So what’s the future of digital publishing like?
Publishing has certainly come a long way since Gutenberg invented the press. Digital publishing was born in 1983, and since then, it hasn’t looked back. In fact, digital publishing has evolved as fast as the business models have. What was once the preserve of the cream among writers, has now opened up to the world at large, with radical new self publishing models. eBooks rule, but print books are not kicking the bucket yet!
Take a look at this infographic that describes the journey from desktop publishing, to the eBooks of today. And, it showcases some radical pointers to the future!
There is a strong debate that print media is being impaired by digitization. In spite of this raging argument, it is a fact that print media and publishing houses have actually welcomed this development quite enthusiastically. The reasons are:
- The technology is affordable
- Considerable savings on space
- Portable and travel friendly
- Ecofriendly
- Convenient to handle content
By eliminating the necessity of physical handling of content, digitization preserves content and makes it available to readers forever, meaning that content published digitally stays for good. Today, smartphones, tablets, and eReaders are giving substantial impetus to the “Digital revolution”. In addition to this, digital publishing is now undergoing drastic transformation with the “responsive design” concept. Here the content is published so as to fit the device type used by the reader. The USP of digitization is the fact that your content is not restricted to just one region.
2 comments
Beautiful graphic. But it would be a shame to see every eBook become an app. Why confine eBook media to proprietary stores and formats when HTML5 technologies like PubML http://www.pubml.com make it possible to display beautiful, enhanced eBooks in the web browser? This notion that the web is for “pages” and we should buy “sophisticated” content in somebody’s store is shallow. The demise of Flash stripped app-like capabilities from the browser (too bad), but paginated, reflowable text looks like DATA anywhere else. The browser is already the most powerful, flexible, and consistent platform for eBooks.
A free Internet with open-source formats is a cornerstone of contemporary society. Let’s not give away chunks of that too casually. Big publishers and bookstores may choose to exclude free channels from their plans, but we don’t have to buy that vision.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for taking the time to comment! 🙂
We totally get where you’re coming from. But our crystal ball said it – and we had to publish it! 😀
As a matter of fact, we do believe in the power of HTML5, as we’ve mentioned in this infographic https://suyati.com/infographic-enterprise-mobility-revolution-biblical-proportions/
We think web based apps built on HTML5 will flourish. And there’s no reason why books can’t be displayed with HTML5 too! When we say app, we’re leaving it open ended as to how the app will be built.
In some cases, like, say a book on ‘The Game of Thrones’, or ‘The Hunger Games’, an app with animation, videos, games, and more embedded in, would make sense!