Wattpad: From Digital Publishing to Print

Wattpad connects “a global community of over 80 million monthly readers.” This community is based around a free website where readers, devoted franchise fans, and aspiring authors alike form a community where they can read or create online material.

Wattpad targets a different audience than companies like Smashwords and Kobo. Where those are services designed to help authors publish and sell their work, Wattpad is meant as a creative outlet for users. While Wattpad does encourage authors to “establish a global fan base as [their] story gains readership and momentum” and “connect with other like-minded writers through storytelling,” they leave the marketing to the author’s discretion.

For the Writers

Wattpad allows freedom for its writers. It leaves the creative rights to the author who is in complete control of every aspect of the story. For example, Wattpad authors have no publishing time constraints. According to The Writer’s Circle, “you could post a short draft and get immediate feedback from readers.” Writers are free to post new chapters of their books whenever they are ready.

With its emphasis on freedom, Wattpad is very lax when it comes to their content guidelines. The terms of service for anyone considering the use of Wattpad as a creative platform can be found here.

Again, Wattpad is not a company that openly seeks to sell creator’s content to larger publishing platforms. However, Wattpad does offer tips to content creators for getting their stories to a broad audience.

For the Readers

Wattpad is unique in its ability to form a bridge between content creators and their readers. For example, they allow readers to create reading lists for easy access. Users may vote for the stories they like the most, thus pushing reader-preferred content closer to the front of the site.

Readers can share their favorite stories on social media increasing the potential reach for any story. Users also have unparalleled access to the authors and other Wattpad users who are reading the same things. Feedback for authors and discussion about the stories is readily available as a result.

Wattpad Books

With over 80 million users worldwide, Wattpad has decided to take digital publishing to the presses. According to Ashleigh Gardner, Deputy General Manager at Wattpad Studios Publishing:

We bring something completely unique to publishing: an engaged global community, the most diverse set of writers on the planet, and the technology to find every type of hit imaginable. Wattpad Books is more than a new division for us, it’s a validation and celebration of the creativity, interests, and world-building that happens on Wattpad every day.

Wattpad Books is the company’s first direct publishing division. It “takes the stories people have obsessed over, and gives them a platform so their creators can be heard.”

Publishing famous Wattpad stories has been a trend for a while. According to Michael Kozlowski, “To date, nearly one thousand Wattpad stories have been turned into books and adapted for TV, film, and digital projects.”

While Wattpad stories have previously been published by separate companies, “Wattpad Books will be its own direct division.” In North America, Wattpad has partnered with Macmillan Publishers, Anvil Publishing, and Raincoast Books. Recently, Wattpad Books has announced that they will be partnering with Penguin Random House UK, the UK branch of the world’s leading trade publisher, to publish Wattpad Books in the United Kingdom.

Wattpad Books uses a special sort of artificial intelligence (AI) to determine what books they will publish. This AI is known as Story DNA Machine Learning. According to Gardner, by combining “machine learning, deep learning, and recurrent neural network,” Story DNA will break down the statistics of the over 400 million stories available on Wattpad.

The AI goes beyond the statistics of shares, comments, and views that a story has and “deconstructs stories into their elemental features, such as sentence structure, word use, and grammar.” This data is then compared to other stories on Wattpad as well as books in the public domain. Resulting data comparison is done in hopes of finding quality content comparable in structure and style to what has already been published.

Once the Story DNA Machine Learning has gathered the content, the stories are sent to a team of Wattpad staff who determine what will be published. Gardner says, “Wattpad Books is equal parts art and science, and our human content and editorial experts are just as important for everything we do at Wattpad Books.”

Success

In 2014, Wattpad author Anna Todd’s One Direction themed fanfiction was published as a multi-part series in both print and e-book form. The After series has recently developed into a film adaptation released in April of 2019. Todd, who is now a New York Times bestselling author, is one of Wattpad’s greatest success stories to date.

With the new Wattpad Books approach to publishing stories made famous through digital writing, books chosen by the Wattpad AI system and staff members will be published as paperbacks, e-books, and even hardback copies.

According to Wattpad Books’ website, they are “poised to disrupt traditional publishing by harnessing data to unleash the most groundbreaking stories from Wattpad directly onto bookshelves.” That is what they intend to do with their Fall 2019 List. The list of the six titles being published through Wattpad Books throughout Fall of 2019 can be found here.

Though Wattpad Books gives aspiring authors a chance to have their works published through paper and ink, Gardner says it “is more than a new division for us, it’s a validation and celebration of the creativity, interests, and world-building that happens on Wattpad every day.”

Wattpad and Wattpad Books are proof that success in digital publishing can be the stepping-stone many need to reach success in the wider world of publishing.

Digital Publishing in the Classroom

Enabling students to harness their voice and to understand the value of their ideas can be cultivated through digital publishing in the English classroom. Through tutoring, I have found that students struggle with expressing their ideas and frequently underestimate the value of their original thoughts. Usually the first step to helping brainstorm ideas is to aid them in understanding that not only does their voice matter, but also to write everything from an angle that interests them. Students sometimes have difficulty understanding why the essays they are writing matter, and how to express their voice.

By guiding students to experiment with and publish e-books in the K-12 classroom, we can cultivate a generation empowered with the ability to communicate effectively and with confidence. An English Teacher, Stacy Cler, writes that “through assignments that incorporate digital media, my students not only connect to the texts we read in class on deeper levels but also illustrate their knowledge and interests in technology, history and culture that reach outside of the classroom.”

To ensure that e-book creation aligns with learning standards we will use the following standards from alex.state.al.us. Perhaps you have your students write poetry to “demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. [L.9-10.5].” Or you may have them collaboratively “write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. [W.9-10.3].”

