Digital Publishing is taking off at a feverish pace. It appears that the launch and success of the Kindle has become a tipping point for consumer acceptance and a harbinger to a plethora of new devices entering the market. Along with this technology boom is the spate of predictions and advice to both consumers and the trade. Trying to make sense of all that noise can make your head spin.

In the several years that I’ve been involved with Tyndale’s digital publishing process, it’s been difficult to determine the best course of action. There is no shortage of opinion on the subject! If one attempts to navigate the course of conflicting opinion, one uncovers predictions ranging from the end of the printed book to dismissing the eBook as a temporary, unprofitable fad. I must confess it has been easy to get caught up in the hype, but I believe reality is somewhere in between. In fact, I’ve read anecdotal information that flew in the face of the results we achieved directly.

Given the rapid time to market on many digital products and the aggressive competition of Amazon and other distributors, it’s not surprising that many publishers feel a pressing need to move quickly for fear of missing the boat. However, moving too quickly has its perils too. I believe there is wisdom in recognizing it’s okay to arrive second at the party, particularly with regards to digital publishing. For every success story, there are usually two or three examples of failure. Adding to the difficulty facing publishers entering the digital arena is the obsolescence factor. Already, our team has revised procedures and workflows due to the rapid evolution and proliferation of different kinds of software and devices. And once you’ve nailed down the conversion strategy, you then have to wrestle with other pressing issues like pricing and DRM.

So, what is the prudent course of action when confronted with so many digital publishing opportunities? We have taken a prudent, measured approach that has two distinctives: Each season we carefully evaluate which titles to produce electronically, and we’ve kept our digital conversion process in house. Many publishers have gone so far as to say they’re converting every last title to an electronic edition. We believe this is impractical and not cost-effective. Instead, we have focused on key titles that will work well in the electronic medium and/or whose demand we believe is commensurate with the time and cost involved in conversion. Keeping our conversions in-house also has proved to be a good move for us. We have the benefit of an excellent editorial staff that provides us with sound, quality markups. The conversion process is constantly changing, but our in-house workflow allows us greater control of our digital editions as well as saving conversion costs. We are also committed to developing an XML library of our content so that we can quickly respond to any new opportunity that arises. Having an XML conversion process in place will also enable us to more easily deploy any backlist titles should we decide to make a larger portion of our product line available digitally. In this way, our in-house pipeline’s capacity can be maximized.

As publishers, we are at the beginning of this digital revolution. There have been many comparisons to the music industry, and a desire for publishing to avoid the same mistakes. No one has all the answers because we are all learning about it in real time. To what extent consumers will consume content digitally will continue to evolve. Some people are waiting for next great “device” to transform the industry. We believe this is short sighted. Publishers are content producers, and the real issue we face is responding to consumer ubiquity. In whatever form people wish to consume our content, they should be able to do so in the form they prefer.

There is no doubt that the digital landscape poses unique challenges to our industry. It is important to be cognizant of the calls to move forward, but we needn’t move so fast simply because someone yells, “jump!” Focus on the basics, tune out the noise, and move forward in a steady, pragmatic fashion.