Advanced Digital Content Ownership

What is advanced digital content ownership?

It is digital content that has been tagged to make it available for any current and future business reuse of any kind.

What does that mean?

That means you, as a publisher, care about the value and revenue generation potential and capability of your content; and you are not going to be confused by the device and format talk and dialogue in the marketplace in 2013. Is Apple or Amazon more important? Is HTML5 better than ePub3? Noise, noise, noise.

Formats of any kind are where content business goes to die. Even paper. You sell your content to a consumer, directly or through a channel. The business is over. You need the content dynamics to keep on selling that content come what may. It may be more paper, it may be new and different digital content formats. The business strategy is no different to what you have been doing with Hardcover, Paperback and Massmarket print formats for the last 30 years. Extracting the fullest value from the content. It's just a little more complicated, because now it never stops. (But the long-tail is an illusion for a lot of content.)

Digital Content is Indeterminate

For any publisher who has their digital content in the right place, it really it shouldn't matter if the future is parchment, paper, ePub3, ePub Zero, Kindle something, Apps, Web Apps or "pure" HTML5 plays. Currently that is just 2013 wannabe "thought-leader" noise dialogues. It doesn't (or shouldn't) affect core digital content ownership strategies. For a publisher the format/channel noise should never be a confusing issue. These are all just market deliverables. 

It shouldn't matter if the "device d'jour" is iPad, Galaxy, Nexus, the desktop, a website or paper.

What has to matter is that your content is digitized in such a way that it is ready to deliver for the business value of today, AND that your content is ready for an indefinite future (not the noise/device/format d'jour).

Who else do you hear saying this? The stuff on digital book/publishing sites has become a directionless discussion machine and in many cases "fear machines". An example is the  "Tools of Change" O'Reilly blog which has transitioned into an opinion noise machine. Publishers need to learn to nod wisely while not listening because they have substantial future ready digital content (and that includes print) strategies in place.

Content is Infinitely Complex

Content is infinitely complex. That is why every XML strategy ultimately fails. The designers cannot comprehend or foresee the complexity of any digital content model, so the "semantic XML" nonsense always dissolves into wasted money within 24-36 months of any XML project starting up.  (Yes seen it dozens of times. There is no mystery. The exception is academic content where structure/semantics while comprehensive is consistent.) All other content is in "digital format adventure land".

XML schemas become un-necessarily complex as they "develop", because they are trying to encompass infinite complexity in a finite container. I am no mathematician, but even I understand that infinity divided by a finite value is a meaningless number. What worked for someones computer book will probably not work for someone else's poetry!

And the answer is...

Interestingly and probably accidentally, the world created the answer many years ago. HTML. Why is that important? Because HTML encapsulates structure first and semantics goes along for a ride. The problem with XML "purists" is they don't like the way that the HTML/5 ride operates. The HTML/5 approach makes the ride different, not wrong. The XML pundits are very strong on a sort of XML Schema racial stereotyping!

Take 30 seconds to think about it. All content is presented in a structural format like title, heading, paragraph, list, table, image or rich media. It isn't magic. That is how print books have been typeset for 400 years, and before that, how manuscripts were written for 500 years.

The problem with content is that it can be anything and can change at anytime. But the good thing is it will always have titles, headings paragraphs, lists and layout. The semantic XML crowd have got semantics so up their bums that they create complexity where it is doesn't exist and is not required. 

Add to this desktop mania. There is no doubt the desktop solutions do not deliver anything of significant current value let alone any future digital content value. While you may be able to scratch an ePub out of InDesign, it will never deliver any future value for content. It is a limited, proprietary, content format machine (mainly PDF), where content goes to die. Serious publishers need a digital content Phoenix machine.

And in conclusion

All publishers needs to be able to more or less instantly generate any format from their content. That means:

• Print - multiple editions - hardcover, paperback, mass market, etc.
• e-Book - ePub2, ePub3, Mobi (crap), Kindle, tomorrow's invention
• Emerging tech - HTML5, Apps, WebApps, something new.
• Specialist - SCORM, static sites, enhanced and value added components.
• Tomorrow's unknown freaky formats.

It also means understanding that desktop applications like InDesign, Sigil, Calibre and the ilk are as much graveyards for content as XML "semantic" strategies.

Advanced digital content ownership strategies means just that. Breaking away from, or listening politely to and smiling at the noise generation crowd, while making sure content is available to make current and future business. This decision shouldn't be hard in 2013.