Articles

Technology vs digital publishing

by Aakancha Mittal hello

Technology is rapidly changing the way we perform tasks and handle information. Like any other industry, technology has its profound impact on digital publishing as well.

We have come a long way from the time first e-book and e-paper was published. Since Apple published its first iPad in 2010, perception for digital publication has changed forever. In today’s mobile era, technology plays a crucial role in providing outstanding publishing and reading experience.

The relationship between the author and the reader is changing like never before.  All the aspects of complete publishing value chain are evolving at a rapid pace. From the way we publish, deliver, and distribute to the way we retrieve, everything is improving continuously.

Let us look at how technology is affecting digital publishing in a broader sense.

 

Mobility

With the advent of mobile devices, it has become a lot easier to access instant information as per the user convenience. Gone are those days when people could not check their emails while traveling, wait to watch the favourite series, and getting the latest updates of a football match on the go.

With more and more users relying on the mobile devices, digital content has become more mobile-friendly. Following the trend, authors are designing attractive and responsive content to be accessed anywhere anytime.

 

Emergence of Apps

The publishing industry is making it a priority to always remain connected to their user base. Daily thousands of apps are launched on the major app platforms. Keeping up with the trend and huge competition, more innovative and engaging apps are extensively published.

These apps are based on providing efficient solutions to the user needs. Users are continuously on the look for valuable and informative content within their comfort zone.

 

Improved User-Experience

Easy usability and better readability is the primary concern of the publisher to build their readership. This is achieved by delivering a great user-interface. It is enhanced by making the content adaptable to a variety of platforms and designing more responsive and dynamic pages.

The digital content effortlessly adapts itself to the user-device with a quicker page load speed. Other elements like images, pop-ups, ads, and others facilitate a seamless reading experience.

 

Quality Content

With the ever-increasing instances of click-bait and fake content online, need for delivering quality content is highly increasing. Authors assure their readers of a worthwhile reading experience.

To be distinguished and believed as an authentic information source, it is essential to deliver genuine and informative content to the end-readers. Thus, maintaining quality is as important as delivering unique content.

 

Engaging Content

With the decreasing attention span of the internet users, it has become significant to grab the attention of the target audience. Publishers are increasingly generating engaging and lively content for the longer retention of readers.

Content is made more interactive with the use of multimedia. Usage of apt video and audio has become equally important as delivering awesome content. It is evident that 80% of the browsed content on the internet is in the form of video. Also, audio is naturally engaging, for example, ‘OK Google’ commands of Google Assistant.

 

User-specific Content

Users are the key assets and the base of the publishing industry. Authors are more concerned about this fact than ever and are focusing on delivering user-specific content and connect with them.

Publishers are delivering personalized content to users as per their interests and priorities. This customized content is more likely to be consumed, appreciated and shared. For example, in a news app, other than the general news compilation, user-customized segmentation focuses on the frequently read news category, city news, discussion feeds amongst the community and other relevant information.

 

Searchable Content

With the plethora of content available online, technology has given equal flexibility and power to everyone to reach the end-users. Thus, users have access to all types of data online. In such a case, publishers keep up the practice of making their content more discoverable and user-friendly by using the optimization techniques.

Hence, authors are striving hard to make their content searchable. Similarly, the readers are looking out for valuable content.

 Social Media Platforms

The importance of social media platforms in business marketing (https://www.magplus.com/blog/how-to-use-social-media-to-grow-your-digital-magazine/) is known to all. No more restricted to establishing family networks, these platforms have broadened their reach as robust marketing platforms for wide-ranged industries.

Industries have made a strong presence on the social platforms. Be it product reviews, promotions, discussions, it is the best medium to reach worldwide consumers. It supports real-time interaction and emphasizes two-way conversation between author and reader.

It also encourages instant feedback and advanced analytics.

 Augmented Reality

Augmented reality has been made possible only with the ongoing advances in the technology. The publishers exploit this field by overlaying the digital information above the existing physical surroundings. It enables development of a dynamic environment, unlike previous static user interaction.

In the digital publishing industry, it has opened a world of new possibilities with undoubted potential.

For example, MOTS Comic has delivered appealing comic content with augmented graphics and text with added musical score. It helped in bringing the comic to life. Similarly, for children, an app named Supersaurs is introduced where younger audience are exposed to the engaging environment where dinosaurs roar and roam around which further assisted in learning.

 Artificial Intelligence

It is an accepted reality and not a buzzword anymore. It helps in setting preferences, content recommendation, ad selection, conversion optimization, and other such features. Overall, it provides benefits of superior decisions and easy task achievement.

Besides, the personalization of content assists in better analytics and unmatchable user experience. Smart algorithms are implemented which further do not require human skills and saves manpower. For example, Google assistant and Siri are the applications of AI.

Using voice commands, publications are made even more interactive. A reader can command to go to a particular page where he left last time, one can search for a particular topic simply by calling out or request to share an article with friends.

 Subscriptions

With the advancement in the publishing industry, subscriptions are gaining popularity over the digital ads as the freshest revenue generation method.

This age-old method of monetization is again in trend to generate more revenues. Publishers are focusing on attracting and converting the potential customers and retaining the existing ones with the well-strategized subscription plans.

Authors provide an insight into some of their quality services and further persuade users to subscribe. For example, Audible, an Amazon company is a great platform to listen to your books anytime and anywhere. They provide monthly subscriptions after 30 days of free trial. These subscriptions have interestingly given a boost to the number of Audible users.

Other such example is Netflix. It is popular worldwide for the unbeatable on-demand video streaming services. With every subscription users can access complete library of videos and movies.

 

Wrapping it up, technology has had and continues to radically impact the digital publishing industry. It is certain that the changes will always occur. What is important is to be aware of them, gear up and adapt accordingly.

With all these changes, only the delivery method has evolved. The main aim is still the generation of informative and quality content as per the readers’ interests. Thus, success is achieved by delivering the right content using the right methods at the right time.


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About Aakancha Mittal Advanced   hello

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Joined APSense since, April 18th, 2013, From new delhi, India.

Created on Aug 10th 2018 05:02. Viewed 648 times.

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