Award-Winning End-to-End Automated Publishing Solution to Exhibit in The Digital Zone; Dan Dube from DocZone to Present Success Stories in the Digital Zone Theatre

DocZone Book Publisher announces its silver sponsorship at the 2012 London Book Fair at stand Y800 in The Digital Zone. The award-winning end-to-end automated cloud publishing team from RSI Content Solutions will meet with book publishers and demonstrate how their publishing clients save time by automating production processes to deliver content simultaneously to print and digital products.

DocZone Book Publisher will also be highlighted during two presentations in the Digital Zone Theatre as Dan Dube, EVP of global solutions at RSI, will showcase success stories of publishers using the system to produce multilingual print books and ebooks.

“DocZone Book Publisher continues to blaze a trail as the first fully automated ‘cloud’ solution for editing and producing both print and ebooks. We are pleased to show our latest release at the 2012 London Book Fair, where we will introduce new support for generating InDesign output from our XML-based publishing platform.” explained Dan Dube. “DocZone Book Publisher enables push-button publishing to PDF, EPUB, HTML, and InDesign. And with built-in language translation tools, it also allows publishers to reach today’s global markets by publishing to these formats in over 200 languages.”

Click here to schedule an appointment with one of our digital publishing strategists.

While catching up on some metrics reported by various publishers on ebook sales, I thought it would be a good idea to consolidate them in a quick list:

• Penguin ebook sales doubled in 2011---Penguin Group (USA) CEO David Shanks stated: “Our eBook sales doubled, we expanded our digital publishing programs, and we won a Pulitzer Prize for the second year in a row.”
• Association of American Publishers report ebook sales went up 72% in December---eBooks grew slightly over November 2011, closing out the year with an increase of 117% over 2010.
• Hachette Book Group reports 130% increase in ebook and audiobook sales in 2011---These digital products represented 22% of the company’s overall revenue in 2011, compared with 8% in 2010.
• Bloomsbury reported its eBook sales grew 38% in the fourth quarter of 2011 over sales during the same period last year---Chief executive Nigel Newton, stated: “We have a robust business, strongly adapted to the digital market place, that we have positioned to take full advantage of the continuing opportunities arising from growth of online sales and sales of ebooks.”

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:

“America’s Fastest Growing Small Publisher” Will Use DocZone Book Publisher to Simultaneously Publish Print and Digital Books

Skyhorse Publishing recently licensed DocZone Book Publisher, an end-to-end book publishing solution that automates output to both print and ebook formats. In 2011, Publishers Weekly named Skyhorse Publishing “America’s fastest growing small publisher.” Founded in 2006, the publishing company is quickly gaining recognition among customers and has already had three New York Times bestse

llers. Skyhorse—with its five imprints (Arcade Publishing, Allworth Publishing, Skyhorse, Sports Publishing, and Sky Pony Press) now boasts a backlist of 1,500 books.

“We are thrilled to add Skyhorse to the list of publishing companies who use DocZone Book Publisher as part of its digital publishing strategy,” stated Dan Dube, EVP Cloud Solutions at Really Strategies, Inc. “DocZone Book Publisher will help Skyhorse Publishing automate production processes and publish PDFs and ebooks without the use of off-shore resources while saving time and money.”

“We are often asked how a new publishing company can make it in the current environment,” stated Abigail Gehring, managing editor at Skyhorse. “Our focus is on quality content and implementing appropriate tools, like DocZone Book Publisher. As a result we are the nimble publisher who can publish great books with modern tools and processes.”

Some of the world’s leading publishers use DocZone Book Publisher to increase revenue with faster time-to-market and achieve an XML-first publishing process.

Really Strategies will introduce the newly released DocZone Book Publisherat Digital Book World Conference 2012 in New York City (stand 31) from January 23rd to 25th.The Digital Book World Conference 2012 is the only conference that offers trade publishers hard data on the state of the book business, as well as actionable, proven strategies for taking immediate advantage of opportunities as they develop in today’s publishing industry.

“DocZone Book Publisher is the only end-to-end book publishing solution that automates output to both print and ebook formats, as well as provides online editorial tools, workflow, and language translation. DocZone Book Publisher is the latest entry based on our award-winning DocZone cloud platform for XML content management and multilingual “push button” publishing. Now, book publishers can take control of their editorial and production processes for a similar price to using an offshore service provider. Any book publisher attending this event is invited to take part in a free consultation with one of our digital publishing specialists.” --Dan Dube, EVP Cloud Solutions

Some of the world’s leading publishers use DocZone Book Publisher to increase revenue with faster time-to-market and achieve an XML-first publishing process. 

