Since people are sharing information and content, the publishing industry had to revolve into a high tech industry. While the largest logical challenge was in the past distribution of newspapers and magazine, the challenge has changed into the question of where, how, and when to deliver on which medium. Digital Publishing and e-Publishing is the new way of getting information delivered on mobile devices and other digital channels for display.
A look into the past, present, and future of digitsal publishing
The team of Suyati sure have a knack for compiling tons of data into a single, easily digestible format. Check out their infographic after the article which illustrates the path of publishing evolution. It detailed reviews the history of digital publishing (e-Publishing), provides some relevant contemporary information and boldly predicts the future of the industry.
Yesterday
Back in the year, 1983 Desktop publishing was introduced via the program “Type Processor One” in Philadelphia. Very soon after we could see that Aldus Pagemaker and Apple Laser Writer give birth to the DTP market, this happen in 1985. The market predicted already at this time, Goodbye printing press. But it took some more years until 1990 when a trend for newspapers shifted to digitalized production techniques and layout software.
1993 IBM launched “Simon” the world first smartphone during their “digital revolution” campaign. Finally, in the year 1995 Amazon.com launched to sell physical books online. One more milestone is worth to be mention, 1996 the traditional newspaper industry started to experiment with online services, while Jacobson and Comiskey patent e-ink technology. The game changer kicks of the e-book revolution.
We see content platforms and social media platforms over the years to come, 1998 Google launched, 1999 the blogging platform Blogger, 2004 Facebook, 2005 YouTube to finally taking care of Video content, 2006 Twitter and 2007 Amazon released Kindle the e-ink based reader; while Apple launched the iPhone.
2010 Apple launches the iPad focusing on e-ink and 2011 Amazon reports that ebook sales surpass the sale of printed books the first time.
Today
Pre reports of the death of printed book are grossly exaggerated. In the USA and Canada, we can experience that 2011 more digital magazines launched (128) than printed magazines (111). IN 2012 the gap got even larger, 133 digital publications versus 114 printed publications. And the trend is followed very strong in Europe. Markets like Asia and the Middle East are traditional slower moving to digital media.
Tomorrow
Let’s have a look at our future of Digital Publishing.
- Digital Readers will become as competitive as the mobile phone arena.
- We will see the rise of each book will be a single App.
- With an unpopular statement to see but it will come through, print publishing and bookstores will die.
- Interactive books with multiple endings will become common.
- Ebook retailing models like pay-as-you-read subscriptions, etc. will be the norm.
BY 2020 self-published books will outdo traditionally published ones.
The digital transformation happens everywhere and impacts heavily our life. In the publishing industry, new job types have been created over time. However, we could also witness that jobs have been reduced and got obsolete, removed and not replaced.
We at Skillz Middle East are working in a lot of digital transformation projects in the digital publishing industry. We enable publishing organizations to succeed in the digital transformation with our offerings in digital asset management, e-publishing, and omnichannel solutions.
Share your thoughts and predictions for the future of the digital publishing industry. Which trends do you see coming up? Use our commenting section below.
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