Adobe Digital Publishing Suite for mobile publishers

The New Yorker iPad edition produced with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite

Adobe’s new Digital Publishing Suite , launched today is designed to provide publishers and developers with a set of hosted services and viewer technology to create, publish, optimise and sell digital content direct to consumers.

The suite is put together from Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe InDesign CS5 software, and adds additional functionality including a flexible commerce models and support for deep analytics reporting.

Using InDesign CS5, PDF, HTML5 and the Digital Publishing Suite, publishers will be able to efficiently author both fixed and adaptive layouts, natively build new levels of interactivity directly in InDesign, distribute and monetise their digital editions, and optimise their editorial and advertising content for a complete end-to-end digital publishing workflow.

Adobe is already working with publishers such as Condé Nast and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

“Our pioneering work with WIRED and The New Yorker has enabled Adobe to deliver a set of workflows and tools that will leverage emerging hardware platforms and make our magazines stand out in the digital format that will attract advertisers and keep readers engaged in new ways,” said Joe Simon, chief technology officer, Condé Nast. “I can’t think of a more exciting time to be involved in the publishing business.”

Gael Towey, Chief Creative and Editorial Director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, stated: “Adobe was attuned to our needs as designers, editors and content creators and was able to meet those needs in a way that not only distinguishes our forthcoming digital issue of Martha Stewart Living, but will benefit all magazine publishers.”

The Digital Publishing Suite includes:

• Support for the Adobe Content Viewer for Adobe AIR and iOS that can be fully publisher-branded to support immersive reading experiences on tablet devices, such as the Blackberry PlayBook, Samsung Galaxy, Apple iPad and the many Android-based devices expected to come to market soon. Minimal chrome, innovative navigation features such as the zoomed out “browse mode” and dual-axis navigation allow readers to engage with content in new and exciting ways.
• Production Service: Upload articles directly from InDesign CS5 into an intuitive hosted service in which publishers can collaborate on design, assemble final content in the correct order, add issue and article metadata and preview the complete issue as it will appear in final published form on the desktop and tablet devices. The Production Service will support a range of file formats, including PDF and HTML5.
• Distribution Service: Securely store, host and distribute digital content across leading tablet devices and desktops for broad reach and audience access. Publishers can manage content available for fulfilment from within a library content dashboard, including publication metadata and archival as well as seamlessly notify readers within the Content Viewer when a new magazine issue is available for purchase or download.
• E-commerce Service: Leverage flexible payment and merchandising models with the ability to monetise content directly, through retailer platforms or leading mobile marketplaces such as the Blackberry App World, Android Market, Google Apps Marketplace or Apple App Store. Publishers can create high-value merchandising programs such as print and digital content bundles and enable readers to seamlessly purchase content directly from within the magazine application on their device. Direct publisher e-commerce support for interoperability will allow readers to purchase content once and read it on their desktop or tablet devices.
• Analytics Service: Gain valuable customer insights to better optimise editorial content and drive higher advertising monetisation using Adobe SiteCatalyst. Publishers can access prebuilt dashboards directly from within the hosted publishing workflow to view key advertising and subscriber data including total ad views, issue download and purchase metrics and engagement with interactive content such as video. Valuable viewer-profile analytics can supplement traditional offline point-of‐sale (POS) data to build a more comprehensive understanding of an individual subscriber. Drill-down reporting and analytics are available through a separate Adobe SiteCatalyst subscription. Additional dashboard and reports can be custom tailored to meet a publisher’s unique business goals.

Pricing and Availability

The Digital Publishing Suite is expected to be available in Q2 2011 and offers both a Professional and Enterprise Edition. Pricing for the Professional Edition is expected to be US$699 per month plus a per-issue fee (there’s no UK pricing yet), which scales with publisher volume. The Professional Edition price allows publishers to access the Digital Publishing Suite and create applications for all of their titles and publications. The Enterprise Edition is a custom, multi-year platform agreement that includes access to APIs for integration of back-end publishing services such as subscription management, print fulfilment and e-commerce. Adobe also offers professional services to support enterprise level custom engagements.

Professional publishers that would like to deploy and sell commercial applications prior to general availability of the Digital Publishing Suite are invited to join the Adobe Digital Magazine Publishing Pre-release Program at http://www.adobe.com/beta.

A preview release of the add-on digital publishing technologies for InDesign CS5 is available on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitalpublishing.