Current and Future Digital Publishing Trends
When thinking about digital publishing, the first thing that comes to mind is ebooks. But digital publishing is much more than that. It covers many areas of our lives and significantly changes them day to day.
Newsletters, advertisements, company reports, tickets, catalogs, massive libraries, resource materials, books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals, to name a few.
Digital publishing solutions have become an integral part of many industries; they provide considerable time- and cost-savings and improve our everyday lives.
And as with any cutting-edge sector, it has its current and future trends.
The publishing industry has risen over the past decade thanks to an ever-changing digital landscape and big changes in how people read news, books, and journals.
Because of the proliferation of free content, online news sources are having a tough time. According to a new report, about 46% of media executives surveyed expressed pessimism about the future of journalism.
They concluded that journalists’ ability to hold the rich and powerful to account is waning, just like the public interest in local and national news organizations.
However, the report found that the majority of media executives surveyed were positive about the health of their own companies because there is still a lot of space for growth in the market.
If publishers want to succeed, they should adjust to evolving trends and keep up with a changing market environment.
The Use of Digital Publishing
The invention of the print machine was revolutionary for human society. Still, today, in the digital era, we don’t think a lot about the way we share information, which has evolved significantly during the last three decades.
The introduction of the Internet has provided great opportunities for people who want to transform traditional sources of information into a digitized form, allowing them to save them for future generations or share them with others on a larger scale.
These accomplishments, together with the modern means of communication and devices, have spawned entire industries, and digital publishing stands among them.
What Is Digital Publishing?
Living in the revolutionary era of digitalization, we underestimate how digital publishing has changed our lives in recent years. But what does digital publishing mean for us?
‘Publishing’ is the activity of making information available to the general public, including the distribution of literature, music, or information. Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed materials, such as books and newspapers.
‘Digital’ refers to something using digits, particularly binary digits, and applies to everything related to computers or other electronic devices. Consequently, digital publishing is a way to introduce information to the public via the Internet and computerized electronic devices.
Today, the digital publishing industry includes the following examples of fast emerging materials both converting and creating: newsletters, journals and blogs, music, videos, games, advertisements, company reports, catalogs, massive libraries, resource materials, and databases; and, of course, books, magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals.
Also, it is more common to differentiate such branches of digital publishing as online or web publishing, e.g., including micro-publishing, websites, and blogs.
Social media and digital publishing platforms (like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Medium, etc.) allow everyone to become a digital publisher by sending tweets, posting pictures, or sharing thoughts and ideas.
What Is e-Publishing?
The original term’ electronic publishing’ has slowly been replaced by the term e-publishing (or ePublishing) and is transformed into a more generic term – digital publishing.
Mainly, all of these terms describe the same processes. However, there are some differences depending on a particular industry.
For example, ‘digital publishing’ is more frequently used by companies offering e-services, and e-publishing is mostly related to an editorial aspect, the electronic versions of books, newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals.
How Digital Publishing Сhanges Our Lives
Why is digital publishing so popular? There is no single answer to the question, but we can mention some important factors.
The steadily rising popularity of different electronic devices designed for digital media, such as electronic books (ebooks), streaming services, and electronic periodicals, gave a new impetus to the digitalization of all sources of information.
Digital publishing allows the use of metadata, computerized navigation of published products, and similar features, e.g., digitizing medical record systems and educational materials in a digital format.
Eco-friendliness is an argument in favor of digital publishing, too. But probably the biggest benefit of pervasive digitization is significant cost savings over printed materials and other traditional sources.
Much like the whole industry itself, publishing changes over time as new technologies continue to spur innovation.
The initial purpose of some e-publishing branches was to emulate book and magazine formats.
For example, some ebooks simulated turning page sounds instead of designing features that may surpass traditional media.
Fortunately, industry leaders have quickly realized their advances and have integrated features that allow a computerized voice to speak the words on a page, which can be helpful for those with reading difficulties or some visual impairments.
Thus, audiobooks received new life, helping millions of people to see the meaning of a book from the other side. So digital publishing is not ‘all about money.’ It also significantly changes our lives for the better side.
AI and Mobile Optimization: How They Shape Digital Publishing
Artificial Intell