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What Authors Can Learn From The Sale of The Times Magazine

‘In September 2018, the iconic news magazine was being sold for $190 million to Benioff, one of the four founders of Salesforce, a cloud computing pioneer.’ Source – Forbes

With the sale of one of the most venerable magazines in the world, one thing has become clear – print publications need to adapt according to the digital evolution or else be prepared to head towards extinction.

Back in the day in the year 1923, when Times magazine started, it gained huge popularity by employing a hit formula – short, punchy items which collated the previous week’s events.

However, it failed to fully embrace the industry-wide transformation from print to digital platform in the 21st century which eventually led to its demise.

Meanwhile, its loyal readership deviated to a more engaging medium. The reason was simple. Why wait for a week to get hold of the latest news when you can have real-time access to all types of information over the internet. Besides, the new age digital version of news includes a variety of interactive options like internet bloggers, explainers, listicles, and 30-second videos.

Emergence of ePublishing

The publishing industry has seen a tremendous revolution since the onset of the computer era. Such has been the impact of the digital revolution that today it’s doesn’t seem impractical to envision a world with no more paper books. In addition to that, the growing popularity of eReading devices like Kindle and iPad has made ebooks a popular choice among many.

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal commented on the present e-publishing industry: “Book retailers are transforming, as many customers go online to purchase. This move has put a lot of pressure on traditional chain stores to create revenue and profits. Similarly, digital books continue to gain market share, and are now estimated at 8% to10% of revenue for some major publishing (houses).”

What sets ePublishing apart?

E-publishing is somewhat similar to the traditional publishing process excluding the printing of the material. Besides, the distribution process of ebooks is also different. It is delivered in a form of a file to the content owner, who then disseminates the publication online. As there is no use of paper, glue or other physical resources, there is no printing and distribution cost involved. This not only makes ePublishing a cost-effective option but an eco-friendly one too. Owing to these benefits, ebook creation is in popular demand with ePub development being the most opted format.

Academic institutions can now easily publish content electronically and distribute it among students and professors alike. Readers find it convenient to search online for an academic paper, research study or even a novel and then download it onto their smart devices. In this way, the electronic versions reach an even wider audience than previous printed versions did.

The corporate sector can engage its readers, with contextually relevant content, products, events and other value-added resources presented via browser, mobile, or tablet. Business owners can also empower their staff to efficiently manage all content from one easy-to-use dashboard with workflow and tools to do their jobs faster.

All in all, ebooks have attracted a diverse range of clientele including self-published authors, educational institutes and even large corporations.

But, how does ePub fit into the picture?

James McFarlane, CEO of Easypress, has claimed that ePUB 3, the latest version of the open ebook standard, is the leader of the next generation of e-books. Quite rightly, ePub has become the standard file format used by e-publishing companies to publish ebooks. The reason behind the popularity of ePub development is that this format can be effectively displayed on mobile devices, ebook readers and desktops. Multimedia resources and interactivities can also be easily added. In fact, any file format can be easily converted to ePub, except for PDF. Hence, the cost of converting PDF to ePub format is slightly higher.

It is worth adding that the transformation of an existing textbook into a correct ePub format itself requires extensive manual work because an automatic conversion of a print-oriented textbook is usually unavailable, specifically for complex layouts. Keeping this in mind, self-publishing authors need to hire a professional for ePub conversion as the expert would be updated with most of the current innovations in technology.

SunTec Digital has onboard a team of highly skilled specialists who can easily turn your content into an ePub format using advanced technologies. Are you in search of an ePub conversion expert who has an unmatched expertise and capability to handle ePub conversion based on the client requirements? Drop us a line at [email protected] to get quick expert assistance.

Contributed byhttps://suntecdigital.com/

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