Tizra Blog

Free Webinar: How to get off the mult-format content treadmill

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 15:19:00 +0000

Free Webinar: Friday, September 21

12-12:30 pm (ET)

How to wrangle ALL your content types into one beautiful online hub… and get off the treadmill for good!

It never lets up. First it was publications and conference materials. Then blogs and social media. Then webinars, infographics, podcasts and online courses. You keep cranking them out, but where do they all go? How can you keep your communications investment from evaporating at the speed of Twitter?

Tizra lets you bring it all together into a great-looking, searchable, mobile-friendly website that delivers long-lasting value to your audience.

In 30 minutes you will learn...

How to broadcast and curate mixed media types for maximum impact.
How to categorize content for ease of use and maintenance.
How a well-tuned search can reveal hidden gems.

REGISTER NOW!

2018 Tizra User Summit: What We Learned by Meeting Our Customers Where We Are

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:41:00 +0000

They say you should "meet your customers where they are." Well, for Tizra's 4th annual user conference we decided to take a chance and do the opposite. Instead of going to Chicago or DC, where Tizra customers are concentrated, we bet on hosting in our home town of Providence, RI. It's not that we don't love Chicago and DC, but we really felt we could do something special with the home field advantage. As it turns out, we were right.

The Tizra user community is a silo-busting mix of creatives, technologists, content strategists and executives, who share the goal of building, engaging and generating value from audiences with digital content. For this crowd, we didn't want a sterile conference facility. We felt that by giving them a place they could really connect with, we'd help them connect with each other. Providence, with its vibrant tech and design scene, walkable downtown, and non-traditional venues, provided just the funky catalyst we were looking for. Great food didn't hurt either.

What else did we learn?

The event itself was packed with juicy takeaways for anyone who's interested in managing, delivering and selling digital content more effectively. Here are a few highlights from my notes.

First and foremost, as keynoter Mark Jannot put it, the customer is always... Always seeking. Always restive. And if we want to be successful, always at the center of our publishing efforts. Mark made an impassioned case for the power of speaking with an authentic voice. He reminded us that nostalgia is not a strategy. That sometimes we need to murder our darlings to create what's next. But if we are tough and focused, even workaday content like case studies can be sexy! He also broke news of his new gig at The New York Times Magazine… cutting short an all-to-brief speaking career we were lucky to benefit from while it lasted.

The American Payroll Association's Laura Lough followed with the story of how she and her team murdered a few darlings of their own, and in their place created gleaming new industry bibles in XML, learning in the process the nefarious reasons why their old CD-ROM products had been mysteriously popular with certain customers (hint: not all pirates wear eye patches).

Scribe's Noah Burd chimed in with the technical details behind APA's new workflow. "XML is just the expression of a hierarchical relationship between elements in a document" may not seem like an applause line… until you understand just how much this simple idea lays the foundation for great user experiences.

Then Nicholas Napp of Xmark Labs told us why Blockchain may actually live up to the hype, including such spicy concepts as triple entry bookkeeping, cheaper, more efficient, trustless transactions, and new ways of verifying content ownership and origins.

David Durand's annual Tizra roadmap looked ahead at our big plans for sleek new Admin panels, faster, better mobile search, personalized dynamic books, and simpler ways to do multi-format publishing. Plus juicy behind the scenes gossip like a top secret search API and kudos from a senior product manager at Google.

Master front-end artisan Henry Woodbury boldly handed over the keys to the latest test version of the new Tizra mobile reader and let everyone in the room try it out on whatever devices happened to be in their pockets, prompting oohs, aahs… and a few bug reports.

Then it was back to the front lines, with publisher success stories. Curtis Vouwie of OEM Press shared how he went from working at Little, Brown and Company to working at a little publisher of his own. Very little, in fact, which gives Curtis the agility to quickly test new ideas, including the new Tizra Bootstrap template, which he used to redesign and mobile optimize his Tizra site in less than a day. He also revealed a brilliant and breathtakingly simple way to update ebooks, so they can be sold as subscription products.

Aron & Amy Griffis of Scampersand took us on an island-hopping tour, using a whimsical premise to explore serious ideas for increasing user engagement and conversion. Exploiting Tizra's native ability to link related content, their demo revealed opportunities to turn hidden connections into bridges and help users unearth treasures that might otherwise remain buried.

And Shameka Walls of the American Dental Association closed the conference with a great, "the customer is always…" story. In this case, it seemed like the customer was always complaining about the digital rights management software ADA had previously used to deliver content. In switching to Tizra, ADA reaffirmed that the customer is always at the center, dramatically reducing complaints, and opening up new new product opportunities such as streaming video and more flexible institutional sales.

Throughout the conference, we were proud to see our home city of Providence serving as more than a backdrop, but as a hard-working attraction in itself. The field trip to Brown University's Center for Digital Scholarship led by director Elli Mylonas was a great opportunity for all of us to escape our usual constraints, and see how creative applications of technology have been fundamentally changing how people experience reality for centuries. And there are few things I've enjoyed more in my time at Tizra than seeing our user community gathered for a boisterous family-style dinner at North, or a reflective morning coffee around the big magazine table at Bolt Coffee (both of which just got a nice writeup in The Boston Globe, by the way).

Tizra's new Search is a CODiE Finalist

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 20:05:00 +0000

Tizra's new Einstein Papers search shows how researchers can pinpoint key passages across large numbers of complex documents.

We're thrilled to announce that the new search feature we originally developed for the Einstein Papers Project has been named a finalist in the 2018 CODiE awards. The CODiEs have been around for 30 years, and are the software and information industry's only peer-recognized awards program. It's wonderful to see all the hard work recognized in this way!

