Welcome to the Spring 2006 issue of KNOWLEDGEWISE, as we continue our mission to offer perspective on the latest trends in Content, Knowledge and Publishing. This issue features a Q&A with Nick Bogaty, executive director of the International Digital Book Publishing Forum, formerly known as Open eBook Forum. Mr. Bogaty offers an update on the new developments in e-book publishing and notes that 2006 could be the year in which we finally see a significant uptick in this arena. We also report on SafariU, an innovative custom-publishing initiative by O’Reilly Publishing, which could have far-reaching implications for the entire textbook industry.
As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions on how we can make KNOWLEDGEWISE even better. Enjoy.
The Editors, KNOWLEDGEWISE
Since it was formed in 1998, the International Digital Publishing Forum, originally called Open eBook Forum, established a framework for advancing common standards among its member organizations—software companies, publishers, consumer electronics manufacturers and consumer advocacy groups. In this issue, KNOWLEDGEWISE talks to Nick Bogaty, executive director of IDPF, about his organization’s mission and whether this could be a watershed year for digital publishing.
We have two main thrusts: promoting trade and industry standards.
On the trade side, we promote the industry of digitally published work through conferences, statistical reports, policy doctrines and surveys. We also develop and place articles on electronic books.
As for standards, the organization is responsible for building and maintaining industry standards that benefit consumers and the companies that bring e-book-related products to market. We created the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) Specification in 2000 that allows publishers to deliver content in an electronic format. There have been two subsequent releases since then, and we've made them available on our Web site. Publishers use our standard to transfer their publishing files to XML files, which are then more easily converted into end-user files. That’s widely referred to as the open exchange format.
Our efforts to support standards also include establishing a format for the cleaner encapsulation of files so that a publisher needs to send only one file into their distribution chain, making it easier and cheaper to create e-books. The second is to update the OEBPS in order to improve the adoption and viability of the standard as both a cross-reading system interchange and production format, as well as a final publication delivery format.
Membership is evenly divided between academic and trade publishing companies, software companies, consumer electronics companies and advocate organizations. The primary benefit that they all gain is a common standard, but they also benefit from the industry-related data on sales, consumer surveys, library surveys and the like that we release throughout the year.
Originally, the public perceived e-books as something that were solely designed to be downloaded to computers for offline reading. Over the last several years, the direction of our membership and industry has broadened to include a number of ways to provide online access to books and other forms of digital content, including online search.
The public demand for e-books still hasn’t matched the industry’s vision. As a whole, e-books is still a very small industry with only $15 million in U.S. sales last year. However, it’s growing at an annual rate of nearly 40 percent and this year and the next could represent a significant watershed for e-books. We’re seeing significant investment in the e-books space for the first time since the early 2000s. Sony and iRex Technologies, among others, are releasing new e-book reading devices. Several software companies have created e-book reading devices for personal digital assistants (PDAs), and mobile and smart phones can be used to read on-line and to download books. Things are looking much more promising now.
The main issue continues to be consumer adoption. What’s the feature that will get them hooked on e-books? So far, we’re finding that the vast majority of end-users prefer to read books on PDAs. Screen size is not an issue, they want portability. So consumer products companies are coming out with new devices such as cell phones that also display e-books.
For publishers, the issues are selection and price. Consumers feel that electronic text should be less expensive than books in print. And they want greater availability. For example, about 70 percent of the New York Times best seller list is available in e-books and that still means that a lot of popular titles are not available.
The jury is still out on how to make money from e-books. Publishers are increasingly looking to monetize e-books themselves. HarperCollins, for example, is setting up a data base of their own books.
There’s also the issue of control of digital book files. Publishers have the copyright and control the files, but will they control digital assets in the future? Just look at all the issues that have been raised by the Google, MSN and Yahoo digitization projects. The answer probably will shake out along with the new devices.
A lot of research libraries are also interested in digitizing text to ease research and to create on-line digital libraries. They’re trying to find out what their on-line future is going to be. The fear of being left behind is a pretty good motivating force.
I encourage everyone to visit our Web site at www.IDPF.org. And for more details about our upcoming Connected & Mobile 2006 conference, which will be held May 24 in New York, please visit www.IDPF.org/mobile.
Amid some fanfare, computer book publisher O’Reilly Media broke into a new market this year with the introduction of SafariU, a custom course publishing platform for the college market. SafariU aggregates O’Reilly’s impressively wide and deep catalog of computer science and IT books—along with books from several other major computer book publishers, such as Addison Wesley, Prentice Hall and New Riders—into a Web-facing publishing platform for university professors and professional trainers.
Custom publishing is not new to the higher education market, of course. Enterprising college students, always eager to find a cheaper alternative to textbooks, have fueled the used textbook market for decades. Publishers have countered by routinely introducing new text books, but this solution is costly and not always effective. In response, higher education publishers have turned to custom publishing. McGraw Hill rolled out its Primis custom publishing system in 1989, and the major college publishers have not looked back. According to recent research from Simba Information, custom publishing is the fastest growing segment of the college publishing market.
Soaring prices for college books has also prompted the growth in custom publishing. A Gilbane Report case study on SafariU* cites a US GAO report that recorded textbook prices increasing at twice the rate of inflation and tripling in cost from 1986 to 2004. These cost increases make the used book market even more attractive, of course, but also cause professors to think twice about assigning several, quite expensive standard textbooks when those books may only be partially used in a given course or semester.
