The emergence of new mass-market devices such as dedicated e-book readers and multipurpose tablets has led to the increasing popularity of digital publishing. Publishers are looking for new and innovative ways to deliver content across multiple device spaces in a more effective and interactive manner to serve clients better. Now it is possible to incorporate audio, video, slide shows, and 360-degree images to bring digital content to life.
According to a survey conducted on 3,000 consumers in the United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom and South Korea to evaluate the transition of printed content to digital format, dedicated e-readers and multipurpose tablets are becoming common place and adoption rate to such systems are projected to reach 15 percent to 20 percent of the population in developed countries.
How Digital Publishing is Benefiting Businesses
All types of businesses benefit from e-publishing:
Merchant Warehouse (a credit card processing company) uses iPads and other tablets for sales presentation, according to a review in Mag+. They use iPad publishing to keep their sales team consistent when presenting to clients.
This review also outlines how Volvo FH uses digital publishing to create a beautiful product guide that helps in sales and how InWear Fashion, a Danish fashion brand uses iPad publishing for their trade tool and look book.
The adoption of digital publishing is growing by the day. According to a Statista survey report, the profitability of different digital platforms has increased during 2012-2014. During the survey, 51 percent of the respondents stated their website were profitable in 2012. The figure is projected to rise to 56 percent by the end of 2014.
According to another recent report, digital content revenue was expected to increase from $275 million in 2012 to $1.4 billion in 2017. Digital publishing, when coupled with effective user management, can provide analytical insight on the performance of the content and offer the following benefits:
- With reduced turnaround time and publishing straight to devices, digital publishing allows companies to save time, resources and printing costs
- Content can be published fast and efficiently across multiple platforms
- Customer interaction with content can be tracked with different mechanisms such as Adobe analytics
- Digital platforms can add videos, sound, music and various degrees of interactivity and collaboration to the reading experience. This feature allows companies to create unique experiences that can reflect their brand in a better way
- Digital publishing allows the use of in-app marketing tools that facilitate social sharing, push notifications, commerce, e-commerce, custom promotions, coupons and offers, to improve the reach of the product.
With book to e-book conversion gaining popularity, the adoption rate of e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader has also increased. But ensuring the quality of e-books has become a concern for both authors and publishers. Important points to consider while designing e-books are:
- Should be readable on different output devices such as desktop computer monitors, laptop screens, portable digital assistants, and so on
- Have to support both text and images on the screen
- Every page should allow easy navigation
- Quality and completeness
Today libraries, court houses, educational institutions, government departments and businesses are stepping up digitization of paper-based documents to secure their preservation. This will fuel digital publishing, allowing them to reach a wider audience.