Just as exciting this powerful new content discovery tool is now available for use on all kinds of documents--from scholarly and professional to scientific and technical--through Tizra's new QuickStart option. Learn more.

New Mobile-Optimized Template Simplifies Site Design

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:05:00 +0000

Pre-designed templates are increasingly popular as a quick way to get new Tizra sites launched, or to refresh the design of an existing site.

A key driver in both cases is keeping up with increasingly high user expectations for ease of use and visual appeal, particularly on mobile devices. To address these needs, we’ve released a major upgrade to our Bootstrap-based responsive design template. The new version makes it much easier to customize with your own colors and logo, improves mobile interaction with the latest version of the Bootstrap framework, and adds numerous other visual and usability refinements.

Existing Tizra customers can try it out now by selecting the “Bootstrap Responsive Template” in the PRESENTATION area. Or if you’d like to see a quick preview, take a look at this demo site…

https://abedemo.tizrapublisher.com

Using XML to Create a Better Online Reading Experience for the American Payroll Association

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 01:16:00 +0000

Congrats to the American Payroll Association on their recent launch of XML-based publications on Tizra! Thanks to this collaboration, APA's authoritative books for payroll professionals are now available in crisp, reflowable HTML, creating a user experience that feels like a truly digital native product, rather than a conversion from print. XML-based publishing also creates a better mobile reading experience, supports more precise search and navigation, and opens the door to better accessibility for users with low vision and other disabilities. Our partners at Scribe did a great job supporting APA through the process of producing the XML for loading into Tizra, and we’d definitely recommend them to anyone interested in such a transition.

It’s hard to overstate what a big step forward this is for Tizra as a platform and a company. XML has long been planned for in the product's architecture, but now for the first time, we have a working example that demonstrates the power of combining new digital-first content with more traditional content in a single platform. The result is unified search and navigation for users, and a strong brand and audience builder for publishers.

Drop us a note if you’d be interested in a behind the scenes tour.

How the American Dental Association Moved Beyond DRM

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 14:30:00 +0000

The American Dental Association has been publishing books, brochures and other materials to help members stay current and manage their practices for more than a century, and now generates about $10 million in sales and licensing revenue from these products.

The ADA migrated to Tizra this year after a rigorous RFP process, driven primarily by frustration with their previous digital publication solution, which relied on proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. Under the previous digital publication solution, users were required to download special software to view the publications, which caused user complaints, and the DRM solution was unable to handle video and other supplements that went along with the publications, meaning ADA had to rely on cumbersome delivery mechanisms like CD-ROMs and flash drives.

Working with Tizra, ADA has not only eliminated these issues, they have gained the flexibility to pursue complex business models like group sales to large practices and institutions. ADA and Tizra are now actively exploring follow-on projects to add more kinds of content, and further develop publications as a key source of non-dues revenue to support ADA’s mission.

What Einstein Taught Us About Searching Inside Publications

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 13:10:00 +0000

When the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein went live on Tizra a few years ago, it was a huge step forward. Suddenly, anyone anywhere could search and access the output of one of the 20th Century’s great minds…from love letters to breakthrough articles that changed how we think about the nature of time and space.

But the project also showed the limits of traditional tools for searching within large, complex publications. These limits sparked a collaboration with Princeton University Press and Einstein Papers Project editors, which this year resulted in a dynamic new search interface, which we’ll be demonstrating in a Webcast Friday, December 15 at 1pm ET.

The interface not only makes it easier for Einstein researchers to home in on relevant content on both mobile devices and desktops, it points the way toward faster, better searching within a wide range of publication types, from reference books to periodicals, technical documentation and standards to textbooks.

Click To Register for Webinar

Take-Aways From The Digital Einstein Papers Project - a Tizra Webinar

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 12:54:00 +0000

Learn How Princeton University Press + Tizra Collaborated to Create a Revolutionary, Researcher-Friendly UI For Complex Online Publications!

Join us Friday, December 15 at 1pm ET for a quick, behind-the-scenes webinar tour of Tizra's new search technology developed for the Digital Einstein Papers and learn...

How hybrid search technology helps users find relevant content faster.

Deep search tools that uncover the value within large, complex publications.

How to manage the metadata within your publications.

This webcast focuses on THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS – a collaborative project powered by the Tizra platform that enables readers to experience the writings of Albert Einstein in unprecedented ways.

A newly developed search tool improves discoverability by allowing users to perform hybrid searches of full-text and structured metadata across volumes containing thousands of articles, letters, lectures and other writings, with easy navigation between original German texts and English translations, as well as extensive explanatory footnotes, introductory essays, and links to the Einstein Archives Online, where there are thousands of high-quality digital images of Einstein’s writings.

Presenter: Abe Dane
Abe Dane is Co-Founder of Tizra, where he manages operations, and is responsible for relationships with clients including the American Medical Association, Scholastic Library Publishing and Princeton University Press. Before Tizra, Dane worked in print and digital publishing for 20 years, at organizations including Hearst, MIT and Ingenta. In 1995, he launched Hearst’s first magazine website, and was founding editor of HomeArts, a mass market destination that eventually became one of the web’s top ad revenue earners. Since then he has helped guide the development of numerous online products for organizations ranging from Eastman Kodak to Oxford University Press and McGraw-Hill. Early in his career, he was Science and Technology Editor at Popular Mechanics, where he was responsible for most of the magazine’s cover stories. His work there won a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

Date and Time

Friday, December 15, 2017
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM EST

Click to register today to save your spot!

