2011, in the true sense, was a busy and eventful year in book publishing. Today, the content which is moving to dedicated e-readers, multipurpose tablets and other digital devices could be in the hands of 15 percent to 20 percent of the world’s population by 2015. We bring you a quick recap of some startling publishing industry events that happened through 2011.

eReading catching up!

Without a doubt, the e-book is practically the biggest thing that’s hit the publishing industry. Publishers and e-book resellers are reporting massive growth. Dedicated e-readers and multipurpose tablets have finally become conventional. The power of the word has actually increased. According to a survey conducted by Bain & Company, across six countries and three continents (United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom and South Korea), readers now tend to read more when equipped with digital readers.

Self-publishing – The Next Wave

Editors and publishers are now encouraging authors to market their books by self-publishing. Technology companies are set to provide tools that let authors easily publish in hard copy prints and (or) on e-reading devices. Possibilities are vast and authors are now having active virtual discussions with their readers and are already uploading their content on the web.

A year of publishing e-singles

Many newspapers, magazines, books and website publishers, from the LA Times to kids’ book publisher Scholastic, started publishing e-singles in 2011. E-singles are a logical (and inexpensive) way to monetize earlier published content or introduce new ideas “at their natural length”. It remains to be seen whether e-singles priced at $1.99 or $2.99 can bring publishers a significant source of revenue. But as a trend, this has gained popularity in the e-publishing ecosystem.

The Tablet craze and Social reading continues

The market was flooded with more animated and enriched e-readers in 2011. Digital book publishers are taking advantage of consumers’ taste for e-books by adding new features to keep readers glued. Amazon made electronic readers mainstream with Kindle devices, which were later followed by Samsung and Sony and other providers that have fueled the e-reading trend with their own tablet models.

The year 2011 also saw a new trend – the trend of Social reading. The eBooks get posted as a topic of discussion inviting a dozen friends or co-workers, and being able to see feeds, highlights, comments, and questions—and reply to them.

The Device-war seems to be over

Because most developers are developing e-reader software that will work on multiple other devices, consumers will care less about the device and more about the user experience of the e-reader software, portability of titles from one device to another, and access to a full catalog of titles. The price seems to be right for the experience and the devices are all set to rule 2012 as well.

Amazon and its story

In later 2011, Amazon bought 450 titles from children’s publisher Marshall Cavendish. The books provide the basis of Amazon’s new NYC-based children’s publishing imprint. Amazon’s acquisition of the Marshall Cavendish titles is just the latest in a string of publishing imprints it has launched in 2011. The company now has seven imprints plus a New York-based division, publishing everything from science fiction to romance, and its ambition to become a full-fledged publisher—including the hiring of publishing industry vet Larry Kirshbaum.

2011 – Interesting in many ways!

iPublishCentral witnessed an array of upgrades and enhancements in 2011 owing to rapid and fast-growing digital publishing trends. We have always, through our product platform, stayed committed to delivering unmatched solutions to publishers. The year started off for us by adding iPad Book as an App and iPad Bookstore as an App solution to our offering. We worked rigorously on optimizing and enhancing the online reader as well – which now has faster loading pages than ever before.

The product also grew in terms of giving more useful controls to the administrators of the eBook portals. Yet another exciting upgrade was the addition of 8 new end-points to our distribute model. By the last quarter of 2011, iPublishCentral was ready to support Bookshelf-as-an-App on the iPhone, Android 2.2-based smart phones and Android 3.0-based tablets.

On the whole, the year has been quite exciting for us and we are looking forward to new technologies and trends that will shape the future of the digital publishing revolution in the coming times.

If you are looking to step-up your digital strategy to new heights in 2012, write to us at marketing[at]impelsys[dot]com

Publisher marketing has quite been a buzzword recently. Essentially through the ‘Viral’ dimension of it, publishers now have a much stronger reach and hold on their target readers. This section will unleash the newest trends in the Publisher Marketing arena, giving away the best ways to leverage it for your business.

Publishers! Buckle-up for the viral marketing lane.

Why Viral marketing?

One of the coolest things about the Web is that when an idea takes off, it can propel a brand or company to seemingly direct fame and fortune. For free. Whatever you call it—viral, buzz, or word-of-mouth — having other people tell your story drives action. The challenge for marketers is to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouth.

Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s coverage and influence. It doesn’t matter if you have an outstanding product or an extremely well designed website, if people don’t know that it exists.

What’s in for the Publishers?

Promoting the e-book can be a crazy affair.

