Adobe Digital Publishing

Did you know…

Customers with InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 can now create an unlimited number of .folio files for no additional charge.

You already know that InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 integrate with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to allow customers to publish apps to tablet devices such as the iPad, Xoom and PlayBook. But for InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 customers who are interested in creating content for tablet devices but are not yet customers, it is now easier than ever to try digital publishing before making the financial investment in the Digital Publishing Suite solution that meets your needs.

InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 customers can now:

• Create an unlimited number of .folio files in InDesign
• Preview them on Adobe Content Viewer  – including interactivity – to see how they will render when published to a tablet device
• Share them with colleagues or clients on a 1:1 basis via the Adobe Content Viewer

Further, customers can now access the Folio Producer Service in the Digital Publishing Suite with a valid Adobe ID to manage and edit their .folio files. All of this can be done before purchasing Digital Publishing Suite.

If you are interested in learning how to create an App directly from InDesign CS5 or CS5.5, without writing code or depending on a developer, feel free to try it. You can pitch ideas to your client or your boss; or you can build a portfolio of your work and preview it on a tablet device. Practice makes perfect, and with an unlimited number of .folios, you can practice as much as you want! When you’re ready to publish to an app store, you can select the Digital Publishing Suite solution that is right for you.

Bonnier AB is expanding the reach and impact of its brand by debuting four digital newspapers for the iPad—DN+, Sydsvenskan+, Di+, and Børsen—created with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Enterprise Edition. Bonnier already has more digital editions in the works with plans for distribution on Android devices as well. To start, the pioneering Sweden-based multichannel media company lays out all of its newspapers in Adobe InDesign software. The print content in digital editions is then increased and enhanced with more photos, videos, and interactions between readers and journalists. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite enables Bonnier to create content once and easily repurpose it, dramatically increasing efficiency.

Trial subscriptions have already resulted in an impressive 10% to 15% buy-through rate. Support for direct entitlement in the Enterprise Edition, which enables selling issues directly to consumers from the application, is helping Bonnier to convert print subscribers into digital readers. To learn more about how Bonnier uses the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Enterprise Edition, click here: http://adobe.ly/nshRIq.

• Download the Dagens Nyheter app from the App Store
• Read my full interview with Tore Fjaertoft, chief technology officer at Bonnier Digital
• Read the Bonnier AB Case Study

Today concludes our summaries of MAX sessions designed for Enterprise and Professional customers. We are grateful to everyone who joined us at MAX and shared their experiences with digital publishing. If this summary piques your interest, click on the Adobe TV link in the post to explore the topic further.

MODERATOR:
Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester

PANELISTS:
Daniel Blackman, Chief Digital Officer, Newsweek Daily Beast
James Kober, Director of Advertising Operations, Newsday
Dale Bryson, Prepress Director, Source Interlink Media

In this session, three panelists discuss their digital publishing successes and challenges over the past year, from deciding which platforms to prioritize to maintaining the print brand on an interactive format. Because they have been making strategic decisions in a rapidly changing environment, they also are on top of news related to the future of digital publishing, including monetization, social media, and the role of the web. Here are some highlights. To listen to the full session, click here.

• When resourcing their tablet app strategy, media companies found that it’s important to staff the print and digital versions with the same people. Designers often have a vision for the brand and want that vision to carry over to the digital product.
• Teams feel a sense of success the first time they experiment with Digital Publishing Suite. Although they have seen examples of others’ work, a creative “spark” appears when they realize how the interactivity can enhance their own publications. For example, Motor Trend can feature the sights, sound, and motion of a car, which couldn’t be fully showcased in print. However, they also have to determine how much interactivity is appropriate for content.
• Interactivity creates a sense of engagement because consumers like to control things, such as the color or interior of a BMW in an ad.
• The industry still grapples with questions about pricing. Digital subscriptions tend to be on par with print subscriptions, but special issues allow for more pricing flexibility. For consumer convenience, subscribers should be able to access the publication no matter what device they are using, arguing for pricing between print and digital to be on par. However, there is an added value to being able to access it in multiple places, which could potentially warrant a higher price.
• Web vs. apps? The internet provides an obvious scale and reach that tablet apps do not provide. However, consumers want and expect different content on the web than they want on their tablet devices. People expect to find breaking news on the web and will toggle between windows and check other sites. We tend to be more focused when consuming content on a tablet.
• There are several ways to monetize digital publications including advertising, subscriptions, and e-commerce. Consumers are willing to pay for apps even though most of the content that is inside can be found for free, which speaks to the type of reading experience that tablets provide.
• Users discussed integration of DPS into content management and workflow systems.

