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Electronic publishing
Corporate Profile
Article 1: Income Generation
for Non-Profit Organisations
Article 2: Is your Yellow Pages
advert earning its keep?
Article 3: Hints on how to edit
your own copy
Article 4: Stop the World...
I want to get off!
Article 5: What is a SWOT
Analysis?
Article 6: Uno Momento
(3 short articles)
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| About e-publishing |
What is e-publishing, and how can a business or individual cut 80% off their printing and distribution costs? |
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| To begin with, anything you publish in the conventional manner i.e. books; education materials; manuals; catalogues; magazines; newsletters; fliers and promotional material; and tutorials...can be e-published. While e-publishing produces a more 'user-friendly' and 'aesthetically pleasing' publication – there are of course a number of benefits. Navigation in an e-published item is the same as a web page. All links (including e-mail and URLs), photos / pictures / animations / sounds etc, are retained within the e-publication – exactly the way they were created. In addition, rather than flicking through pages to find a particular item or chapter – links can take the reader from the title on a contents page to the item itself with the 'click' of a mouse. So if the 'look' and 'quality' of your publications to date have been restricted by your budget, you need look no further than e-publishing for the bulk of the material you would print in the 'normal' method. E-published items can be attached to your website for downloading, or they can be distributed via e-mail - which eliminates the cost of postage. In other words, if you have the e-mail addresses of your clients or members in your database, you can distribute your e-publication via the 'send' button...it's that simple. And as far as file size is concerned...the following example should give you an idea. The most recent issue of 'E-Communiqué', the e-zine of Par Excellence, is 13.3MB...not a 'small' file! But it contains photos, graphics (including animated graphics), sounds, shaded text boxes, e-mail addresses and URLs (all active)...and it's in full colour. However, by the time 'E-Communiqué' was ready to be e-mailed to our clients, it was around 900KB in full...and it remained exactly the way it was originally produced...e-mail links, animated graphics...the works! This means that a file that was originally over 13MB can now be copied 15 times onto an average disk that slots into the A-drive of your computer! This is possible, because PaR Excellence converts potential items for e-publishing into EXE files...which means small-size files...and no programs to download or update to read them. All that is required to read any item e-published by Par Excellence is Microsoft© Windows 95/98/NT, and Microsoft© Internet Explorer 4 or higher. But the benefits don’t stop there. Environmentally speaking, e-publishing removes a large portion of the reliance on paper products. Advocating the use of recycled papers and soy-based inks are positive steps for any organisation – but they fall a long way short when it comes to a substantial reduction in the use and reliance on precious resources. And speaking of resources, what about the unnecessary wastage of financial resources? While you wouldn’t want e-publishing to replace every item an organisation prints, how many organisations can afford to literally throw money away – from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars – every year? There’s an organisation, not unlike a number of organisations – which has made a commitment to distribute an annual publication of around 300 pages. It’s basic black on white with one additional colour on the cover, and no pictures. Each copy costs around $10 to post – as a parcel. Despite a reduction on quotes the combined printing, design and distribution cost is over $100,000 p.a., yet return on sales for the first issue was around $600. Does this make good economic sense? And where will this organisation be in 5 years time? If they live up to the commitment of an annual publication – they’ll probably be half a million dollars worse off – money which will probably come directly from membership funds. If they do an 'about face' on the annual publication – they do severe damage to their public profile – not to mention the relationship with their members and other associated publics within their industry who rely on the information contained within the publication. In a marketing and an economic sense, could these allocated funds be spent otherwise – maybe on additional experienced staff; staff training; purchase of technology, or capital equipment? The above example is merely to illustrate that while business, and the way we do business, is changing on a global scale – some organisations, predominantly through their leadership, either have, or will cease to be competitive – through no other reason than 'myopic business, economic and marketing vision'. In other words, they are no longer capable of striving. E-publishing will never replace conventional publishing methods, and quite frankly, you wouldn't want it to. But for those items that an organisation or company distributes to their 'audiences' on a regular basis...there is an alternative which offers cost and user-friendly benefits...which doesn't require sacrificing 'quality' over 'budget'. Interested in reading other PR and Marketing-type articles? Then click here to see our 'new' site, which reflects our changed name, and upgraded articles. P.S. Don't forget to bookmark us when you arrive, as this will be our primary site. |
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