Webinar Sneak Preview: Strategic SEO - Increasing Your Organization's Visibility

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 17:27:00 +0000

Q+A with SEO expert Pam Long of True Digital

We caught up with Pam Long and asked her to answer just a few SEO-related questions in advance of her upcoming webinar - Strategic SEO: Increasing Your Organization's Visibility. In this session, Pam will focus on the SEO challenges faced by association and mission-based publishers and organizations, and the Q+A below is just a small taste of the information she has to share, and she'll be taking your questions throughout the webinar!

To register for this free webinar which takes place on Thursday, October 12 from 1pm ET - 2pm ET, click here.

1. What's the biggest SEO challenge facing association/mission-based publishers?

You need to face the reality that there are organizations out there that have been generating content with the intent of being found far longer than many associations have had digital content available at all. You’re competing against the likes of Google Books and Amazon, who are very, very good at discoverability, have a ton of information, and have brand name visibility.

2. How can publishers use SEO to reach BEYOND their core audience to readers who don't know them well?

I’d recommend you set up a free Google AdWords account and run some terms from some of your publications through it, just to begin to get an idea of how many people are searching for terms related to the topics your content covers. You'll find out the average number of searches for each term, and you can slice and dice by country by language, etc. It's a great way to start looking at where the opportunities are to reach outside your current audience just by doing a little bit of keyword optimization within content.

3. What are some new factors Google is considering in search rankings?

Two recently added inputs you should be thinking about are...

Does your site use responsive design?
Does it load fast on mobile devices?

4. How does Google score sites, and how does this uniquely affect online discovery for book publishers?

Google doesn't give a score to the site as a whole, they give a score to each individual page. In terms of content derived from book, it is important to think of each chapter or each segment of a book as an individual piece of content, and each of the keywords within that need to be very specific to that piece of content rather than to the publication as a whole.

About our speaker:

Pam Long - Senior Digital Strategist for True Digital
Pam has been involved in search engine optimization for over 20 years... longer than Google has been in business. Working for a variety of agencies and interactive shops, Pam has developed extensive expertise in the particular needs of mission-driven publishers. Now at True Digital, she puts her marketing and tech strengths to work developing digital strategies, SEO/SEM programs and measurement tactics to analyze everything from search engine rankings and social media engagement to website conversion.

Webinar October 12 - Strategic SEO: Increasing Your Organization's Visibility

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 21:46:00 +0000

Join us on Thursday, October 12 for a free webinar that will help you control access to your valuable digital content, while optimizing discoverability.

Your content is a valuable resource, not just for your existing customers, clients or members, but for reaching new audiences and increasing visibility for your organization. The key? Strategic SEO!
In this session, Pam Long of True Digital will share insights on:

Looking at content in a new light

Gatekeeping in the age of Google

Optimizing content for visibility

Date: Thursday, Oct 12, 2017

Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT

Price: FREE

To Register: Click Here

Pam Long, Senior Digital Strategist, True Digital

Depending on who you ask, Pam is either a technical person who speaks marketing or a marketing person who speaks ‘geek’. It’s a combination of strengths that has served her well in her 15-year career in ad agencies and interactive shops, where she has worked with clients in the building products, manufacturing and non-profit sectors. At True, she puts those strengths to work developing digital strategies, SEO/SEM programs and measurement tactics to analyze everything from search engine rankings and social media engagement to website conversion for our clients.

When she’s not reminiscing about the glory days of Netscape Navigator and Alta Vista or up to her eyebrows in spreadsheets and charts, Pam enjoys gardening, quilting and beadwork (which some would argue is just a more colorful version of spreadsheets and charts). Pam is married and the proud Mom of one well-adjusted, highly analytical son and one slightly neurotic rescue dog.

Free Webinar 9/28: "The 5 Top Issues Facing Association Publishing Management and how to Tackle Them!"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 14:20:00 +0000

Did You Know?

The average American spends nearly 3 hours a day on their smartphone? And that just ten apps control 98% of that time.
Amazon now controls over 50% of all books sales and 85%+ of ebook sales.
The resurgence of print is "wishful thinking rather than an understanding of what’s actually happening".
Publishers should raise prices: there 's far more flexibility than publishers think.
The merger of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) with the W3C will enable DRM-protected books in browsers.

These are just a few of the many insights you'll learn from digital publishing expert Thad McIlroy in Tizra's free webinar this Thursday. Thad has been on the cutting edge of technology trends for decades, authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, served as Program Director for the Seybold Seminars and written hundreds of articles and posts on subjects ranging from XML to metadata to marketing and publishing automation.

The 5 Top Issues Facing Association Publishing Management and how to Tackle Them!

Thurs., Sep 28, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EDT

Announcing the Tizra Publishing Webinar Series 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:25:00 +0000

This September Tizra is launching a new educational program for its association publishing clients and others interested in digital publication best practices. The free series of three monthly webinars led by publishing expert Thad McIlroy is directed to help you become a more effective publishing manager by examining best practices and new trends in online publishing.

The first webinar in the series is "The 5 Top Issues Facing Association Publishing Management and How ToTackle Them!" and it takes place on Thursday, September 28 from 1pm - 2pm ET. Registration is free.

Description:

It’s never been a better time to be an association publisher. The tools, technologies and formats bring information and knowledge to members in record time and in multiple formats. There are challenges, but, as the saying goes, challenge brings opportunity. When Tizra talks with association publishing managers these are the top issues we hear about:

1. Enabling discovery via search and enhanced metadata

2. Optimizing content delivery to mobile devices

3. New technologies for continuing education

4. Marketing through multiple sales channels

5. Dynamic web sites for publication sales

This webinar will review each issue and discuss ways that publishing managers can more effectively address these core challenges. You can register by clicking on this link.

Two additional webinars will follow in October and November: "A Holistic View of Association Publishing" on Oct 26, 2017 1:00 PM EDT, and "Trends in Continuing Education in Association Publishing" on Nov 15, 2017 1:00 PM EST. For more information regarding these webinars, click on the links above.

About the Presenter

Thad McIlroy is an electronic publishing analyst and author based in San Francisco. His site, www.thefutureofpublishing.com, is the most in-depth on the subject. McIlroy advises associations and publishing companies on maximizing digital technologies within publishing workflows. During the past 25 years he has educated and entertained audiences around the world on every aspect of digital publishing. His latest book is The Metadata Handbook: A Book Publisher’s Guide to Creating and Distributing Metadata for Print and Ebooks.

Books That Are Websites - Worth More Than a Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 17:12:00 +0000

At the Bookseller's FutureBook blog, Molly Flatt does an excellent job of summing up the incredible advantages and opportunities that browser-based books offer over books as apps and ebooks.

The post is definitely worth a read. In it, Flatt argues that books as apps lead to an unpleasant experience for readers, due to both the barrier of entry of downloading and the inconvenience and disruption of leaving the "walled garden" each time one clicks on a link.

Tizra's publisher clients would most likely agree with Flatt that apps are equally if not more painful for publishers: "From a publisher’s point of view, producing and distributing content via an app is a total pain - from creating complex InDesign files to working with frustrating external shopfronts such as the Apple Store. And it’s useless for SEO."

Noting the advances by leaps and bounds that web design has made in recent years, Flatt states plainly that the web now "better caters for long-form storytelling".

Flatt then takes the argument for browser-based books beyond apps, to ebooks - which we concur are aptly described as "those clunky, unattractive, digital-but-not-native things that run within low-grade apps...Those things that have been crying out for a rethink for at least a decade...".

As Flatt comments, "truly native browser books, redesigned fresh each time, offer exciting possibilites to authors and publishers in terms of design, interactive extras, data gathering and SEO". We at Tizra couldn't agree more!

Tizra's digital publishing software was built to allow publishers to easily create "books in browsers" from within their own websites. Publishers can control access to their content; optimize it for discoverability, sharing and sales; unbundle and remix it for new products; and incorporate multimedia. Plus, Tizra can easily be integrated into existing systems, offers automatic mobile content optimization, and provides built-in agile ecommerce tools.

For Tizra, books as websites have proven worth well beyond just a thought - and resulted in successful business models for our client publishers! To learn how Tizra can put your books into browsers, drop us a note, or sign up for a demo.

ACCESSE17 Conference Takeaways: Publications a recurring theme

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:28:00 +0000

The annual CESSE conference (Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives) has historically been focused on high-level strategy, so when we headed up to Quebec City for this year’s I wasn’t sure I’d be hearing a lot about publications.

But I was surprised at how many discussions—both in the sessions, and in the hallways—revolved around issues that publications really are central to. The issues themselves are nothing new…

Recruiting, engaging and retaining members
Building organizational branding and identity
Finding effective value propositions for members and prospects at all points in their careers
And of course, adding revenue streams

What’s new is that we’re seeing more and better ways of using publication content to address them.

For example, associations can recruit, engage and retain members by meeting readers where they are, making it easier to find publication content in Google and social media, and reducing the barriers to sampling, with metered paywalls, rather than strict access denieds.

If you do it right, some of that traffic converts to publication sales and new memberships. And more of it converts to awareness that your organization is the place to go for information that is both relevant AND credible.

Another example: repurposing your publication content in continuing education, courses, leveraging existing materials to create offerings that deliver educational outcomes, and can be adapted to each waypoint in the member’s career journey.

A conversation I had on the flight up neatly captured the challenge. The woman sitting next to me told me she’d recently started her career as an occupational therapist. She’d had a student membership in her organization—the AOTA—while in school, but hadn’t renewed when that lapsed. She clearly felt bad about it, and was aware of the research and other valuable contributions the organization made to her profession, but felt she could get the information she needed to do her job from colleagues, and yes, Google.

Fortunately, AOTA recently started working with Tizra, and hopefully next time I happen to sit next to an occupational therapist, she’ll be reading one of their digital publications.

Association Publishers: Workers want your specialized professional development resources - are they optimized for discoverability?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 17:53:00 +0000

A post over at the No Shelf Required portal highlighting a new whitepaper from Oxford University Press recently caught our eye. Navigating Research examines "how users seek contextual information and guidance for areas of scholarship as they conduct research, and how reference resources can support their work.”

Key findings of the paper, include, among others (bolding ours):

recognition of ‘reference’ as a specific category is declining and users are not likely to identify ‘reference resources as those belonging to a distinct category
research needs of today’s researchers are moving away from basic factual information and terminology (for which free online sources are used)
resources offering guidance to a field of study retain appeal as a ‘bridge between introductory materials and specialized research publications'”
resources offering guidance to a field of study are also used to support work in interdisciplinary fields
use of reference sources relies on their visibility and discoverability; this is likely to remain a challenge for publishers, librarians, and researchers

Those bolded bullet points should stand out to association and mission-based publishers. It's not much of a leap from academics and librarians to professionals and workers -- all of these groups are searching for specialized information.

As with researchers and librarians, workers can find more basic professional development resources online for free, but there is a growing need for more trust-worthy, in-depth and specialized information. And, as with researchers and librarians, ensuring workers can find that information depends upon visibility and discoverability.

