Adobe Digital Publishing

Post by Zeke Koch, Director of Product Management, Digital Publishing

For those of you headed to the IFRA Expo in Vienna next week, join us at workshops on topics relevant to magazine publishers, including subscriptions, merchandising, and monetization. In addition, some of our customers will describe their digital publishing strategies. The following story by Zeke Koch is a sampling of what you’ll hear.

I recently got back from visiting customers in London and New York to learn more about how they’re using the Digital Publishing Suite and to get feedback on our roadmap.  As always, it was a delight to learn more about their experiences and see the beautiful publications they’re creating.  During my trips I received a lot of questions about In-App Payments, Direct Entitlement and other mechanisms publishers are using to monetize their content.  I thought that it would be useful to explain your options here through some stories of how customers shaped our payment systems.

Moving From Single-Folio to Multi-Folio
Digital Publishing Suite began its life as a collaboration between Adobe and Condé Nast to build a platform that enabled them to release Wired each month on digital tablets.  The core of the solution was built out rapidly over a few months in the spring of 2010 and then enhanced in a pre-release which grew to over 6000 customers by the time we launched commercially in March of 2011.

The June 2010 issue of Wired sold for $4.99 as a single application in Apple’s App Store.  However, publishers want the tablet experience to mirror the print experience, and we soon enabled readers to purchase new issues of Wired from within a single application, similar to visiting a newsstand.  In July, the Wired Magazine Viewer was converted from a Single Folio application to a Multiple Folio application. The Wired Viewer was free and the issues inside of the viewer were $3.99.  Initial sales of Wired folios were strong, but we kept getting feedback that customers wanted to be able to subscribe to the magazine digitally.  As we all know, a subscription saves the customer money and publishing companies have the opportunity to build a longer term relationship with their customers.

Daily Delivery
In the summer of 2010 Bonnier’s Newspaper group approached us with a proposal to launch its daily newspapers using our Digital Publishing Suite.  Bonnier is a privately held media group that houses 175 companies operating in 17 countries. Digital Publishing Suite was originally designed to support weekly and monthly publications only, but Bonnier’s incredible design and vision inspired us to add extensions to support daily publications.  We love it when our customers help shape the solution in ways we hadn’t planned. A small team of folks from Bonnier flew to San Francisco and showed me a prototype of Dagens Nyheter (Swedish: “Today’s News”) built using our prerelease tools.  I was blown away by both the quality of their designs and the vision of their team and we immediately began collaborating on daily publication capabilities.

In App Payments and Direct Entitlement
Bonnier’s customers wanted to download the newspaper on a daily basis and subscribe on a quarterly or annual basis.  After a lot of negotiation between Apple, Bonnier and Adobe, we settled on a scheme whereby individual issues would be purchased through In App payments, but readers would be able to subscribe from within the application using Bonnier’s payment method.  Bonnier now had a branded Entitlement Banner embedded in the Viewer that allowed new customers to purchase a subscription once they had downloaded the Viewer, and Direct Entitlement which allowed its loyal print subscribers to use their existing subscription login to access digital versions of the publication. In November of 2010 Bonnier was not only the first Digital Publishing Suite customer to launch with support for subscriptions but it was also the first Daily newspaper.

How Does Direct Entitlement Work?
Direct Entitlement is a system that allows magazine and newspaper subscribers instant access to their print publications. Digital Publishing Suite integrates with third party entitlement systems like CDS, which validate current subscribers and allow them to quickly download digital versions of their print subscriptions. From the subscriber point of view, the experience is completely seamless and only requires the reader to click on a banner at the top of the application, which then begins the sign in and authentication process. Through our alliance with CDS Global, publishers can now use their existing print subscriber base to grow their digital downloads, offer print‐digital bundles and cross-promote related titles.

Post by Rufus Deuchler, Sr. Worldwide Design Evangelist at Adobe Systems

As a worldwide Design Evangelist at Adobe Systems, I travel the World to showcase and explain Adobe solutions to Creative Suite users and I get to meet hundreds of designers in person. InDesign is their weapon choice when it comes to creating beautiful layouts independently of how they will be published, and the Digital Publishing Suite always generates great interest among audiences.