The Premise is That…

As a student myself, I was never nurtured to value my voice until late in my college career where professors coaxed it out of me. Furthermore, it wasn’t until the very class that I am writing this article for that I understood how to project my voice outside of a complicated and competitive academic publishing environment.

Now I know that publishing online is achievable at any level of education, and it should be utilized. Sources such as the Teacher Off Duty and Cult of Pedagogy detail ideas for how to incorporate digital publishing into the classroom. However, what if a student wants to go further and publish an e-book themselves?

Self-publishing an e-book is easier and cheaper than ever with websites like LuLu, and can be as simple as downloading a Google Doc in the .ePub file format. Students may even convert PowerPoint and Google Slides documents into PDF files that may be read as e-books.

Resources for E-book Creation

Google Classroom utilized through a school’s G-Suite are seemingly the most convenient method to publishing the student’s work in e-book format if the classroom has access to digital devices – such as Chrome Books. Not only does Google Classroom allow the educator to easily manage the student’s writing, but since the students will be writing in Google Docs or Google Slides this allows the students an easy route to converting their work into .ePub format.

Greg Kulowiec explains that to create an e-book through Google Docs “the process…consists of creating content within a Google Doc and then exporting it: File –> Download As –> ePub Publication (.epub).” After converting their in-class work to the .ePub file format, the student can then “upload their digital book back to Google Drive and make the .ePub file accessible to anyone via a link.”

Furthermore, Kulowiec writes that creating an e-book through Google Slides is as simple as designing each slide as a single page of the e-book, converting the file into a PDF document, and then uploading it to Issuu.com. Issuu has many subscription plans, but for the purposes of a classroom the educator may utilize a free subscription plan and allow the students to upload their e-books.

PowerPoint is as simple as using Google Slides. Convert the PowerPoint file into a PDF and immediately share with family and friends. To find more information on this medium, I recommend reading this article on students making e-books from the Cult of Pedagogy. Theoretically, the same may be done with a Word Document; however, just like Google Slides, PowerPoint allows for the manipulation of images, text, and design, allowing students to create vibrant e-books.

Realizing Students can have an Impact

Students can do more than just create a PDF file, or write something in .ePub. Your students can profit from their e-book. Students can distribute their e-books from the iBooks Store, LuLu.com, and even Amazon.com.

Of course, these methods will be rather nuanced and require more exploration and effort than simply distributing the e-book as a PDF and/or through Google Drive in .ePub format. Furthermore, the buyers will likely be limited to family and friends. However, cash is a great attention-grabber and motivator in the classroom.

Another valuable outcome of this process can be teaching students how to market their work, and the value of money. They can be led through the process of selling these e-books around the students’ local community; specifically, students might sell their e-book at their school’s book fair.

Encourage the students to take ownership of their voice by writing together and publishing a collaborative collection of all their work and selling it at the book fair. Advertise the event to parents. If you want to spice things up, negotiate royalties with the class – perhaps you return 70% of the book funds to a class-wide fund that they may vote on how to utilize for something like a pizza party to celebrate their publication. Figure out as a class where that remaining 30% should go to, like a charity, or maybe you invest in making a physical copy of the book to put on display.

At the end of the learning segment, students will have learned the writing curriculum, how to create and publish an e-book, and how to project their voice and be recognized for their achievements.

IS DRM For You?

What Is Digital Rights Management?

Digital rights management controls not only when the customer can use the product, but also how the product is used. According to Margaret Rouse, “DRM is implemented by embedding code that prevents copying, specifies a time period in which the content can be accessed or limits the number of devices the media can be installed on.”

Effects of Digital Rights Management

According to Copy Issues with e-books (Links to an external site.), “When buyers are purchasing e-books, they are not merely buying the book to own. In reality, e-book consumers are purchasing a licensing agreement.” Digital rights media is often active because of these kinds of licensing agreements. The DRM serves as a way to uphold the licensing deal for an e-book.

For example, Microsoft Office made an entrance into the e-book market in 2017 and left two years later. When Microsoft went under, customers of Microsoft’s e-books no longer could read e-books on their e-readers. Every Microsoft e-book that was purchased received their money back although customers deemed the product to be more valuable than money.

DRM for Authors

Digital rights management was first created to prevent online piracy. Now, the DRM has extended to being used to control the author’s content. One possible benefit of having DRM is the ability to edit e-books after it has uploaded. If the author notices an error, it will be easily fixed. Through the DRM, all of the author’s edits will be up to date since it connects to the server. Then if an author dislikes the feedback from a particular section, they can completely delete the section. The DRM adds an extra layer of protection that many authors have considered using.

Like every other coin, there are two sides to the DRM. A group of critics who are highly against the use of DRM has created a #DayAgainstDRM. Now is the time to raise awareness about the harms of DRM. According to Creative Commons Timothy Vollmer (Links to an external site.), ”

There are serious problems with attaching DRM to creative works: not only does it frustrate legitimate users in enjoying the content they’ve paid for in the ways they wish, but it also limits access and interaction with these works for educational and socially beneficial purposes.”

DRM has to be connected to a certain server; control is inevitable. Anderson (Links to an external site.)writes, “If you want to shift your Kindle books to an e-reader that doesn’t support Kindle files, you have to break the DRM. And as e-readers and e-books become more common, this fact becomes unavoidable.”

How does DRM affect E-book customers?

Companies who decide to use DRM have more control over the e-book. Thus, if a customer buys a book from Amazon, the book can only be read on a Kindle Fire or Kindle app. E-books purchased from Amazon are unable to be shared with other Amazon users.

Purchasers of e-books using DRM may limit how many devices an individual can download the same e-book. Some individuals are unable to print from e-books. If a person manages to print their e-books a watermark will appear on every page.Through DRM e-books are unsharable because it violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Is DRM stronger than Vibranium?

