More than a million ebooks are expected to be published in 2012. This number is it set to grow exponentially. This huge increase in the number of ebooks published, poses a huge challenge for publishers. How can publishers gain the attention of their audiences in a crowd of choices and alternatives? How can publishers market their ebooks in a cost effective manner? What tools can publishers leverage to market their titles even has their marketing budgets shrinks?

Publishers on iPublishCentral who sell directly to end customers are provided with a number of tools to market their ebooks. An overview of all the marketing tools available on iPublishCentral is provided below:

Widget: It is equivalent to placing a banner advertisement on website or blog. It is possible to generate a widget for each title on iPublishCentral. This widget can then be placed on other blogs and websites to provide the target audience with information about the book.

The widget can be configured to provide links to sample content, table of contents, and links for the buying the ebook. To see a sample widget that has been posted by the author on a blog for the ebook – click here

ViewInside: Enables a prospective buyer to browse through an ebook before it is purchased. ViewInside can be generated for each title on iPublishCentral. The publisher can control which pages the potential buyer can read. To see a sample ViewInside created by one of the publishers on iPublishCentral – click here

Access Code: Enables a publisher to provide access to a specific title without buying the title on iPublishCentral. The publisher can generate access codes with specific built in controls for access on redemption – can specify duration for which title can be accessed after redemption, can control number of times an access code can be redeemed, can restrict redemption to a specific registered user. Access codes can be used for a variety of purposes like - providing access to a professor so that it can be adopted as a textbook for a class/course, providing access to an electronic copy of the book when a print book is sold.

Discount Coupons: Publishers can generate discount coupons to run a variety of marketing campaigns. Discount coupons of various types can be generated – provide discounts only when value of ebooks purchased is above a particular value (Example more than hundred dollars), provide discounts when number of ebooks purchased is above a specific number (Example more than five ebooks), or provide discounts on every purchase. Discounts can either be set at a fixed dollar value (Example ten dollars) or as a percentage of the total cart value (Example five percent)

Free ebooks: Publishers can also mark an ebook as free to attract the attention of a specific target market. Publisher can either make it mandatory for readers to register on the portal before reading the book or make it a frictionless experience by eliminating the registration process.

The team at iPublishCentral recognizes the critical role that marketing tools will play in the years ahead and continue to provide additional tools. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on additional marketing tools that can be incorporated iPublishCentral? Please share your thoughts and ideas with us - feedback at ipublishcentral dot com or pandith.jp at impelsys dot com.

Technology has penetrated  every industry and publishing industry is no exception. The sprawling giant ‘Amazon’ has tremendously expanded its ambitions this year and is now at a verge of adding some more to its kitty. Throughout the year, Amazon was in the news for various reasons like - mergers & acquisitions - and biggest among them was the release of the Kindle Fire.

Amazon was initially known only for selling ‘stuff’ and has now spread completely into eBook business by establishing its own hardware to promote the books. Amazon started 2011 with a bang, when Amazon.com sold more Kindle books than paperback books and towards the end of the year made its presence felt by aggressively quoting a lesser price for the Kindle Fire than the iPad 2. Here are some facts:

January: Amazon launched Amazon deals, a free iPhone App that provides an overview of daily deals to the customers.

March: Amazon joined the online music streaming business with Cloud Player, a music player that allows anyone to upload the music to Amazon’s servers and stream them on the web, an Android device, iPad or a Kindle Fire.

April: Amazon launched the Android equivalent of Apple’s App Store to improve the Google’s Android market shopping experience, the go-to store to purchase Android apps with unique test drive feature. Read more: http://mashable.com/2011/03/22/amazon-appstore-android/

May: Amazon hits the runway with MyHabit.com, a membership-only shopping site that offers sales up to 60% off clothes and accessories for men, women and children. The site also offers discounts on toys, beauty and home products. It was in this month that Amazon added a new member to the Kindle family: a 6-inch Kindle 3G. Only four years old, Amazon’s Kindle eBooks outsold physical books purchased on Amazon. For every 100 print books sold, 105 Kindle eBooks were sold. Amazon launched the Mac Downloads Store, a direct competitor to Apple’s Mac App Store.

June: In another European deal, Amazon acquired The Book Depository, a UK-based online bookseller that offers more than 6 million book titles and free delivery worldwide. Read more:http://mashable.com/2011/07/04/amazon-aquisition/

September: Details about Amazon’s Android-based tablet emerged ahead of Amazon’s press event.

November: Amazon’s Kindle eReaders and tablets sold exceptionally well on Black Friday, especially the Kindle Fire, which was the bestselling product on Amazon.com that day. Read more:http://mashable.com/2011/11/28/black-friday-kindle/

December: Amazon Publishing Acquires Children’s Imprint Marshall Cavendish. Read more:http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/amazon-buys-450-marshall-cavendish-childrens-books_b43471

With the publishing industry evolving ever so dynamically, Amazon seems to be seizing the opportunity to captivate as big a market as it can through diversified strategies and plans. Now the big question here is, will the publishers and literary agents be able to withstand such a change and challenge?

With Amazon having gained the experience and power to develop, publish and distribute its own books, it will be interesting to study its relevance in the publishing circle.  Amazon has changed the landscape of the publishing industry totally by having its say in all spheres and it is clear now that we have entered a “dynamic world of publishing”.

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

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!

One of the key themes for updates to iPublishCentral in 2011 was support for reading of eBooks on a variety of devices like the iPad, iPhone, Android tablets, and Android smartphones. Smaller screen sizes on these devices makes it very difficult to read “fixed-format” content (like PDF) that is intended for larger screen resolutions. The solution to this problem is to provide content in formats like EPUB that re-flows or automatically adapts to fit the display resolution of the device on which it is being read. As consumption of eBooks on mobile devices is increasing, it is imperative for publishers to make their content available in a variety of formats so that their customers can read on a device that they prefer.

iPublishCentral now makes it possible to associate multiple file formats with an eBook. An eBook on iPublishCentral can be made available for sale in PDF, EPUB, and mobi file formats. Publisher can configure an appropriate file format to be delivered based on the device on which it will be read.

For example, iPublishCentral can be configured to deliver the eBook in EPUB file format when the eBook is accessed from an iPad and deliver the eBook in PDF file format when it is being accessed from a laptop or a computer. Multi format support also ensures that there is a single listing of the product on the end user portal.

Publishers are also provided the flexibility of pricing the different file formats either independently or as a bundle. For example, a publisher can decide to price a title at $10 for reading on the iPhone, iPad, and computers/laptops by making the PDF and EPUB file formats available for that price. Alternatively, the publisher can price the same title at $5 for reading on the computer/laptop by only providing the PDF format of the title and $7 for reading on the iPhone and iPad by only providing the EPUB format of the title.

In order to enable customers to read eBooks after purchase, iPublishCentral provides dedicated apps for reading on the computer/laptops, iPad, iPhone and Android smartphones, and Android tablets. iPublishCentral will continue to support new and emerging trends to stay relevant to the needs of publishers and end users.

Please share your thoughts on trends that will become important in future ipublishcentral dot com or pandith.jp at impelsys dot com

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

To know  your readers better, it’s important to peep into the readership paradigm and understand the dynamics of a reader’s mind. We have tried to collate certain attributes that largely explain how important it is to know your readers before formulating a strategy to even reach them.

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