iPad buzz in publishing

The iPad buzz at Folio

The Folio:Show was buzz with excitement with all things iPad. There was hardly a person who was not interested in seeing how to put his/her publication on the iPad. And fast.

The iPad is such a beautiful product, and sales are proving this fact – 2 million sold in 2 months, that has become a reality for the publishing industry. Or maybe even a compulsion.

Yes, I am a big fan of the iPad. Just can’t wait to get it out of the hands of whoever is playing with it at home and start my browsing and email. I think the iPad and devices like the iPad hold a great future. They need to be paid smart attention to.

Smart Attention

There is a reason why I added Smart as an adjective. Companies are scrambling head over heels to create their great iPad app and putting in stop gap arrangements for their CMS and other systems to support it. In this mad rush, many are ignoring the long term. We know the iPad, (when I refer to the iPad, I really refer to iPad and similar devices that are sure to crop up very soon) is here for the long term. Devices like these will rule and for all practical purposes, devices with a keyboard and a mouse will soon feature on the History Channel.

What publishers need today is a long term content strategy for digital publishing on a whole range of devices, not just iPads. They need a comprehensive solution to the whole digital publishing conundrum.

My company is advising its clients to take this holistic approach and not a band aid kind of approach. If they fumble on this first step, it will be hard to recover and recreate the entire iPad experience without significant money and time loss. And then of course the loss of the brand and market share.

We are taking a step back and looking at this entire play with a comprehensive approach to solving the problem for a long term. We are asking our clients to look at

• Their source of content, how they are feeding it into their CMS system
• Their CMS system itself – is it equipped to handle the next wave?
• The output that the CMS is generating – is it good enough only for the iPad? Can it be used for other devices? Can the output be dynamic enough to leverage the changing nature of content?
• Is the content easily discoverable for the range of devices we are dealing with today and will encounter tomorrow?

Check back for more on this whole digital publishing thing. Interesting times, requiring smart attention!