Monday, February 22, 2016

Transition to Digital: A Brief BIGNY Dialogue with Wiley's Peter Milburn

Peter Milburn
The Book Industry Guild of New York (BIGNY) recently spoke with Wiley's Peter Milburn about his firm's transition to the digital marketplace. In his role as Associate Director, Digital Product Marketing, Knowledge & Learning/Wiley, Milburn possesses a sharp, experienced perspective on the challenges and rewards digital opportunities offer.

The following three questions provide a window into insights Milburn will share during BIGNY's Tuesday, March 8th "Publishing Technology Update: New Digital Directions" panel discussion.

BIGNY: Can you give some examples of re-purposing content in order to monetize it?
Milburn: In Test Prep, we licensed spiral bound "Focus Notes" book content to mobile app company gWhiz. Also, we put our books into online courseware, as well as ebook formats.

BIGNY: How has data from your digital products affected new book or product creation?
Milburn: We constantly run customer surveys to understand what they like or dislike about our products. We adjust based on the feedback. For example, print replica printing was important to our customers, so we worked with Vitalsource to add two files of each book to their account: a print replica ePDF version and a reflowable ePub version.

BIGNY: How has the digital workflow changed people's jobs? For example, do designers have to code? Do teams work more closely?
Milburn: Everyone needs increased awareness of the workflows and end-customer impacts. So, for example, editors need to understand the full content ecosystem to help backout author delivery dates, the dev teams need to be able to react quickly to market feedback, sales people need to become software solution specialists.

Learn more about publishing technology's new digital directions from Milburn and other industry experts during BIGNY's March 8th event. For event information and advance ticket purchase, please visit the BIGNY site for details. And click here for a brief professional bio of Peter Milburn.

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