rates”), the economy will experience an artificial high. Then, once some time passes, the readjustment (“correction,” “recession,” “downturn,” etc.) will inevitably take place.

ABCT has pretty much always been proven right. Some will dispute that, but by and large, it is dead on.

In our current situation, it is almost certain that all the quantitative easing that took place during the COVID years due to fear of a major, worldwide economic crash will one day come back to bite us. We’ve not yet seen a major correction or readjustment since the COVID years of inflation, and I don’t see any chance that we won’t “pay the price” for our profligate monetary policy and experience a pretty significant downturn in the next 5–8 years.

Then again (or “on the third hand”), no one ever knows for sure until it happens. Economies are too big, too complicated, and too mysterious to predict. Whatever happens, let’s remain calm and continue to diligently apply ourselves to making others’ lives better.

Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines annually and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter from the June 2026 Sixth Annual Buyers Guide Issue print edition examines the property-rights tensions AI raises for publishers.

Feel free to contact Doug at doug@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment. 

In early May of this year, leaders from the North American magazine publishing industry met in Chicago for a day and a half of industry talk and “saw sharpening.” Publishers of notable magazines like Fast Company, Inc., and Farm Journal attended as did Heat Treat Today. Two main topics dominated the event: events and artificial intelligence (AI). Conspicuously absent from the discussion was any emphasis on digital publishing (see last month’s Publisher’s Page for more on the contraction of digital media growth).

The conversations about AI were interesting but non-conclusive. In a nutshell, no one, not even the publishing “experts”, had any idea where AI was headed and what impact it would have on the publishing industry. Doomsday and utopian speculations abounded side-by-side. Either could be right; no one knows.

Private Property and Permission to Use

There are real and unique issues with AI and the publishing industry. Imagine what would happen to your business if every time you produced a product, an unrelated third party would access all the details of your products and make them publicly known to whoever wants to know without getting approval from you. And, of course, you would get no compensation for all the information accessed and disseminated by this third party. All your engineering drawings, vendor lists and purchasing specs, your proprietary designs, and perspectives would all be laid bare for unfettered, uncompensated use by an unrelated third party. I’m guessing you would scream “foul” and would do what you could to protect your property from unauthorized use.

Fortunately, for many of you, your product details are not splashed openly in excruciating detail on your website. For publishers, however, websites are one of our main distribution channels (albeit secondary to our print editions). For publishers, editorial content is our product, and by and large, it is available for public consumption, but not to help others make money without prior permission.

The issue seems to be one of private property and the use of that property without prior permission. When a magazine publishes an article, it is the property of the magazine and cannot be legally reproduced in part or in its entirety without prior written approval from the publishing company. As it currently stands, those wishing to access the content can have free access to it (unless it’s behind a paywall or registration wall), but they must come to the publisher’s website, which is of financial benefit to the publisher. If the public can get access to the publisher’s content without coming to their website, the publisher loses the financial benefit of traffic to their website. This is a real and tangible financial loss and is the result of someone accessing the content without due compensation to the publisher.

It is a unique situation that publishers are facing…thankfully for you! AI companies might object by saying that they give attribution to the sources of their findings and are therefore allowed to use the content. Citations help, but providing a footnote to the source of an AI answer is similar to a pawn shop listing the location of where they stole an item — it’s still the use of private property without permission.

Anticipated Legal Action

It’s safe to say that legal action is inevitable. I fully anticipate that the publishing industry will do something to protect its product and its private property. Some will say that it is futile, like King Cnut the Great trying to hold back the tide. Could be, but it will be interesting to watch and see what effect AI will have on the publishing industry. As we’re watching that play out, Heat Treat Today will continue to do what we do — make people happier and help them make better decisions by keeping them well informed.

Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines annually and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter from the May 2026 Sustainable Heat Treat Technologies print edition challenges the assumption that digital-only communication is the future, citing Heat Treat Today’s own subscription data and industry research to argue that print and tactile media are making a meaningful comeback.

Feel free to contact Doug at doug@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment. 

46% of Gen Z say that they are taking steps to limit their screen time according to an extremely interesting article by Rocco Nugent in a recent print edition of The Epoch Times national weekly newspaper. In the same article, Nugent states that somewhere between 180,000 and 750,000 U.S. households are now living off the grid to some degree. Digital minimalism is officially “a thing.”

As you can imagine, the way Heat Treat Today’s audience consumes information is of immense interest to us. And, as you may not imagine, this curtailing and even abandonment of digital media is no surprise to our team. For many of you reading this column by holding a hardcopy in your hand, you also might not be surprised. But for those of you who are fighting with your upper management about whether to go all digital or do the more moderate approach of combining digital and “old-fashioned” tactile forms of communication, here are some facts that should help the cause.

70% of all subscriptions received by Heat Treat Today — and other trade journal publishers based on informal research — are for hardcopy print magazines. This is true across all age categories. We offer subscriptions to digital editions of the magazine and industry e-newsletters. Seven out of ten of these subscriptions include a request to receive the hardcopy magazine. They typically ask for at least one other digital subscription, but a full 70% request a hardcopy magazine. This is counter intuitive in what many wrongly believe is a digital-only age.

According to a study published by The Harris Poll in partnership with Quad, there has been a marked move back to tactile marketing efforts like hardcopy mailers, postcards, letters, and magazines because of the substantially better results (Quad 2025). They dub this effect “return of touch” — as opposed to return on investment (ROI). Most digital marketing campaigns brag about their ROI, but this study asserts that return of touch is now winning the day. People, including those Gen Zers mentioned above, are hungering for something more tangible, something they can touch and hold. Apparently, when you spend your entire day in front of a screen, it’s enjoyable to get away and grab something physical.

Heat Treat Today digital magazine subscriptions peaked at roughly 25% of our circulation 10 years ago; since then, it has steadily declined. Today, it is at or below 20%. That is to say, if you look at only magazine subscriptions, 20% or below are asking for digital-only subscriptions. In fact, we know that of the people who request digital editions, the number who look at their digital edition is not substantial. After decades of interacting with trade publishers and magazines, I can state that this is true across nearly all industrial trade magazine brands, not just Heat Treat Today.

All of this leads us to a simple conclusion: those who believe that we are in a digital age and that digital-only communication and marketing practices are the future, are mistaken. A small percentage of the companies we do business with have digital marketing firms. By default, these marketing companies, as their names indicate, have focused on digital marketing because they believed it was the future… back in the early 2000s. Unsurprisingly, these digital marketing companies would badmouth hard copy magazines and mailers, but that’s because their whole company existence is predicated on digital marketing assets. They were biased from the start.

Heat Treat Today has a horse in both races, so we are somewhat agnostic about whether a company goes all digital or maintains a more balanced approach. We just hate to see companies hurt themselves by believing that digital-only is the way to go when it is demonstrably not. You need to have digital. We are not in favor of throwing the baby out with the bath water, but a digital-only world is one where you will be missing up to 70–80% of your target audience.

References

Nugent, Rocco. 2026. “Silent Revolution.” The Epoch Times. March 11–17, 2026. p. A15.

Quad. 2025. “Return of Touch: Consumer Engagement Has an Omnichannel Revival.” May 13, 2025. https://www.quad.com/resources/research-and-tools/return-of-touch-consumer-engagement-has-an-omnichannel-revival.