DRM is far from being impenetrable. If a company decides to use DRM, possibilities of setbacks still exist. For many customers, breaking the DRM off of their device is advantageous.

If a customer owns an e-book by a company that uses DRM, they could lose their e-book when they travel out of the country. K.T. Bradford (Links to an external site.)explains, “attempting to access Google Play Books from a country where that service is not available isn’t possible, even if you bought the books in an access country. This affects people traveling internationally as well as those who move from one country to another.” Customers who are wary of the future of e-book companies also may want to break DRM. When the DRM is broken customers will be able to keep the e-books, even if the company goes under.

While the use of DRM has changed, so has the initial market. As a result, DRM is both valuable and unhelpful for authors and consumers. Depending on a person’s perspective, DRM may be beneficial to authors and customers alike.

The Fall of the Facebook Empire

In the 15 years since its inception in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook simultaneously became the leading social networking site and one of the largest platforms that users no longer trust.

Why the Distrust?

According to the Ezoic article “2019 Digital Publishing Trends that Publishers Care About ,” 55.5% of publishers voted that Facebook was the platform they trusted the least. The article states that, “Facebook has earned their tough reputation with publishers. A non-transparent change in the newsfeed and the reduction of reach for publisher pages has earned Facebook a tarnished image with publishers.”

Facebook also garnered a disreputable image with publishers due to the biased decision making toward their featured news articles. While a certain amount of bias should be anticipated when dealing with large business corporations – and yes, Facebook is a corporation – copious amounts of bias, such as the information presented during the 2016 election is a red flag for publishers looking for a platform to present their work.

In the Wired article “Of Course Facebook Is Biased. That’s How Tech Works Today,” Izzie Lapowski remarks that during the 2016 election, Facebook was asked by the US Senate Commerce Committee about the allegation that “the company’s news curators have been deliberately suppressing conservative news from surfacing in its Trending Topics.”

This suppression of news comes as no surprise considering that people chose and filtered Facebook’s Trending Topics rather than AI algorithms. Personal bias is impossible to avoid in newsroom situations, and the Gizmodo article that revealed this controversy quoted one former curator who said, “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.”

This bias poses problems for consumers and publishers alike while posing the question: what is the benefit of using a specific platform if your content could be ignored or pushed aside based on one curator’s personal opinion?

“The problem is that the people who use Facebook and Google, LinkedIn and Amazon, expect that these services are making decisions independent of human judgment—that the machines can rise above the differences that divide us,” Lapowski said. “When that turns out not to be the case, people feel betrayed.”

Another point of contention between digital publishers and Facebook is Facebook’s constant revisions to the formatting of their platform. According to the What’s New in Publishing article “How Would it Impact Publishers if Facebook Ditches the Like Count?”, Facebook is considering following the lead of Instagram – a social media network owned BY Facebook – to ditch the Like count in order to “bring back the focus on the quality of content shared, rather than only on posting content designed to increase the Like count.”

The Like count will essentially become private to everyone except the publisher, allowing them to concentrate on the content they are producing and not the likes it will receive. While this is positive for consumers who are attempting to discover legitimate, interesting news, this could be detrimental to publishers who acquire new readers based on the popularity of their content.

The reasons behind taking away the Like count are also more self-serving to Facebook’s interests than they would lead consumers to believe. “It could also obscure Facebook’s own potential decline in popularity as users switch to other apps,” said TechCrunch’s Josh Constine in the WNP article.

It’s not just about the Likes themselves, though – it’s frustrating for publishers to believe the platform they are using is set up one way and then find themselves lying on their backs when the rug is ripped out from under them. According to the Ezoic article:

Facebook does seem to bounce back and forth with publishers. They often offer lifelines with new things like Facebook Watch, but then wipe away all goodwill with major changes to things like the way publishers reach their followers on Facebook’s platform.

And while Facebook seems to create a negative reputation with publishers for the benefit of their consumers, Facebook simply makes the best decisions for their company. However, considering the data-selling scandal of 2018, Facebook’s attempts to help consumers regulate their news has been subpar at best.

In order to change their News Feed to incorporate trustworthy news in their rankings, Facebook created a two-question survey. These two questions were, “Do you recognize the following website?” and “How much do you trust each of these domains?” Though Facebook provided simple questions, consumers complained that this survey was completely unreliable.

“I’ve filled out more robust surveys at fast food restaurants,” said Rani Molla, a journalist for Recode who criticized the survey on her personal Twitter.

The Verge’s article “Why Facebook’s Survey About Trust Won’t Make or Break the Media (Something Else Might Break it First)” expands on the issues surrounding the new survey:

The anxiety here is that survey results could be inaccurate, leading to a mis-ranking of publishers that favors the most partisan sites and exacerbates Facebook’s negative effects on democracy. For journalists, there is a secondary, existential fear: that publishers who fare poorly in the survey will see their traffic collapse, leading to declining revenues and eventually layoffs.

Ultimately, Facebook’s attempts prove ineffective and reveal its desire for self-preservation above content integrity for the consumer.

How Publishers Can Cash in on Facebook’s Failings

Between the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the sudden algorithm changes that have drastically reduced publishers’ outreach to followers, Facebook’s popularity is at an all-time low. In the opinion of Digital Content Next, now is the time for publishers and other companies to capitalize on Facebook’s free fall.

Jesse Moeinifar, the writer of the DCN article, urges publishers to take this opportunity to create their own platform, where “instead of struggling to build your brand on Facebook,” publishers will gain control over their published content on a personalized domain.

On this new platform, publishers are encouraged by Moeinifar to “give the people what they want” by providing a safe, easily accessible opportunity for consumers to engage in social interactions with fellow users.

