in General

Poking a dream with reality: Status of publishing industry [Part 1]

[toc]

It is inevitable to embrace technology to deliver content. It is indisputable to adapt to new models of content delivery. It is antique to stick to cults of content delivery. There must be an interesting hybrid. Evolved to survive, transformed in aspects that cannot be changed and stands strong on the ideals of the industry.

Intent

To understand the revolution already took place in this industry to generate a new business model. To embrace technology as deliverance for the dying traditional methods.

Stages of publishing

pre-production

  • editorial: of course, the most important stage where the whole success story lies.
    • [cite importance]
    • [investigation of tasks involved]
  • design: as required by content and highly demanded by marketing
    • [cite importance]
    • [investigation of tasks involved]
  • sales and marketing: sales required by modes on content delivery and
    • [cite importance]
    • [investigation of tasks involved]

modes of content delivery

  • printing, binding and distribution
  • eBooks
  • Amazon Kindle
  • playbooks
  • standard web tools with security for reducing piracy.

Reason for a new publishing model [4]

The decline of print media has been explored endlessly. Everyone is agreed that the traditional business model is broken. And most people agree that there is no silver bullet that will solve the problems facing publishers in this new environment. To summarize the new reality:

Print circulation is declining across the board, and in many cases will become unsustainable as a mass distribution channel.
Advertising revenue in the print medium is declining rapidly, and advertising overall is becoming fragmented across many types of properties, including social networks, blogs, aggregators, and other services.
Content is expensive, but almost no one will pay for it online.
Publishers are able to freely reach much wider audiences than ever possible before, including new emerging markets, but the competition for eyeballs is fierce.
The problem is huge, affecting hundreds of publishing companies, and many thousands of employees at those companies.

Different kinds of publishing house silos [3]

  • The Traditional Publishing market is dominated by 5-10 big publishers per country.
  • Most of the bestselling authors in India are associated with these publishers.
    There are many small publishers beside these juggernauts, who have no bestselling author to boast of
  • There are almost as many Vanity publishers who boast of being able to turn your dream of being an author into a reality.

ISBN

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique[a][b] numeric commercial book identifier.

What is ISBN? [1]

An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a book. For example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, and 10 digits long if assigned before 2007. The method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country.

To get ISBN number in Germany and India respectively. Other agencies that provide ISBN nationally can be found in the link [2] . The third one comes up online all the time 😉

  1. http://www.german-isbn.de/standards
  2. http://isbn.gov.in
  3. http://www.bowkerlink.com/common/StatementOfUse.asp?from=corrections&rgs=bip

Tools

Typesetting

Indesign can be used for professional typesetting or better, LaTex can be used for professional typesetting. Its an open tool with high flexibility for compiling pages together in a PDF but requires expertise.

[5] also came a popular tool for typesetting but looks like it is tailored for specific market.

Cover designs

Photoshop, Illustrator are professional tools for rendering and drawing out amazing graphic arts.

Content delivery

with the context already set for declining circulations of books, it is important to set up a parallel supply chain network to create and deliver the content directly to users on different platforms.

References

  1. International Standard Book Number
  2. Find an agency | ISBN
  3. How do I start a publishing company in India?
  4. http://idioplatform.com/blog/the-new-publishing-business-model/
  5. QuarkXpress

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