9-Point Guide for Switching to ePublishing from Traditional Books
Here’s your guide to epublishing.
With the growth of digitization in the past few decades, publishers realized that sticking to the print publishing model might soon put them out of business.
The urgency to switch to digital publishing became more evident when smartphones developed into this all-in-one tool that could double up as a learning device as well.
And very soon, companies and educational institutes started demanding their content to be published in digital format so as to cater to these new-age readers who prefer smartphones over books.
So, as people’s preferences changed, many publishers gradually started adopting digital publishing. While the adoption has been slow, ePublishing has definitely made it easier for publishers to create and distribute content.
But even today, there are some publishing houses that are skeptical or rather apprehensive to make the move to digital publishing. Either they are worried about managing the technology, the expenses involved, or fear losing their user base.
Firstly, digital technology is quite easy to operate and manage.
Secondly, it is more cost effective than print publishing.
And third, you will gain more users by switching to epublishing.
Moreover, print publishers have newer challenges to face, such as the availability of free content on the internet and their declining reader base. So, instead of avoiding technology, they need to adopt it to create and deliver content in innovative ways.
9-Step Publishers Guide to ePublish Their Content
1. Reuse Existing Content by Converting it to ePUB
Just because you have now decided to go ahead with digital publishing does not imply that your existing print manuscripts and documents have gone to waste. These can still be reused optimally by way of ePUB conversion.
Print to digital conversion is possible, whereby you get to retain all your print documents as is in the digital format. And once it’s been scanned and digitized to PDF or text file, it can then be converted to ePUB. ePUB is the standard format of eBooks recognized globally and supported by most eBook readers.
Learn why You Should Go For ePUB over PDF
2. Select a Cloud-Hosted ePublishing Platform to Create New Content
We saw how you can utilize your existing content. Now if you want to create fresh content from scratch, there are epublishing tools that can help you do it.
An eBook publishing platform lets you create as well as publish and distribute digital content. You can opt for one such platform to author new content.
And it should preferably be a cloud-hosted digital publishing platform since storing copies on local computers is a bit risky. Cloud storage guarantees the safety of your materials. And since it’s a central storage system, you can authorize multiple people to access it anytime they want.
Of late, almost all businesses have shifted their data to the cloud. This shows that cloud storage is reliable, and you too should look for a publishing platform that allows cloud storage.
3. Pagination
This is one area where technology has proved immensely helpful. From manual pagination and indexing which required days of labor, today we have digital table of contents that can be created in a jiffy.
You can design the layout of the eBook in a much more efficient manner. You even have pre-designed templates that you can use directly.
4. Choose Between Fixed or Reflowable Layout
Depending on the content of your eBook, you can decide which layout would be best suited for it. For books which have mainly text content, you can opt for a reflowable layout, as this will allow for a seamless reading experience.
The content adjusts itself as per the size of the device screen and the reading pace of the reader. Whereas if you have many image files in your eBook, it would be best to opt for a fixed layout.
5. Add Videos, Images and Audio Files
One of the major drawbacks of print books was lack of interaction and engagement. ePublishing solves this problem. You can make your eBook as interactive as you want.
An epublishing platform lets you add high res images, videos, audio files and much more to make the eBook livelier and more interactive. This lets your reader engage with the content.
If you are publishing school e-textbooks, adding such interactive elements will help students in learning and understanding concepts in a much better way. Here are 8 Reasons to Create Interactive Textbooks for Engaging K-12 Students
6. Add Interactive Widgets
Apart from multimedia that enhances the engagement value of your eBook, you can also add a number of on-page interactive features. These interactive elements include text search, which lets the user search for a particular word / phrase in the eBook and find it in an instant.
Other such useful features include bookmark, text highlight, backlight adjustment, orientation, changing font style and size, pen tool, etc.
Guide:
How to Create an Interactive eBook
7. Add Appropriate Metadata
Metadata is an integral element of digital content. The internet is loaded with a humongous amount of content.
So, if you want your readers to find that piece of content that you have created, then you need to add the right tags.
Metadata increases the searchability of content. Not just on the world wide web, but even if the user is searching for your eBook on an eStore, the app still needs to showcase your eBook up front.
Think of it as an advertisement, where you want your eBook to stand out from the rest. Adding relevant metadata ensures that users can find your content among all the others.
8. DRM Protection for Content Security
You must have set a revenue target for the content you developed. Now you don’t want unauthorized users to copy and distribute your content for free. In order to safeguard your content against such illegalities, you need to opt for DRM protection.
DRM will ensure that only authorized people can access and download your content.
Guide: Know How to Create a DRM Protected eBook and Distribute it Securely. Download Now!
9. Publish and Distribute
Now that your eBook is all set to hit the market, you can publish them for your readers. But, before you publish, you need to check for ebook distribution options. How are you going to ensure that your eBook reaches the maximum number of readers.
This is where you look for an eBook distribution service provider who can organize, manage, and distribute your materials to all key retail platforms. Some eBook publishing platforms also enable publishers to effectively distribute content on eStores. Here are 5 Reasons Why Publishers should opt for eBook Distribution Services
Conclusion:
Automation is the way forward. If you consider the pros and cons of digital versus traditional publishing, you will find that digital publishing has way more to offer than traditional publishing.
It’s cost effective, time saving, and can produce a better output that users find engaging and compelling.
And the entire process of creating and publishing an eBook can be made easy with the help of the right epublishing tool.
As more and more people are consuming content on their digital devices, it is becoming important for publishers to adopt epublishing in order to improve their revenue as well as business output.
Related:
- How to Identify the Best eBook Conversion Services
- 9 Best Cross-Platform eBook Readers
- How to Distribute ebooks on Online Platforms
- Best Practices in Publishing & Distributing eBooks at Scale
- Best eBook Publishing Strategies Every Publisher Must Know!
- How to Create an Interactive eBook in 10 Steps
- How to Select the Best Digital Publishing Platform
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