It is probably coincidental, but since the launch of the Apple iPad to the world, there has been a wave of children’s books arriving through our doors here in Rutland for us to look at. They are all lovely books on subjects varying from castles and creatures to science and philosophy.
The common questions from the clients that send them to us include how to make money from these books in a digital format and what to do with them to make them something more than just an electronic book which does more than just enable you to flick a digital page.
At this stage, it is easy to dive straight into being creative because the books we see are graphically rich and beautifully written and they lend themselves to the inventive imagination of our development team.
But, you have to be start with a far more pragmatic approach if you are going to make something which is both appealing to your target market and commercially viable. And at this point, the process highlights the differences in sectors of the publishing industry today.
Science, technical & medical publishers (STM) and educational publishers are, generally, advanced in their digital plans and products. It is not surprising, in some ways, because schools have been ‘digital’ for some time with most classrooms equipped with interactive whiteboards, networks, hardware and software for helping the children to learn. Academia has been sharing information and publishing it over the web for a very long time.
Trade publishers have had less necessity to ‘go digital’ until more recently when Apple injected a sense of excitement into what could have been thought of as a cosy industry quietly clinging onto the printed page, hoping that nobody really liked digital books.
But, that attitude has now gone in trade publishing and they are all energised by the potential that digital technology offers. That energy has to be used correctly so that the right questions are asked at the start of the process of making money out of digital books while delighting your customers.
The questions that should be asked have to be based around boring but practical realities such as for which platform are you publishing your books for? If you have educational books in print which you sell into bookshops, how are you going to get them into the educational market? How much money do we have to invest in making extra content for these books? These are just a few questions, but you probably get the idea.
The fact is that you have to be very clear about the answers to these questions. When you have the answers in place, you can start to build a digital publication which your customers will like and which is profitable.