MAX Session Recaps
We are featuring business publishers on day two of our MAX session recap series. If you are interested in the summary on corporate publishing provided here, click on the link in the post to explore the topic further. Although you cannot see a video of the panelists on Adobe TV, you can see the demos of their apps.

MODERATOR:
Allen Weiner, Gartner

PANELISTS:
Robin Brown, Director, Marketing Communications, Biomet Sports Medicine
Josh Pullan, Assistant Vice President, Sothebys
Eric Martucci, Director, Marketing Services, Story Worldwide

Businesses from a spectrum of industries are now adopting Digital Publishing Suite. Listen to the panel and watch app demonstrations on Adobe TV to hear people from medical, retail, brand consulting, and real estate describe their innovative and creative uses of the tablet publishing medium.

Each of our panelists used existing features of Digital Publishing suite: from panoramas and videos to analytics, for the purpose of giving customers a deeper and more thorough understanding of their products. For all of the companies, little staffing was required to build the apps, the level of engagement continues to be high for their customers, and the ability to analyze how the app is used helps them hone in on the facets of design that drive customers toward purchase.

Robin Brown showed Biomet Sports Medicine’s tablet application for their sales team. Historically their sales reps have had to carry multiple materials when showcasing medical devices to surgeons. The app incorporates those materials into one place, including videos of surgeries, 360 views of medical devices, fact sheets, and the ability to order patient education materials while in the meeting. Using analytics, the marketing team has found that because the sales team has more information at their fingertips, they can have longer, more in depth conversations with surgeons.

Eric Martucci of Story Worldwide developed an app with his client RCI, a travel and rental agency. They created a travel magazine that also contained detail on rental properties. Their audience was already using tablets and appreciated the ability to research rental properties using 360 degree panoramas and videos of the locales. RCI can use analytics to understand what content ultimately drives customers to booking rental properties.

Sotheby’s is an auction house that develops 300 catalogues per year for fine collections, including jewelry, watches, wine, and books. Josh Pullan shared a fine art collection app available for their customers, captured with stunning photography at Sudeley Castle. 360 degree rotations and video give Sotheby’s customers a more comprehensive view of the art, accompanied by a narrative that gives background on the artists and their intention. Because Sotheby’s client base tends to be early adopters of tablets, it made sense meet them on their preferred medium.

MAX Session Recaps

If you were not able to go to Adobe MAX this year, fear not. Our sessions were recorded and posted to Adobe TV for posterity. This week, we will provide summaries of panels that you can listen to if you want to explore the topic further. Although you cannot see a video of the panelists, you can see the demos of their apps. 

Listen to the session and view tablet demonstrations here.

MODERATOR:
Lalit Balchandani, Entrepreneur In Residence, Adobe Media Solutions

PANELISTS:
Eric Litman, Chairman & CEO, Medialets
Nicole Johnson, SVP, Director of Technology, Vision, and Delivery, Publicis Life Brands
Christian Plamenig, New Media, Red Bulletin gmbh
Gerald Farro, Business Development, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

“We now have a workflow in place for our creatives to push the envelope…  I don’t think any of us have been exposed to what we’re seeing today and it’s the first time that we really are collectively bringing this to life.”
- Nicole Johnson, SVP, Director of Technology, Vision, and Delivery, Publicis Life Brands

As Johnson’s quote illustrates, we are watching tablets evolve as a medium for consuming content, and the speakers in this MAX session are defining the field of tablet advertising every day. Four panelists discussed some of the issues that leading agencies, brands, and publications are tackling in the advertising world when technology is changing rapidly and new opportunities arise. Listen to them discuss the tablet market, trends in the industry, valuation and the new complexities of dynamic ad serving.

• The “print-centric” focus of ad creation on tablets is moving toward a more immersive and interactive approach.  Readers’ expectations are raised for ads on tablets because magazines are pushing the limits of content design in the articles. Therefore, it would be an injustice to a brand if the ad did not rise to the level of the core magazine content.
• Embedded analytics let us know how long a reader spends on an article or advertisement, and that feedback shapes the iterative design of a magazine’s content. While the analytics are helpful, the industry needs a common currency of metrics. Currently advertisers want to be first to market. They want to experiment with the medium. Soon they will demand more meaningful data and metrics.
• Dynamic ad serving allows messages to change over time on a given page, based on the user’s demographics, behavior and geography.
• These advancements (content enhancement, analytics, and dynamic ad serving) all increase the value of an ad. The heightened value of digital advertising also creates a demand for more detailed and meaningful analytics. If ad agencies are going to spend more on digital, they also want to know who saw the ad and the level of engagement that it elicited.

