[Anil Gopinath, joined the team in October 2010 as Executive Vice President - Global Engineering - iPublishCentral]

Its been about 4 months since I joined the iPublishCentral team. With no prior experience in publishing the last four months have been a real eye opener for me. It has taken me this long to get a feel of the different aspects related to publishing, the different segments and the different needs and requirements of the ecosystem.

Working with the team at iPublishCentral has so far been a great experience. With their help and  through discussions with our clients and other publishers I am now beginning to feel like I am  a part of this community.

The opportunity to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2010 and the more recent O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference in New York, gave me a good understanding of the transformations that are happening in the world of publishing. At both events, I met with several authors and publishers who were kind enough to share their experience and thoughts about the changes they are seeing in the industry.

The publishing industry is now at a crossroads of sorts, with technology being the major game changer. Publishers now have new capabilities and new markets to explore and are questioning some of the older business models.

For us at iPublishCentral, innovating to find solutions and products to ease this transition for publishers is what is foremost on our minds. In these past few months we have transformed our product road map and have made several process changes within the iPublishCentral product team. We have broken up development into formal release cycles and are streamlining  internal and external communications. We have also strengthened the network operations team to keep up with the growing requirements for eBook delivery.

We hope to continue to innovate and help our publishing partners keep pace with and grow with each and every evolution of technology.

This year, The Frankfurt Book Fair seemed quieter than the previous year in terms of footfall, but not so in terms of quality of meetings. We saw a higher level of ‘C Level’ visitors prepared to explore their digital strategies and talk about how a technology partner might be able to assist them in this endeavor.

Our stand which was strategically placed right opposite the ‘Device Hot-Spot’ gave us the opportunity to study attitudes towards the several reading devices that have hit the market place in the past few months. No doubt the hype about the iPad and the onslaught of these new devices have led to the explosive growth in eBook sales and has generated a lot of discussion, with more publishers now paying a lot of attention to the future of content and content delivery. The tablet phenomenon is proving to be a major catalyst towards driving user demand for interactive and media rich content on the move, and has spurred many industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung to position themselves to own the digital book space, in much the same manner that Apple has taken over the music industry.

While a few years ago, the predominance of this digital trend was limited to the United States and parts of Europe, we are now seeing an increasing interest in digital content and eBooks from developing countries in Asia, the Middle East and South America.

The eBook era is enabling publishers to take more control over their content and deliver it directly to their end-users. Delivering eBooks to the market does not have to follow the traditional print supply chain where the distributor and retailer have such a strong presence. Publishers can now have their eBooks hosted on a neutral platform and sell or deliver it through their own branded eBookstore directly to their end users and institutions. This allows the publisher to set their own price and redefines their relationships with resellers, and of course the discounts they offer.

While matters regarding DRM protection for content still remains debatable, this year we experienced more and more enquires from publishers and distributors regarding safeguarding of their digital content. The market is clearly a friendlier place for eBooks and we saw several publishers from different countries shopping for an eBook platform that allows them to deliver and sell their content as an aggregate set of titles via publisher branded portals. It was encouraging to note that most of them had researched the eBook platforms available in the marketplace, a clear indication that they are in the process of embracing this new age with enthusiasm. The internet and the cloud phenomena that powers global access of content through multiple devices continues to shape the publishing world and we are all excited about what the future holds.

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.