Finally, there's a publisher that can do it all – IP.
Printed books, using the latest offset and digital technology. Online books for download from our site, your site or from hundreds of online sites globally. Audio books on CD or for sale by the track or album via iTunes or other online audio sites.
The sheer number of options for getting published work out there can be dizzying. You need a publisher who knows the business, has done their homework and has already established strategic partnerships with companies who know how to give work a second life in the digital space.
The time for waiting and seeing is over. Digital publishing and distribution is a reality. EBook readers such as the iPhone, Sony, Kindle and iPad are here to stay, and will only get better as the technology improves. The Age of the Lone Book is over, too. Books need to have many lives – and extended ones – as eBooks, audio, or even as multimedia. Increasingly, all of those options are feasible – if you work with someone who knows how to get your work into those spaces.
Enter the Digital Publishing Centre (DPC). A practical point of focus for publishing work in several forms (multiversions). This is not about the Death of the Book, any more than DVDs were about the Death of the Movie Theatre. This is about giving content creators, readers and viewers CHOICE and ACCESS. Creators in Australia need no longer see themselves at the end of a dirt road, distant from the marketplace. With digital multiversioning, your work can be available in cyberspace even before it appears in physical print.
At IP, this is nothing new. We've been providing these services to our authors for years. At a time when other publishers are just thinking about going digital, IP has more than 90 titles available via POD and more than 40 titles on the Kindle Reader. We've been offering these services as a bonus to our royalty authors for some time; with the DPC we now extend these services to authors and organisations that may not have published with us before.
What Solutions Does the DPC Offer?
Put simply, the DPC starts with a digital master that can easily be adapted to whatever format is required for other forms of publication.
Print books typically are output as press-ready pdfs. The same master can be output to POD companies to allow for copies to be printed on demand anywhere in the world, including on the new Lightning Source Espresso machine that can produce a high quality printed book is less than five minutes.
Using formats such as ePub, XML or mobi, we can then convert and upload masters to our eBook partners such as Amazon, ContentReserve.com, or to ReadHowYouWant, a company that specialises in producing large print versions for visually impaired and blind readers.
With the DPC, you no longer have to search for service providers for each step in the process of multiversioning and then coordinate their efforts to avoid duplication and added expenses. We can do it all for you.
IP was one of the first publishers in Australia to partner with the big POD players like Lightning Source and CreateSpace (formerly known as BookSurge). We may well have been the first to place our titles on Amazon's Kindle® Reader. And to develop an integrated workflow that makes our titles available as downloadable eBooks in print and audio form 24/7.
We've done the hard yards. Now we're ready to share what we know with authors, businesses and agencies – anyone keen to get their work out there and available globally, 24/7.
The sky's the limit. Businesses and Government agencies can benefit by making their publications available online or via download. Schools and higher education institutions can make texts, handbooks and guides accessible on site or at home.
Once published, a work never need go out of print. Once digitally published, its contents can be resized, searchable, divisible. And portable. Your library can be at the beach. Your workplace at a café. Saving trees. Reducing our carbon footprint. Making the publishing industry truly green.
There's never been a better time to think digital. And when you do, think DPC.
Interested? Read on to see what we can do for you.
Courtney Frederiksen
Editorial Intern, 2008