Seven years on, “digital publishing” is well on its way to simply being “publishing,” and options for both publishers and readers continue to evolve and expand. Publishers are significantly more change-hardy than they were in 2006. And there are plenty of other events that are helping publishers keep up with new technology offerings in the space.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The app has been optimized for the Windows Phone 8 platform on Lumia devices. One new feature in this app is that content from multiple sources will be in one place, so you don’t have to launch into a new magazine to read articles from different sources. It also includes a new preference picker so that users can curate their reading list by area of interest.

Michelle Bottomley, president of Zinio, stated, “Nokia Lumia smartphones with Windows Phone 8 were the perfect platform for Zinio to bring the future of digital magazine reading for discerning digital readers. We’ve rethought every portion of our smartphone reading experience to be as intuitive as possible, allowing digital readers to fully immerse themselves in the magazine content that connects them with their diverse interests.”

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The app edition includes 27 how-to videos with gardening techniques and tips. It also includes slideshows, interactive images  and tappable climate zone maps, so that readers can plan their gardens based on where they live. It has regional gardening calendars and a note-taking tool, for readers to make plans for their gardens.

The book, which is in its 9th edition, was first published 80 years ago. This is the publisher’s first foray into interactive book app publishing. Barb Newton, president of Sunset Publishing, stated: “With so much information and inspiration at your fingertips, we think this is going to be the most important tool in the garden. The zoomable, high resolution photos take this interactive book to a whole new level for the brand, and there are so many other enhancements as well.”

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Booktalk Nation lets authors create digital events where the readers can dial in to hear an author read from their book, or watch videos online. Callers or web viewers can ask questions, as they would at a real life reading, using the platform. Check it out: “Authors are interviewed either by web video or by phone, with readers around the country watching and listening in. Readers can submit questions for the author. Host booksellers set up the events and affiliate booksellers around the country promote them.”

Readers can even order personalized copies of the book signed to them by the author online and have these books shipped to their homes. Independent bookstores can host these events and fill these orders. continued…

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At the  O’Reilly Tools of Change Author Revolution conference in New York today, Ashlock, the founder of Movable Type Management, spoke about his three-pronged approach to representing authors in the modern publishing world.

First, he suggested that “publishing is a team sport.” He said that the radical mediator agent should not be narrow but should be expansive and looking at any possible intermediaries that will connect readers with authors. He said that agents in today’s marketplace should think of themselves in a business development position, as opposed to a sales positions. He advised thinking about lifespans as opposed to title-by-title marketing. continued…

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Appropriately, the new suite of tools is called Evolve. Evolve is made up of a couple of different tools that textbook publishers can use to format books into eBooks and then add interactive elements to these digital titles including the Kno Book Enhancer, Kno Assessment and the Kno Ingest tool.

The Kno Ingest tool lets a publisher make a PDF interactive. The Kno Book Enhancer tool then lets a publisher enhance an existing eBook by adding new interactive elements such as videos, audio, websites, 3D objects, and calculators. So for example, a history book can be added to, as time passes and current events evolve a story.  continued…

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Magazine publisher Hearst has partnered with Apple to release digital editions of its magazines before the print books drop.

Hearst is the first publisher to participate in, “Read Them Here First,” a new program from Apple’s Newsstand which gives iPad users access to publications before these titles are available elsewhere. As of now 20 Hearst titles are available through Apple’s Newsstand’s new offering including: O The Oprah Magazine, Esquire and Good Housekeeping.

AllThingsDigital has the story: “via Hearst pr’s Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers’ headstart ‘varies’, depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal’s origins: ‘Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement.’”

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New publishers to join the program include university presses and those that specialize in medical, scientific, law and  religion. These publishers join Cengage Learning, Elsevier, Wiley, McGraw-Hill, and more than 200 other publishers that distribute digital books through VitalSource. VitalSource has 2.7 million registered users on 6,000 universities around the globe.

Jed Lyons, president/CEO of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, one of the new partners, commented, “As institutions around the world continue to move to digital learning environments, working with Ingram’s VitalSource platform gives us the tools to easily expand the reach of our titles to the broader education communityAs more schools reshape and enhance their curriculums for today’s student with digital content and technology from Vital Source, more Rowman & Littlefield titles will be available to those that want them.”

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At Mediabistro’s Media App Summit today David Steinberger, CEO/co-founder of digital comic book publishing company comiXology, revealed how he built a digital comic book company that owns 85-95 percent of digital comic book market, competing directly with Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. The company grew from releasing about 100 digital comics a month in 2009 and to releasing 1,278 books a month today.

With the vision, “bring comics to everyone everywhere,” Steinberger walked through how the company upgraded its app from Version 2 to Version 3. This update tripled the app’s engagement rate. Here are some tips from his presentation:

1. Think about the material and how a consumer will be thinking about that material. Steinberger recommends to think about what is unique about the content that you are providing and think about how a consumer would be most likely go deeper. For example, reading one issue of a comic book would likely make a reader go to the next issue or jump to another comic with a similar character. continued…

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The magazine offers subscribers content through its weekly print magazine, app editions of the magazine, as well as online access. For readers who commit to a two-year subscription, a print subscription is  $2.19 a week; a digital subscription is 2.19 a week; and a subscrition to both is $2.74 a week. Full app access used to be free with a print subscription.

In an interview published today by Ad Age, Michael Brunt, SVP of circulation for the Americas and global head of marketing at Economist Digital, explains why the magazine stopped giving away app access with a print subscription.

He told AdAge: “Our subscribers really value our content, and we wanted to create a pricing structure that made sense for the way that people wanted to buy our subscription. People think it’s reasonable to pay a little more for both and to give them a choice for a lower cost if they just want print or they just want digital.”

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Netpage’s tool is called Digital Twin. A user points this smartphone app at a Netpage-enabled print page which creates a digital replica of the printed page from the cloud. In this environment, a user can clip and share content digitally and even watch videos. A code is not required.

The December 2012 issue of Esquire is the first magazine to use this new tool. The entire magazine has been doctored to become interactive. From now on, all issues of Esquire will be Netpage-enabled and next year Hearst plans to use this app with even more titles.

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Smashwords founder Mark Coker blogged the news last night. He wrote: “If you typed at 25 words a minute without pause, it would take 200 million minutes to write 5 billion words.  3.3 million hours.  If you typed 8 hours a day, it would take 416,600 days, or 1,141 years.  Imagine the lifetimes of creative output now captured, packaged, immortalized and available for discovery at the click of a button or mouse.”

According to Coker, Smashwords retailers will sell $18 to $20 million worth of eBooks this year. Currently, five Smashwords authors rank on the top 20 titles in Apple’s iBookstore.

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Zinio’s service let’s users purchase subscriptions and individual issues of digital magazines and newspapers and read them through tablet smartphone, and desktop apps. They sell thousands of magazines including Rolling Stone, Harper’s and VIVmag.

In February, the company launched a set of content creation tools called  Zinio Fusion. The toolset includes assets for designing and publishing digital magazines, including the ability to make them interactive.

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