Perseus Digital Services
April 30, 2009
Perseus Books Group offers its distribution clients a wide range of digital production and marketing options via their Constelllation Services. Pegasus has negotiated special pricing with each service provider.
These services include;
- eBooks.com
- Follett Digital Services, for e-book sales to libraries;
- Ingram Digital
- North Plains
- Amazon Digital,
- Sony
- Barnes & Noble,
- ebrary
- OverDrive
Book publishers can pick and choose which Constellation services they want to use.
For more information visit:
http://www.perseusdigital.com/constellation/home.php
HarperCollins Digital Catalog
April 29, 2009
HarperCollins has switched to a digital catalog of its books, and is no longer producing printed catalogs.
http://www.harpercollinscatalogs.com/harper/default.htm
This well organized catalog is searchable by imprint, title, author and ISBN.
Each listing shows title information, marketing plans, author bio and may also include extras such as sample spreads, audio files, links to the book’s website, videos, and other extras.
Digital Book 2009 Conference
April 28, 2009
Digital Book 2009 conference will be held in New York City on May 11th and 12th.
The conference kicks off with workshops on May 11th. The workshops cover 1) eBook Production and Workflow and 2) eBook Sales, Marketing and Business Development.
The conference on May 11th is focused on eBook publishing best practices and business models for successful digital publishing.
The cost is $299 for non-members of the IDPF.
Visit Digital Book 2009 for more information.
PS: Edwin Fager, the president of Kensai International will be attending Digital Book 2009.
Software as a Service
April 17, 2009
Software as a service book publishing software solution offers book publishers unique advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
- SAS means that you need to spend less money upfront. You pay a monthly fee per user.
- SAS can significantly reduce your IT expenses by eliminating the need to purchase and manage additional servers.
- With a SAS offering the vendor assumes responsiblity for software updates and data-backups.
Disadvantages
- The long term cost may be higher that purchasing the software, especially for publishers with lots of users.
- If the vendor’s system or your internet connection goes down your system goes down too.
- The vendor has possession of your data and the software. If they or their hosting services goes under you may lose access to your data.
- SAS is not offered by all vendors.
When we evaluate hosted solutions we look for;
a. Mirrored hosting at financially stable multiple Tier 3 hosting centers.
b. References that demonstrate minimal downtime for the hosting service.
c. Option to store accessible copies of the datafiles and program files at the publishers site or at a software escrow service. This protect the publisher in the unlikely event that the vendor goes under.
Warehouse Management Leaders
April 16, 2009
Which book publishing software solutions are strongest in warehouse management?
From our perspective the leader in warehouse management is IBS Bookmaster. If you are running a major distribution or 3rd party fulfillment operation with sales over $10M its IBS Bookmaster. Most of IBS Bookmaster clients run major distribution operations and because of this IBS has more WMS (warehouse management system) implementation experience than its competitors, and its software offers greater functionality in this area.
Last year; in 2008, National Book Network ( www.nbnbooks.com ) implemented IBS Bookmaster. NBN went live with no downtime.
Number two in my list would be Vista, because of their experience with large WMS systems. Vista is not as powerful in WMS as IBS Bookmaster, but they offer more marketing tools for publishers. Vista also offers a powerful hosted WMS solution for smaller publishers.
For a smaller publisher, with sales of $3M to $10M I would say that ACUMEN Book is the leading solution based on functionality and price. ACUMEN offers a choice of optional advanced waremanagement modules; including ASN, along with an option of using a more powerful (and more expensive) 3rd party WMS.
When looking for a WMS the first thing that we tell our clients to ask the vendor is how many WMS have you installed over the past 1, 2 and 3 years. Then we advise our clients to contact those vendors for feedback on their experience. You want a vendor that has a track record of implementing warehouse management systems with minimal or zero downtime.
