User:Saskac/BlogEntry: 2007 May 15 13:51:04 EDT
From sasCommunity
At SAS Global Forum, SAS Publishing held a special session for SAS Press Series authors to give them an update on new technologies in the publishing industry and SAS' plans for marketing and distributing their books. Sean Gargan, Director of SAS Publishing Solutions, gave an excellent presentation to our authors called "Leveraging Technology: SAS Press Series."
With technology, there are many opportunities for books to be distributed other than as hard-copy books. This can be scary for those who rely on the royalties they receive from each book sale, as there is concern that a book will be downloaded then shared with anybody and everybody. There is also a fear among some of us that books are a thing of the past, that eventually no one will read content except in an online form.
I believe that books won't go away during my lifetime. In 2006, more ISBN's were issued than in any previous year. ISBN is the tracking number on the back of every hardcopy book; it identifies the publisher and is a unique identifier that is tracked through a company called R. R. Bowker.
Yet, hardcopy books are certainly obtained through online channels. In fact, the #1 product purchased online is hardcopy books.
eBooks, books that are electronic and read using a reader, have not taken off like publishers originally thought. However, there is reason to believe, as technology, accessibility, and cost of these readers improve, that you'll see more and more eBooks.
SAS Publishing has partnered with Google Book search to allow customers to search through our books and even see portions of the book without purchasing it. It is our belief that this will not hurt the sales of those books but will, in fact, entice people; tease them. We believe that seeing a portion of the book will cause people to want to read the whole thing; a "Buy Me!" button is conveniently located close by.
From an author's perspective, technology can also create opportunities to develop a community of people interested in their subject of expertise. As word gets out, two things can occur: the author can become better known and considered a thought leader; and like-minded people can electronically discuss their areas of interest.
It is SAS Publishing's desire to help our authors amplify their individual voices and messages. We want to take advantage of new technology, but control and manage digital content for the purpose of driving hardcopy sales. We want to participate in new business ventures and channel strategies that expand the market for books and add value for readers. And we want to support multiple delivery formats to provide every reader with his or her preferred style of getting information.
At the same time we are helping those authors, we want to help other customers find and take advantage of information that can make their use of SAS software more valuable. We are working to get our books more widely distributed worldwide. We are exploring translation opportunites for those books that have been popular in the U.S. We are increasing our partnerships with Google, Amazon, Windows Live, and Safari. We are encouraging authors to make use of sasCommunity.org to talk about their books and engage other SAS users with similar interests in chat rooms and blogs. We continue to explore whether eBooks make sense for us as technology improves.
The authors who attended Sean's presentation seemed excited about what we told them. While initially being somewhat reluctant for SAS to offer their books electronically, we ended the session with a great idea. One of our authors, who will be using his book as a textbook to teach statistics, wanted us to offer books electronically, with a hook into SAS to run all the examples and produce output automatically! We would certainly have a corner on that market.
Anybody out there have ideas about how we could do that? Let me know.
Posted by Kathy Council at 10:25 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
