On April 11th, I ran the Paris Marathon. An event that I trained for over the last six months.

As I was running the marathon, my mind went through all the effort that was needed to get ready for the race. Running 42 kilometers is not easy and it takes a toll on your body. The only way to be ready for it, is the preparation that is required months before the race. The preparation and the discipline to maintain your training schedule allows you to compete and potentially complete the race. My race was going well and I was on pace to get to my 4 hour goal when I hit the wall during the 38 km mark. My legs gave in and I was in severe pain. Physically my body was telling me to let up but mentally I knew that I could not stop because the finish line was so close. The last 4 kilometers was a mental vs. physical battle to get to the finish line. At the end I crossed the line achieving my time goal and gaining a personal victory for myself. Crossing the finish line was an incredible feeling of pure and unadulterated joy!

I realized while running the marathon that what we are building at Impelsys is also like a marathon.  We, at Impelsys have a clear goal in becoming the leader in supporting the global book publishing market to deliver and market their electronic content.  We are passionate and determined to get to the goal and win, not only for ourselves but for our publishing customers.  Our training in the “marathon of business” has been the effort that we have put over the last several years to study the transition of the publishing industry, to understand what traditional publishing was all about and to use this understanding to help them adapt and succeed in the electronic world.  In turn, helping them add revenues through new and previously unexplored business models and building the content delivery infrastructure for the online world.  Just as my marathon training required extreme discipline, achieving this vision too requires discipline, determination and an ever thirsty passion to succeed.

Our industry is a dynamic, ever-changing, ever-evolving one, where almost every day there is something new out there, something more that customers want and something better that someone else is doing.   In today’s competitive business world the secret ingredient to success is in having your consumers win. We have built our capabilities and dedicated our vision towards helping our clients’ win, by ensuring that their customers in turn win. We are determined and confident in getting to our finish line.

It’s been a month since the conference, and I still haven’t gotten over the whole “TOC experience”. My mind keeps going back to all the discussions we had, and I find myself constantly pondering over opinions expressed, predictions made and in general, visualizing what the outlook of our industry might look like few years down the line.

Having worked closely with the publishing industry for over a decade, it was both inspiring and exciting to see publishers from all around the world come together with the realization that change is here to stay. Encouraging, was to note how earnest publishers were towards understanding this change and the focus they have towards preparing themselves for the future.

In this blog, I would like to share a few anecdotes, and what I thought was especially interesting and defining for the future of our industry.  For the past ten years we have studied the dynamics of the publishing industry, its trends, changing reader habits and one session that struck an instant chord with me was by Peter Collingridge from Enhanced Editions. He describes the work he does as “tailor-making books for the iPhone, and the challenge that they set, on how to translate a book to a device in a way that creates a valuable new user experience and adds to the content. He highlighted the fact that the app was being offered as an ‘optional experience’. To quote him, “You don’t have to listen, or read and listen, or watch. Its how the reader wants it to be. We can build stuff around it and online – but the reading should be left between the reader and the content. The app is all about engagement with the content.” The key to their success here is their understanding and empathy towards the reader. His insight into reader behavior is an important lesson for all of us in the content business. The sure win sales strategy is to give your readers the content that they want.

Over the past couple of years we have seen the lightening quick pace at which the industry is evolving and this experience has helped us build innovative solutions such as reporting and data analytical tools that are helping publishers the world over take their publishing to a whole new level. As Tim O’Reilly mentioned in his session, today publishers have a better understanding of their markets with the help of data analytical tools and are building direct relationships with their readers. These tools enable publishers to put reader habits under the microscope, and use this information to tailor make content to suit the readers need. This and the ease through which they can convert their content into digital formats and deliver it through custom built platforms enable them to cash in on the opportunities that the web offers.

This year at TOC, I too had the opportunity to share my thoughts on ‘The new dynamics of publishing’ at the keynote and at a focused session on the ‘Next generation of ebooks’. Publishing has evolved, and now more than ever publishers need to focus on their core area of expertise - Content. Yet, understanding and exploiting the advancements in technology and reader demand and consumption habits could very well be the key factor that defines success. My belief is that in choosing the right strategic partners, publishers can remain focused on their core business, while still being able to implement the right technological strategies that keeps them at the top of their game.

Last Tuesday, we proudly announced that Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization behind Sesame Street, has partnered with Impelsys to convert as many as 900 of its over 5,000 published books into eBooks. The deal got tremendous coverage in the media, that included a feature article in the Wall Street Journal which ran in the print edition of the WJS and on wsj.com. Impelsys was also featured in the Los Angeles Times, LiveMint, Gizmodo, MediaBistro and on ABC news.

We actively pursued this partnership with Sesame Street for more than a year because this deal represents the direction in which the industry is heading. The Kindle and Nook were important steps for the digital publishing industry, in the same way that Pong was a big step for the video game industry, but I contend that the best technology at the moment for digital books is one that most of us already have in our homes – the computer.

I believe that we can learn a great deal from the evolution of the video game industry. In 1975, Atari released the Home Pong console – a hardware-focused, one-dimensional product that captured our imaginations and helped spawn a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry. Pong was an important first step but in the end, the machine played one game and we needed gaming systems with more power, flexibility and interactivity.

