Skip to main content

Books That Are Websites - Worth More Than a Thought

At the Bookseller's FutureBook blog, Molly Flatt does an excellent job of summing up the incredible advantages and opportunities that browser-based books offer over books as apps and ebooks.

The post is definitely worth a read. In it, Flatt argues that books as apps lead to an unpleasant experience for readers, due to both the barrier of entry of downloading and the inconvenience and disruption of leaving the "walled garden" each time one clicks on a link.

Tizra's publisher clients would most likely agree with Flatt that apps are equally if not more painful for publishers: "From a publisher’s point of view, producing and distributing content via an app is a total pain - from creating complex InDesign files to working with frustrating external shopfronts such as the Apple Store. And it’s useless for SEO." 

Noting the advances by leaps and bounds that web design has made in recent years, Flatt states plainly that the web now "better caters for long-form storytelling".

Flatt then takes the argument for browser-based books beyond apps, to ebooks - which we concur are aptly described as "those clunky, unattractive, digital-but-not-native things that run within low-grade apps...Those things that have been crying out for a rethink for at least a decade...". 

As Flatt comments, "truly native browser books, redesigned fresh each time, offer exciting possibilites to authors and publishers in terms of design, interactive extras, data gathering and SEO". We at Tizra couldn't agree more!

Tizra's digital publishing software was built to allow publishers to easily create "books in browsers" from within their own websites. Publishers can control access to their content; optimize it for discoverability, sharing and sales; unbundle and remix it for new products; and incorporate multimedia. Plus, Tizra can easily be integrated into existing systems, offers automatic mobile content optimization, and provides built-in agile ecommerce tools.

For Tizra, books as websites have proven worth well beyond just a thought - and resulted in successful business models for our client publishers! To learn how Tizra can put your books into browsers, drop us a note, or sign up for a demo.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Using XML to Create a Better Online Reading Experience for the American Payroll Association

Congrats to the American Payroll Association on their recent launch of XML-based publications on Tizra!  Thanks to this collaboration, APA's authoritative books for payroll professionals are now available in crisp, reflowable HTML, creating a user experience that feels like a truly digital native product, rather than a conversion from print. XML-based publishing also creates a better mobile reading experience, supports more precise search and navigation, and opens the door to better accessibility for users with low vision and other disabilities. Our partners at  Scribe  did a great job supporting APA through the process of producing the XML for loading into Tizra, and we’d definitely recommend them to anyone interested in such a transition. It’s hard to overstate what a big step forward this is for Tizra as a platform and a company. XML has long been planned for in the product's architecture, but now for the first time, we have a working example that demonstrates t...

FEB 11: Catch our Lightning Demo at Tools of Change

When the first Agile PDF sites launched recently, we promised we'd be saying more soon about how the sites were built. Well, the first public demo is coming up at the O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference in NYC: The Five-minute Publication Site —Part of the TOC Lightning Demos Series, February 11, 7:30-8:30pm, Broadway Ballroom As the name suggests, we'll be showing just how quickly a publisher can move from PDF files to a flexible, customizable website selling digital content. And of course, if you've got a bit more than five minutes, we'd be happy to answer any questions. We'll be exhibiting immediately after the demos at the TOC Faire , and happy to talk at any point during the rest of the conference. Drop us a note at info@tizra.com .

Slater Invests in Tizra

This is a big one for us. Rhode Island's Slater Technology Fund is betting $500,000 that Tizra will "really open the floodgates for book-based content from thousands of publishers." Their investment caps a year in which we've gone from four people , two dogs and an idea to a company that someone besides us and our friends and families believe will set online publishing on its ear. We even have our very own Forbes article . Thanks to the folks at Slater for being great advisors as well as investors, and to the many friends and family members who preceded them!