Educational Publishers Must Prepare for Multichannel Future Survey Finds
NEW YORK—Oct. 2, 2012—Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), a leader in converting content to new formats, and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP), which encourages and advocates for professional, quality content for teaching and learning, announced the results of “The Changing Face of Back to School Survey” of the K-12 education market. The respondents were loud and clear: 77 percent think publishers will go out of business if they do not move to multichannel publishing. And the same percentage think that day is not far off, predicting that within five years printed materials will become less important to their business than digital content.
“Taken together, these issues reflect the need for publishers to put in place a strong, overarching content conversion strategy, rather than trying to address this urgent need internally on a project-by-project basis,” the findings report concludes.
“While our survey shows that more than 60 percent of respondents expect to deliver custom digital content within two years, they are concerned about their ability to do so in a way that meets the same high standards as their print publishing,” said Mark Gross, president and CEO, DCL
According to the survey, the top concern is accuracy, with approximately 75 percent not completely confident their converted content is free of errors. Moreover, respondents have concerns about the bandwidth of internal resources, with 60 percent most worried about time and deadlines. Insufficient staffing was cited by 54 percent of respondents.
The survey responses reflect the changes taking place in the types of materials provided by educational content providers: approximately 90 percent see demand increasing for online curriculum products and eBooks, followed by approximately 70 percent seeing rising demand for online learning games and multimedia/video. To meet these demands, publishers must be prepared to convert their materials into digital formats that include HTML, XML and, for eBooks, EPUB/MOBI.
Educational publishers face a balancing act: while 82 percent of respondents do foresee a day when students will only need to carry a digital device for most of their curriculum, that day has not yet come. This survey findings reflects one of the biggest challenges facing the learning resource industry: how to best create blended materials, or digital materials that can be integrated with print.
About DCL
Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) is a leader in organizing, converting, and moving content to modern formats for wide access and new revenue streams. With expertise across many industries, DCL’s proprietary technology matched with US-based project management teams solve clients’ complex conversion challenges securely, accurately and on-time.
Source: DCL.