Consider integrating tools directly on your platform that allow your users to discuss your content and chat with one another. By generating engagement on your domains, your visitors will be more inclined to interact on a consistent basis and subscribe.

Thus, publishers who create their own platform can excel by being a legitimate, reliable source with relevant content targeted towards the consumers’ interests.

“If you create valuable content that maintains a consistent tone and is highly relevant to your readers, they will view your brand as a reputable source for trusted media,” said Moeinifar.

Publishers need to produce relevant, reliable content that builds trust with their consumers. In a time where Facebook is less trusted than ever by consumers and publishers alike, it’s time for new platforms to arise from the ashes of a Harvard student’s once great media conglomerate.

The New Libraries of Alexandria

The world of digital book preservation eases the burden of literary scholars and historians while serving to make historically important literature widely available. In the past, scholars had to rely on one or two fragmented manuscripts that likely had inconsistencies. The Library of Alexandria burning down was a big hit to literary history because extra copies were tedious and expensive to produce. In the age of the printing press and mass-produced books, paper decays. Organizations, such as Project Gutenberg, must take special precautions to preserve ancient paper. Your average paperback will probably be printed with short term profit in mind. After all, the smell of old books exists due to the breakdown of chemicals within the paper itself.

Plenty of books are worth preserving, even in a world where cheap, by-the-numbers romance novels dominate every grocery stores’ shelves. Knowing just which books will be important has not been determined yet. Books are snapshots of time, and as such, are necessary for a more complete view of history. Digital preservation seeks to make as many books as possible available digitally to anyone who wants to read them.

Project Gutenberg

The most successful group has been Project Gutenberg. PG is at the forefront of digital preservation. Rather than the literal printing press that its name refers to, this press makes strides in digital preservation. They have been “the original, and oldest, etext project on the Internet, founded in 1971.” Michael Hart had, essentially, indefinite access to a mainframe computer at the University of Illinois and a simple premise: “anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely.” He came to the conclusion, even in the 70’s, that something recorded digitally could be reproduced in any number of copies.

The internet is a dream come true for Hart’s idea of spreading the books around as far as possible. As PG developed, a philosophical system has also developed. The first aspect of this philosophy is “The Project Gutenberg Etexts should cost so little that no one will really care how much they cost. They should be a general size that fits on the standard media of the time.” As such, the reader has the simplest access as possible.

The texts are transcribed in American Standard Code for Information Interchange, or ASCII, which is the simplest transcription of text possible: “Plain Vanilla ASCII can be read, written, copied and printed by just about every simple text editor on every computer in the world.” Basically, any written book can be done in this format and translated from there. A glance through the Gutenberg Press catalog shows that you can download epub, Kindle, plain text, or just read it online in HTML. The texts are easily put into any of these formats from the initial input.

The second part of the philosophy states that “The Project Gutenberg Etexts should be so easily used that no one should ever have to care about how to use, read, quote and search them.” The simple ASCII foundation also lends itself well to being discovered from a simple search. Their website is simple to use and lends itself well to this quote from their philosophy page:

We love it when we hear about kids or grandparents taking each other to an etexts to Peter Pan when they come back from watching HOOK at the movies, or when they read Alice in Wonderland after seeing it on TV. We have also been told that nearly every Star Trek movie has quoted current Project Gutenberg etext releases (from Moby Dick in The Wrath of Khan; a Peter Pan quote finishing up the most recent, etc.) not to mention a reference to Through the Looking-Glass in JFK.

The point of searchability is that you can look for phrases you’ve heard in conversations, quotes you saw at the beginning of movies, and the names of authors you are interested in.

The management of Project Gutenberg is what makes this possible. PG is a non-profit organization and is run by Dr. Gregory B. Newby, volunteer CEO. The books are all submitted to the Project by volunteers, as well. They do not have to worry about maintaining a staff.

PG only publishes what is in the public domain. So, as soon as something enters the domain and a volunteer shows interest in the book, PG can enter a submission. PG, as such, avoids any potential legal issues that come with the tricky world of copying works of literature. From the volunteer force to steering clear of lawsuits, everything about Project Gutenberg is designed for the purpose of digital preservation and the dispersion of texts.

Google Books

Issues arise when you overlook copyright laws. Google Books is an excellent example. The idea is great: They wanted to physically scan books and make them searchable on Google. As their own website states:

…in a future world in which vast collections of books are digitized, people would use a ‘web crawler’ to index the books’ content and analyze the connections between them, determining any given book’s relevance and usefulness by tracking the number and quality of citations from other books.

Google partnered with Harvard, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library, Oxford, and Stanford. However, Google sticks strictly to copyright-unprotected works. They encountered legal trouble which boils down to copyright law: “Plaintiffs, the Authors Guild, Inc. and individual copyright owners, complained that Google scanned more than twenty-million books without permission or payment of license fees.” The Authors Guild accused Google of doing the equivalent of walking into a library, just scanning everything, and then putting it on the internet.

After a decade, Google won, but “the company all but shut down its scanning operation.” Their books are available to rent or buy, and are searchable, but is a fractured database that has not been updated in recent years. However, the operation has been put to some use, though: “Through the HathiTrust Research Center, scholars can tap into the Google Books corpus and conduct computational analysis—looking for patterns in large amounts of text, for instance—without breaching copyright.” The project was ambitious and still has benefits today.

Million Books Project

The Million Book Project straddles the line between independent, volunteer projects and ambitious, big-tech business. They were a nonprofit organization that scanned physical copies of books. As their objective states, “The objective of this project is to create a free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, primarily in the English language, available to everyone over the Internet.” Similar to Project Gutenberg, they simply sought to preserve books, along with backing from universities in China, India, and even Egypt.

