Since we helped Condé Nast launch the digital edition of WIRED earlier this year, we’ve seen an enthusiastic response by our publishing customers to our digital publishing tools. Publishers from all over the globe – including WIRED, The New Yorker, iGIZMO, Credit Suisse and others – have created digital publications that engage readers at a deeper level by combining the design aesthetic of print with the interactivity of digital.
Today, I’m pleased to announce the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite — a new publishing solution that allows publishers to deliver innovative reading experiences that attract readers and advertisers. This end-to-end, hosted set of services builds on the foundation of Creative Suite and allows publishers to use existing staff, skills, and workflows to design and deliver engaging, publisher-branded reading experiences.
The services and viewer technology of the Digital Publishing Suite allow publishers to create, monetize, deliver and optimize publishing content to the widest possible audience on a wide array of mobile devices. With the Digital Publishing Suite, publishers can retain the design fidelity of print, optimize their workflows, and monetize digital content through the following services:
- Production Service – Designers and production staff can upload articles directly from a new InDesign CS5 panel into a hosted Production Service. Using the Production Service, designers can collaborate on content and production staff can assemble content, add metadata and preview the complete issue. The Production Service will support a range of file formats, including PDF and HTML5.
- Distribution Service – With the Distribution Service, publishers can securely store, host and distribute digital content across tablet devices and desktops. With this functionality, publishers can fulfill individual .issue files (soon to be .folio files) into a publisher-branded Content Viewer, as well as notify readers within the Content Viewer when a new magazine issue is available for purchase or download.
- E-commerce Service – Publishers are anxious to monetize digital content. With the e-commerce service, publishers are enabled to sell content directly from their own website, through retailer platforms or through leading mobile marketplaces such as the Apple App Store, Android Market or Google Apps Marketplace. Support for in-app purchase facilitates the content acquisition process and support for print and digital content bundles enhances content merchandising. Through the e-commerce service, readers can purchase content once and read it on their desktop or tablet devices.
- Analytics Service – Publishers can also optimize editorial content and drive ad revenue using online analytics from Adobe SiteCatalyst. Publishers can access prebuilt dashboards directly from within the hosted publishing workflow to view advertising and content performance data — including user engagement with interactive content such as video. Drill down reporting and analytics are available through a separate Adobe SiteCatalyst subscription. Additional dashboard and reports can be custom tailored to publisher specification.
In addition, viewer technology enables readers to consume publishing content across devices. The Digital Publishing Suite will support the Adobe Content Viewer for iOS and for Adobe AIR that can be publisher branded for reading experiences on tablet devices such as the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy, RIM Playbook and other Android-based devices expected to come soon. Minimal chrome and navigation features such as the zoomed-out “browse mode” and dual-axis navigation allow readers to fully engage with content.
Adobe Labs and Prerelease Program
While the Digital Publishing Suite will be available in the second quarter of 2011, we’ve made some tools available now on Adobe Labs for publishers to create, preview and share their content. As mentioned previously, the tools on Adobe Labs include the Interactive Overlay Creator and Digital Content Bundler. The Interactive Overlay Creator allows designers to add interactivity to publication layouts created in InDesign CS5 and the Digital Content Bundler enables layouts to be packaged into the cross-platform .issue format (soon to be .folio format). The Labs release also includes the Digital Publishing Plug-in for InDesign, which allows InDesign to interface with and transfer information to the Digital Content Bundler. To access these tools, visit the Adobe Labs page.
With the Labs release, publishers can create and assemble digital publications as well as preview and share their content using a new Digital Content Preview Tool provided by Adobe and available in the Apple App Store. The Digital Content Preview Tool allows you to test interactive elements, view the design fidelity and generally preview the content of your digital publication on the iPad. To help you get started, we’ve created a set of training materials on how to produce digital publications, including videos on Adobe TV, documentation on Adobe Labs, and a monitored user forum with staff to respond to your questions.
Additionally, publishers who need to immediately create applications for commercial deployment can register for the Digital Magazine Publishing prerelease program. This program gives access to iterative, beta builds of the tools. Learn more about the prerelease program on Adobe.com.
Changing content consumption
We’ve seen how interactive digital magazines like WIRED and The New Yorker are changing the way readers consume content. And starting today with the Adobe Labs release, the Digital Publishing Suite will allow publishers to efficiently design and deploy content to mobile devices in a way that is complementary to current print workflows and that engages readers with the rich design of print.
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