Technologies in booktrade

Introduction
Booktrade has gone a notch higher and is
now using technology to enable
digitization, online selling using devices
and platforms that accession or ematerials.

Technology
An art, skill, of making, modification,
usage, and knowledge of skills,
machines, techniques, crafts, systems,
and methods of organization, in order to
solve a problem, improve a pre-existing
solution to a problem, achieve a goal,
handle an applied input/output relation
or perform a specific function.
Technologies significantly affect human
as well as animal species' ability to
control and adapt to their natural
environments.

Digitization
The term digitization is often used when
diverse forms of information, such as
text, sound, image or voice, are
converted into a single binary code.
Digital information exists as one of two
digits either 0 or 1

eBook
An electronic version of a traditional print
book that can be read by using a personal
computer or an eBook reader. Users can
purchase an eBook on diskette or CD, but
the most popular method is to purchase a
downloadable file of the eBook (or other
reading material) from a Web site (such as
Amazon or Barnes and Noble) to be read
from the user's computer or reading device.

When a publisher decides to go digital they are
faced with a series of decisions they must
make:
o what content to digitize,
o how to digitize it,
o how to distribute it,
o how to market it and what to charge for it.
Every publisher will make slightly different
choices, depending on their budget, their
content, and their overall goals.
Digital Investment Strategies

Thinking outside the print box
Regardless of how a publisher decides to invest in
digital, once the decision is made it’s important to
begin thinking not only about how to use digital
to complement your print publishing, but of the
new possibilities digital represents. For example,
once you have created a digital complication of
short stories it becomes relatively easy to also
create individual digital files for each short story
and sell them separately. Your publishing house
could then make this a new product – the
individual short story and by so doing create a
new revenue stream.

Outsourcing
Most publishers, even large ones, engage in some level
of outsourcing. They might outsource their file
conversion or their distribution, or both. Building
some in-house capacity will still be necessary, as
communicating with converters and distributors,
properly archiving files and filling out metadata in the
best way possible but a firm will still require some
level of technical familiarity with the process
internally.
Three low-cost file converters:
Suntec (India)
Innodata (India)
Digital Divide Data (worldwide, with African HQ in
Nairobi)

Two examples of companies who do both file
conversion and distribution:
Magic ePub – specializes in fixed lay out
conversions
Pubish Green – will convert plain text, word or
PDF to non-fixed lay out formats
Two examples of distributors:
Ingram – the world’s largest distributor, with
distribution to libraries
De Marque – a global distributor that offers a host
of other solutions, including ebook marketing
and the creation of direct to customer e-
commerce sites

Digitization tends to be most suitable for publishers
with deep pockets, with a large amount of
educational or children’s content that they want
to make globally competitive. Investment can
mean investing in digital specialists, software or,
in some cases, buying other companies with
existing expertise or forming strategic
partnerships. Pearson Education, for example,
has invested in digital primarily through a strategy
of acquisition. Lacking in-house high-tech
capacity to build complicated learning platforms
to complement their university level texts they
purchased Effective Educational Technologies
(EET).

The Hidden Costs of Going Digital
While digital is often pitched as a way for publishers to
save money, this is not entirely true. Digital books do
not have to be printed, bound, stored and
transported, which for print books amounts to a great
deal of overall cost, however, the costs for digital
books come about in other ways. Some to consider:

Dual means of production:
It’s rare to find a book from a mainstream
publisher that is only published in electronic
form, which means that publishers still have to
account for print costs and now, the potential cost
of a dual production process addressing the varied
needs of digital and print publishing
simultaneously.

Human resources:
No matter how a publisher chooses to pursue
their digital strategy they will have to invest in
some amount of staff re-training. This can be
limited to learning how to organize, view, lightly
edit, ready files for sale and archive files to
investing in hiring new staff members who
specialize in the production of digital books.

