The importance of XML is real, but practicality of PDF gets short shrift

Publisher's weekly seems to have missed a key part of my message during Rebecca's and my backlist tutorial, which is that the long-term term payoff of XML is sufficiently expensive and disruptive that it can't happen quickly for publishers with significantly smaller resources than Thomson's, and that image based solutions like PDF can meet a lot of needs very quickly, for publishers that don't want to postpone full entry into online markets another 2-5 years.
The Adobe announcements (especially integration of new e-book formats into print-oriented production tools) seems to present a more practical way for smaller publishers to change their workflows than the "big-bang" conversion project. But that kind of incremental strategy leaves existing PDF and image backlists just the way they are, and means that PDF will be a key part of all solutions for online marketing and product definition for the foreseeable future.
Sometimes the future's so bright that it can blind you to the present, or tomorrow.
I'll have more to say about Adobe's news, but I can say that I don't think the reader is the interesting part, even if it is a very Flash-ey demo

Comments

The Best Freaking Web Browsing Machine Ever

Contrary to our recent post, we do not actually believe Apple intended the iPad as a Tizra viewer . For all the talk of Apps and iBooks, the iPad's real significance is that it does a better job than anything we've yet seen of lowering barriers to using the web. You don't have to wait for it to boot up, it doesn't need to be recharged all the time, is small enough to keep on you most of the time, but is big enough that you don't have to squint or scroll too much when reading and can fit enough of your fingers on it to type reasonably well. Plus its touchscreen is intuitive enough and response is fast enough that you don't lose your train of thought while getting from one place to another. As Tim Bray says, " speed is a feature ." All these things come together to create something that enables us to work the web—with all its incredible power to inform and facilitate interaction—into more and more of the corners of our lives where it didn't ...

Make Your Own Marketing Widgets!

How LAB-AIDS is using the new widgets . Tizra now offers a Widget viewing mode that lets you embed your content in just about any standard web page just by inserting a little blob of HTML code. It's great for letting users "leaf through" samples of your content without interrupting what they're doing...whether that's perusing your online book catalog, reading a review, or as you'll see below, enjoying a fascinating blog post like this! It enables you to disseminate promotional samples widely via viral or conventional marketing campaigns, and to make the online shopping and buying experience as seamless and integrated as possible. For example, say you were a well-known Tizra customer like LAB-AIDS . You could give bloggers a simple snippet of code that would let them show their readers a thumbnail-sized sample of one of your beautiful books like this... All that's needed to embed the above sample is a little blob of code like this... <iframe s...

Princeton University Press Partners with Tizra to Take Einstein Papers Online

Unprecedented project will make nearly 30 volumes of Albert Einstein's papers available throughout the world. October 9, 2013 (Providence, RI) -- Princeton University Press has selected Tizra as the digital publishing platform it will use to make The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein available online. One of the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the documentation of the history of science, The Collected Papers will ultimately comprise more than 14,000 papers selected from all phases of Einstein's career and fill nearly 30 volumes. The online version hosted by Tizra will provide easy, searchable access to the full archive, and will offer features including: Powerful, bilingual search, with page-specific search results. Links between German text and corresponding English translations. Persistent, page-specific URLs to facilitate citation, referencing and discussion. Easy online viewing in all common web browsers, including those on the most p...

Tizra Blog

Search This Blog