Half of all Americans now own some sort of smartphone or tablet device, according to a recent Pew Research initiative. This is roughly similar to the number of Americans who own laptop computers, but the transition has occurred in over very few years, and these numbers are expected to double in the coming years. This trend is largely what is driving most activity in the content business today. The ability to present meaningful content where and when it is requested and at a price that is acceptable is a major challenge. It is becoming increasingly clear that content that is not digitized is not as valuable as content that is.

Digitization has become a necessity for content driven businesses. Many publishers have developed digitization strategies mainly as a reaction to market trends. Some publishers have adopted a “wait and see” mindset betting that technology will improve and that prices will come down. This may have been a good strategy in the early adoption era. However, technology and software have evolved, and the pricing for both technology and offshore services are about as low as they are going to get.   Digitizing your content is one of the necessary costs of admission to be able to play in today's marketplace. 

Download our free white paper, "Content Digitization Strategy 101" and understand the following concepts, which must be part of any content management and publishing plan:

• How you develop content that has a high digital readiness factor

• Strategies for reclaiming content that does not have a high digital readiness factor

• Planning to upgrade legacy content that is not digital into digital readiness

• How you manage, store, and distribute your digital ready content

• How do you maintain a focus on business value as a guide to all these activities

  
  
  
  

During Hurricane Sandy this week I doubt I was the only east coast reader concerned about how I would read when the electricity went out. My Kindle and iPad were charged but I knew the iPad wouldn't last long if faced with days of lost power. My trusty Kindle would serve me well but my aggregated news on Flipboard would be missed. Power outage gave me a glimmer of hope that I could catch up on some long-form journalism in its print form (New Yorker) and plan my holiday menu (Bon Appetit). I chuckled thinking how my friend who is adamant about reading print only was not wasting mental energy on this internal discussion. Powered with candles and print, he was prepared for a lovely time. 

At a time when major publishers are selecting "digital only" as a solution to plummenting subscriptions and ad sales, the devil is in the details. Electric outages are an obvious problem and real concern if your business delivers exclusively to digital products. There's also the issue of ad revenue in the digital sphere compared with print. Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers illustrate that ad revenue from digital products will double from 2011 to 2016 and print will experience small growth. But the dollar value from print ads eclipses digital:

Now combine competition into this story. Looking at Newsweek's decision to go digital only in 2013 is somewhat shortsighted when you consider all the online competition competing for smaller digital advertising dollars. 

Digital only is not the golden ticket....yet. Publishers (media, trade, educational, STM, legal) still need a strong print presence both for the obvious reasons (national electric power grid, customer demographics) and the other obvious reasons (ad revenue, customer demographics!).

We've been conducting a year-long survey with publishers and media organizations to assess digital revenue metrics along with technology adoption decisions. So far, the majority of our respondents indicate that digital revenue is exceeding print revenue. 

Does this mean these publishers are creating more digital products than print products? That answer is still to be determined. We also ask publishers to indicate all the outputs expected to be a focus in the future. At the moment both print and ebooks are tied with 88.9% of respondents indicating that print and digital books are important. Web products have a slight increase at 91.1%.

Our big takeaway from the preliminary results to the 2012 publishers' survey do indicate something we've maintained for years. No matter your revenue streams from published products, a single-source multi-channel publishing process is key to satisfying customers along with the bottom line.

As you're cleaning up from the hurricane and recharging your electronic devices think about how your organization is setting itself up and share your input. We'll reveal all the results to this survey in an upcoming webinar in December. 

Let us know the devilish details that your organization faces.

We’ve heard the allure of digital revenue for more than a decade. Yet many publishers still report that print supersedes digital. And a majority of publishing organizations continue to structure people, processes, and tools to support a print-first environment. In 2012 the rules have changed. Having worked with hundreds of publishing professionals during the past 10 years, we've observed organizations that implement a strategic content management initiative and converted backlist titles into XML are the ones who are seeing digital revenue exceed print.