Distribution:
Once a book is produced and ready for market, a
publisher must then consider distribution. There
are now many different platforms, each with their
convoluted process for signing up, own specific
requirements and benefits. In order to save time,
most publishers end up turning to a distributor
who then takes a percentage of the sales. This
means that a single book sale will be shared
between the platform (eg. Amazon), the
distributor (eg. Magic ePub) and the publisher,
which cuts into publisher profits.

Digital marketing:
Once a book is distributed it will still need to be
marketed. If a book exists in both paper and
digital form it will likely require two slightly
different promotional strategies which can
potentially result in higher promotional costs,
particularly as a publisher begins to familiarize
themselves with the digital marketing scene.

Legal fees:
Most publishing contracts, unless recently signed,
do not account for digital rights. This requires the
re-writing of contracts between the author and
publisher and potential re-negotiation. As well,
any contracts a publisher signs with a distributor
should be reviewed by legal counsel.

Interactivity
Interactivity is a big buzzword in digital books and the
ground is still being laid as to just what uses it offers and
will offer readers. Interactivity and animations in EPUB
come from JavaScript coding. Multimedia and text
content is governed by XHTML5.
At its best, interactive content is a new way for users to
engage with the material in a meaningful way. At its
worst it can have a distracting element. Therefore, it is
important to approach the subject of interactivity with a
well-weighed sense of what the goal is and whether or
not it will aid in accomplishing this goal, while
considering its cost-benefit analysis. Whether or not
particular books should be interactive, how interactive
they should be and which genres are more likely to
benefit from interactivity is a topic of ongoing debate in
some publishing circles.

Devices and Platforms
Though often related, devices and
platforms remain distinct. A device is, an
ereader, mobile phone, tablet, computer,
used read content and a platform is a
marketplace like Amazon or Worldreader
Mobile. The overlap occurs because
marketplaces, like Amazon, will also
manufacture devices that are uniquely
optimized to access their marketplace.

Devices
e-Readers
A device that has been primarily designed, though
not limited to the reading of ebooks. Textual data
does not use much storage, allowing one e-reader to
house a large collection of books. The market is
saturated with a daunting number of different
devices.

Tablets
Tablets are devices that are used for more than just
reading. They typically run the iOS or Android
operating system and have a color screen.

There are many eBook reading applications
available on a variety of devices
The Kindle, produced by Amazon, is a black and
white device that competes with the following
models: the Nook, the Kobo and the Sony e-
reader. The Kindle allows users to purchase
content from the Amazon bookstore.
The Nook is owned by Barnes & Noble and the
Kobo is tied to the Kobo marketplace. It’s
important to have a handle on the diverse
language surrounding e-reading devices. For
example, a device like the iPad can display ebooks
but is not referred to as an e-reader because it is a
multi-purpose device – one can surf the internet
on it, watch movies, check email, etc.

Android
Android is an operating system created by Google and its
array of software is intended for devices like mobile
phones and tablets. This customizable software, while
possessing common features, will display differently
depending on the handset.
The Android platform is one of the most popular
operating systems on the market (500,000 activations per
day). The Android operating system provides users with
access to Google services (YouTube, Maps, Gmail) in
addition to a host of other applications located in the
Google Playstore. The top reading apps on the mobile
market are android-based, like Flipkart’s, Flyte
application.

Platforms
In the digital age, platforms can be equated
to bookstores, with one exception that one
sell directly to customers. While these
retailers will provide the tools to help sell
efficiently, they will generally not assist
with marketing and advertising. But, they
will place digital content in front of a vast
pool of potential international customers
with varied reading tastes.

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com
Sign up: Free
Royalty per sale: 35%-70% depending on market
Ebook format: MOBI
Amazon is a US American multinational electronic
commerce company. It is the world’s largest online
retailer and also has the world’s largest selection of
ebooks. To some of its customers like Worldreader,
it provides technical and operational support as
well as discounted Kindle e-readers.

