Key Trends in Cross Media Publishing

Steve PaxhiaDirector- Publishing

PracticeThe Gilbane Group

Bill RosenblattSenior Analyst

The Gilbane Group

http://gilbane.com

About Gilbane Group

• Consulting and market research firm• New research initiatives on various aspects

of digital publishing• Collaboration• Beyond the E-Book - Cross-Media Publishing

Strategies• Digital Magazine and Newspapers• Enterprise Rights Management

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Outline

• Research Study Highlights• Digital Magazines and Newspapers• Collaboration• Cross-Media Publishing

• Strategic Trends in Cross-Media Publishing• Search and Discovery• E-Books and Devices• Content Infrastructure

• Conclusions

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Strong Growth in Digital Periodicals Key Statistics

• Number of titles and page views grew better than 40%

• The number of pages read and the average length of sessions grew more than 100%

• The number of links clicked grew than 100%

• Number of Unique readers grew more than 150%

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Industry projecting significant growth

• All vendors projecting growth between 30-50% in all categories this year and next

• Growth is expected to continue in new titles, new digital readers, and time per session

• The rate of active linking is strong and is expected to get even stronger

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Trends

• Digital editions and websites becoming complementary

• Search becoming an important reason for preferring digital environment• Prediction- more publications will offer archiving • Prediction- Publications will begin to work

together to allow their readers to find more information on topics of keen interest

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Collaboration and Community in Book Publishing

• Already an important force in Reference Publishing

• Learning Communities in Higher Ed• Note Sharing and online interactions with faculty

growing very rapidly

• Café Scribe, VitalSource• Merlot, Digital Marketplace

• Digital Initiatives growing in K-12• Curriki

• SAP Netweaver Forum• Near-Time O’Reilly • Libre Digital Mash-ups

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Collaboration Data Summary

100% 100%

74%

51% 50% 49%

25%

9%

5%

36%

55%

39%

24%

43% 42%

36%

20% 18%

11%14%

10%

58%

48%51%

65%

73%

50% 49%

18%

37%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Email

Web

sites

Web

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Wikis

Blogs

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currently using

rate very effective

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Trends

• Collaboration and community technology being deployed to connect customers with the publication and with each other…

• Advertisers report being happy with the creative avenues being provided by digital advertising and also like the measurability and rapid feedback

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Search & Discovery Trends

• The Discovery Paradox • Professionally selected, edited, produced content

generally not findable online• Leads users to “good enough” free alternatives

(Wikipedia)

• SEO • Constant expense, black art• Arms race with diminishing returns• Limited impact anyway

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Search & Discovery: Rights

• Key obstacle in solving Discovery Paradox• Not the same thing as “DRM”

• Hugely complex problem• Solutions can be expensive, disruptive• Many publishers still in denial

• Solutions• Technical (ACAP, text fingerprinting)• Ad hoc licensing• Litigation

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Search & DiscoveryPredictions

• Text fingerprinting will drive licensing deals• Web crawling, recognition of publishers’ content

on websites

• Standards face long road ahead• Little incentive for search engines to play• Incentives will come from search startups that

want to index premium content

• Rights Information Management will grow and help• Publishers build rights information databases• Use to inform automated licensing arrangements

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E-BooksLessons from Music Industry

• Fragmented device market• Amazon Kindle could become iPod of publishing,

but…• Fragmentation impedes growth

• Device makers try for lock-in• Proprietary DRM exacerbates this• Economic incentives need to be aligned

• Customers want to share• Needs to be much easier • Cannot be done without device maker cooperation

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Cross-Media Infrastructure

• CMI 1.0• Install centralized content management

system• (that’s it… hope it works… usually fails)

• CMI 2.0• Federated technology infrastructure• 80/20 rule on enterprise-level

functionality• Investment in process, organization, and

skill changes• Content creation treated independently

from output format (not just XML…)

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CMI Example:

• Before:• Consumer Reports magazine editorial staff• Ad hoc repurposing for books, website• Very limited product set

• Media Neutral initiative• Reorganization of editorial by subject matter• Publication groups become “customers” of

editorial groups• Cross-media content development the norm, not

the exception• Technology mostly unchanged

• After:• New product development much easier• A thousand online flowers bloom

• Next up: technology, now that processes and organization are in place!

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Cross-Media InfrastructurePredictions

• Growing awareness of product planning• Product/feature plans drive requirements• No more “build it and they will come”

• Editorial will lead the way• Processes, organization, skills first• Technology close second

• Metadata problem taken more seriously• “MLS” skill set• Taxonomies• Tools and processes

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Prediction

• Publishers will soon seek to be involved in the reader’s complete information cycle• Browse• Search in context• Link to related data• Present new information based on algorithms

that analyze past information consumption• Use Geography data to present more pertinent

info

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Giving Readers the Best Choices

• Paper and Digital• Functionality that fits the media• New products for New readers• Communities that work• Business models that fit the product and

media