Digital Catalogs: Tomorrow’s New Trend?

“The advantage of this is that it makes it seamless to the user from any Web browser,” Buser says.

Conversion takes five business days. Texterity charges for content conversion based on the size of the catalog. Several hundred pages starts at $2,500. Texterity also charges a hosting fee, which is based on audience size, starts at $100 per month and increases based on audience size.

A Smooth transition

Penguin Putnam, Thames & Hudson, and Curriculum Associates are three of the book publishers that use Texterity for digital catalogs. Penguin Putnam chose Texterity because, “[It] was prepared to handle the number of book titles we had in the queue, including digitization work on Penguin Classics,” says Michael Neal, digital managing editor for Penguin Putnam’s online department. “We were also looking for as seamless a transition as possible of the workload, file archiving and delivery.”

To choose a vendor, Neal says a number of business models were evaluated based on the vendor’s ability to do the necessary work in a manageable time. “Cost,” he adds, “was not a deciding factor because Penguin Putnam was looking for a long-term relationship with its digital catalog vendor.”

While Neal would not detail the cost structure Penguin Putnam has with Texterity, he says the implementation was not without some unanticipated costs, “but nothing of extraordinary detriment.”

London-based Thames & Hudson needed to maintain its “elegantly designed print catalog online without the usual Web limitations,” says John Hawkins, director of Thames & Hudson Digital.

In addition, Hawkins says, after evaluating vendors and technologies, the company decided to go with Texterity’s Published Web Format because “it loads faster and does not require the customer to download any additional software.” He also suggests that Texterity has a fair and simple pricing structure, which allows his company to use digital catalogs to promote its advance titles more cost-effectively.