Tizra Blog

A post over at the No Shelf Required portal highlighting a new  whitepaper  from  Oxford University Press recently caught our eye .  Navigating Research examines  "how users seek contextual information and guidance for areas of scholarship as they conduct research, and how reference resources can support their work.” Key findings of the paper,   include, among others (bolding ours): recognition of ‘reference’ as a specific category is declining and users are not likely to identify ‘reference resources as those belonging to a distinct category research needs of today’s researchers are moving away from basic factual information and terminology (for which free online sources are used) resources offering guidance to a field of study retain appeal as a ‘bridge between introductory materials and specialized research publications'” resources offering guidance to a field of study are also used to support work in interdisciplinary fields use of ref...

ACCESSE17  - the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives - takes place in Québec City July 25 - 27, and Tizra will be there! Well, our own Abe Dane will be there, facilitating a new session during Thursday’s breakfast called the  Reciprocity Roundtable . Abe will be leading a discussion on the category of “relevance” - as in an association’s relevance to members, their professional development and career advancement. Roundtable attendees can expect to learn the power and practice of reciprocity; find solutions to issues while focusing on contributing to others; build relationships and trust with colleagues; and learn about and help one another. All that and breakfast, too! You’ll find Abe and other early risers at 7am in QCC – Room 200B, with roundtable sessions beginning at 7:30 am, and ending at 8:30 am.

We recently came across the post, " Digital marketing scales and that could create new opportunities for capable publishers " by Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company While written with trade publishers in mind, it has some good news and helpful takeaways for niche-market, mission-driven publishers -- especially those who are Tizra users. The post puts a spotlight on publisher Open Road Integrated Media's success with discount pricing and vertically-focused digital marketing campaigns, and their continuing expansion as a marketing services provider for competitive publishers. Open Road offers those competing publishers visibility for their niche titles in its highly target-marketed newsletters, reaching an ever increasing number of niche readers. In a win-win arrangement, those publishers reach more potential readers, and Open Road is able to share news about additional relevant titles - making their newsletters even more valuable for the readers. Open Road...

Continuing the Feature Frenzy series , today we'll introduce the new account batch loader, which provides a simple way to create and tag user accounts on Tizra hosted sites.  Who cares?  Anyone who wants to do things like... Sell content via email promotions  — The loader lets you quickly add members of your mailing list, and give them access to special deals, free samples, etc. Deliver content in bulk to schools, companies, etc.  — Use the loader to fulfill large numbers of orders quickly when selling through an existing sales team or other offline method. Manage "members only" access  — The loader provides a quick, simple alternative to single sign-on integration, helping associations and other groups keep member lists up-to-date. We'll detail some sample applications in upcoming posts, but first, the basics: To use the batch loader, just go to the "USERS" area in the Tizra Control Panel, then click the "Upload" button down at the bottom o...

Continuing the Sisyphean task of trying to blog as fast as Tizra is upgraded, today's Feature Frenzy  covers the new Sampling License, which as the name suggests, makes it much easier to give away precisely those chunks of content that advance your marketing mission...while keeping the rest behind the paywall or otherwise off limits. The sampling license is ideal for promotional strategies like... Using one content format to promote another  — Say you want users to have free access to a web-only version of your content, but to charge them for the convenience of a version they can download, print, or load into their iPad or other ereader.  Or maybe you want to charge for video, or other multimedia extras. Metered paywall — Gives users free rein to sample whatever parts of your content interest them, but limits the total number of pages they can view.  With the Sampling License, you can achieve an effect similar to what publications like the The New York Times ...

Tizra isn't the same software it was a year ago. Or even a month ago. In this series, we'll outline a few recent upgrades that are making our software more useful and valuable all the time. Upcoming posts: Promoting your content with flexible sampling licenses . Quickly creating and tagging user accounts with the new batch loader . Tailoring advanced search with custom fields. Applying and updating access and sales terms across large numbers of documents, or document subsections, with the new content lists. Single Sign On integration with popular association management software. Customizing user profiles to gather key demographic details. Today: Quick fixes and updates with new publishing options. Ever have post-publication panic…that sudden chill when you catch an error right after clicking "Publish to Live"? Fixing these slips has always been pretty easy with Tizra, but now it's quicker and your users need never know it happened…even if you goofed...

You may have read that Rhode Island's making a serious push to establish itself as a hub of innovation and economic growth in the green energy sector. At the core of this effort is a document called "A Roadmap for Advancing the Green Economy in Rhode Island," which was unveiled today by Governor Carcieri, Senate President Paiva Weed and RIEDC Executive Director Stokes at an invitation-only event keynoted by retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark. Perhaps less well known is the fact that the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation tapped Tizra to deliver the document, which can be found on their website at… http://publications.riedc.com/view/qe2ne/default It's a great example of how an organization can simultaneously provide faster and easier access to information, while simultaneously fostering local economic development, and preserving natural resources that might otherwise go into printing hundreds of copies of the document. Or for all you P-Bruins fans, you...