People can instantly see the value of a book that looks like for-purchase content but can actually be downloaded for free. Online tools are enabling publishers to spread the word about their books to more targeted audiences—and sometimes, at a much lower cost—than traditional marketing methods.

And the winner is – Widget Marketing!

Widgets are a Serious Marketing Opportunity and brands can use them tactically to form direct relationships with customer. They are like free advertising as they get your content/message onto peoples web pages and desktops at just the cost of the efforts invested in design and content. Their viral nature also means that a properly executed widget can reach the massive number of social networking audience.

What are Widgets?

Web widgets can be composed in HTML, JavaScript, Flash, and other scripting languages. These widgets run in the web page when the page is activated and is normally noticed along the left or appropriate feature bar or in the center of the post.

Widgets combine a range of digital marketing techniques:

• Online PR and strategic viral marketing
• Brand advertising and Brand engagement
• Direct response on sales and lead generation

Benefits of widgets for web marketing includes:

• Reach your customers faster!
• Low cost option
• Visitor engagement and effective call for action

Not only does the Widget enable publishers to promote their brand on the Internet, but also helps in increasing sales by directing traffic straight to the bookstores or retailers.

The Widget in a way acts as multiple storefronts spread all over the web. When a reader chances upon a widget he can view the table of content, browse a few sample pages from a book and search within the book before making a purchase decision.

This article was featured in the iPublishCentral Newsletter. To subscribe to our newsletters, write to us at marketing@impelsys.com

Commercial tablets and readers have taken the market by storm. In the tablet category, the iPad certainly set the pace for what’s shaping up to be a hot sector. Electronics manufacturers have accordingly sought to capitalize on this trend by creating a range of new devices to access these media, which in some cases have further influenced and altered consumer behavior. Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the most exciting trends of the eReaders and Tablet market.

Demand for e-book readers remained strong in first-quarter 2011, with global shipments soaring 236% on year to 4.8 million units. Global e-book reader shipments will reach 27 million units in 2011. Among the brand-name vendors, Amazon will continue to be the market leader with 60% share of global shipments in 2011. Barnes & Noble may hold on to second place, but its gap with third-place Sony will narrow. In just a couple of years e-book readers have turned from devices for the big pockets to machines almost anyone can afford, with recent price cuts having led to a strong competition in the $149 to $199 category.

North America will remain the biggest market for e-book readers, accounting for 72% of global shipments, but growth in the area is slowing down. E-book reader vendors are now aggressively expanding their presence in the Europe market, which is registering higher-than-average growths. Monotone e-book readers will remain the mainstream in the next three years, during which no breakthrough in developing color devices can be expected. Global e-book reader shipments will reach 63 million units by 2014.

Market Dimensions

The starting of 2011 saw a sale upsurge of estimated 10.3 million tablets and 6.7 million eReaders. As far as eReaders are concerned, the Kindle remains the most popular unit, followed by Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Strong sales of Amazon’s Kindle, which was refreshed in August and priced more aggressively, as well as significant gains from competitors such as Pan digital, Barnes & Noble, Hanvon, and Sony among others, contributed to market growth. Apparently, people whose households net is $150,000 annually or more are more than twice as likely to report owning a tablet or eReaders.

Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape has more or less stayed intact the way it was for FY 2010, with Apple taking a clear lead in the Tablet market. Samsung, Motorola, and perhaps now Sony all have entrants in the field, and time will tell whether the android-based devices will offer Apple as much competition on the tablet front as on the mobile phone front.

For single-use, high-price devices such as the higher-end eReaders, growth is certain to slow in the coming years as tablets and the larger smartphone gain popularity as reading devices, as well.

The Online-Reading Pie

In addition to facing competition from these traditional print publications and tablets with eReading capabilities, eReaders must also contend with PCs and smart phones, which are also popular among respondents for ebook-reading capabilities.

E-Readers and E-commerce

Shopping via tablets has become so popular that a new term has been coined — “t-commerce.” While only 9% of online shoppers own tablets, their behavior is encouraging for retailers. Consumers tend to spend more time on the Web after buying a tablet, and nearly half shop from the device, according to a survey of more than 2,300 consumers.

Tablet owners tend to be wealthier, which gives retailers a self-selected audience of their best customers. They may also be encouraged to spend by less tangible attributes: large touch screens that draw users into the content, and a portability that helps users get more comfortable than when surfing on PCs. While some eCommerce professionals may want to lump together tablets and smart phones as “mobile devices”, the data above on usage could revise this train of thought. Retailers may want to look at their industry and their own web analytics to determine what plan of action is necessary for portable devices.

