Postcards from Frankfurt Book Fair 2016 – Reflections & Takeaways

The KITABOO team is back after a packed schedule of back-to-back meetings, insightful conversations, making new friends and catching up with old ones at Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) 2016. A mega gathering of publishers worldwide, FBF transforms the city of Frankfurt into a global marketplace for meet-ups, networking, deal-making and just getting the industry to know each other in the publishing world. So, here we were, 6th time in a row, at the publishing capital of Europe.

FBF – A watershed for publishers

We had to be at Frankfurt Book Fair, not because it’s a mega event to network, but because it is the only event that gives you insights on the global markets like no other. Everyone in the book business globally is here. Our automated platform “Kitaboo” showcased three innovative digital publishing solutions – a ready-to-license K-12 Digital Content Library, ePub Automation for PDF to eBooks in any language and Kitaboo Author – an eBook authoring tool for publishers.

Digital is serious business

Our conversations with publishers gave us the assurance that digital is now no more just a cost center or an investment in technology. Mobile apps, interactive eBooks, ePub automation, DRM security, 3D animation, and gamification are all in demand and publishers are scoping products and solutions that offer these for their book business across all genres of trade, children books, and academic publishing. Digital is now important for publishers because it means revenue, business sense and customer service.

Thanks for dropping by…

With a packed schedule of meetings lined-up for all the days, we received an enthusiastic response from visitors who dropped by our booth to learn or enquire more about the digital solutions offered by Hurix Digital. The mobile app feature of Kitaboo was especially popular among publishers. It did not matter if they were a large size publisher with thousands of books or a small publisher with 10-20 book titles – they were all looking at digital solutions for ease of doing business with their B2B/B2C customers.

This year’s FBF journey helped us gain a better understanding of why Kitaboo is the right technology at the right time! Here are some takeaways:

Mobile App for Book Distribution: Many publishers have been selling on third party websites and giving away profit cuts per sales of books, but don’t want to continue doing this anymore. They want to go solo and sell online under their own brand, titles, and authors. Moreover, they are looking for a solution that offers them their own branded mobile app to sell in the world of the online/eCommerce marketplace. Kitaboo was an ideal fit as it offers Kitaboo Author for interactive authoring, custom-branded reader app and eBook Store for secured distribution/sale of books for online/offline reading.

Localization Services: Today, more than ever before, translation/localization is a business need as they target new countries and markets. Publishers now want a wider spread of their content in different languages and not restrict themselves to a given geography. ePub automation is the fastest route to automatically create error-free eBooks in any language. Please read our blog on PDF to ePub of books written in native languages to find out more about Kitaboo and its translation powers.

Interactive Content: Can the content itself talk, play videos, or read aloud in multiple languages? Publishers are exploring new formats of content in publishing. It’s not just PDFs and eBooks that they want now. They want their readers to engage with the content – click, watch, hear what’s written and not just read them. A ready-to-license and share Digital Content K-12 library was an instant connect with academic/educational publishers. Packed with more than 4000+ fun & interactive learning nuggets for K-12 classrooms, the digital library caught the attention of many at FBF this year.

HTML5: The growing volume of digital reading on devices has led to the demand for HTML5-ready content. Publishers stocked with volumes of flash content were looking for HTML5 conversion services.  Many of the visitors at our booth asked for an end-to-end HTML5 conversion service provider to help publishers refurbish/create digital content.

Let’s stay connected…

Our team had great conversations, discussions, and networking with publishers at Frankfurt and we hope to see you there next year! In case you missed us at the show and need to know more about our Products and Services, please Drop us a Note HERE.