Kobo
http://www.kobo.com
Sign up: Free
Royalty per sale: 70%-80%
Ebook format: EPUB
Based in Canada, Kobo is one of the world’s
fastest growing e-reader services and has a
solid customer base from all over the globe. It
offers one of the largest catalogues of
international titles from all across the genres.

Scribd
http://www.scribd.com
Sign up: Free
Royalty per sale: 80%
Ebook format: EPUB; PDF
Scribd is a digital library that offers readers access to one of
the world’s largest collections of ebooks and written
works. It is well established on the basis of a subscription-
based service that allows Scribd subscribers to enjoy
unlimited books for a flat monthly fee while paying
authors and publishers when a book is read, as if the
subscriber had bought it in a retail ebook store. Authors
and publishers who distribute their paid content through
Scribd’s Subscription Program receive immediate and
comprehensive analytical data about uploaded content,
such as numerical and graphical display of data, reads by
region, search keywords, top referrers, etc.

Kalahari
http://www.kalahari.com/
Sign up: 5 ZAR (0.47 USD)
Royalty per sale: 94%
Ebook format: EPUB; PDF
South Africa’s number one online store is popular for selling
print and ebooks from across the genres and languages.
Kalahari puts sellers and buyers in touch by enabling
customers to ask publishers/authors questions about their
books. This opportunity for direct contact with the end user
increases chances to make sales. The feedback on sellers’
performance that customers leave on Kalahari also goes a
long way toward driving more sales, provided the feedback
rating is high.

eKitabu
 http://www.ekitabu.com
 Sign up: Free
 Ebook format: EPUB
A growing Kenyan ebook platform that allows
readers to buy literary works from publishers in
Kenya, Africa and the world and allows reading on
their computer, tablet, or Android and iPhone
mobile devices. To Kenyan publishers in
particular, eKitabu offers a complete set of
services to digitize, mobilize and monetize their
publications in digital format. eKitabu also offers
conversion of print books or any digital format to
EPUB; ebook distribution to Apple iBooks, Barnes
& Noble, Kobo and many independent ebook
stores worldwide.

Flipkart
http://www.flipkart.com
Sign up: Free
Ebook format: EPUB
One of the top ten Indian websites, is considered
the e-commerce company that has made online
shopping popular in India. Initially focused on
selling printed books, the company now offers
more, including thousands of ebooks from
Indian and foreign publishers. However, Digital
books, can only be purchased and downloaded
within the Indian territory, but can be read
across computer, tablet and mobile devices.

Other distribution platforms
Okada books (Nigeria), Mazwi (Zimbabwe),
Barnes & Noble (USA), iBooks (USA). Each
has their own requirements to purchase
and might find setting up a seller account
necessary depending on where a bank
account needs to be located. Some require a
credit card to purchase while others like
eKitabu allow consumers to purchase books
with M-Pesa.

Formats
Mobipocket
A French company that developed its
eBook creation and reading software
when eBooks were still in their
infancy, and managed to flourish in
the nascent market, eventually being
purchased by Amazon in 2005. The
Mobipocket format is based loosely on
HTML 3.2

Kindle Format 8 (KF8)
Released by Amazon in late 2011 is the successor to
the old Mobipocket format, and has been updated to
include a variety of new features and functionality.
KF8 has support for HTML5 and CSS3, and it also has
a built-in fixed layout format well-suited for children’s
eBooks.

ePub3
Released in 2011, it has continued to gain traction in
the marketplace. It is currently officially supported on
only a few reading systems, but be ingested by eBook
retailers.
ePub3 has been updated to include better support for
foreign languages, embedded media, and other core
features and enhancements.

NOOK Kids
“ePib” is the unofficial name of the NOOK Kids
format. This is a fixed layout format used for
children’s eBooks in the Barnes & Noble NOOK
platform. It is not supported on other devices or
platforms
The NOOK Kids format has a few useful features like
audio narration and region magnification, but it does
not allow embedded video, page zooming, or other
features that are available in other children’s eBook
formats.

iBooks Author
Author is a proprietary eBook format
created by Apple and intended for complex
non-fiction eBooks like textbooks,
cookbooks, etc. The iBooks Author format
is used in the iBooks ecosystem, and it can
only be created in the iBooks Author
program on a Macintosh computer.
iBooks Author files are inherently fixed
layout, meaning that the design is static
and does not allow readers to change the
font size or other visual settings.

