1. Electronic Content Delivery
and Customer Intimacy
‘Publish it & they will read’, is a print paradigm
Nizar Jamal
CTO, Impelsys
Private and Confidential

2. Agenda
Market Trends Challenges
Customer Intimacy Questions

3. Who we are?
• From inception till 2009, Impelsys has powered more than
2000 projects for billion dollar publishers to small million dollar publishers
• We have invested in our core technologies, iPlatform, VirtualPages and
iDAMS. We have built them over the past 5 years and the technologies are
serving millions of readers worldwide
• We launched iPublishCentral (ipublishcentral.com) as a Software as a
Service (SaaS) model leveraging our years of experience. iPublishCentral
allows publishers to create widgets, book previews, portals and a digital
warehouse for their titles; and experiment with their content online in
minimal time and at minimal cost. The goal is to bring down costs by
allowing publishers to market, warehouse, distribute and deliver content
online with a pay as-you-go pricing.

4. Key takeaways from this presentation
Customer
Interaction Strategy
Control Relationship

5. Market Trends
- Total book sales rose 1.0% in 2008, to $40.3 billion, and are expected to rise
1.8% in 2009
- Unit sales fell 1.5% last year
Source: BISG Trends 2009

6. Market Trends
Trade ebook sales increased to $37,600,000 in Q2, 2009 & reached $16,200,000 in July 09
Source: IDPF Industry Statistics (http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm)

7. Publisher Market Segments
Religious Publishing Professional Publishing
Trade Publishing University Press Publishing

8. Publisher Market Segments
ELHI Publishing College Publishing

9. Consumer Market Segments
Individuals Libraries
Corporates

10. Consumer Expectation
Multiple formats: Participative:
.epub, .mobi, .LRF, .LIT, .palm for “I matter and so does my opinion”
various devices.
Available:
Multiple pricing Anywhere, Anytime
options:
Content chunking and rentals

11. • Pace of innovation and reader trends
continue to accelerate, publishers
need to adapt to the changing
environment.
• Being prepared to meet the market
demands of tomorrow – today - isn’t
a luxury, but a necessity.

12. Challenges

13. Challenges
Multiple formats, hardware devices, software
Which one will win? What formats?

14. Challenges
Cost and Risk
Cost of experimenting and risk of competition

15. Challenges
Conversion costs
• Tagging/Metadata
(how deep?)
• Time to Market

16. Challenges
Challenges in depending on others
Who controls it?
Who is gaining insight into user behavior?
Who understands the market needs?
Who can develop products that meet these needs?

17. Importance of Customer Intimacy
as e-Strategy

18. Why Customer Intimacy is Important?
• To understand reader behavior and
preferences
• To meet the ever increasing and growing
demands of readers
• To make informed decisions
• To make your business future-ready

19. How to Establish Customer Intimacy?
• Sell directly to readers
– Launch your own portal to build direct relationship with
readers
• Gain insights into reader preferences
– Study readers’ usage behavior and demographics
through in-depth reports

20. How to Establish Customer Intimacy?
• Engage and stimulate readers
– Leverage interactivity and community features
like user-generated posts, comments and
ratings

21. How to Establish Customer Intimacy?
• Experiment online
– Offer various pricing models like individual title
sales, site-wide subscriptions and rentals
– Understand what works and what
does not

22. Thank You
Nizar Jamal
nizar.jamal@impelsys.com