Source:  CBS Interactive, IDC, Nielsen, Forrester

This article was featured in the iPublishCentral Newsletter. To subscribe to our newsletters, write to us at marketing@impelsys.com

Device innovation and Children behavior – What’s the Connect?

Devices are all over the marketplace! They have found an invincible chunk in all the segments, verticals and industries. The most exciting role they have to play in though is the Children segment. There has been a huge traction seen in the way children have started using gadgets and smart phones for fun-learning, entertainment, gaming and education. Not just that, but to add is how the Publishers have started looking at this as a big challenge.

Time management is an issue for most people today. The regimented life of the average student seems designed to overwhelm that of kids. Grades have become all-important at a time when distractions and extra-curricular activities explode. It has increasingly become a trend wherein parents are concerned about the way their kids learn – more effectively, faster and with utmost exposure to technology advancement.

Children Segment – Are Mobile-Apps the new buddies?

It’s the mobile era! When every other thing is on mobile, the kids can’t keep themselves off the gadget charm. And why would they – for the benefits and the fun they offer!

The Books are just not in trend anymore. Mobile apps have become the new buddies and the answer to everything that can help children learn faster and more effectively. While the world of mobile applications—tabbed as the new Wild West by developers and consumers alike—continues to explode with everything from games to online books to interactive tutorials, there is a lot of content designed to fit the face-to-face classroom. There’s something so intuitive and simple about touching things on the screen that tempt children needing to be shown how it all works.

Conventional Learning – A passé!

Conventional mode of learning has become a passé, and the learning modes have gone Mobile! Be it the poem recitation as a part of the classroom study or the illustrative study of the Human Body – the Books are just not sufficient to satiate to impart the required knowledge. Reasons?

· Are Books interactive? No.

The books have transformed from being hardcopy entity to high-definition interactive apps. The interactivity element has given ebooks a preference over conventional learning modes in the education industry. Learners can now take-up online tests, self-assessment lessons customized to their competency level, which was otherwise never feasible through textbooks.

· Do Books offer rich media? No.

Books as an App come with an in-built capability to present information in a rich and attractive format to enhance the learning experience. Rich media helps deliver 3D animation and flash with a high level of precision, thus finding a huge utility in study of Human Biology, Architecture and Engineering subjects.

· Books speak and sing? Never did they.

Children books thrive on bright colors and fun elements. Books as an App makes it a fun-filled experience for children to learn and absorb the knowledge.

Challenge for the Publishers

Looking at the speed the mobile and gadget market is growing, it has become a huge matter of concern for publishers to keep up with the pace of this advancement. Most of the publishing houses saw the onset of digital publishing strategy in past few months. Publishers are faced with questions such as:

• What should be the digital strategy to penetrate into the Children segment?
• How to convert the textbook content to rich and exciting apps?
• K-12 readers are all going digital. What are the devices that these readers are using?

Success Story: HMH iPad App for the Digital Generation

HMH designed an iPad app that engages tech-savvy 21st century students with access to over 400 video tutorials, step-by-step animated instructions, instant feedback on practice questions, and the ability to write, record and save notes.

HMH Fuse App encourages:

· The use of personalized lesson plans by combining direct instruction, ongoing support, assessment and intervention in a single platform.

· Multiple presentation methods and modes

· All-in-one app with built-in tools including Algebra Tiles, Linear Explorer, Quadratic Explorer, a graphing calculator, text and audio note-taking, scratchpad, and a student response system for instant learner feedback.

Value-Add

· Teachers and students can customize learning and meet individual needs by combining instruction with ongoing support and intervention

Harnessing on the growing advantages of digital publishing has become critical to children’s publishers. The results over the time have made subtle the need of a right and proactive strategy for this segment.

Thus, publishers have now realized a need to have a go-to-market strategy to take their books to the right audience and in a right mode – the Mobile Mode.

This article was featured in the iPublishCentral Newsletter. To subscribe to our newsletters, write to us at marketing@impelsys.com

There are many reasons that eReaders and eBooks are changing the publishing landscape. As with any technology, early generations of software and hardware have led to continuous improvement over time. The technology behind eBooks is no exception.

The new ePub3 standard reveals the scope of ePub in the current technology trend with a move to HTML5 based content and key emerging technological advancements in all means. The ePub3 with HTML5 support provides rich media experience & interactivity, layout enhancements, global languages support and accessibility improvements.  So we hope to see all the features like video & audio embedding, metadata, linking, navigation, multimedia, font, scripting, text to speech, dynamic layouts, semantic mark-ups, etc., in an ePub with help of ePub3. This also provides opportunities for application developers to create eBook readers for web and mobile platforms.