In addition, college professors have strong opinions about what should be in their course materials and what should be considered extraneous. Many of them have written their own materials, and all of them have assembled a range of outside materials that they incorporate into the courses—journal articles, presentations and other primary materials. At the end of the day, the course materials presented to students reflect a fairly eclectic range of content from multiple sources, not just one textbook.
To that end, systems like SafariU play an important role for professors. They allow the professors to select from a broad offering of authoritative materials and combine them with their own. The system then collates the materials into PDF, prints, binds and ships them to the professor or his designated bookstore. This is very similar to other custom publishing platforms from major college publishers such as Wiley and Pearson, though SafariU does add some nice additional features. The system will dynamically build an online syllabus for the instructor, with links to PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and multimedia files. It also provides collaboration features that allow professors to share syllabi and other content with other professors.
What is also different about the SafariU platform – and which may have far-reaching implications for higher education custom publishing, and for custom publishing overall—is that O’Reilly built it using books encoded in XML from the SafariU repository. This gives professors access to more modular content that can then be published to both print (PDF) and the Web (HTML), enabling O’Reilly to maintain and add to a single base of generically encoded content. As a result, they can systematically update content and reuse that content across titles and products.
While the original target market for SafariU is higher education and professional development, O’Reilly is already using it as a platform for selling to their core audience of computer science and IT professionals. In January, O’Reilly announced a new product, Rough Cuts, which gives readers a chance to buy O’Reilly books before they are officially published. Readers get an early snapshot of an emerging book—and mechanisms for providing feedback. Thus, the reader who has a pressing need for the earliest look at a hot new technology (books about Ajax and Ruby are among the first rough cuts) can, as the Web site suggests, “get ahead of the curve.”
Clearly there are opportunities with this kind of platform, and O’Reilly has already tapped two markets. Their early commitment to XML (and SGML before that) has helped O’Reilly Media develop this kind of platform—and will efficiently help them develop new platforms and products in the years to come.
* Innodata Isogen Partner Mark Logic played a key role in helping O’Reilly Publishing bring SafariU to market. To read more, download a copy of the Gilbane report at www.marklogic.com.
Innodata Isogen Webinars are now available as podcasts, audio broadcasts that can be downloaded to any device and listened to at the users’ convenience. The Webinars feature leading industry speakers on such topics as DITA, page composition services, editorial services outsourcing and Structured Product Labeling. Visit Innodata Isogen's Knowledge Center for a full menu of the podcasts available for download.
For the second consecutive year, KMWorld Magazine has named Innodata Isogen one of the Top 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management. The magazine sifts through more than 1,500 companies to select those whose ideals of true knowledge management, and products and services fundamentally transform the way organizations operate. “These companies have helped create, enhance or define a market, and they all share a remarkable capacity for agile, customer-driven innovation,” KMWorld stated. With more than 51,000 subscribers, KMWorld is the leading information provider to the knowledge management systems market.
An article in the February issue of BtoB Media Business listed Innodata Isogen among the online publishing services providers that can help publishers create online content. The article, “Running out of Real Estate,” focused on the increasing demand for online advertising, which some experts estimated will grow at a pace of 20% or more for the next five years. The article also noted that the Web sites for many publishers are now sold out for extended periods of time. The increasing demand for online advertising is prompting publishers to redesign Web sites, build more robust search engines and explore new opportunities to generate revenue through online content.
KMWorld Magazine reported that INPUT, a market research firm specializing in government business, estimates that federal spending on knowledge management will reach $1.3 billion per year within the next five years. INPUT's figures include data warehousing, data mining and analytics, but not categories such as enterprise content management and customer relationship management. The primary factor driving this growth, according to INPUT, will be the demand for better information sharing among different government agencies. Consulting firms will be active participants in this growing market because of the key role they play in creating knowledge management applications for large organizations such as federal agencies.
Common Sense Advisory estimates that the market for outsourced language services will grow to $9.4 billion worldwide this year, up 7.5 percent from $8.8 billion in 2005. The firm based its calculations on the aggregate revenues of the companies active in the business, freelancers, and an approximation of the revenue generated by international and ethnic marketing agencies, boutiques, system integrators, consultants, printers, and other service providers who facilitate translation and localization.
Learn more, and view the top 20 translation companies for 2005
Idiom Technologies Inc., Waltham, Mass., opened a new office in San Mateo, Calif., to meet the growing demand for its software solutions that accelerate and optimize globalization initiatives.
The new office will help the Waltham, Mass., company better meet the demand for its WorldServer platform, and improve service to its customers in the region including Adobe, eBay, Mattel, Medtronic, Oracle and UGS.
ANTHEA Languages opened a new office in Brussels and an extended production platform on the French Riviera. The company also announced that it had increased its engineering/testing and project management capacities.
Dec 2 - Dec 4, 2008
Online Information 08
The world's leading event for online content and information management solutions.
Jan 27 - Jan 28, 2009
SIIA Information Industry Summit
This annual Summit of industry leaders is one of the very few forums providing strategic guidance to the information industry's senior business leaders, bankers and technologists.
Visit our Knowledge Center, a continually updated archive on all aspects of content creation, management and distribution.
Knowledge Center »
KNOWLEDGEWISE, a report on content and knowledge management trends, knowledge services and publishing technologies from the work process and technology experts at Innodata Isogen.
Volume 3, Issue 2
Volume 3, Issue 1
Volume 2, Issue 3
Volume 2, Issue 2
Volume 2, Issue 1
Volume 1, Issue 2
Volume 1, Issue 1
(201) 371-2828
Request Information
RSS Feeds
