Viable someday, sometime later than today
Viable someday, sometime later than today
I'm intrigued by the possibility, as are many fellow ink-stained wretches turned tech weenies. Certainly as the software tools to produce such products are coming online the ability to create such ePubs will expand, but there are still some significant roadblocks to widespread implementation:
1) Price Point -- right now, the entry point for many of the solutions is in the mid five-figure (US$) range, with issue costs in the high four-figure to low five-figure range. That's chump change compared to a daily metro's print bill, but dollars and cents (or your currency model here) is just the ante for playing on this platform.
2) Control -- at the current time, most of the solutions for translating content to iPad are offered as a subscription service, with input provided by publishers. Websites may be able function on this model, as "publishing" is near instantaneous. But iPad publishing has additional roadblocks. At distribution, end products have to be posted to the Apple Store for access and there are no "push" solutions to move them directly to subscribers' iPads. That model may work for an eMagazine, but it's too cumbersome for a daily newspaper. Non-dailies would have to offer something pretty specialized, or just something really special, to develop an audience that could justify the publishing costs.
3) Emerging Standards/Platforms -- Right now Apple effectively owns the tablet platform. But it's not alone now, and more rivals are coming online in the next six months, using Android, Windows Mobile/Windows 7 and RIMM/Blackberry platforms. Some subscription services have the ability to cover multiple platforms, but it entails additional effort and additional cost. There is not currently a write-once, automatically publish to multi-platform solution, nor is there a clear winner in the platform race. Despite what fanboys/advocates may say, each platform currently has limitations to its rivals. Picking a sole platform limits possibilities and covering multiple platforms requires duplicate effort and additional expenses.
4) Infinitesmal Market Share -- Editor & Publisher reported earlier this week that 97% of publication online page views are still done with computers through web browsers. The number for tablet-based solutions? Right at 1 percent. While it's only been six months since the iPad was first released (though with all the publicity, it seems like it's been around practically forever), that number will likely grow. The question is, how much? A telling statistic in the same report is that the remaining 2 percent of views were done through smartphones, which have had mobile publishing solutions for years ...
So where does that leave us today, and in the near future?
I see real advantages to reading text by tablet: one device holds many publications, reduced costs for distributing textbook and technical manuals, enhanced linking/indexing capabilities for text-based information. And I'd much prefer to view text on a larger tablet screen than a scrunched-up smartphone. I think these advantages will "pull" us toward better tablet publishing solutions and higher adoption rates as users drive disruption of the current content development and distribution models. But I don't see it coming soon, and I don't see it as the substitution -- or salvation -- of print publications for some time to come.