While enthusiasts were analysing and trying to understand the specifications, I had an opportunity to work on a sample for the ePub3.  As a team, we have been working on all of the ePub3 features currently supported by the iPad. Below are the listings of the samples we have created using the latest ePub3 standards.

Video: Video can now be embedded in eBooks. Video spec: H.264 (a way of encoding video that’s free to use, but not public domain) is video standard right now, but there is a possibility of open standard by end of this year, that may change to another encoding which might be WebM, which is royalty-free.

Audio: Audio passages can also be embedded in eBooks, and ePub3 is better at adopting the current DAISY accessibility standards, making eReaders more useful to visually challenged users.

Interactivity:  An interactive ePub can act more like an app than a document, and can include features like pop-ups for images, tables, bibliography references, etc activated by clicking on words in the text.

Global language support:  Includes vertical writing, and writing from left-to-right and right-to-left.

Multi-column layout: A feature that will greatly enhance cookbooks and coffee table books.

Hyphenation: This helps page formatting, particularly in justified text, and avoids very tight or very loose lines of text.

Embedded fonts: This provides lot of opportunities to use any fonts in an eBook.

Improved accessibility:  The new NAV formats supersedes the NCX format (ePub2) by providing enhanced navigation within the eBook, improving the reader’s ability to jump to specific chapters, pages, and passages.

MathML: A mathematical specification that provides greater opportunities for textbook publishers to convert and publish texts as eBooks and also provides 100% searchable content which was not there in ePub2 where all maths are coded as images.

Compatibility

ePub3 readers will be backward compatible, meaning they will be able to read eBooks created in the ePub2 format. But ePub2 readers will not be able to read ePub3 documents, as there are structural, non-compatible changes between ePub2 and ePub3.

Would like to hear your thoughts on this emerging standard and your experiences that made things work better with ePub3. Please do share your experiences by writing to us at info@ipublishcentral.com

The future of eBooks is brimming with possibilities and promises. Nothing short of a revolution is happening in the domain of eBooks. Increased interactivity, e-reading clubs—authors, publishers and technology companies are pushing the frontiers and coming up with new ideas every day.

Here is a link that summarizes some of these trends

We live in a world that offers too many choices and too little time. Quick and easy access to relevant and accurate information in the most economical way is what discerning customers look for. They do not have the time or inclination to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Then why buy an entire book, when you can buy just the relevant chapters in the book?

Last weekend, I was reading a book on lateral thinking. After progressing through the first four chapters of the book, I came to a chapter on information processing. It seemed like an area that I already had some knowledge about. Skipping the chapter, I read the rest of the book.

It occurred to me that I should have not paid for that chapter since I did not need it. Just to confirm my hypothesis, I went back and read the chapter that I had skipped earlier. It had information about what I already knew, although the chapter also contained the author’s perspective and some new info. Also, the author had made a few references about this chapter elsewhere in the book.

So does buying just certain parts or chapters of a book make sense? From a cost perspective, the decision is clear. Why pay for something that you do not need.

Another advantage is the time you save by arriving where you want to be without having to cut through the clutter. Why oppress yourself by spending time on information irrelevant to you. Additionally, there is no information overload. But, as always is the case, there are two sides to this coin too. The main disadvantage to buying just the parts and not the whole is the potential risk of not completely understanding the concept discussed in the book. If the author is building his arguments or explaining his concept in the chapters you chose to skip, there is the danger of misinterpretation and misconception.

Fortunately, there are ways to address and overcome this problem. When authors realize that readers want buy chapters of the book, instead of the entire book, they would design each chapter as an independent self-contained entity. Detailed previews of chapters—and not just the preview of the whole book—would give customers an idea of what they want to buy or not.

With chapter sale, we would be embracing the internet experience of searching for the most pertinent info and finding related info from the links that the chapter contains.

At this point, I am not sure how this trend will evolve, but I do feel that chapter sale would be a great option that all textbook buyers would like to have.

Please email your thoughts and suggestions to info@ipublishcentral.com

Heavy and thick print textbooks that I was accustomed to while at school, are slowing beginning to evolve.  A few companies are taking a fresh look at the way textbooks are designed, and published to enhance learning and comprehension.

One of the primary reasons for these companies to take a fresh approach is the adoption and availability of smart-phones, tablets and e-readers. These devices offer dimensions like video, audio, touch, and connectivity to the internet to recreate an entirely new learning experience.  While price may be a barrier to widespread adoption of these devices among the student community today, declining prices will accelerate their adoption in future.