However, the Million Book Project was expensive, and ultimately ended. As of January 2008, their website said they anticipated over ten million books in the next ten years. The project ended that same year. In addition to those universities, the website states, “National Science Foundation provided funding for Scanners, Computers, Servers, and Software.” A necessary web of manpower is required to pay for and run all of these machines. Million Books had a Rube Goldberg machine of sponsors and staff that was bound to break. Most of the texts could only be accessed through Internet Archive’s efforts.

Project Gutenberg’s administrative structure is simple. Anyone with a computer can volunteer to type up books for Project Gutenberg. Google Books was ambitious, and ultimately tripped over the red tape it so often attempted to hop over. The Million Books Project is a phenomenal idea, as well, but had so many moving parts that something was bound to breakdown.

Each of these pioneers in the world of digital publishing made important strides and learned lessons that we can take with us into the future. Digital publishing allows unparalleled access to the world of literature preservation available to anyone who thinks to search Google for “What is the Library of Alexandria?”

Using Tags in Digital Content

With the continued expansion of digital publishing, it is of the utmost importance to be proactive with online content.

Tags are used as a navigation tool to locate and specify content on a website. For example, a specific word such as “kayak” can be used to shortcut or direct a person’s web search toward a focused group of websites. To optimize a website’s visibility and enable traffic growth on a larger scale, its best to use SEO (search engine optimization) tags. Using the example, “kayak”, the SEO tag would return to a website where the content surrounds watercraft and outdoor activities.

According to Statista.com (Links to an external site.), “digital publishing revenue grew to nearly 18 billion U.S. dollars in the United States in 2018.” Could the use of tags have played a part behind this exponential growth?

Digital publishing continues to expand across many platforms. Implementing the use of tags helps to compact and organize information on a more manageable level.

Creating Tags

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tool that enables users to manage and create personalized marketing tags for their websites. Digital publishers can use this tool to customize the analytic data they are producing and gain more traffic for their website. Depending on how many tags are used, websites will also load faster and track scrolling from the audience.

One of the major benefits of GTM is that it frees users of the complications of setting up the technical sides of their websites. Its user-friendly interface can be attributed for this. Digital publishers using GTM can create marketing content through tagging without having to get involved with the source code of their websites.

These tags are crucial for companies using digital publishing because they help search engines identify content specific to the companies’ web pages. Keeping tags short and relevant will also distinguish them among repetitive titles. Identifying and creating the right tags will increase the probability for people searching for a topic to be directed to the tagged and targeted article.

Categories vs. Tags

Categories group content and are primarily used in blog posts. They enable authors to neatly organize their posts while maintaining a professional look for their websites. Pete McPherson at Do You Even Blog explains the importance that SEO categories play in site structure and suggests that users, “[o]ptimize the category titles and descriptions” in order that their sites efficiently show up in search engines.

However, McPherson warns against using duplicate tags in individual posts, saying , “Under no circumstances should you have duplicate category names, OR have the same category and tag names for any piece of content.” These duplications confuse search engines on which tags need to be prioritized, thus minimizing the meaning of website’s intended information.

One of the biggest differences between categories and tags is how they are used. Categories are used as a generalization of the information provided, while tags are used to indicate the individual subject matter of a post.

Food bloggers may have categories relating to meal prep and recipes. The author would then use tags to specify food resources and ingredients. Using these distinct tags creates pertinent information that sets this data apart from other digital media.

Content Relevancy

Keeping tags relevant to the content will strengthen articles. However, overusing tags can diminish their value. With so much information being uploaded regularly, tags create relevant searches and alert these search engines to provide concise and valuable recommendations to readers.

The New York Times uses tags to provide related content for their news readers. The Times’ Open Team works to collect data on a more efficient level and build digital products for the company. Their goal is to promote website growth from an organic reach across multiple online platforms. Tags serve as the building blocks behind many of the teams’ digital inventions.

According to the Times’ Open Team :

“We built our own tag management system because we needed to have easy access to our back-end data — data regarding website visitors and data from our content management system — and there weren’t any commercially available systems that provided that level of access.”

In 2015, The Times’ Research & Development group created the prototype called Editor , which would automatically tag relevant content in future news articles. The R&D group describes Editor as an “editing interface that explores how collaboration between machine learning systems and journalists could afford fine-grained annotation and tagging of news articles.” By using tags, this prototype allowed the Times to publish and communicate online content across multiple.

Audience Engagement

Distinguishing content from the plethora of internet data proves to be a difficult task for readers and content creators alike. Thus, taking one step further to categorize digital media using tags ensures individuality and guaranteed website tracking. Tagging is not only beneficial to news platforms and online blogs, but also to social media users. These users have integrated the use of hashtags to better market their content.

Lauren Aston encouraged her readers to “[t]hink outside of the box and do your research to find the best and more appropriate tags for your posts.” Putting more thought and research into tags will ensure a user’s posts are seen and more likely to reach their intended audiences. By using these tactics, these tags will also bring higher engagement levels.

However, content creators must avoid haphazardly using tags. On Instagram, there is a rumored shadow ban for those who overuse hashtags. Their posts are removed from search engines and hidden from fellow users to weed out spam profiles.

Stronger Strategy

While adding new tags with every post may be tempting, using existing tags will eliminate excessive variations and links and will organize content in a more productive way. This method essentially groups content together, making it easier to find and evaluate. The more traffic these existing tags bring to a website, the more they will increase the relevance of the published content.

The Yoast blog says the following:

Structuring your website is crucial for both its usability and findability. Many sites lack a sound structure to guide visitors to the information they’re looking for. Having a clear site structure also leads to a better understanding of your site by Google, so it’s incredibly important for your SEO.

