Can’t I Just Push a Button To Do That?

Are you a member of FOLIO MediaPro? Chances are, you should be. All the cool kids from publishing hang out there.

At any rate, an interesting question was posted this week, so I’m posting it (and my answer) here:

The question:

Anyone know of a tool that parsed magazine PDFs for syndication to
eReader formats plus iPhone, Android and other mobile readers? If not,
would it be valuable?

My answer:

At this point, software can’t do this. We create BlackBerry, iPhone,
accesible versions for the visually impaired, and Kindle-friendly
versions. In a nutshell, there’s some overlap, but each version
requires massaging to various degrees.

Until e-Readers are color, the fashion magazines probably can ignore them.

*End of answer

I didn’t want to get all preachy and salesy in the forum, but what I didn’t say was that if you are evaluating digital editions, you should be asking all providers what they’re doing for these devices because I guarantee you that a portion of your audience is migrating to a portion of these devices, and the reality is that you’re not going to see a self-service product that seamlessly converts and uploads to all of these devices.

Some digital publishers will ignore this trend. That’s fine, so long as you don’t mind losing those readers.

Other digital publishers will give you tools so that you can convert all of your content into each format. That’s fine, too, so long as you have people sitting around with nothing to do.

And then there’s us. Our plan? Figure out how to effectively convert your content for all of these devices on our time, so that your content can find your readers, wherever they are.