The Folio Producer tools in InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 enable designers to create interactive content on top of their layouts (overlays) and publish these to tablet devices. It’s so easy that it’s almost too good to be true. However, in the past, when the discussion moved over to the costs of the service, it became difficult for designers to experiment any further. That was because DPS Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition have rather high upfront and subscription fees, costs which make perfect sense if you are in the business of creating many folios for your customers, or if you are a publishing house and want more control, or if you need enterprise grade features to distribute, control, and publish your content.

The question I then heard most frequently, was “I am a freelance designer and I just want to publish a few folios for my customers, is there a solution for that?” or “I work for a school and we just need to create one catalogue each year”.

Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition answers these very questions: you can now create your folio and pay a one time fee (through the Adobe Store) and have your Folio transformed into an App that can then be distributed over at the Apple App Store.

The workflow to create such interactive documents has become increasingly simple over the past months and with Adobe now offering a solution for Single Editions, it has become easier than ever to get your content out there. Now, there’s only one thing left to do, get creative and get your ideas out there. Now you can do that very easily and cost effectively.

Single Edition for iPad and Professional Edition, Monthly should be available in North America at the end of November. They will be available in other geographies in 2012 – stay tuned for more specific information.

Remember that in the meantime you can create and share as many folios as you need using the Folio Builder Panel in InDesign CS5/5.5 to create your Folios, move articles around, add metadata and share your work with whomever you want. Your colleagues or customers will need a free Adobe ID and the free Adobe Content Viewer App to view your work on their tablet devices. It’s as easy as that. Once you are ready to actually distribute or sell your document as an App, you will be taken through a series of steps that will guide you through the Viewer Builder Service and you will be good to go.

For more information, please click here.

A great example of how Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition can be used to create engaging digital content for publication to the Apple iPad was created by branding and advertising agency 160over90 for their client, the University of Dayton. Many universities and colleges send out printed viewbooks each year highlighting their philosophy, academic programs, and campus activities to recruit students. 160over90 is changing the game by bringing real sights and sounds of higher education to the iPad using Adobe Digital Publishing Suite – essentially bringing the University of Dayton campus to the recruit digitally.

For the University of Dayton, the 160over90 team found it easy to leverage the original printed viewbook created in Adobe InDesign and deliver an engaging, interactive digital publication that resonates with today’s students and help them get a feel for the campus culture. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite let 160over90 designers leverage and adapt content that was already created for print, layer interactivity over the top of it directly in InDesign, and give it a new, digital life in a fraction of the time it took to create the original piece.

See how they did it by checking out the video:

Check out the University of Dayton Undergraduate Viewbook app here.

WoodWing Becomes an Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Value Added Reseller

Adobe has had a long relationship with WoodWing, and today at MAX Adobe announced that WoodWing will begin to integrate Digital Publishing Suite into the WoodWing Enterprise Publishing System. As a value added reseller, WoodWing will solely offer Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Enterprise and Professional editions as its solution for tablet publishing, further extending the long standing relationship between the two companies. What does this mean for customers and the industry? By joining forces, we believe it will strategically place our shared customers at the forefront of the tablet industry. Providing access to the Digital Publishing Suite workflows within the WoodWing editorial workflow system will empower magazine, newspaper and corporate customers to efficiently create, publish, analyze, and monetize engaging tablet content. Integration of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and the WoodWing editorial solution is expected to be complete in November 2011.  Those of you attending the WAN-IFRA Expo in Vienna this Fall will be able to see a first peek at the integration and its progress.

Building on WoodWing Workflow Systems
WoodWing, based in the Netherlands, has developed and implemented state of the art editorial workflow solutions that enable the efficient production of print, online and tablet publications. Some of your favorite magazine, newspaper and book publishers, as well as communication agencies and corporate customers, rely on WoodWing for multi-channel publishing. The alliance between Adobe and WoodWing means that WoodWing can now fully focus on its editorial workflow business which is vital for large publishing organizations. Some of the largest publishers in the world, including Time Inc. and Meredith Publishing (Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, and Ladies’ Home Journal), rely on WoodWing to power their publishing business.   The agreement is also a win for Adobe in that we gain a path to more quickly scale our Digital Publishing Suite business and serve a wider range of customers and geographies.

Utilizing Robust Features from Adobe
Within WoodWing Enterprise, users will be able to create .folio files using Content Station and WoodWing’s Digital Magazine Plug-ins for InDesign.  The .folio files are then automatically uploaded to the hosted Digital Publishing Suite platform. WoodWing customers will gain the ability to create branded applications directly within Digital Publishing Suite giving them tight control over the complete tablet publishing process, leverage a robust and reliable distribution network for fulfilling content to tablet devices and access foundational analytics driven by Adobe Online Marketing Suite (SiteCatalyst). Now WoodWing customers can combine the best-in-class WoodWing editorial workflow solution with the benefits of Adobe Digital Publishing Suite in a single, cross-media workflow.

As a Digital Publishing Suite reseller, WoodWing will cease the sale of its Reader Application and Content Delivery Service, and immediately shift to selling Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, with sole support for the Digital Publishing Suite .folio file format. All WoodWing customers are expected to have transitioned to Digital Publishing Suite by November 2012.

We are excited about the possibilities that this agreement offers both customers and the industry. For more information, read the Adobe Press Release or our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Post by Annemarie Beliard, Product Marketing Manager, Adobe InDesign and Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition

Today during the MAX Keynote, Adobe announced Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition, the newest addition to the Digital Publishing Suite product family. Single Edition is an ideal fit for freelance designers, small businesses and design firms who need to publish content including brochures, highly-visual books, annual reports, or a personal design portfolio to the Apple iPad.

The Single Edition offering truly democratizes publishing – it allows customers to publish a single, custom iPad app for a one-time payment of US$395.  Bottom line- it’s affordable.

“Adobe Digital Publishing Suite opens up a lot of creative possibilities for us in the mobile and tablet space, enabling us to take advantage of the fun qualities of mobile devices—vertical and horizontal views, accelerometer, compass, and more. Being on a tablet is a competitive differentiator and Adobe designed a solution that is hands-down the easiest way to get in the game.”
- Dan Marcolina, founder, Marcolina Design and Marcolina Slate

How does Single Edition work?
Use familiar InDesign CS5.5 tools to design a page layout. Then use the Folio Producer tools in InDesign CS5.5 to add engaging, interactive elements such as 360 object rotation, image panoramas and to preview the digital content on your desktop or tablet device.  To publish to the iPad, access and purchase Single Edition on the Adobe.com store.  Because the work takes place in InDesign, this means that the designer owns and manages the entire workflow – from design to publication – without writing code or depending on a developer.

To see interactive elements used thoughtfully, take a look at this app that was created by Gary Higginbotham, a one-man graphic design team at Alan Mascord Design Associates – a Portland-based home design company. They created an engaging, interactive brochure called Mascord Living Spaces.

“With Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, design and production works seamlessly. Adobe offers a superb level of integration between content creation and digital publishing tools. Now, with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite Single Edition, it’s even simpler for a small business to reach out to customers in exciting, affordable ways.”
- Gary Higginbotham, director of marketing, Alan Mascord Design Associates, Inc.

Can’t wait to try this?
The Single Edition service will be available soon.  In the meantime, if you have InDesign CS4 or earlier then now would be a good time to upgrade to InDesign CS5.5. Also, now is a great time to get your InDesign files ready, and start adding engaging interactivity – like audio, video, slideshows, 360 degree views, etc.  A little known fact is that once you have InDesign CS5 or CS5.5, you can share an unlimited number of folios with colleagues and other stakeholders via the dashboard in InDesign.  Here is more information. This is a great way to try out DPS and practice.

Also, Adobe also announced that Digital Publishing Suite, Professional Edition will be available as a monthly subscription at US$495/month.

Single Edition for iPad and Professional Edition, Monthly should be available in North America at the end of November. They will be available in other geographies in 2012 – stay tuned for more specific information.

For more information, visit: http://www.adobe.com/products/digitalpublishingsuite/