Impelsys CEO Advises Publishers on Widget Selection and How Best to Market Them

NEW YORK, July 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Battered by a down economy, book, journal and magazine publishers are looking for new strategies to secure and retain customers and penetrate new markets. Publishers already involved in e-publishing have turned to widgets to reinforce core brands, introduce new titles and related products, build communities focused on themes, issues or titles and engage readers.

But not all widgets are created equal, says Sameer Shariff, CEO of Impelsys, a leading provider of electronic content delivery solutions for the global publishing market and the force behind iPublishCentral, a self-service e-book platform that includes widgets among its online tools.

"Widgets should enhance the benefits of online marketing, from reduced time-to-market and lower costs, to improved efficiency and customer engagement," Shariff said. "As one of several online marketing tools in the social media category, widgets should reinforce a publisher's relationship with its customers while motivating them to make repeat purchases."

Shariff recommends that publishers consider the following before choosing and implementing a widget:

• Customer Experience: How well does the widget enhance the potential purchaser's experience through interactive, participatory features? Is the widget likely to boost sales through rich media features such as audio and video interviews of authors?  
• Marketing Potential: Does the widget allow potential purchasers to access supplemental marketing materials covering related titles and issues? How likely is it that access to these materials would increase sales across titles?
• Purchasing Decision Support: Does the widget allow potential purchasers to retrieve content that could influence purchasing decisions? For example, can users access tables of content, introductions, author commentaries or sample chapters? Harper Collins' launch of a "browse-inside" feature resulted in a 30 percent increase in print sales, while Amazon.com reported a 30 percent increase in print sales across 120 titles within five days of implementing its search-inside feature.
• Accelerated Web Traffic: To what extent will the widget increase traffic to your portal, boost sales or generate new revenue streams?
• Search Engine Power: How effectively will the widget build back links that enhance search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM)?
• Strengthened Reader Relationships: Will the widget help to reinforce relationships with former, current and potential purchasers? Does the presence of widgets make it easy and convenient for users to share purchasing decisions and insights with friends and colleagues who might become purchasers?
• Brand Building and Reinforcement: How will the widget assist in building your brand or increase your visibility among target customer groups and opinion leaders?

Shariff also offers several recommendations to publishers on how to maximize benefits from widgets:

• Replace any flat, one-dimensional cover art on your site with widgets. Suggest that reviewers use widgets rather than cover art in their reviews.
• Showcase new or featured titles through widgets on the home page of your site.
• Add the URL for a widget to e-mail signatures and social bookmarking sites such as Digg, delicious or StumbleUpon.
• Augment your commentary to bloggers' reviews with the URL for a widget so other readers can "look inside" a title.
• Tweet the title's URL to other relevant Twitterers.
• Post the widget on pertinent discussion forums and mailing lists.
• Add the widget to widget aggregation sites such as WidgetBox.
• Get authors involved. Ask them to include a title's widget on their blogs and Web sites, add the widget to email signatures, change LinkedIn status to include the widget and position the widget within Facebook or MySpace profiles.

For more information about using widgets to market your e-book titles, visit iPublishCentral.

About Impelsys

Impelsys, a leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions to the global publishing market, helps its clients compete, evolve and grow in an increasingly complex marketplace. Impelsys-powered technologies like iPlatform(TM) and VirtualPages(TM) and solutions like iPublishCentral help publishers deliver content online quickly and cost effectively. Impelsys' passion for client success has helped it build long-term partnerships with its customers becoming critical in the client's electronic delivery strategy. Leading clients include McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Benchmark Education, Marshall Cavendish and Houghton Mifflin. Headquartered in New York, Impelsys operates across North America, Europe and India. For more information, please visit http://www.impelsys.com/.

 Media Contact:

Christopher Capot
KNB Communications
212-505-2441, 203-379-8019 (mobile)
ccapot@knbpr.com

NEW YORK, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Impelsys (www.impelsys.com), a global leader in electronic content delivery solutions, today announced that in just three short months since its launch at the Frankfurt Book Fair, its iPublishCentral platform (www.ipublishcentral.com) has skyrocketed to success, having registered more than 150 publishing clients worldwide.

While traditional publishers struggle to respond to the growth and popularity of the Internet, Impelsys has solidified its leadership position by supporting global publishers with online content delivery strategies. iPublishCentral is a self-service e-publishing platform that enables publishers of any size or in any location to digitize their content for sale online and to promote brands and titles across the Web through strategic viral marketing.

"The question for publishers moving forward won't be 'Shall we utilize the Web to increase sales?' but 'How do we invest in the technology needed to distribute and deliver information and knowledge in an innovative way?'" said Sameer Shariff, CEO of Impelsys.

