NewsStand thinks it just might have come up with the peace pipe that Google and book publishers want to smoke. It’s LibreDigital, a new digital warehouse system that applies to books the digital content delivery technology NewsStand employs for periodicals. HarperCollins is already using the program as its main digitizer. As Craig Miller, General Manager of LibreDigital, puts it, “We’re a friend of Google’s, but still believe in the publisher’s right to exert copyright.” A digital warehouse such as LibreDigital allows a publisher to release its content into the online wilds while still maintaining control over where it goes and in what format, who sees it, and for how long. The control comes from a rights and permissions layer placed over content after it’s been digitized. “With this layer, a publisher can assign rights to each title, page, and even an object within a title uniquely for each partner who has the right to access it,” explains Miller.
While the DRM layer will ostensibly help publishers keep tabs on content and keep prompting people to buy the entire book, other features of the new warehouse system could help generate new revenue from slicing and dicing content. For each title, LibreDigital creates three digital representations: an image, full text, and metadata. The image is what’s presented in the Search Inside feature on Amazon or BookBrowse at LibreDigital. The full text digitization is necessary for allowing search partners such as Google to index content for a page.
It’s metadata, however, that holds the real potential for publishers who want to control and repurpose content. At the simplest level, a metadata “tag” is applied to each page with the page type (i.e. copyright page, the first page of a chapter, etc.). At the deeper level, every picture, table, paragraph, and even word is tagged. The tagging allows users to pull up related content in less than a second and this compilation of data can be instantly packaged and sold to the user digitally. For example, when a user searches for a specific recipe in the entire cookbook collection of a publisher, both free and premium recipes show up. The user can then opt to purchase “bundled” content such as variations of the recipe, complementary appetizers and desserts, or tips from a celebrity chef, creating a personalized, mini-cookbook that’s delivered either digitally or via POD. The same technology could be applied to travel guides, arts and crafts books, and other niche content. And with NewsStand’s online advertising integration, contextualized ads can be wrapped around pages as well, opening up even more possibilities for revenue generation.
Along with its plans to help publishers protect copyright and repurpose content digitally, LibreDigital eventually wants to use its BrowseInside’s text to speech and voice recognition capabilities to provide book access to those who are unable to operate a computer interface. Miller explains “we’re excited to offer this and bring literally any book to someone who’s impairment makes using standard book content challenging or impossible.”