Tags are keywords that tidy up websites and make content easier to find. They make up the taxonomy of most web pages and boost users ahead of competitors, while adding value to their digital media. Tags cut across various categories and keep audiences engaged and on the websites longer.

Using tags consistently will enhance website performance. It displays publisher’s content at a higher rank within search engines, optimizing the opportunity for revenues from digital platforms

Changing the World with Worldreader

Worldreader, the lovechild of Amazon and higher education, gained three million new users in 2018, bringing the total number of individuals the company has reached to 10 million according to Publishers Weekly’s Ed Nawotka.

Worldreader, a charitable organization that promotes literacy and learning through technology, was founded by David Risher, previously both a general manager at Microsoft and Amazon’s senior vice president for Retail and Marketing, and Colin McElwee, the first Director of Marketing at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. As an AllAfrica article on Worldreader explains, Risher and McElwee’s initiative “provides people in the developing world with free access to a library of digital books via e-readers and mobile phones.”

Worldreader intends to bridge the gap in education that permeates developing nations. According to CIO’s article “Worldreader Launches E-reading Program in Rabai,” “only one in nineteen African countries has anything close to adequate book provision in schools.” To change that, Worldreader gives away Kindles and Tablets, loaded with e-books, to disadvantaged peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

What Worldreader has to Offer

Worldreader re-evaluates its e-book catalog each year based on reading levels and gauged interest. The 35,000 works that it offers fit all different categories to engage readers fully – AllAfrica says the e-books are “texts for all ages; books that are supplementary reading for education; vocational books; books for low literacy adults; and basic books to get parents to tell stories to kids.”

Worldreader offers three different apps so that readers can access the e-books on mobile devices. The regular Worldreader app enables users to set and track reading goals through gamification and supports offline reading, which the frequently low-fi status of the villages necessitates. The unique language support feature contributes the most to Worldreader’s success: the app supports all modern written languages from Hindi to Arabic.

The organization also offers a “Worldreader Kids” app. Like the original app, it enables offline reading – however, the child-friendly app includes personalized avatars to entertain young ones while they read the illustrated children’s e-books.

The “Worldreader Student” app works on Android devices and supports reading level analysis as well as other insights to help the organization tailor the program for students.

Worldreader also offers a product it calls a BLUE Box, which the charity designed for schools and libraries. The BLUE Box costs $15,000 per package and consists of 5,000 e-books pre-loaded onto 50 Kindles (sometimes donated Android tablets) with full Worldreader operational support. The products Worldreader supports feed directly into its established programs.

Moreover, the charity boasts an incredible range of partners, donors, and patrons. Worldreader is partnered with publishers such as Pearson, Penguin Random House, and Rosetta Books, and supported by organizations like EBSCO, Google, LinkedIn, and the UN. Additionally, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft all make products for Worldreader at low cost.

Worldreader’s Reading Programs

Worldreader outlines four major reading programs: Pre-Reading, School Reading, Library Reading, and Lifelong Reading. The “Worldreader Kids” app feeds into the Pre-Reading program, which aims to get parents and teachers reading with young children to establish the importance of literacy young. Worldreader’s 2018 Annual Report says that learning to read at a young age dramatically increases a child’s earning potential which “increase(s) their chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and create(s) inner capacity to build healthier and more equitable societies.”

The School Reading program correlates with the student app and BLUE Box to provide material to both student and teacher. UNESCO states that “an astonishing 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not reaching minimum proficiency levels in reading. A lack of books prevents literacy acquisition and learning, blocking students from reaching their full potential.” Worldreader challenges this problem by providing students access to online textbooks through their program.

Worldreader has several initiatives in both the Library Reading and Lifelong Reading programs: the Library Reading program has LOCAL (Local Content for African Libraries) and LEAP (Libraries, E-Reading, Activities, Partnerships) which engage the public in e-book consumption. The Lifelong Reading program has AvanzaLee, a Latin American initiative focused on Mexican e-books, and Anasoma, an initiative geared toward gender equality.

Why E-readers instead of Print Books

Donating e-readers makes more sense than providing print books in an environment where scarcity oppresses. As Linendoll from CNN explains,

Carrying heavy loads of books is not practical for Kenyan students who often have to walk miles to and from school. E-readers, however, are a different story. They’re lightweight and portable and give students access to entire libraries, including books from African publishers.

The e-readers also allow for more technological intervention – between being data-driven and fully supported remotely, e-readers encourage more engagement in continents like Africa by supporting African languages. The technological literacy the readers attain also promotes the use of e-readers.

The founders, Risher and McElwee, explain that the previous favor print books held counteracts the goal of the charity,

Donating paper books to a place like Africa is well-intentioned, but it’s actually ill-informed. You can’t actually get the right books to the people you want to get to, at the time they need it. It’s very expensive and highly inefficient.

The expense of sending print books would be astronomical – the cost of production and shipping alone would already eat through Worldreader’s funds, and e-readers contain more content in half the size for pennies on the dollar. The volume and versatility of e-readers make them the clear choice for an operation of this size.

Some might worry though about the danger of theft when using tools so valuable; as Linendoll expresses, “The students, after all, go home to a community filled with poverty.” However, less than a single percent of e-readers has disappeared, which indicates the absences can likely be attributed to other factors, such as moving. “Books and education are really the way out of this, and people take great care of books and education,” McElwee stated.

Worldreader has pushed literacy through e-books with great results on four continents. Though the charity currently boasts 10 million users, Nawotka’s article “Worldreader Added 3 Million Users” reports that, “The stated goal for the group is to ultimately reach one billion readers.” These results should come as great news for e-book authors as Worldreader has expanded the digital publishing universe by opening up audience demographics that were previously left untouched. All an author has to do is write something worth reading.

