EPublishing – Threat or Opportunity for Traditional Printers

iPads, iPhones and the glut of diverse tablet devices currently hitting the market are converting the manner many humans observe courses. An increasingly wide variety of people are locating that the use of cellular devices to access an extensive range of material (frequently even as commuting) is more convenient than magazines, newspapers, and different conventional print media. The splendid display decision has promised to make the iPad the new medium for analyzing magazines.

For some printers and publishers this formerly green trend is a supply of subject; even fear. But is this fear properly founded? Was the initial buzz across the iPad and magazines only a fad? Is this a threat or possibility to the print industry?

After all, there appears to have been a downward trend in iPad mag subscriptions after the preliminary frenzy. When Wired released their iPad mag in June 2010, they bought extra than a hundred,000 ‘copies’. But more lately it’s been said Wired’s iPad mag most effective bought a median 31,000 copies in line with the month in Q3/10. Falling similarly to 22,000 and 23,000 for October and November respectively. Vanity Fair fared no higher and has seen declines in iPad income from 10,500 in August, September, and October to eight,seven-hundred copies of its November trouble. Glamour dropped around 20%, Men’s Health has skilled a 28% drop and GQ has lost customers. Fewer and fewer people seem to shop for virtual magazines for the iPad.

So is this a sign for the future? Does it suggest printers and publishers want no longer fear? With the glut of pills and smartphones predicted in the marketplace in the close to destiny and the lowering access price, I am positive there’s a protracted-term destiny for ePublishing. And for printers and publishers with vision, publishing ought to be visible as a way of complimenting their ‘ink-on-paper’ publishing – it’s a chance to get beforehand of competitors, to take advantage of lower distribution prices, growth reach and create new revenue streams.

As Charles Darwin said; “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the maximum wise, but the one most adaptable to trade”

Simple Solutions
There is a diffusion of options for presenting fabric so it can be considered on the mobile devices flooding the market. The simplest approach is to make your pdf print material ‘seem like a mag or e-book’, and there are numerous cheap software program applications that permit you to flip your pdf files into ‘web page flippers’. In truth maximum machines, whether they be iPads, iPhones or pills have extremely good support for viewing pdf files natively within their environments.

Here’s a short summary of PDF-associated alternatives:

1. Provide a link to a PDF report from a present website. Most tablet gadgets have the capability to without difficulty download and examine PDF documents, so that is a simple method if people are already traveling your website.

2. Make your PDF downloadable from the Apple iTunes store as an “App”“. There are many alternatives for converting a PDF document to a “page flipper” app, which may be listed at the iTunes save. While this may offer a level of marketing publicity, it is doubtful how plenty advantage this offers as it may get lost the various 2 hundred,000 games and different apps in the iTunes Store.

One disadvantage is that packages for iPad and iPhone devices will now not run on non-Apple devices. This is a serious problem if one considers the range of providers and projected boom for Android-primarily based telephones and pills.

Three. An alternative to creating Apps is to put up e-books. Apple offers steerage on the way to try this. Their suggestions are that if the text goes to be the famous person of your presentation use the ePub layout, however, if the layout is important then use pdf documents. Both of them can be published via the iTunes service as a virtual eBook.

To listing an eBook with iTunes, you need to open an account with Apple, and you want to get an ISBN variety for your publication. This isn’t necessarily an easy procedure. The most important advantage is that you’ll be indexed as a book, rather than an App, and this may have credibility implications.

Limitations of Page Flippers Unfortunately, most readers are experienced with the internet, and are not glad about simple pages of textual content intermingled with pictures. They want sites that permit them to “do stuff”. They need to watch videos, to look through content, to get entry to associated information, to “browse”, to find out expenses and to purchase matters they like, and to follow their whim. They often are not happy to just turn from side to side via pages.

To meet those expectancies, an exceptional technique is needed. While there are several opportunities, the maximum flexibility and cost-effective method are to convert your application to a “Web App”“. In simple terms, a Web App is a website that may be disbursed or accessed as if it had been a utility going for walks on the cellular tool.

Rather than being an easy “web page flipper” for viewing a PDF report, a Web App has the potential to comprise greater capability. Such capability can be associated with enhancing the user enjoys (for example consisting of movies, menus, links an interactive capabilities), or associated with generating sales from the document (targeted advertising and marketing, or the ability to make purchases at once from inside the guide), or associated with supplying a beneficial carrier to the reader (calculators, get entry to records, Facebook connections, etc).

However, with the proper development tool you can turn your guide right into an awesome searching Web App with a level of fine regular together with your printed book(along with a desire of up to 3,500 fonts) – ‘re-purposing’ your layout and print effort to a couple of digital transport platforms along with the internet, tablets and smart-phones utilising diverse operation structures (eg Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Phone), and also from the Internet.

With an approach that ‘goes beyond web page flipping’, you could acquire giant business blessings consisting of increased sales possibilities, as an example: a. Regionalise advertising ie offer advertisements specific to the region the man or woman is gaining access to the publication b. Introduce a “click on through” fee machine for advertisers. When a reader clicks on a specific advertiser’s access, you are able to price for this (much like Google Adwords) c. Place only a short model of your e-book on-line to lure readers to i. Subscribe to the broadcast version, or ii. By placing the booklet at the back of a payment gateway, have readers purchase the present day online publication or subscribe to future online versions.

Maintain pleasant ‘look and experience’ of your publication With the ever-growing array of electronic equipment on which humans are gaining access to the web, it’s miles essential that quality publications be offered professionally. What can also appearance wonderful on a computer screen from a website will now not translate to an effortlessly viewed presentation on a phone or tablet.

Pages want to load quickly to offer customers that ‘immediate-on’ experience. It is no use having the excellent searching magazine web page which takes 2 minutes to load up – there might not be anybody there to examine it. The recent load times of the ‘The Daily’ iPad app is a great instance.

Use new media Today, publishers and printers have the option to go virtual or ‘ink on paper’, however many are choosing a collaborative method, nonetheless handing over conventional print, however complimenting it with extraordinary digital variations.

With your online model of your book, appearance to embed video and audio files at the repurposed website. This makes the media come to life and gives a rich multimedia enjoy if the publisher wishes to accomplish that. This offers the publisher the opportunity to grow sales streams the use of commercials embedded inside the new media. Most importantly this new media should be delivered the usage of an era that guarantees compatibility with the huge type of structures along with Apple is that are unfriendly to flash, and non-Apple devices.