Skip to main content

Case Study: Small Medical Publisher Proves You Don't Have to Be Big to Sell Direct

Image
By

"We were most comfortable with Tizra because of their personal approach. As a small company, we wanted a close relationship with a company that provides the same level of support we deliver to our customers." 
-- Curtis R. Vouwie, President and Publisher, OEM Health Information, Inc.
Download the Case Study

OEM Health Information, Inc. is a small company with an outsized presence in its field.  They have been publishing books on occupational and environmental health topics for over thirty years, and their books are relied on by doctors and nurses who need to be able to access information in a wide range of settings, and have no time for tech hassles.  "We needed an ebook solution that provided simple, reliable access from the clinic or from the road," says President and Publisher Curtis Vouwie.

With a small staff, Vouwie knew he needed outside help in choosing the right digital publishing platform.  He partnered with Laura Fillmore at Open Book Systems (OBS), a publishing services company equipped to help publishers transition to digital. OBS helped OEM determine which titles should be made available in digital form and what capabilities were required in a digital publishing platform. After investigating many options, OBS recommended Tizra.

"It was a very easy decision in the end," says Vouwie. "Not only did Tizra's software give us the capabilities and control we were after, but their business model was more appealing because it let us retain our profits."

Tizra worked quickly to get OEM's ebooks ready in time for an important presentation to over 1,000 physicians. As part of the setup, Tizra also provided web design services, tailoring the look of OEM's Tizra-hosted storefront so it blends seamlessly with their existing website and supports the continued development of OEM's all-important brand. The design also took advantage of responsive techniques to automatically optimize for mobile and tablet users.

After going live, OEM has been able to take a DIY approach to managing its digital storefront, taking advantage of the simplicity and flexibility of the Tizra platform including:
  • Testing new pricing and promotions on the fly.
  • Introducing new products, including digital-only ebooks on niche topics.
  • Keeping content up-to-date without delays from intermediaries.
With the flexibility of the Tizra platform, the company has been able to experiment with new kinds of sales models, including higher-priced subscription options, targeted offers using coupon codes, discounts for multi-title purchases, and downloadable product offerings using Tizra's social DRM watermarking.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Postcard from Tools of Change

By
Think back to the summer of 2007. The first iPhones are just hitting the stores. Kindle is still a gleam in Jeff Bezos' eye. And in the words of Publishers Weekly, "a festival of practical geekery" is taking place in San Jose, CA. That festival was the first Tools of Change for Publishing conference. We were there , of course. And while comparatively small, it was the largest gathering we'd found of people who cared as much as we did about the transition from print to digital books. That's still true today, which is why I'm excited to be on the floor of ToC 2010 as I write this. The show's a lot bigger now, and has spread beyond its geeky roots to focus on seismic shifts we're all aware of…the explosion of handheld devices , social software and changes in the ways all of us find and use information. If you're here, come see us. We'll be in booth 114 with our partners Digital Divide Data , and you can ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kindle's Cool, but Remember the Web?

By Abe Dane
If anyone can obsolete the printed book, Amazon can, and they're clearly taking a formidable whack at it with their handheld Kindle reader. We can't help wondering, though, how many consumers will really pay $400 for a single-purpose reading device, when alternatives from a riotously competitive hardware market combine reading with phone, messaging, music and other capabilities. For example, the iPhone pictured here, with a tasty looking page delivered via Tizra's Agile PDF . We wish we could say it's the result of some special technology we came up with for delivering books to mobile devices, but really it's just a byproduct of the fact that Agile PDF makes books work like the web. So as the web finds its way into more mobile devices, so will books published with Agile PDF. Meanwhile, of course, there are already a billion or so eager readers accessing the web through more traditional means. By the way, the sesame crusted tuna's from Montreal's Aix Cui...
Post a Comment
Read more