The Digital Rights Tragedy of Microsoft’s E-Book Market

Microsoft’s discontinuation of their e-bookstore means that consumers will no longer be able to access and view Microsoft’s e-books. Customers who purchased the right to view the e-books within the past two years from the company are now unable to read them.

Microsoft updated their Edge browser to support e-book consumption in March of 2017 and began to sell e-books through the Windows 10 Storeapp. Microsoft then ceased selling e-books in April of 2019, resulting in the revocation of each consumer’s purchased right to view the e-books.

Consequently, buyers have been robbed of the transaction experience: I give you money and you provide me with the product.

Microsoft has shattered the trust given by consumers in a supposedly fair transaction. The e-books are simply gone with the wind “because company executives have decided it’s no longer worth keeping the store running.”

Companies are setting a precedent of making their products obsolete. Dave Lee writes about how there is no concrete equivalent that mimics the loss of ownership that is possible because of Digital Rights Management; physical bookstores are unable to take a customer’s material, purchased books away from them.

Digital Rights Management and Microsoft

DRM (digital rights management) is a systematic attempt to prevent the piracy of e-books. Microsoft utilized DRM and then had the issue of revoking every consumer’s right to view Microsoft’s e-books. Cory Doctorow writes that “this puts the difference between DRM-locked media and unencumbered media into sharp contrast.” Doctorow still owns e-books and MP3’s from organizations that are long gone, but Microsoft is forced to reimburse consumers because the company’s e-books cannot be viewed outside of Microsoft Edge.

Similarly, Josh Axelrod and Lulu Garcia-Navarro write about how cars and various smart home appliances are under DRM-lock as well. The permanence of cars, much like Microsoft’s e-books, are no longer guaranteed. If Tesla were to go under, a smart car can lose everything that makes it a Tesla. People paid for the car but not the ownership of the software.

Microsoft’s Downfall

A major issue for Microsoft was the lack of users for their Edge browser. Ed Bott states that “in the first three months of 2018, Microsoft Edge accounted for a paltry 8 percent of the 1.2 billion visits to government websites from consumer and business PCs and Macs.”

The minimal impact of Edge users combined with a system that was not built for convenience was too much for Microsoft.

In contrast, Amazon’s Kindle exemplifies e-book convenience. Amazon provides an inexhaustible source of e-books along with a portable device for reading them, and a free Kindle app which may be used when not connected to the internet.

For the few people using Edge the medium was ill-fitted for e-book consumption. Edge requires that the consumers view the e-book through the browser rather than allowing users to download the book. Having to view the e-book through Edge limits many users to only being able to view the e-book on a PC. Further, this exclusivity did not allow for e-book compatibility with Apple devices.

While exclusive compatibility is not without precedent, Microsoft lacked the fan-base that allowed for the complete alienation of competitor’s operating systems.

Further, Microsoft Edge users must be connected to the internet to view the e-books. Connectivity issues, lack of compatibility, and the requirement that the e-book be viewed in-browser stifle the appeal of Microsoft’s e-books.

What Microsoft Has to Say

Microsoft has not given many statements about why they are ceasing the sale of e-books. The first mention came in June when they posted on their website about the closure of their e-book store and eventual refunds for customers.

The FAQ mentions giving an additional $25 credit to individuals who annotated in their e-book. Microsoft is essentially paying for the consumer’s intellectual property which will be lost along with the rights to view the e-books.

The consumer reimbursements and Edge’s lack of traffic imply that Microsoft did not have many e-book sales in the first place.

Microsoft also recently indicated that e-books are not their focus, but rather that their app store is their priority when Microsoft stated that the company is “streamlining [its] focus’ on the store.”

The Future for Microsoft in E-Books

Microsoft’s foray into e-book sales utilizing Edge was not their first attempt at entering the market and it will likely not be their last. Microsoft invested $300 million in Barnes and Noble to create a separate Nook Media company in 2011, but this venture was terminated in 2014.

David Grossman writes that “MS Reader tried to sell books for LCD screens” in 2011. However, this project fell through in the same year due to a lack of usage and routine updates.

Whether or not Microsoft has given up on e-books, the company’s blunder has made evident the possibility for massive loss of content for consumers when dealing with DRM-locked content. Consumer trust will be difficult for Microsoft to earn back if they decide to wrestle with e-book sales again.

Whatever the future holds, hopefully Microsoft has learned from their past mistakes to avoid any future losses of this caliber in the e-book game.

Podcasting for Publishers

Up and coming publishers are turning to podcasts to jump start their digital publishing careers. Podcasting provides the audience versatile and varied content through short audio-based episodes. They favor the medium because it requires very little in the ways of technology and production budget.

David Winer developed podcasts in 2004, but Adam Curry popularized the medium. Winer created the RSS, or “Really Simple Syndicating” to launch his show Morning Coffee Notes but due to Curry’s notoriety from his time with MTV, his program grew more influential, much faster.

Wired claims Curry’s audience grew from 500, 000 to over a million in just one year, thanks in part to iTunes’ support of podcasts in 2005. Now, it mainly appeals to people who look for content on the go. According to Shiva Bhaskar, “There are over 525,000 active podcasts, with over 18.5 million episodes produced,” as of 2018.

Thorpe claims in “Why Should Publishers Start A Podcast?” that a third of the world’s population listens to them:

Podcasts are taking off around the world due to better content and easier distribution. According to the Reuters Digital News Report 2019, more than a third (36%) of people around the world listen to a podcast at least monthly, and this rises to half for those under 35. In fact, listeners in the US now spend over six hours each week on podcasts, listening to seven episodes a week on average.

The Power of Podcasts

Podcasts provide the audience with personable content that plays into publishers’ strengths. The production cost pales in comparison to other personal media such as video streaming. The audio episodes also promote flexibility in content such as storytelling, news reporting, education, or opinionated discussion.