As textbooks are transformed from static, physical books into living ebooks that are continuously enhanced with curated content, they are likely to incorporate some or all of the features listed below:

• Capability for the instructor to add content: As text, audio-video presentations, and links to content on the internet.  Boundaries for such ebooks are more likely to be amorphous with continuous addition of curated content over a period of time

• Ability to cater to different learning styles:  Content can be presented in a variety of styles so that it suits the learning style of the reader.  One learner may prefer an audio-visual style while another may prefer an interactive or engaging style

• Self-assessment:  Capability to assess what the reader has learned at the end of each chapter or topic by presenting a quiz or test of some form

• Remediation:  Based on the scores of these quizzes/tests, the ebooks could

  • Adapt the learning level or pace the learning as appropriate by dynamically “staging” the content presented to the reader.  They also provide additional reading material or links to enhance learning and comprehension

  • Provide the capability to post questions to the instructor, expert or a study group and receive responses

• Sharing of notes: Capability to share notes with other students or a study group to facilitate better understanding, collaboration and help initiate discussions

• Alternate approaches to problem solving: Instructors are also likely to emphasize on different approaches to problem solving by enhancing the content with appropriate examples

iPublishCentral recognizes the need to develop the next generation “Text eBook” reader that provides the features listed above, with the capability to be used on a wide variety of devices.  We would love to hear your thoughts on how the next generation “Text eBook” reader is likely to evolve and the functionality that it will provide to students.

Please write to us at - feedback at iPublishCentral dot com or pandith.jp at impelsys dot com.

It was exciting to see that iPublishCentral made it to Nasscom Top 8 SaaS-Apps.
This was a significant milestone for the product. While we continue adding new features that are being requested by publishers worldwide, we are continuing to push the three key aspects of a SaaS product: Scalability, Usability and Performance. We now have customers that use the product worldwide. Feedback from these “power users” is helping us to continuously enhance the product and make it easy to use as well.

The one aspect that is clearly pushing eBook publishing is the new smart tablets. They make reading more interesting and fun. Televisions have had 3D experience for a while now. It is obvious that this experience would be extended to tablets soon, although there are some additional technology challenges for rendering 3D experience on tablets. This would be a huge opportunity to push eBook experience even further. Geography text books could use a 3D globe to explain continents, climate patterns, population and provide students with a more engaging experience.

Talking of interesting new experiences, the iPad2 can be connected to a television using an HDMI cable. This would make it possible to read eBooks on a television. This adds a whole new dimension to talking eBooks, audio and video eBooks. The ipad2 in effect becomes a very smart remote that would enable you to interact with a large screen in more ways possible than before.

I just returned from the 2011 edition of BookExpo America (BEA), North America’s largest gathering of book trade professionals. BEA is organized with the support of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the American Booksellers Association (ABA), and it always attracts an international audience.

Attending major publishing conferences and trade shows such as BEA always helps me to feel the pulse of the industry. There’s nothing quite like walking the exhibit floor and sitting in on various conference sessions to really hear what is on the minds of executives and to track what the latest developments are in the marketplace.

This year, I detected a clear shift from last year in one important trend: publishers are clearly moving from a reactive to a proactive attitude when it comes to their digital publishing strategies.

In past years, publishers would send various employees to attend shows such as BEA, listen to what was being said, digest that information, and then take it back with them for discussion with their colleagues. However, more often than not, that’s pretty much where things ended. But this year, these professionals came with specific agendas for what they wanted to learn, brought their decision makers with them, and were clearly ready to take action on the information they gathered at BEA.

Another interesting thing that stood out to me at BEA this year was the increased size of the “Digital Book Zone” at this year’s event — which included 17 booths and 16 kiosks in 5,000 square feet of space, not including Google, Amazon, and HP, all of whom had substantial booths outside the Digital Book Zone. Clearly, we have more and more companies showcasing their products, and it’s very interesting to see the various start-ups with unique technologies and products. During the show, we all heard about announcements made by Amazon and other companies regarding the significant rise in eBook sales versus print sales.

With BEA 2011 behind us, it will be interesting to see how publishers respond to Amazon’s dominance with their new publishing division, Amazon Publishing. While our position is neutral, we have always maintained that publishers need to take control of their digital infrastructure so they can build direct relationships with their end customer – rather than let retailers own those relationships.

It’s a good feeling to know that iPublishCentral is regarded as one of the “short list” options that publishers consider when they look for a technology platform to support their digital publishing strategies. At BEA, we received warm feedback everywhere we went from folks who consider Impelsys to be true thought leaders in the industry.