According to Mediabistro, September 2010 ebook sales were reported to be around $40M. This year, September sales are reported to be $80.3M.

Now the optimist in me is thrilled to see +100.9% growth in the ebook market.

The pessimist is bummed that September represents a 10% drop from August 2011 ebook sales of $89M.

The realist is reserving judgment and waiting to compare numbers after December 2011 sales have been tallied.

The capitalist is concerned that overall tradebook sales have declined -6.45% since 2010.

The nihilist wonders what do books, sales, and half-full glasses even matter.

And The Dude says, "Hey, nice marmot!"

What's your view on the latest sales metrics?

 

On Thursday, December 1^st at 1:10pm in Theatre 4, near the XML Pavilion, Dan Dube, EVP, Cloud Solutions at Really Strategies, Inc. will speak at Online Information 2011, the largest event dedicated to the Information Industry.

Mr. Dube will present, “Success Stories: automated production of print and ebooks, featuring RSuite Cloud.” The presentation highlights RSuite Cloud, an award-winning, end-to-end publishing solution for book publishers.

“For book publishers, delivering content to devices like the iPad and Kindle is not an option, it's imperative,” stated Mr. Dube.  “With so many technology and outsourcing choices available to publishers, navigating the options often results in uncertainty and confusion.  In my presentation, I’ll share real-world case studies of book publishers who are successfully using XML-based technology to automatically produce multi-channel output to print and ebooks."

Digital editions of cookbooks have been on the slow cooker for some time now. But with the release of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and published by Alfred A. Knopf, digital cookbooks are gathering steam. Judith Jones*, retired senior editor and vice president at Knopf and the person responsible for bringing the book into our homes, insisted the digital publication wait until the technology could properly display the beauty of Julia's writing and recipes.

Well, that time is today. Knopf released the digital edition of this classic tome on October 5. Because no electronic files of the book were available, production staff had the book re-keyed and images scanned.

With the impending release of Amazon's Fire in November and the impressive metrics stewing for digital cookbooks, the time is ripe for cookbook publishers to go digital.

Check out our latest whitepaper "Best Practices for a Long-Term Digital Publishing Strategy" so you too can get cooking.

 

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*Judith Jones also saved The Diary of Anne Frank from the reject pile. And for that too, I thank you Ms. Jones.

RSuite Cloud the industry's first hosted end-to-end content management and automated publishing system, allows book publishers to create, manage, and distribute single-source content to multiple channels.

The Joss Group awarded RSuite Cloud the prestigious Seybold Report “Hot Pick.” The Seybold Report Hot Pick designation is given to products, technologies, and services that add obvious value to professional publishing processes and reflect the Seybold editors’ vision of where the industry is heading.

“RSuite Cloud is transforming the world of book publishing,” stated Dan Dube, executive vice president of cloud solutions at Really Strategies. “We believe there should be no barriers for book publishers to deliver content to their audience—in any format, in any language, at any time. RSuite Cloud is already making that happen, both at global publishing houses and at small boutique publishing firms.”

“When I saw this solution transform Word manuscripts into XML and then automatically publish print and e-books, I realized RSuite Cloud is how book publishers can get into the world of XML without high cost,” explains Molly Joss, owner and publisher of the Seybold Report.

Want to see RSuite Cloud for yourself?

At Really Strategies we are fortunate to work with a variety of publishers: journal, book, scholarly, trade, technical. Obviously each publisher has a different approach for navigating the digital publishing landscape.

What we often see are publishers who are creating loads of wonderful digital content yet their digital supply chains are heavily tied to the print medium. According to the American Association of Publishers,

“e-books have grown from 0.6% of the total Trade market share in 2008 to 6.4% in 2010. While that represents a small amount in the total market for formats, it translates to 1274.1% in publisher net sales revenue year-over-year with total net revenue for 2010 at $878 Million.”

This means content supply chains need to change in order to properly prepare for a digitally focused content marketplace. Download our latest whitepaper to understand best practices for a long-term digital publishing strategy.