Portable Document Format(PDF)
Adobe products like InDesign or Acrobat can be
used to generate PDF files. The problem PDF files
have in the modern eBook world is, texts in PDF
files cannot reflow to fit small screens. eBook
devices like the Kindle and Nook, as well as
phones and tablets like the iPhone, iPad, and
Kindle Fire, have screens that are smaller than a
typical computer screen or even than a standard
print book. As a result, when a PDF file is loaded
on such a device it usually needs to be zoomed in
to be legible, forcing the user to scroll left and
right to be able to read all of the text on a line.

ISBNs
The number of print books and eBooks
published every year is going up, and
tracking all of those books and files is not
easy. To facilitate tracking through retailers
and other places, publishers and authors
use International Standard Book Numbers
(ISBNs).
According to the International ISBN
Agency, every format of a book sold must
have its own ISBN assigned to it.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)
 A systematic approach to copyright protection
for digital media. Its purpose is to prevent
unauthorized redistribution of digital media and
restrict ways consumers can copy purchased
content. Although digital content is protected by
copyright laws, policing the Web and catching
law-breakers is very difficult. DRM technology
focuses on making it impossible to fraudulently
get content.

The use of digital rights management is not
universally accepted. Some content providers
claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright
infringement and that it can help the
copyright holders maintain artistic control or
ensure continued revenue streams. Those
opposed to DRM contend there is no evidence
that DRM helps prevent copyright
infringement, arguing instead that it serves
only to inconvenience legitimate customers,
and helps big business stifle innovation and
competition. Works can become permanently
inaccessible if the DRM scheme changes or if
the service is discontinued.

Print on demand (PoD)
A printing technology and business process in which
copies of a book (or other document) are not printed
until an order has been received, allowing books to be
printed singly, or in small quantities.
When is PoD used?
Print on demand can be used to reduce risk when
dealing with "surge" titles that are expected to have large
sales but a short sales life (such as celebrity biographies
or event tie-ins):
 Print and reprint "niche" books that may have a high
retail price but limited sales opportunities, such as
specialist academic works.
 Allows for books to be printed in a variety of formats.etc

Marketing eBooks
A big part of the success of any publishing
project lies in marketing. There many ways of
marketing books, but the key is to know your
readers and learn how to get your book to
them.
Any book marketing plan should include the
basics of marketing: a good website and a
social media presence.

A book’s website will become the center point of its
marketing and reader engagement. It will be where
readers learn about the book: the plot, the characters,
the author, and how to buy it. With a publisher site,
set aside some pages for the book, with extra
information and details that will draw people in.
Services and tools like WordPress.com,
WordPress.org and Blogger can be used for basic
websites or blogs.

Social media - Facebook and Twitter, are
useful for connecting with some readers,
but:
Don’t use your personal Facebook
account for book marketing.
Don’t post junk on your social media
accounts.
Be real.
Don’t engage the trolls.

Distribution
With an ever growing number of platforms, each with its
own specific quirks many publishers opt to use a
distributor. When picking a distributor consider the
following:
What kind of reporting services do they offer? Can you
see, for instance, what countries your books sold into and
how often is this data updated?
What fee do they charge or what percentage of sales do
they take?
Which platforms do they distribute to?
How easy it is for one to change or update your metadata?
For example, can price be changed to account for sales or
promotions?

Some of the Distributors include:
Ingram
Overdrive
De Marque
Book Baby (often used by self published authors,
slightly more geared to that market)
Firebrand
Slightly smaller distributors:
Magic ePub (based in Germany)
eKitabu (based in Kenya)
Publish Green
Digital Divide Data

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