After extensive internal testing, the Association of Research Libraries has begun offering recent issues of its flagship publication on a public test site hosted by Tizra. The organization announced recently that Research Library Issues is now available in full-text searchable form at… http://publications.arl.org We're thrilled about this, not only because because it's a vote of confidence from a high profile organization, but also because ARL's membership includes some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world (including the libraries of MIT and Indiana University, whose presses are already using Tizra). In addition to greater production efficiency and flexibility, ARL's use of Tizra stems from a desire to provide members with capabilities including… Better full-text search. More targeted references via social software and other links. Better compatibility with web enabled mobile devices like the iPhone. We are proud to count ARL—and RLI reade...

Don't get us wrong. We love Google, as anyone who remembers what web search used to be like in the days of AltaVista , Excite and even the World Wide Web Worm has to do. But there are certain things even Google doesn't do particularly well, particularly taking users to the relevant part of a long document...without long downloads and repeat searches. Here's a quick video showing how Tizra solves this problem (among many others), based on actual experience we had looking up our trademark on the official US Patent and Trademark Office site. Note: Click the little TV icon above to see it big!

In business there's only one thing more meaningful than having someone trust you to make good use of their money, and that's having them do it again! That's exactly what Rhode Island's Slater Technology Fund has done by announcing they'll increase their investment in Tizra . Slater's been involved in Tizra from the days when we were just a few guys with an idea--initially with advice, and then with investment . They've been a great partner, always pushing us to dig deeper, think harder, do better and ultimately to believe in the potential of what we're doing. Now that that potential is bearing fruit , we're thrilled to see them increasing their involvement.

I'm a real fan of MIT Press books, and have been for years. Lots of interesting stuff for me in Computer Science, New Media, Electronic Music, and all are well designed, beautiful books, which also matters to me. I have a bunch on my shelves, and more on my "buy someday" list. And this week, we have the public announcement of the Tizra-hosted MIT Press CISnet site . This makes me feel really good because it's very much something that came from a daydream I had last year. I was up at MIT to talk with the (excellent) Venture Mentoring Service, and stopped in at the MIT Press bookstore after the meeting. As I was looking around, but not quite able to find one volume to buy, I thought that I'd pay right then to have access online, like the ACM digital library. I'd happily pay to browse around, search and use books for reference, and then later I might buy volumes that I really wanted to dive into. So we approached MIT Press with the idea, and now there's a gr...

Famed for its plant collections, architecture and setting, The New York Botanical Garden is not only an exceptionally beautiful place, but a place for cutting edge research. The New York Botanical Garden Press communicates discoveries made there and elsewhere, and with three journals, five book series and more than 200 books, it is one of the largest publishers at any botanical garden in the world. We're thrilled to announce that this renowned institution has chosen to begin making its publications available online with Tizra's Agile PDF. It's pretty exciting when an organization that's been around since 1896 decides to work with one that's been around since 2006. But consistent with their forward thinking spirit, we get the sense they're pretty excited, too. "I am convinced that online publishing is a key part of our future," said Nate Smith, associate director of the press. "We've wanted to make our books available online for years,...

We're happy to announce that The Federation Press , one of Australia's leading publishers of legal, social and academic journals and books, is now a Tizra customer and partner. It's especially validating because Federation clearly went out of their way, conducting an international search before settling on us, a new company on more or less the opposite side of the globe. The decision seems typical of the independent, entrepreneurial, and yet pragmatic spirit Federation brings to publishing. With more than 400 books in print and twenty years in business, they're hardly upstarts, but they still place an emphasis on basics like efficient manuscript turnaround and quick order fulfillment. They're also a great fit with Tizra's innovative online publishing approach because of their international audience, and their focus on broadening access to traditionally esoteric topics through clear writing and creative marketing. We look forward to helping Federation add an...

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...

A brief moment for a minor bit of boosterism. Duke University Press has come on board with Tizra as a charter customer, something we’re excited about for a couple of reasons. We're seeing how the emergence of long tail sales strategies is beginning to transform book publishers’ business models. The Duke books program, with its combination of long-lived scholarly and trade content, is particularly well-suited to a long tail sales strategy. We are also really delighted at the prospect of working with such a smart and forward-looking publisher.

This is a bit of a hormone-supplemented blog post, but I hope the length is worth it. We spend a lot of time pitching to potential investors. You need faith in your idea, and an ego of steel, because they're usually critical. I find it helps to think about all the great companies that barely got funded, were rejected by everyone, etc. That's nice for confidence, but you also need to think hard about every objection; they've dealt with a lot more business plans (certainly than I have, probably than you have, too). So once I've cheered myself up, I try to follow up on my "they just don't get it" boosterism and look to see if it's me that just doesn't get it. This note is inspired by some criticism that I don't believe, even after thinking about it. One prospect didn't like Tizra's business model of helping publishers sell their own stuff; he prefers to create or license large aggregations of data. "Aggregations mean real value and...

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!