With dedicated reading devices evolving tremendously and the increasing rise of digital books or eBooks, the digital publishing industry has witnessed disruptive and innovative developments during the past few years.

Digital Publishing is taking the next leap – moving from ePUB2 to ePUB3 and also Mobi to KF8. While some players are confused to adapt quickly, some others are waiting for the technology to mature more before investing.

Technology in digital publishing (or in an eBook) for a progressive digital publishing business can broadly be divided into the following components:

a) Content:

As the popular saying goes “Content is King”.  The academic publishing market is evolving with rapid dynamic content and publishers need to focus on entertainment and media companies as real competitors.  Learners (students) have more access to smart digital devices and have expectations that the content is more interactive.

Teachers are embracing evolving learning technologies to boost student outcomes with digital content in the form of lessons being developed in audio, videos and other interactive formats.

Education technology is a student motivator and many leading publishers are yet to make use of aspects such as typesetting to markup tagging and further to book apps, for now the services are yet restricted to page conversions only, unfortunately, due to lack of understanding of the technological advancements.

Online Content forms an integral part of the future of digital publishing as technology is enabling the amalgamation of all the aspects of digital publishing needs and the current standards lack depth and still need resourceful insights, which is an area of work in progress.

The evolving technology is slowing down the acceptance pace for both the vendor and the digital publishing platform as evolving digital publishing platforms support/incorporate features to keep the publisher future-safe (content) and also allow the creation of rich and interactive content.

b) Smart Devices:

Smart device usage is exploding on a real-time basis and target audiences are consuming content on their devices (particularly mobiles) in various interactive formats.

Although the rise in technological landscape is triggered by the rise of smart devices – mobiles and tablets – have taken the front seat to make this happen.

This is crucial for Publishers in the form of extending support to maximum devices to enhance scope.

Publishers have a huge business opportunity to deliver rich and interactive content to their customers (across devices), with the only challenge publishers facing is to deliver to a maximum range of devices, which includes omnichannel distribution of delivering content on customised apps and utilising the existing users to drive sales.

c) Publishing Platforms:

Publishing Technology Platforms is predominantly the crux of digital publishing strategy, for any publisher. The platform essentially defines the go-to-market strategy for publishers via allowing them to create/distribute digital content in the form of eBooks.

Depending on the capabilities of the publishing platforms, eBooks can be made available for free/periodic subscription and can further be enhanced in enabling in the marketplaces.

Publishers need to remain focussed on which content is performing better. The more the digital rich content is put into use, the more the performance of these multimedia assets needs to be gathered/acquired so that the end result or the feedback can better be used to create better versions of the eBooks.

Conclusion:

The Future of eBooks is distinct and has an overwhelming potential for the publishers to explore and unleash with the increasing role of technology, due to the following offerings:

 a) Content incorporated with the Context:

eBooks facilitate curated content with textual subject matter in audio, video and other digital rich formats, fostering better reading and enhanced learning experiences.

b) Search/Index Capabilities:

Search Features (with index capabilities) in eBooks make them more approachable and attractive which enforces results to be much more contextual.

c) Implementation of Cloud Technologies:

eBooks allow user-generated content to be saved on the cloud so that users can access them anytime and anywhere across devices.

 d) Fostering Collaboration:

From within the same eBooks, if users are allowed to share and collaborate with other users, it will make learning more fun and engaging, cultivating interactive learning.

For Ex:

• Share comments about a topic of the eBook
• Leave reviews on the topics
• Share lessons using Social Media

Collaboration, hence is innovative and the next generation of eBooks which is yet to unfold and hence is exciting.

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