In his latest video, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Evangelist Colin Fleming walks us through Newsstand, showcasing familiar brands that have created Newsstand apps using Digital Publishing Suite. Your personal Newsstand will feature any titles that you have purchased either as a subscription or as a single issue of a subscription-based periodical, as long as the publishing company has enabled it for Newsstand. Much like a newsstand in real life, it will show the cover of the most recent issue even if you have not yet purchased it. If you have a subscription it will automatically download the latest issue in the background to reduce wait time. Earlier this week, Colin demonstrated how Enterprise and Professional edition customers can build Newsstand ready publications in Digital Publishing Suite Viewer Builder.

The highly anticipated iOS 5 is available today, and iPad users are eagerly playing with the new features – including Newsstand, which we blogged about last month. Your Newsstand is personalized.  Your magazine and newspaper subscriptions are housed in a central location right on your tablet for easy, convenient access.  Background downloading allows issues to be delivered to your “doorstep” the moment they are available, allowing you to spend your time reading your favorite magazine, not waiting for it to download to your tablet.  By making publications available in the Newsstand section of the app store, publishers can cut through the noise, make their content more discoverable and drive more awareness of their latest issues and stories.

Our team has been working hard with some of the largest global publishers in the world to make sure they can take advantage of Newsstand on day one.  Earlier this week, Adobe evangelist Colin Fleming posted a video showing users how to create magazine and newspaper apps for Newsstand using Digital Publishing Suite Viewer Builder.  Professional and Enterprise Digital Publishing Suite customers can start creating Newsstand-enabled applications immediately. To access Viewer Builder please log into the Digital Publishing Suite Dashboard.

“We are seeing rapid adoption of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite among publishers that want to create exceptional, engaging apps enabled for Newsstand that reinvent the magazine experience while making digital content more easily discoverable and marketable,” said Todd Teresi, Vice President and General Manager, Media Solutions, Adobe. “Adobe technology is lowering the barriers to publishing digital editions of magazines and newspapers as well as enabling publishers to better showcase and merchandise digital content on iOS devices.”

Available on Newsstand today

• Most of Condé Nast’s  leading publications are live including:
  • Glamour
  • The New Yorker
  • Vanity Fair
  • WIRED
• National Geographic has launched both National Geographic and National Geographic Kids
• Reader’s Digest

Publishers Releasing Newsstand Apps Soon

• Bonnier
• Dennis Publishing
• Newsweek
• Rodale Inc.
• Smithsonian
• Wenner Media

Hear What Digital Publishing Suite Customers Are Saying

“Adobe’s full support for Newsstand is attractive for us because it will provide our readers/customers with the convenience of having content immediately available in their digital newsstand as well as organizing all their magazines in one spot.”
– Peggy Northrop, Vice President and Global Editor-In-Chief, Reader’s Digest

“Now that Digital Publishing Suite includes full support for iOS 5 Newsstand subscriptions, our users can always be sure they have the latest content as soon as it is available and we can showcase cover art, the most coveted real estate for a publisher with iconic titles, such as WIRED, The New Yorker, Glamour, Vanity Fair and Vogue.”
– Monica Ray, Executive Vice President of Consumer Marketing, Condé Nast

“Adobe Digital Publishing Suite support for Newsstand is exciting because it will put National Geographic magazine at users’ digital doorsteps, making it easier for tablet users to explore the rich offerings enabled by the software.”
– Bill Marr, Creative Director at National Geographic

Centralizing the location of periodicals creates an easier shopping and reading experience, allowing magazine and newspaper companies to more easily acquire new subscribers and connect with their existing readers.  Background downloading minimizes frustrating wait times and lets readers spend their time reading, and not waiting for their favorite issue to download. Newsstand, in combination with Digital Publishing Suite, just gave publishers another powerful tool for driving their digital publishing business forward.

In anticipation of the iOS 5 release, our Worldwide Adobe Evangelist Colin Fleming highlights Newsstand support in Viewer Builder v1.5.1, released on October 10, 2011.  If you are an Enterprise or Professional Digital Publishing Suite customer, you can create magazine and newspaper apps which will appear in the Newsstand app on the iPad. This newest release of Viewer Builder is available on the Digital Publishing Suite portal. Stay ahead of the curve and get your publications built and submitted to Apple for approval before the release of iOS 5. Check out this informative video on YouTube.

