Skip to main content

Books That Are Websites - Worth More Than a Thought

By
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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

By
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 the pow
Post a Comment
Read more

More Eggs in More Baskets: How the AWS Outage Made Us Stronger

By
Like a lot of web companies, we learned some hard lessons from the Amazon Web Services outage of a few weeks ago.   We didn't lose a single byte of data, but we resolved never again to put one service provider—no matter how large and diversified—in a position where its failure could cause a serious interruption in service for our customers. As promised, we 've now finished setting up automated data backup and redundant server infrastructure in facilities maintained by a completely separate company:  Softlayer Technologies .  Like AWS, Softlayer maintains the high security and reliability standards we require, including SAS 70 Type II Certification and PCI DSS Compliance.  And their Texas location adds geographic diversity to the Virginia and California regions Amazon gives us access to. This is in no way the end of our efforts to improve reliability and security.  We'll keep refining backup, failover and recovery processes to ensure not only that our customers' dat
Post a Comment
Read more

We're Live

By Abe Dane
Congratulations to two publishing organizations that over the past couple of days became the first to go live with sites built using Tizra's Agile PDF : eat.shop guides Green Building 101 from Rate It Green The first is a fast-growing publisher of printed city guides with an emphasis on creative design and local flavor. The second is a web startup aiming to facilitate information sharing and growth in the burgeoning business of green construction. As one look at the sites will tell you, they're two very different organizations. But both have taken an exciting first step toward new online publishing revenue. Better yet, both are doing it their way, with complete control over their own products, brands and strategies. And they are doing it with none of the technology investment or lead time that traditional custom information commerce projects have required. How? We'll begin taking the wraps off of that part in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, drop a note to info@tizra.com i
Post a Comment
Read more