Consider also, this post, "The Age of the Wisdom Worker Is (Still) Just Ahead". It is aimed at an audience of content marketers, but is highly relevant for association and mission-based publishers. In it, author Robert Rose discusses the trend of "knowledge workers" transitioning to "wisdom workers", and bemoans the failure of many businesses to take advantage of technology to meet the needs of these professionals who are "...distinguished not only by their ability to think with reason, but also with creativity, intuition, and emotional intelligence." He argues:

"The internet revolution has been realized at the expense of content’s value. Because of the ever-increasing ease with which content can be produced and distributed, businesses have viewed content as yet one more widget that can be made more efficient when measured by output".

Online publishers who focus on quantity over quality are going to be left behind. Information that is plentiful and free, but not at all useful to the knowledge/wisdom-seeker, has no value. Conversely, professional development resources designed to teach workers to better analyze information and apply their expertise become increasingly valuable. But, again - only if people can find them.

Is your content optimized for discoverability? Publishers employing Tizra's digital publishing platform have a built-in advantage in that they can easily make even their paywalled content discoverable via Google and other search engines. In addition, Tizra's digital publishing platform offers publishers the ability to:

improve their SEO through name based URLs, search engine friendly redirects, and special content formats tuned for search engine crawlers.
take advantage of Tizra's powerful built-in search with relevancy ranking, preview snippets, contextual scope of options, linkable results, and hits that lead directly to relevant pages.
create customized search fields for specialized audiences and applications.

Professionals at every stage of their careers are searching for trust-worthy and specialized content online, and they're willing to pay for it. As association publishers, your content is considered trust-worthy and addresses the needs of professionals throughout their career paths. But, can those professionals find that valuable content when searching for solutions online? With the right digital publication tools, you can ensure your digital content is optimized for discoverability - better-serving both your membership and your bottom line.

Want to learn more about how Tizra can optimize your digital publications for search and discovery? Drop us a note, or sign up for a demo to see how.

Tizra On the Road: ACCESSE17

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 14:20:00 +0000

ACCESSE17 - the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives - takes place in Québec City July 25 - 27, and Tizra will be there!

Well, our own Abe Dane will be there, facilitating a new session during Thursday’s breakfast called the Reciprocity Roundtable. Abe will be leading a discussion on the category of “relevance” - as in an association’s relevance to members, their professional development and career advancement.

Roundtable attendees can expect to learn the power and practice of reciprocity; find solutions to issues while focusing on contributing to others; build relationships and trust with colleagues; and learn about and help one another.

All that and breakfast, too!

You’ll find Abe and other early risers at 7am in QCC – Room 200B, with roundtable sessions beginning at 7:30 am, and ending at 8:30 am.

What Can Association Publishers Learn from Trade Publishers? Digital Marketing Take Aways

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 22:55:00 +0000

We recently came across the post, "Digital marketing scales and that could create new opportunities for capable publishers" by Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company

While written with trade publishers in mind, it has some good news and helpful takeaways for niche-market, mission-driven publishers -- especially those who are Tizra users.

The post puts a spotlight on publisher Open Road Integrated Media's success with discount pricing and vertically-focused digital marketing campaigns, and their continuing expansion as a marketing services provider for competitive publishers.

Open Road offers those competing publishers visibility for their niche titles in its highly target-marketed newsletters, reaching an ever increasing number of niche readers. In a win-win arrangement, those publishers reach more potential readers, and Open Road is able to share news about additional relevant titles - making their newsletters even more valuable for the readers. Open Road also benefits from additional revenue, and perhaps even more valuable - behavioral data points on what interests their audience and drives sales/conversions.

How is this relevant to Association Publishers?

Reading between the lines and omitting those bits that don't apply to a direct-to-consumer/member publisher, the post delivers some reassuring news for association publishers: vertical publishers with access to a niche market of eager readers are in an enviable position. As association publishers, your readers are members who have already accepted you as a trusted source of relevant content, and you have direct and exclusive access to them.

How can you apply some of the ideas presented in this post to your own publishing program? We've identified three key take-aways that mission-driven/association publishers might consider to bring greater value to members, build brand awareness, and boost the overall bottom line.

Price-Driven Promotions (for marketing, discovery)

Open Road's Early Bird Book newsletter highlights free and discounted titles, with data showing that bargain-hunting readers of Early Bird Books also buy related, non-discounted titles. Because Tizra publishers can implement price changes and content access/configuration in real time, experimenting with price-driven promotions is easy.

Among the possibilities: offering limited time or scarcity-based discounts; offering entire books or partial books for free; offering discounts to sub-sections of members; etc. The data you can gather about what promotions motivate purchases can be very valuable, and price-driven promotions can lead to purchases of relevant, full-priced content.

Content Marketing -- (for brand awareness, discovery, marketing)

"Sometimes adapting something from the book and other times creating original content of interest to the vertical audience" are other ways to optimize the value of your books/content. Sharing pieces of your premium content via newsletters, blog posts, etc., can drive readers (including interested non-members) back to you for other offerings - both content- and membership-related.

Marketing Services -- (for additional revenue stream, added member value)

As an association publisher, with exclusive access to a vertical audience, you might consider offering your marketing services (via your association's newsletters, blogs, events) to like-minded publishers who want to promote their titles to your membership. Vetting the titles ensures they meet your standards, and makes such a marketing service even more valuable to both participating publishers and your members.

Given that Tizra was developed for the broader publishing market, it's not surprising that our platform offers easy and cost effective ways to execute tactics like these. Drop us a note, or sign up for a demo to see how.

Questions & Answers about the Tizra User Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 May 2017 18:18:00 +0000

Why has this gathering of digital publishing mavens expanded beyond its origins as a simple software user conference? Following is a brief Q&A with Tizra's founders.

Why did decide to put on a user conference… and why have you kept at it?