In “5 Key Podcasting Trends from the Digital News Report 2019 ,” surveyors asked listeners why they chose this specific medium. Listeners responded that they either wanted to stay up to date on topics of personal interest (46%) or learn about something new (39%). Researchers also found that young people ages 18-24 were almost three times more likely to consume podcasts regularly compared to their 55+ aged counterparts.

The storytelling aspect of the platform plays a vital role for publishers. Stories allow humans to shape the way they see and understand the world. Podcasts stimulate the imagination and portray the “richness of the human experience.” Shiva Bhaskar explains,

Storytelling appears to have evolutionary roots, as it can help foster cooperation amongst people in a society, and those who tell good stories, are often preferred social partners, and likely to have more children.

Publishers can take advantage of this aspect and insert themselves into the rapidly growing broadcasting platform. Shelley Seale states , “Podcasts are emerging as one of the most significant and exciting cultural innovations of the new century” because they afford an intimacy between audience and host that fosters a devoted fanbase. Podcasts allow viewers to put voices to their favorite works.

Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis

The platform provides hosts a way to interact with their viewers for prolonged periods: hour-long episodes fill the podcast world and let hosts thoroughly work through ideas in ways shorter media forms do not. They also don’t face the same criticism that promotional print material or video streaming does; “Podcasts also offer a potentially more trustworthy alternative to the plethora of false information out there.”

Though, starting out from scratch in a new medium intimidates some people, consistency in streaming helps ensure profit. Also, most episodes pause regular programming to play ads or promote brands. That influence aspect of the episodes opens up possibilities for secondary revenue. Owens claims, “Between 2017 and 2018, brand advertising jumped from 25 percent of all podcast ads to 38 percent, and this year it’ll likely overtake direct response advertising.”

Owens also explains that podcasts offer companies other streams of revenue besides just ads: businesses can “mine the podcast interviews for additional article content,“ as well as host live tours and drive listeners to subscribe to memberships, receiving profit from ticket sales and membership costs.

About 75% of publishers host some podcast, and the medium’s influence grows stronger each year. Podcasting pushes producers to build an audience in the growing digital market. The viewers get unique, quality content, and publishers get a new environment to capitalize on.

Emotional Responses to e-Books Versus Paper

Which medium is preferable for leisure reading, e-book or paper? An article by Alison Flood in The Guardian (Links to an external site.) mentions a study conducted to try and answer that question. A lead researcher, Anne Mangen, said that they gave 50 participants a story to read. Half received paper copies and the other half received e-book copies. The study found that “the paper readers have a higher empathy, transportation and immersion along with narrative coherence than those with e-book copies of the same story.”

Mangen also pointed to a study in which 72 tenth grade students were given a similar test: some had the physical text and some had a PDF. Mangen found that the print readers scored significantly higher on comprehension tests given during the study.

Abigail Sellen of Microsoft Research Cambridge states (Links to an external site.) that “the implicit feel of where you are in a book turns out to be more important than we realize.” When we read a printed book, we sense the pages turning as the story unfolds before our eyes and in our imaginations. The reader can sense the story coming to an end as the pages lessen to the right and accumulate to the left. He gets a sense of progression and accomplishment. Could this sense be due to a form of sensory output supporting achievement through visual progression?

I decided to do my own research involving a study of 30 readers. 15 were males and 15 were females. The females ranged in ages from 16-76, and the males were ages 19-72. The occupations of the study group varied on both data sets from retired educators and construction workers to professional actors and stunt performers. Both data sets have relatively similar educational backgrounds. Each participant agreed to read two books: Clive Cussler’s Valhalla Rising and Sahara. I chose these two books because they had action, suspense, drama, and romance with a relatively easy plot to follow and both were almost equivalent in length and content. All participants answered 11 comprehension questions about each story to ensure that they read the books in their entirety.

Of the 30 participants, 63% preferred paper to e-books. The 63% that preferred paper stated that they felt more in control and that the e-book format was not as easy to connect with. As Abigail Sellen would have predicted, the participants wanted the feel of paper in their hands and the feeling of accomplishment from turning pages. In other words, to them, the overall serendipity and sense of control is better with the paper book.

The 37% of the study group that preferred e-book stated that they preferred the ease and accessibility. Having a portable device to read in spare time was important due to an often-hectic schedule. This group also stated that lugging around another book along with their electronic device seemed unnecessary. Their responses were more mechanical in nature compared to the emotional responses from those that preferred paper books.

Screens and e-readers interfere with intuitive management of written text and inhibit the mental mapping of the journey in the reader’s mind. In digital text, a reader can quickly skim over words, paragraphs, entire chapters, and even jump directly to a particular phrase. With paper books, the reader tends to feel as if they have cheated in some way for skimming over materials.

Even though 37% voted for the e-book format, 65% of that same group admitted that the paper book was harder to put down. The times for reading within the two groups varied as well. The 63% who preferred paper enjoyed reading during leisure time and just before bed, while 15% of this group read at work. 76% of the e-book readers did their reading at work and 24% of them read during leisure time. The paper book readers were 87% more likely to put the stories’ events in chronological order as opposed to 72% of the e-book readers. While the paper book readers seemed to have more empathy for the main character, e-book readers were still on par with them having around 88% who understood his plight in both novels.

With my own research and that done by both Anne Mangen’s group and Abigail Sellen, I believe that the cognitive site of our brain tends to be more emotionally connected to a story read on paper. While I am sure that producers of e-readers are striving every day to make their product as close to the real thing as they can, paper text still has more emotional impact. The research shows that most people want the paper book’s sense of accomplishment and old-fashioned feel of turning pages.