The hardware (i.e. Xbox, Wii, PS3) remains important to this day, but its genius lies in the software that runs on these systems. For example, the Wii was a big development, but people loved it because we could go bowling in our living room or play tennis with our kids on a snowy day.

Whether playing Halo with a friend from China on PlayStation 3, doing exercises with your sister on Wii Fit or having Grover personally read for your 3-year old “The Monster at the end of this Book” on ebooks.Sesamestreet.org, consumers want a rich, interactive, 3D experiences, regardless of the gadget it comes in.

This partnership with Sesame Workshop is an important milestone for Impelsys and a great way to end a very productive 2009. I look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of digital publishing and providing publishers and content developers with technologies that enable interactivity and allow their businesses to grow in 2010 and beyond.

Over the past 8 years, we’ve heard countless reasons why e-books just won’t work. We’ve been advised that digital books will only be a niche market. We’ve been cautioned that e-books will spell the death of the industry.

Despite these well-intentioned opinions, we pressed on; building a platform for the masses and believing that this would be the next great chapter in the publishing industry’s proud history.

After last week’s Frankfurt Book Fair, I am proud to announce that the revolution is over and the future is finally here.

For five straight days, my team and I were in back-to-back (to-back) meetings with the world’s leading publishers talking about digital content delivery. We read innumerable stories about the revolution including the WSJ’s “E-books are hot topic at Frankfurt Book Fair” and the AP’s “E-books gain a foothold at Frankfurt Book Fair.” We even saw China play second fiddle to Google, Apple and Amazon.

Since the launch of iPublishCentral at FBF last year, the publishing industry and iPublishCentral have taken some significant steps forward. Over the past 12 months, more than 350 publishers from around the world, including the AMA, MIT Press, F+W Media, M.E. Sharpe, Marshall Cavendish and Vanderbilt University Press, have signed on to use iPublishCentral.

We’ve added support for content in multiple formats, multiple languages and for multiple mobile devices. We’ve increased reporting and analysis tools and have begun supporting various pricing models, including rentals.

What we’re most proud of is that iPublishCentral enables publishers of any size or in any location to make their content for sale online and to promote their brands and titles across the Web in a simple and cost-effective manner, with minimal up front investments and pay-as-you-go pricing.

I wanted to use this blog entry to thank our customers, our partners and the incredible team at iPublishCentral for their hard work and their dedication to this cause. There remains a great deal of work ahead of us, but the future is indeed bright.

Viva la revolution,

Sameer Shariff

I’ve been thinking about last month’s New York Times story, Textbook Publisher to Rent to College Students, and the subsequent NYTimes blog post, A Cheaper Way to Get Textbooks: Rent and I’m a bit confused.

I’m not surprised that companies like Cengage, Chegg or Follett need to take these steps in the hopes of preserving the dwindling revenues that the entire book business is seeing. But I’m surprised that the Times saw fit to stand behind these efforts so blindly in light of the facts.

The basis of this story is that companies are adopting textbook rentals to counter the online sales of used textbooks to outfits like Amazon.com.  They believe this approach will increase profitability because they won’t have to go for additional print runs.

Even if this were a solid deal for students - which most of the blog comments seem to indicate otherwise – the economics just don’t add up. The companies still have to manage lending centers; replace damaged, lost or destroyed books, and they are still limited to a certain geographical area or be subject to large shipping fees.

If we accept that e-books will be the norm sooner or later, this new business can hardly be seen as anything more than a last gasp for the physical textbook business.  (For those doubters still among you, I am reminded of the music industry execs that couldn’t be convinced that digital music would ever replace CDs).

When e-books become the norm:

1. Books become available to all just with an Internet connection.
2. They can sell it at a much lesser price compared to their print versions.
3. They can rent it for a period of time.
4. They can sell content in chunks.
5. They can rent content in chunks.
6. Publishers do not have to worry about the used book market.

I don’t know…maybe I’m over thinking this one.

I recently read an article on Fortune.com by Michael Copeland titled, ‘The end of paper‘ and was delighted. It just reaffirmed my thoughts in terms of the direction I predict the industry will take. The article sums up just how you may be reading your newspaper or your book on an e-paper device in the near future. A sleek, lightweight, portable e-reader is slowly becoming an attractive alternative to the hardcover tomes. The excitement, for me, is around the rapid pace at which this transformation is taking place.

Several companies, including giants like HP, Fujitsu and startups such as Polymer Vision, FirstPaper and Plastic Logic are developing new versions of e-reader addressing the limitations of the current devices available in the market. The new e-readers feature larger screen, wireless connectivity, longer battery life, and touch screen functionality for easy navigation. In short, the e-reader is all set to take…well…reading to a completely new level.

Not only does it come packed with a host of advantages, the e-Books are a cost-effective, durable way to go. What we can look forward to in the near future is flexible display technology that will allow you to fold your screen small enough to slip into your pocket. Apart from Plastic Logic, other players including HP, LG Display and Polymer Vision are working on developing their own versions.

Though e-book sales are still a small percentage of sales compared to print sales, I believe we are closer to the tipping point than ever before. The signs all indicate that we are going in the right direction. Publishers need to be aware of all these advancements and be ready when e-sales take over from print. They need to experiment and see how best to make their business models work in the electronic world.

On another equally uplifting note, we will have more trees thanks to e-books and perhaps do more than our bit for global warming.