Expert commentary on the evolution, opportunities and challenges of the e-publishing industry, along with live demonstrations of iPublishCentral, will be available at Stand # 8 during the O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference (TOC) inNew York, NY, February 9-11. Impelsys CEO, Sameer Shariff, and CTO, Nizar Jamal, will also be speaking at the conference.

Publishers in every industry -- trade publishing; science, technology and medicine; K-12 and higher education -- can initiate an e-publishing business with iPublishCentral's basic, no-cost package. The package offers publishers access to standard features and functionalities, while drastically reducing the cost and risk of launching an online strategy.

"iPublishCentral removes publishers' concern about making costly investments in new technology," continued Shariff. "The platform provides a risk-free vehicle by which publishers can experiment with new online business models."

Beta-tested with several high-profile publishers including MIT press and the American College of Physicians, iPublishCentral delivers an end-to-end workflow solution, allowing publishers to convert and monetize their print titles by tapping into three integrated modules focused on marketing, distribution and delivery: iPublishWidget, iPublishWarehouse and iPublishPortal.

For more information on iPublishCentral, please visit www.ipublishcentral.com

About Impelsys

Impelsys, a leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions to the global publishing market, helps its clients compete, evolve and grow in an increasingly complex marketplace. Impelsys-powered technologies like iPlatform(TM) and VirtualPages(TM) and solutions like iPublishCentral(TM) help publishers increase their revenues by delivering content online quickly and cost effectively. Impelsys' passion for client success has helped it build long-term partnerships with its customers becoming critical in the client's electronic delivery strategy. Leading clients include McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Benchmark Education, Marshall Cavendish and Houghton Mifflin. Headquartered in New York, Impelsys operates across North America, Europe and India. For more information, please visit www.impelsys.com.

Media Contact:
    Christopher Capot
    KNB Communications
    212-505-2441, 203-379-8019 (mobile)
    ccapot@knbpr.com

NEW YORK, NY - Oct. 15, 2008 - Impelsys (http://www.impelsys.com/), a global leader in electronic content delivery solutions, today announced the launch of iPublishCentral (http://www.ipublishcentral.com/), a self-service electronic content delivery platform for publishers that want an easy to use, full featured and cost-effective solution for selling their print content online.

With iPublishCentral, publishers of any size can make their content available for sale online and promote their brands and titles across the web through viral marketing. Publishers have the option to start on iPublishCentral at no cost for the basic features and functionalities, drastically reducing the cost and risk for publishers to initiate online strategies.

"Publishers can now digitize and monetize their printed books without the burden of a lengthy development cycle or the hefty costs of traditional online publishing and infrastructure," said Sameer Shariff, CEO of Impelsys. "iPublishCentral heralds a new era of publishing by empowering publishers to take full advantage of their content to build new online products and revenue streams with extremely fast time-to-market."

Beta-tested with several high-profile publishers, iPublishCentral delivers an end-to-end workflow solution that allows publishers to convert and monetize their print titles by tapping into three integrated modules for marketing, distribution and delivery: iPublishWidget, iPublishWarehouse and iPublishPortal.

iPublishCentral's market functionality, iPublishWidget, enhances marketing reach by offering readers widgets to promote titles across social networks and blogs. iPublishWidget increases the discoverability of the publishers' content by search engines, and its reports provide insights into reader behavior and preferences. iPublishCentral's ViewInside serves up publisher-controlled content sampling that enhance the likelihood of a reader's decision to purchase.

iPublishCentral facilitates content distribution through its distribute module, iPublishWarehouse, which allows publishers to sort, search, retrieve and distribute electronic versions of titles from a digital warehouse.

iPublishCentral's deliver module, iPublishPortal, allows publishers to quickly develop branded, customizable portals complete with the latest Web 2.0 functionality. An online content generation system allows publishers to leverage content into marketable, online content products and bundles. Other publisher-focused features include individual and institutional subscriptions, integrated usage reports and advanced systems for managing content, users and subscriptions.

"Working with publishers for more than seven years, we understand the challenges publishers face in going online. Our goal was to bring to all publishers, big and small, a solution that can radically transform the process of marketing, distributing and delivering their content and we have achieved it. In short, with iPublishCentral, publishing has evolved," Shariff said.

For more information on iPublishCentral, please visit http://www.ipublishcentral.com/

About Impelsys Impelsys, a leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions to the global publishing market, helps its clients compete, evolve and grow in an increasingly complex marketplace. Impelsys-powered technologies like iPlatform and VirtualPages help publishers deliver content online quickly and cost effectively. Impelsys' passion for client success has helped it build long term partnerships with its customers becoming critical in the client's electronic delivery strategy. Leading clients include McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Benchmark Education, Marshall Cavendish and Houghton Mifflin. Headquartered in New York, Impelsys operates across North America, Europe and India. For more information, please visit www.impelsys.com.

Media Contact:
Christopher Capot
KNB Communications
212-505-2441, 203-379-8019 (mobile)
ccapot@knbpr.com