As e-book publishing matures, the need for consumer insight becomes more urgent and the lack of it makes businesses increasingly vulnerable. The only analytics available with print were sales and reviews which didn’t make for a particularly enlightening post-mortem. Eventually with the web you also got customer reviews/ratings, blogging and social chatter, but we’re only now beginning to monitor these things systematically and they don’t always make it back to the editorial group.
Book Prices and Book Value
How Can You Single Out E-Singles?
Should Indies Sell E-Books?
Chris Tabor, Michael Neill, and Christoph Kapp entertained an audience of about 40 on Monday at the Store2012 conference. I had the pleasure of moderating this opinionated panel and I think—bias well in place—that it was a very good panel discussion on how independent retailers can participate in the conversation around digital books.
EPUB Validation Made Easy
Having had the opportunity in the last year to help write and edit the EPUB 3 specification, I can commiserate with people who find the process of putting a publication together a little daunting. It can be a challenge to pull all the basic requirements together and verify whether you’ve met them all. Fortunately, there are tools that can help make sure that your coding is correct and that your book will open and work in reading systems. Not surprisingly, the IDPF maintains a free validator called EpubCheck for exactly this purpose.
The tool hasn’t always been the simplest for lay people to use, however; it has a bit of a reputation of being built by geeks for geeks. If that’s been your perception, don’t fret because help is on the way!
S Is for Sesame, That's Good Enough for Me!
Well, tickle me Elmo! In case you missed it, we’ve confirmed Mindy Brooks, Director of Research and Education at the Sesame Workshop, to talk about How to Reach and Teach Preschoolers with Digital Books at the BNC Technology Forum 2012.
Best Practices for Assigning ISBNs to Digital Books
I Went to Boston for a Free Tablet
There were many, many acronyms that were being tossed around at the latest Gilbane Conference. Gilbane is a research and consulting company that looks at the emerging trends in technology and content creation. There is a strong focus on Tool Vendors at this conference, if you’re in the market for a new CMS. Or, if you’re a consultant who needs to know what’s available to manage marketing, content creation, content translation, globalization technologies and social network management, than this is also the conference for you.
Here are some key takeaways from the conference.
#CMPTO Offers 10,000 Points to All Attendees
Over 50 tech printies turned up to hoist a beer to the changing dynamics of the reading world last Wednesday night at our third Code Meet Print event.
Gamification, social reading, and crowdsourcing were the topics of the night. Here’s a recap of how the night played out.
