LJNDawson.com, Consulting to the Book Publishing Industry
Start With XML

Shaz's Crystal Ball

Category: Digital Publishing
Mike Shatzkin has a great piece in today's PW about the trends in publishing to watch out for in 2008. The number 1 issue, of course, is ebooks.

By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for Kindle; the trick for the other formats will be to make sure they’re included, too. And Kindle pricing will drive the market. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers' bottom lines.

But what I found most interesting (apart from his observations about B&N vs. Borders) is this point:

XML will no longer be considered optional. Increasing sales of customized books will make publishers turn to their backlists for “repurposing.” When they do, they will find the cost of retro-tagging XML is often, particularly for illustrated books, prohibitive. They’ll also learn that with a little discipline and an improved process, doing XML tagging while creating content is almost free.

That retro-tagging issue is huge. HUGE. And yet if XML is "no longer considered optional", there'll have to be some compromise between the high cost of retro-tagging and the necessity of doing it anyway.
Bookmark this post: Add this post to del.icio.us Digg it! Add this post to Furl StumbleUpon it! Add this post to Technorati Add this post to Google Bookmarks Add this post to Windows Live Add this post to Netscape Add this post to BlinkList Add this post to Newsvine Add this post to ma.gnolia Add this post to Tailrank
Posted by Laura Dawson , January 7, 08, 7:12 PM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post
FRONT PAGE
Site design: thesuperheavy.com   Site engineering: Hamidof.com   Powered by: PHPBlogManager.com