We'd been to a ton of publishing conferences, and felt they were light on the central know-how needed to build direct connections with audiences. If you think about it, that's exactly what our customers do day in and day out, and we felt there was the opportunity to do something that would not only help people to use Tizra more effectively, but would help them to be better publishers.

So we put the idea out there and got a very encouraging response. More important, the reviews AFTER the first conference were unanimously positive. Every single person who went said they’d do it again.

In the second year, more than twice as many organizations participated, and we got similar reviews. That told us it wasn’t a fluke. So now the question is How do we build on this? There’s a real, living community here, and we’re excited about exploring how we can make it more energetic, interesting, and able to deliver insight and value to its members.

What are the hot topics that you’re looking forward to seeing on the agenda this year?

By far the best thing about past conferences have been the surprises. Customers are out there doing things that we never expected, which is hugely exciting, because it means that the potential of Tizra isn’t bounded by our own imaginations. Obviously, we don’t know what this year’s surprises will be, but two things we know have a lot of energy behind them already are XML and integration.

What’s significant about XML is that it offers the opportunity to create a truly digital-native user experience, including reflowable text that’s much easier to optimize for mobile devices. It also frees you from the constraints of the printed page when it comes to content remixing. Basically you can create whatever size chunks you want and you can use all the most modern web tools to enhance the on-screen look and layout.

XML is particularly significant for Tizra customers because it not only puts them in a position to create really cutting edge user experiences, but they don’t have to write off older fixed layout content to do so. With XML capabilities added to Tizra’s existing PDF delivery, you can combine old and new publications in whatever ways make sense for your readers, without worrying about what kinds of production processes were used for each.

Integration is the other big area. These days it's going way beyond single sign-on. We’re seeing integrations with learning management, production workflow, search, ecommerce and web content management systems. As our APIs grow, Tizra is becoming part of a broader fabric of solutions that give users the freedom to combine software from different vendors with much less concern about the kinds of incompatibilities that used to lock them in. We’re trying to make Tizra as open as possible to this kind of adaptation, and expect to have some exciting new work to show. Again, it opens up the possibility for all kinds of new surprises.

Can you tell us about the newly added ½-Day pre-conference Tizra Developer’s Intensive?

While we’ve always taken pride in how much Tizra empowers non-technical users, the truth is it puts even more power in the hands of people who have certain technical skills. Last year, a number of participants asked not just for a longer conference, but for more hands-on time that would help participants build new features and capabilities that would change how they published in deeper ways. This really requires some focused, peer-to-peer time, where developers can dig in, without fear that they’re leaving everyone else out.

So this year, we’re going to lead into Tuesday’s plenary session with a smaller gathering the afternoon before, which we plan to focus on things like API applications, front-end coding techniques, and working with XML. The goal will be for participants to go home not only with ideas, but with sample code and new skills they can put to work immediately.

Then the whole group will gather for a great dinner, same as last year. A great warm-up to the general session.

What are the benefits to customers who attend the TUG conference?

Well, of course, you’ll learn more about where Tizra is headed and how to get more out of the platform, but that’s actually a comparatively small part of the program. The big benefits really come from the opportunity to compare notes with colleagues across publishing disciplines and from the concrete “how-tos” that combine an understanding of real publishing challenges and deep knowledge of the opportunities technology can create. Expect to come out with an updated awareness of best practices in the fast-changing world of digital publishing, new skills and strategies to help you do great work, and with a recharged sense of confidence and focus based on what you’ve learned.

Case Study: ABC-CLIO Upgrades to a Mobile-First eBook Site... While Keeping an Eye on Value

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 12:08:00 +0000

“Tizra’s support for cutting-edge web design was a key factor in our decision. They enabled us to achieve a modern, mobile-first user experience that fits our profile as a technology leader.”

--Troy Martin, VP Operations, ABC-CLIO

Tizra API's enabled complex, faceted search.

With more than 8,000 eBooks already published, and a steady flow of 30-40 new releases every month, ABC-CLIO was well established as a leader in digital publishing. But their homegrown eBook platform wasn't keeping pace. They knew they were in a race to meet increasingly high user expectations, particularly as content consumption shifted to tablets and mobile devices.

Initially, they considered leveraging their own outstanding in-house technology team to rebuild the site, but careful financial analysis revealed they'd get better value if they went outside.

After surveying a field of 13 vendors they decided on Tizra. Key factors included...

Support for advanced, mobile-first design using the latest responsive frameworks and techqniques.
High-performance, easy-to-use search, with the ability to filter large numbers of results.
Easily customized interfaces that marketing and editorial staff could update without help.
Single sign-on integration, enabling ABC-CLIO to leverage existing infrastructure and providing users with the ability to access all ABC-CLIO products seamlessly with one set of credentials.
Ability to automate content loading and updates from their existing distribution partner (Ingram CoreSource).
A preview widget so they could embed samples from their eBooks in their online catalog and other web pages.

Tizra's deployment team collaborated closely with ABC-CLIO to ensure the Tizra platform was configured and branded to ABC-CLIO requirements. Now live, the new site is a seamless extension of ABC-CLIO's brand identity and a faithful reflection of their reputation for technology leadership.

“I’m very happy with where we ended up,” says Martin. “Tizra enabled us to take leaps forward in meeting our users’ high expectations.”

Want to learn more? Read the full case study.

What Keeps Healthcare Association Executives Up at Night...and What to Do About It

noreply@blogger.com (TamaraGruber) — Mon, 11 May 2015 13:58:00 +0000

The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), recently published an article called "What Keeps Healthcare Association Executives Up at Night?", based on focus group data from its Healthcare Community Committee. The research highlighted concerns that we've been hearing for a while, including...