There has been a lot of flurry around Single Edition of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite after CTO Kevin Lynch’s announcement at Adobe MAX last week. Now that the dust has settled, you might still wonder which edition is right for you. They all have advantages.  It really comes down to the type and timing of your content or publication, publishing budget, and audience.

Single Edition is built for freelance designers, small design firms, and small businesses. The $395 one-time fee is an affordable option for people who want to publish content that won’t require updating once it is available on the Apple App Store. For example, freelance designers may want to create a single app such as a brochure, training manual or annual report for a client knowing that it will remain unchanged for a significant period of time. Or an author may want to self-publish a highly visual book for sale on the Apple App Store that is expected to have a long “shelf life”.

In a nutshell, Single Edition lets you create single .folio apps. To give a couple of examples, a .folio file is a magazine (with a collection of articles) or a book (with a collection of chapters). Digital Publishing Suite is the tool that converts a set of InDesign documents into a single .folio file and then embeds the .folio into an app.  Once you have published your single .folio application to the Apple App Store, customers can download it at no additional cost to you for as long as you keep it in the App Store. Once you want to make a change to that content – such as publishing a new brochure or next year’s annual report, you need to create another single .folio application and go through the Apple process again. You also need to let your clients and customers know that a new application is available for download from the App Store.

Single Edition is a fast and affordable way to get into the digital publishing game. It is perfect for those users who want a straightforward approach to publishing tablet content and who do not require reader analytics, integration with back end systems, viewer customization, advanced merchandising capabilities or the ability to serve content privately within an organization.

If you want to leverage your Creative Suite knowledge to create engaging tablet versions of your print publications, and need the ability to efficiently publish tablet content on a one time basis, Single Edition is most likely the best choice for you or the clients and customers you service.

Single Edition will be available for purchase in North America through Adobe.com store using a credit card in November.

Professional Edition is designed for mid-size organizations and publishers whose content is released or updated several or multiple times a year. Professional Edition provides an out-of-the-box tablet publishing solution that supports the ability to publish multiple .folios into an existing application.  Like Single Edition, tight integration with Creative Suite streamlines the creation and design process of tablet content.

With Professional Edition, every time you make an update to your content, such as adding this month’s magazine issue – you create a new .folio which is then distributed into an existing application already installed on a tablet device.  Your reader or customer gets a notification within the application that new content is available.  Unlike Single Edition, there is no need to re-submit the application to the app marketplace nor re-notify readers that new content is available.

Professional Edition includes both a platform fee and .folio download bundle fee. There are now two ways to purchase the Professional Edition platform fee: monthly ($495) or annually ($5,940). The monthly platform subscription fee will be available for purchase on adobe.com store via a credit card in November. For more information on pricing, check out the buying guide.

Professional Edition is great for organizations that don’t require extensive customization or access to more advanced functionality such as direct entitlement or merchandising within the application.  Professional Edition provides complete flexibility to efficiently publish new content into an existing app which can reduce the amount of marketing and communication outreach necessary to acquire or retain existing readers or customers.  It also allows for broad content reach across multiple platforms with the ability to publish to the iPad, Android and BlackBerry devices, as well as access to analytics that give insight into reader preferences.

Enterprise Edition is the right fit for large publishing entities, corporations, membership organizations and  advertising holding companies that want all the features of Professional Edition as well as the ability to leverage their print subscriber base to drive digital circulation, create customizable HTML store pages within an application, publish private, in-house applications or deliver custom branded viewers that allow readers to access  RSS feeds or other web content within the viewer.

Customizable store pages allow organizations to effectively cross sell content and other products and services directly within the application itself.  Within a custom store, the publishing company owns all display decisions ranging from colors, fonts, layout, and descriptions. Even more important, a custom store provides access to Omniture data to ensure that marketing strategies are delivering the expected results. The store contents can be modified and optimized continually without redeployment of the application thus allowing organizations to ability to improve or modify as marketing and analytic feedback requires.

Private, in-house applications are ideal for information that is exclusive to internal teams. For example, if a sales team requires access to confidential information such as a sales proposal or price list, this gives the company comfort in knowing that the content is not distributed through a public venue such as an app marketplace.

This has been a quick overview of the three editions. The chart below further summarizes the differences. For even more detail, visit the Digital Publishing Suite Features page.

The annual IFRA Expo is coming up next week in Vienna, Austria as a part of World Newspaper Week. We will convene with leaders in the publishing industry, discuss tablet strategies, and provide guidance and expertise around the Digital Publishing Suite solution. Join the Adobe team and your peers in workshops, presentations, and demonstrations in order to expand your knowledge around print and tablet distribution.

Adobe Booth

10:30-10:50     Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Overview
11:00-11:20     Best Practices – Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Case Studies

Publishers will share their experiences: RED Bulletin (Monday), Mercedez Benz Points West with Thinkology (Tuesday), and CHIP (Wednesday)

11:30-11:50      How to Earn Money on Tablets

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Enterprise Edition features, including direct entitlement and custom store, and flexible business models

12:00 – 12:30   (Monday Only) Weekend Magazin Case Study
13:00 – 13:20   Digital Publishing Suite Subscriptions & Merchandising

How to merge print and digital subscriptions, hands on Direct Entitlement, Customised Store Fronts

13:30 – 13:50   Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Overview
14:00 – 14:20   Measuring Interaction & Optimizing Your Content

Leverage integration of Adobe Online Marketing Suite (Adobe SiteCatalyst) powered by Omniture, with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

14:30-14:50     All the best for your print business

Learn how to streamline your publishing process with InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop CS5.5

15:00 – 15:20:  Smooth DPS integration for editorial systems

Use DPS in your existing editorial environment. See how you can profit by using an editorial system

15:30 – 15:50   Best Practices: Adobe DPS Case studies

Publishers share their experiences – Monte (Monday/Tuesday), Weekend Magazin (Wednesday)

16:00 – 16:20: DPS Workshop 1: Create your digital magazine in 20 minutes

 This practical demo shows just how quickly you can build a digital magazine

16:30 – 16:50:  DPS Workshop 2: Build your app in 20 minutes

It can take just 20 minutes to build the corresponding app. We show you how it’s done.

International E-Reading and Tablet Conference
Tuesday, October 12^th
Adobe is proud to sponsor the E-Reading and Tablet Conference. Bonnier’s Head of Business Development, Pontus Schultz, will tell share his story of collaborating with Adobe to integrate digital subscriptions into Bonnier’s daily print newspaper. Bonnier was one of the first daily newspapers to use Digital Publishing Suite to publish their paper on a tablet device.

 
Media Port: Customer Case Studies
Presentation theatre in Hall A is open to all IFRA attendees
Come to Media Port to hear publishing companies showcase their technology driven success stories. Don’t miss the opportunity to interact with the following Adobe Digital Publishing Suite customers as they discuss their journey in transitioning to tablet publishing. For a full schedule, go here.

Monday 10th October
10:30 – 13:00 Theme: Tablet Publishing Trends
10:50 – 11:10 YOU Magazine’s Luxury Fashion Supplement On The iPad – Maximising Content With The Minimum Of Resources

Alistair Dabbs, Editorial Production Specialist, Mail on Sunday, UK

14:00 – 17:00 Theme: Mobile Publishing Business
15:05 – 15:25 Red Bulletin Goes Mobile

Christian Graf-Simpson, iPad Development, Red Bull Media House, Austria

Michael Bergmeister, Production, Red Bulletin GmbH, Austria

Tuesday 11th October
14:00 – 17:00 Theme: Corporate Publishing Business Models
14:45 – 15:05 Mercedes-Benz Launch iPad Magazine ‘Points West’

Simon Milton, Founder and Managing Director, Thinkology, UK

Wednesday 12th October
10:30 – 13:00 Theme: Innovative Advertising
14:45 – 15:05 Measuring Interaction in Digital Publications

Emerging trends and key metrics for digital publications, including a case study from Condé Nast highlighting metrics publishers and advertisers should standardise.

Ed Hewett, Manager of Digital Analytics, Omniture Business Unit,USA

14:00 -17:00 Theme: Crossmedia Publishing Trends
14:35 – 14:55 The CHIP iPad Edition – How to be among the top 10

Thomas Pyczak, managing Director CHIP Communications GmbH and Chief Editor CHIP, Germany

Bastian Stein, Head of Technology CHIP Communications GmbH, Germany

Customer Briefing Sessions
If you will be at IFRA and would like to attend a more detailed briefing on Digital Publishing Suite, please stop by the Adobe booth for information on how you can register to attend the on-site customer briefing session on Monday, October 10.