The recently concluded Digital Book World Conference in New York is a marquee event for the global publishing and digital content industry. For the digital content industry, the Digital Book World Conference is the melting pot of information on trends and leadership thoughts every year. Attending the event in NY all three days, I had some insightful observations and key meetings with industry leaders and business partners. I present to you a quick rundown on key takeaways on some of the latest buzz at DBW 2017.
The event was divided into four tracks – Editorial Acquisitions + Development, Production + Distribution, Marketing + Sales, and Data Analysis + Reporting. The key takeaways are summarised as follows.
Data
Nobody has a crystal ball to predict the future. But data analytics has become so advanced that we can at least find more reliable trends. All the numbers shown in the DBW’s different analyses have one common theme – online sales are growing across different categories of publishers. eBook is growing – particularly in the adult fiction/ non-fiction category and education.
Workflows
In the context of production and distribution, publishers need to focus more on this to better manage the flow of content right from the author file, all the way to the reader consuming the content. Workflow systems help in automation, tracking, transparency, and ultimately the control of the flow of content.
Embracing Complexity
Talking about thriving in a world of multi-product, multi-format, and multi-platform, I believe it should be seen as an opportunity. Being able to monetize your content through multiple formats, it can take and use multiple channels is always good for a publisher. Delivering the content the way your readers want it (be it print, PDF, epub, or video, etc.) and where they want it is best for the publishing industry as a whole.
It’s All About Customers
How to think Print + Platform + Product – one of the major points to take away from DBW 2017 is looking at the content outside of the book perspective. Looking at it as content that can take multiple shapes (which can be delivered and monetized in different formats). Print book – eBook – Free Content – Content extract from a blog post or a magazine article – Learning materials (online courses, offline reading, assessments, etc.) – Webinars (live and on-demand) – Workshops or any other format depending on the type of content. Content is being seen or needs to be seen in this perspective and not just as content for a book.
What is more important here is the delivery channels. Current retailers might not be able to deliver all of these formats (at least the ones that can be delivered digitally). Publishers need to have or develop their own delivery channel to take advantage of the content.
This, in particular, validates the philosophy behind the evolution of our iPublishCentral (Now mon’k) solution from an eBook delivery Platform into a comprehensive Reading to Learning Platform. We also believe in the fact that one size does not fit all, so we made it modular. Publishers can pick and choose the modules that they need and keep augmenting as the business grows.
Taking Control of Your Channel
This is a topic on inventory management and how the publisher needs to ensure that the book is available at all times on all platforms where they sell. In an age of Amazon, where the readers looking at your book see the recommendations – “You may also like this book,” Publishers may lose on the sales if the book is not available to be shipped out. This is particularly important in a print book world of trade publishing in an aggregated retail model.
And then some topics revolved around delivery channels, formats, metadata management, and increasing eBook sales.
Through its iPublishCentral (Now mon’k) platform and associated services, Impelsys has advocated digital content delivery and helped publishers sell & deliver content directly through their own platform. iPublishCentral (Now mon’k) also helps publishers who have their own catalog or eCommerce site by plugging in their award-winning reader technology to deliver the content (both online and offline).
By: Jagadish C U, Sales Manager, Impelsys Inc.