Associations need to identify non-dues revenue models
Members are looking for healthcare associations to provide answers and information
Associations have a critical need to for assistance in curating healthcare-related information and delivering it to members.
Associations need agility to respond to a changing healthcare landscape that is difficult to predict.

These are exactly the kinds of concerns that are driving the adoption of agile digital publishing methods by a growing list of organizations, like the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, International Association for the Study of Pain and American Society of Health System Pharmacists. With tools like the Tizra digital publishing platform, we're seeing that many of the most pressing issues can be addressed.

Adopting an agile, direct approach to selling digital content, such as books, journals, newsletters, or online courses, directly to members adds a significant and profitable source of non-dues revenue. With a platform like Tizra, there is no need to share the revenue, and you have the ability to remix content to create highly targeted product offerings for subsets of your audience, which improves relevance...and sales.
By providing powerful the search tools Tizra provides, like page-at-a-time full text search, and faceted browsing, associations can feed their memberships appetite for fast and reliable answers.
By delivering this content across any browser-based device, be it a tablet, laptop, or smartphone, you are providing information to members in an easy to consume way without the costs associated with printing, shipping and storage.
Publishing platforms like Tizra provide the agility associations are looking for in the delivery of information to members. Not only can associations quickly convert existing materials into digital, browser-based publications, but they can offer associations the flexibility to deliver it in a multitude of ways, including sample chapters, subscription-based pricing, chapter-by-chapter purchasing, company-wide licensing and more.

Offering an e-bookstore on their website allows healthcare associations to generate non-dues revenue, quickly provide the information members are looking for, and deliver content faster, and with more options, than ever before.

Healthcare association executives, let Tizra help you sleep better at night. Request a demo or review some of our case studies today.

Case Study: ASHP Revs up Ebook Sales by Switching to Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (TamaraGruber) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 16:48:00 +0000

"In the first few weeks on the Tizra platform, we have already sold more than the entire previous quarter, plus we aren't sharing our revenue anymore."

—Dean Manke, VP, Marketing & Sales, ASHP

When the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) got tired of sharing ebook revenue with its offshore epublishing vendor, it looked for a way to take greater control of its digital content publishing and sales. This search led to Tizra.

A critical factor behind the move was the need to achieve a seamless single sign-on integration with ASHP's existing Personify association management system, so that users would no longer have to juggle multiple usernames and passwords.

Additional requirements included:

Simple, intuitive user interfaces for readers… and ASHP publishing staff.
An affordable solution that eliminated revenue sharing.
Support for a wide range of sales models, including institutional sales, print/digital bundles, and flexible marketing promotions.
Superb customer service that eliminated the time-zone and other communication challenges of dealing with offshore support staff.

Tizra not only met these requirements, but did so on the tight schedule required to have ASHP up and running in time for its annual meeting.

"Not only did we have a new ebook site to show members, but we were able to start making sales at the meeting," says Manke.

In addition, ASHP now has hands-on control over the publishing process, provides users with a clean, custom-branded ebook experience, offers a single sign-on across its web presence, and is even able to get ebooks to market faster to coincide with—or even precede—the launch of print editions. Download the case study to get the full story.

Digital Einstein Papers Launches on Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:23:00 +0000

Launching today, THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS is a publicly available website of the collected and translated papers of Albert Einstein that allows readers to explore the writings of the world’s most famous scientist as never before.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[PDF Version]

Princeton, NJ – December 5, 2014 – Princeton University Press, in partnership with Tizra, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and California Institute of Technology, announces the launch of THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS (http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu). This unique, authoritative resource provides full public access to the translated and annotated writings of the most influential scientist of the twentieth century: Albert Einstein.

“Princeton University Press has a long history of publishing books by and about Albert Einstein, including the incredible work found in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein,” said Peter Dougherty, director of Princeton University Press. “We are delighted to make these texts openly available to a global audience of researchers, scientists, historians, and students keen to learn more about Albert Einstein. This project not only furthers the mission of the press to publish works that contribute to discussions that have the power to change our world, but also illustrates our commitment to pursuing excellence in all forms of publishing—print and digital.”

THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS website presents the complete contents of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, and, upon its launch, the website—http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu—will contain 5,000 documents covering the first forty-four years of Einstein’s life, up to and including the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics and his long voyage to the Far East. Additional material will be available on the website approximately eighteen months after the print publication of new volumes of The Collected Papers. Eventually, the website will provide access to all of Einstein’s writings and correspondence, accompanied by scholarly annotation and apparatus.

What sorts of gems will users discover in THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS? According to Diana L. Kormos-Buchwald, director of the Einstein Papers Project, “This material has been carefully researched and annotated over the last twenty-five years and contains all of Einstein’s scientific and popular writings, drafts, lecture notes, and diaries, and his professional and personal correspondence up to his forty-fourth birthday—so users will discover major scientific articles on the general theory of relativity, gravitation, and quantum theory alongside his love letters to his first wife, correspondence with his children, and his intense exchanges with other notable scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and political personalities of the early twentieth century.”

Buchwald also noted that THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS will introduce current and future generations to important ideas and moments in history, saying, “It is exciting to think that thanks to the careful application of new technology, this work will now reach a much broader audience and stand as the authoritative digital source for Einstein’s written legacy.”

THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS enables readers to experience the writings of Albert Einstein in unprecedented ways. Advanced search technology improves discoverability by allowing users to perform keyword searches across volumes of Einstein’s writing and, with a single click, navigate between the original languages in which the texts were written and their English translations. Further exploration is encouraged by extensive explanatory footnotes, introductory essays, and links to the Einstein Archives Online, where there are thousands of high-quality digital images of Einstein’s writings.