RSI Content Solutions and Data Conversion Laboratory are hosting a series of webinars this year that examine today’s publishing landscape. This webinar series will step back and differentiate fact from fiction. We'll present success stories that demonstrate how publishing organizations are navigating the world of XML, CMS, and ebooks to meet and exceed customer demands.

The first webinar of the series is moderated by Darrell W. Gunter, CEO, Gunter Media Group. Register for this free webinar and hear the truths about what your organization can do to recognize true digital revenue.

Webinar: Reality Check: The Truth About Digital Revenue Streams
Date: Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT
Moderator: Darrell W. Gunter, CEO, Gunter Media Group

RSuite CMS Will Provide LexisNexis Pacific with the Tools to Efficiently Manage its Vast Collection of XML

Audubon, Pa.—March 27, 2012—LexisNexis Pacific provides world-class content and leading-edge technology designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis Pacific recently licensed RSuite CMS by RSI Content Solutions. RSuite CMS is the leading content management system for publishers who want to manage, store, and deliver content to any channel, in any format, at any time.

RSuite CMS will replace several legacy internal editorial systems in use at LexisNexis Pacific and provide a consolidated and editorial system to manage its vast collection of XML, DTDs, metadata, and other content.

“LexisNexis Pacific has a wealth of great content and products,” stated Barry Bealer, CEO and co-founder at RSI Content Solutions. “RSuite CMS will provide the LexisNexis Pacific team with workflow tools and content discovery tools that stay true to their mission of putting the right information into the right hands and giving people the power to change the world.”

“We required a content management solution that leveraged our investment in MarkLogic Server,” explained Andrew Squire, project manager at LexisNexis Pacific. “RSuite CMS is not only deployed on top of MarkLogic Server but it has the added workflow functionality that will enable us to centralise and normalise our content across all product chains.”

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of hearing Ned May, vice president and lead analyst from Outsell, Inc. present at the Professional Scholarly Publishing annual meeting. Outsell helps the "world's publishers, information providers, and enterprise marketers grow revenue and deliver solutions." Outsell is my first stop to gather information and metrics I can trust about the growing ebook market.

I've been involved with STM publishing and mark-up languages for a long time. (Last night I realized that if my experience were a child, it would be old enough to drink. Ouch!) I recognize that this background is the cause of my nonobjective opinions around ebooks, digital sales, XML content management. I've long maintained that customers want digital, the tools (CMS et al.) are mature, XML is the common language, and the $$ numbers don’t lie. So hearing Ned's presentation and seeing real revenue forecasts based on Outsell's research was heartening.

The following slide set the stage for the $462B information industry with projected revenues and growth based on Outsell's industry research.

Digital publishing's steady growth is represented in the following slide. The point at which publishers' print vs digital revenue flip resembles our findings last October when we polled a number of RSuite customers. Clearly, some publishers have already made this transition to greater digital revenue while others lag.

The following slide illustrates the "R" in your digital publishing ROI. STM and educational publishers have a projected compound annual growth rate of 5.2% and 5%.

So what to make of all these projections? Recognize that digital publishing is not simply a final workflow step in your publishing process. Converting printed books to epub is nice. (Just like that box of candy or flowers for valentines day is, uh, "nice.") Real value and substance comes from the effort that is put in every day---effort to transform the people, processes, and techology.

Ned's closing slide nails it:

Educational Publishing: Dynamic Content Creation Begins Here with Triumph Learning

A free webinar | January 26, 2:00 to 3:00 pm EST

Triumph Learning serves instructional materials to more than 25 million students across the country. More than three brands serve up a range of curriculum needs, including test prep resources, digital curriculum, and classroom kits. In this free webinar, Christopher Hill, VP of product development at Really Strategies will interview Robert Methven, CTO of Triumph Learning. They’ll discuss how a large-scale organization developed a successful digital publishing strategy and selected the tools that will allow it to respond to changing market needs.

Join us and learn what processes and tools you can implement to maintain agility in the digital publishing space.