Tizra Blog

An email from one of our customers this morning reminded me that sometimes it’s best to just get out of the way and let them do the talking.  Following is unedited text from John Weatherby, Director of Product Line Management, at LAB-AIDS  (and an umpire in his spare time), on why he recommends Tizra to his colleagues...                 Reliability of TIZRA – we have experienced very little downtime during the course of our relationship and that is critical, especially to teachers that rely on access during class time                 Cross platform Capabilities – This is key in my mind as the diversity of the products teachers and students are using to access TIZRA is an issue. To develop something in-house that would work across all platforms would be fairly complicated                 Technical Support – You guys have done a great job supporting us and tr...

Targeted promotions and content bundle upsells are two ideas to test in optimizing sales. This is the third in a series of blog posts based on our webcast,  "10 Factors to Consider when Developing your Digital Publishing Strategy."  You can still watch it in its entirety here: So far we have talked about the importance of understanding your   audience  and whether or not to sell direct . Today, we investigate the various monetization strategies publishers utilize.  The entire publishing industry has been experimenting with pricing and delivery models, from the Netflix-like subscription services offered by Oyster and Scribd, to bundling of ebooks with print editions, to chapter-at-a-time sales and more. Yet no single pricing model has emerged.  What does that tell publishers? It means that you need the flexibility to experiment with your pricing strategy and adapt quickly to market fluctuations and demands. You will need a commerce and delivery...

"We needed to find a way to keep all our of customers together on the same site," --Melanie Jeffs, Director of Digital Products, Orca Book Publishers Orca, a Canadian-based publisher of award-winning books for children, teens and reluctant readers, used to maintain separate websites and e-commerce platforms for its various digital offerings. The company had its free teaching resources under its own domain, separate e-commerce stores for the U.S. and Candian booklists, and a third site supporting paid subscriptions to its Text2Reader language arts resources. Maintaining these disparate platforms was a headache and didn't provide a smooth customer experience. "We needed to find a way to keep all our of customers together on the same site," said Melanie Jeffs, Director of Digital Products at Orca. After closely examining a number of different e-commerce solutions, Orca selected the Tizra Digital Publishing Platform because it offered: The ability...

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the International Association for the Study of Pain launched eBook sites on Tizra almost simultaneously. Site launch announcements tend to be a bit like high school football coverage in small-town papers: The only people who pay attention are the players and their families. We think today's news is a little different, though. It involves two very prestigious organizations with similar goals going live on Tizra almost simultaneously, and as a result, serves to emphatically highlight some trends of broad interest in professional publishing. Why did both the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the International Association for the Study of Pain choose now to go-live with eBook portals on Tizra? Each had their reasons, but a few common threads... Both view delivering value to, and building relationships with, members as mission critical, and therefore wanted a digital publishing platform that would help the...

While the opportunities in digital publishing keep growing, so do the challenges. It's no longer enough to get your content online and figure out how to market and sell it. The digital audience is getting broader and more diverse, which means you need to adapt to new ways of consuming content. Helping publishers meet these challenges is Tizra's mission, as demonstrated in recent enhancements like improved mobile support ,  enhanced online reading , and better ways to deliver digital first-content . Now we're going a step farther, and adding text-to-speech capabilities through a partnership with ReadSpeaker , the worldwide leader in this area since 1999. Soon, you'll not only be able to reach users across a wide range of devices and platforms through Tizra, but will also be able to reach all levels of reading ability, different learning styles, and users with visual and other disabilities. This partnership is a great fit not only because ReadSpeaker's commitmen...

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) provides leadership in public and information policy to 125 research and academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada. A few years ago, in an effort to increase community engagement and reduce costs, ARL made the move from print to digital publications using the Tizra platform. "Our goal was not just to go e-only, but to get there with enhanced functionality," said Publications Program Officer Lee Anne George. When evaluating digital publishing platforms, ARL had some critical requirements including: Support for existing publication formats A full e-commerce platform supporting both free and paid content, as well as password- and IP-authenticated access for individual users or entire organizations Mobile responsive design support Full-text searching including relevancy ranking and linking to specific pages in search and social sharing Support for ARL's digital accessibility mandates After extensive testing, incl...

This is the second in a series of blog posts based on our recent webcast,  "10 Factors to Consider when Developing your Digital Publishing Strategy."  If you weren't able to attend, you can still watch it in its entirety, including the interactive question and answer session here.  In the first post of  this series, we talked about the importance of understanding your audience . Today, we turn our attention to another of the most important decisions a digital publisher can make: whether or not to sell direct. As you may have recently read, many large publishers such as HarperCollins, Sourcebooks, and F+W Media, have begun selling digital content direct to consumers through dedicated websites, such as Narnia.com and Pottermore.com, or branded mobile applications. Others are waiting in the wings, but starting to establish direct relationships with consumers through direct marketing and social media. Of course there are trade-offs to be made, do you cede control ...