The Tizra platform was selected for this project, according to Kenneth Reed, manager of digital production for Princeton University Press, because of its highly flexible, open, and intuitive content delivery approach, and its strong reputation for reliability. Equally important was creating a user-friendly reading experience.

“One of the reasons we chose Tizra is that we wanted to preserve the look and feel of the volumes,” said Reed. “You’ll see the pages as they appear in the print volumes, with added functionality such as linking between the documentary edition and translation, as well as linking to the Einstein Archives Online, and the ability to search across all the volumes in English and German.”

THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS is an unprecedented scholarly collaboration that highlights what is possible when technology, important content, and a commitment to global scholarly communication are brought together. We hope you will join us in celebrating this achievement and invite you to explore Einstein’s writings with the links below.

Work on THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS was supported by the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. endowment, the California Institute of Technology, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Arcadia Fund, U.K.

A Sampling of Documents Found in THE DIGITAL EINSTEIN PAPERS

Website: http://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu

“My Projects for the Future” — In this high school French essay, a seventeen-year-old Einstein describes his future plans, writing that “young people especially like to contemplate bold projects.”

Letter to Mileva Marić — The first volume of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein revealed that the young Einstein had fathered an illegitimate daughter. In this letter to his sweetheart and future wife, Einstein, age twenty-two, expresses his happiness at the birth of his daughter Lieserl, and asks about her health and feeding.

Einstein’s first job offer — Einstein graduated from university in 1900, but had great difficulty finding academic employment. He received this notice of his appointment as a technical clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in June 1902 and would later describe his time there as happy and productive.

“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” — Einstein’s 1905 paper on the special theory of relativity is a landmark in the development of modern physics.

“On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light” — Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this paper on the hypothesis of energy quanta.

The telegram informing that Einstein he has won the Nobel Prize — Einstein was traveling in the Far East when he officially learned via telegram that he had been awarded the prize. However, he had long been expecting the prize, as evidenced by a clause regarding its disposition in a preliminary divorce agreement from Mileva in 1918.

“The Field Equations of Gravitation” — Einstein spent a decade developing the general theory of relativity and published this article in late 1915.

To his mother Pauline Einstein — Einstein writes to his ailing mother to share the happy news that his prediction of gravitational light bending was confirmed by a British eclipse expedition in 1919.

To Heinrich Zangger, on the mercurial nature of fame — Having been propelled to world fame, Einstein writes to his friend about the difficulties of being “worshipped today, scorned or even crucified tomorrow.”

To Max Planck, on receiving credible death threats — Einstein writes that he cannot attend the Scientist’s Convention in Berlin because he is “supposedly among the group of persons being targeted by nationalist assassins.”

Four Lectures on the Theory of Relativity, held at Princeton University in May 1921 — On his first trip to the United States, Einstein famously delivered these lectures on the theory of relativity.

About The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein is one of the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the documentation of the history of science. Selected from among more than 40,000 documents contained in Einstein’s personal collection, and 15,000 Einstein and Einstein-related documents discovered by the editors since the beginning of the Einstein Project, The Collected Papers provides the first complete picture of a massive written legacy. When completed, the series will contain more than 14,000 documents as full text and will fill thirty volumes. The volumes are published by Princeton University Press, sponsored by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and supported by the California Institute of Technology.
http://www.einstein.caltech.edu/

About Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections, both formal and informal, to Princeton University. As such it has overlapping responsibilities to the University, the academic community, and the reading public. Our fundamental mission is to disseminate scholarship (through print and digital media) both within academia and to society at large.
http://press.princeton.edu | Twitter: @PrincetonUPress

About Tizra
Tizra’ digital publishing platform makes it easy to distribute and sell ebooks and other digital content directly to readers, with exceptional control over the user experience. Combining intuitive control panels with integrated ecommerce, SEO, mobile, multimedia, and content remixing capabilities, Tizra empowers content owners to respond quickly to market feedback and build audience relationships that will hold up over the long haul. The company is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island, and funded in part by Rhode Island’s Slater Technology Fund.
http://tizra.com | Twitter: @tizra

Online Books that Speak for Themselves

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:00:00 +0000

A while back, we announced a partnership with ReadSpeaker, a leading provider of text-to-speech software. We're really excited to see how our customers have been using the capability to make their ebooks and other content more accessible to users with vision impairments and other handicaps… as well as more engaging for all kinds of users. Check out what Gibbs Smith is doing with their history textbooks in the video below, and request a demo if you'd like to learn more about how they did it.

Frankfurt 2014: Navigating a Book Fair Bigger than Providence

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 16:23:00 +0000

Tizra makes books—and book fairs—easier to navigate.

Along with much of the publishing world, we are excitedly preparing for the annual Frankfurt Book Fair next week. 275,000 participants are expected, more than the population of Tizra's home city of Providence. If you're like us, you'll want all the help you can get navigating the maze of pavilions and events, so we've posted web versions of the show's handy A-to-Z quick reference guide on the Tizra demo site, in English and Deutsch. Hope you find it useful...and that we see you among the 275,000!

Fast Forward (and Back) with Thumbnail Browsing

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 15:39:00 +0000

Helping readers maintain the kind of contextual awareness and quick navigation that print books naturally afford has been a perennial challenge in designing digital reading interfaces. Our new thumbnail browsing option helps by displaying a row of small page images below the main reading area. Readers can quickly skim back and forth to spot the page layouts and illustrations they're looking for. It's especially helpful with educational, reference and illustrated texts, where ability to home in fast on the right page is key.

[TRY IT NOW]

If you're a Tizra customer and you'd like the feature activated, just drop us a line.