Publishers’ Why’s and Wherefore’s When Migrating to Digital (are all the damn apostrophes correct?)

Indeed, when the current publishing upheaval began (it seems just a little while ago in the scheme of things) and the conqueror ‘Digital’ came swaggering into the publishing world, publishers were at first completely devastated; then were bombarded by all kinds of options and questions for their very survival!

You can just imagine publishers’ mental angst deciding “Should I get out of this rapidly changing fireball of an industry or should I admit that the old ways are going down the drain and commit to learning a whole new process … dealing, perhaps, with an entirely new and separate tech industry?”

Karina Mikhil (pictured), a publishing executive with a Master’s in Publishing from New York University, has some excellent questions and analyses that will help these publishing execs and their firms reach a viable decision.

From Karina Mikhil in Publishing Perspectives:

Migrating to Digital Publishing? The Six Key Questions to Ask

Here are the six “Ws” you need to ask yourself before transitioning from the old to the new: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

The publishing industry is not generally known for being agile or quick to change, yet it is facing one of its biggest times of change probably since the invention of the printing press. At the heart of this is the migration to digital.

Prior to this migration, a time-tested process and structure existed for getting books printed: from acquisition, copyediting and typesetting, to author reviews and proofreading, to print. Although hiccups occurred and no two companies had the exact same workflow, the foundations were the same and ensured quality products got released in expected time frames.

Whether publishers are dealing with online content or e-books, digital only or both print and digital, publishers are now faced with more questions than answers as to how to incorporate the new with the old. Below I provide a framework for those questions, using the traditional 6 Ws: why, who, what, when, which, and where.

Why?

Of the six questions, this is the easiest to answer. No publisher can afford to ignore the digital any longer: the tipping point has come and gone; more and more e-books and e-readers are being sold weekly; and authors will begin demanding this, if they haven’t already. And traditional publishers need to offer all things digital to compete with the emerging “digital publishers.”

Who?

Even prior to the migration to digital, publishers would do one of two things to keep costs down: outsource as much as possible, keeping headcount down, or the reverse, which is hire talent to keep all services and costs internal. With digital, publishers have to make this decision anew. Should they invest in new talent from other industries (e.g., technology) or in educating existing talent, those who are eager to learn and have a background in publishing? Or should they turn to one of the many conversion and content solutions providers that exist in the market?

What?

Read and learn more

Writers Welcome Blog is on Kindle right here :)

Google Editions Could Launch eBook Revolution!

How about an online book store with 4 million books to choose from? Oh yeah!

First of all a simple definition of Google Editions (GE): GE is an upcoming online e-book store that will be run by Google. It will offer universal access and non-restrictive copying...AND books and other products will be able to be read on ANY electronic device, mobile or otherwise.

Kevin Klause (pictured below), reporting for phandroid.com, gives some details about this possible GE-sparked eBook revolution:

The publishing industry has been backed into a corner as of late, as the digital age hasn’t played too nicely with old fashioned paper and ink. Companies that rely on the sale of books and printed media have turned to producing their own e-readers in an attempt to capitalize on digitized publications (see Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook), but stand-alone devices for reading e-publications have proven hard to justify for consumer’s who already own any combination of MP3 player, mobile phone, laptop, and now tablet.

The distribution end of this growing problem for the publishing industry is starting to become less of an issue, however; on top of various eBook devices, the iPad, smartphones, and upcoming tablets are all available as easily accessible channels for delivering content. The problem now becomes an issue of the content itself, a snag Google is hoping to eliminate with the launch of Google Editions. According to Japan Today, as of the beginning of this week Google has reached agreements with over 25,000 publishers and authors. This equates to around 2 million books available at launch. Compare these numbers to 60,000 from iBooks, 500,000 from Amazon, and around 1 million from Barnes and Noble currently available.

If Google is able to include the over 2 million public domain titles it already plays host to on its Google Books service (just a small slice of the 10 million books Google already claims to have digitized in its Books database), the number of titles available grows to over 4 million. An effort to have Editions play nicely with all major devices and e-readers means a truly monumental amount of texts available readily for anyone with a device capable of reading them.

So while the eBook revolution has begun to pick up speed thanks to the run away success of the iPad, the content delivery aspect is nothing new. Yes, the iPad has done great things for reinforcing the viability of e-publications, but it will take a great library of titles for the demand for digitized content to grow. The beauty of Google Editions is that users will not be limited in their device selection in order to tap into the huge library available.

Sure, Editions will be pushed on Android phones and tablets, but you won’t have to own one. Having worked for an academic publisher (perhaps the sector of the industry most affected by the shift towards digital media), I can say that one of the biggest things hindering eBooks is the sheer number of formats and services a book must be prepped for in order to reach a mass market.

No digital book store has quite done for the printed word what iTunes accomplished for music distribution. Could Google Editions be the catalyst for a move towards digital texts as the standard? I think you’d have a hard time arguing against the sheer volume of titles that will be available, which looks to be well more than what could be read in a lifetime.

[Japan Today via Android and Me]