Digital Catalogs: Tomorrow’s New Trend?
Dirxion offers book publishers a 10- to 15-day turnaround time for file conversion. Book publishers, he adds, will initially use Dirxion to promote general titles with new releases added as updates.
To promote its digital catalog capabilities to book publishers, Dirxion has an online demonstration at http://AlphaOmega.Dirxion.com.
Sage Publications Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif. used this online demo in its product research, says Helen Salmon, Sage’s director of book marketing. Sage Publications chose the company based on the price structure offered, she explains. Sage will spend $20,000 with Dirxion in 2006, Salmon says, and will be charged a per-catalog fee plus a small hosting cost.
“Digital catalogs will allow our customers to click … through to the shopping cart on our Web site. Ordering online from a traditional catalog is more time consuming,” says Salmon. “Our customers are … used to ordering books online. We see digital catalogs making it easier for them ….”
Although there certainly are book publishing companies using digital catalogs, it is unlikely the print version will go the way of the typewriter anytime soon. “[Publishers] invest a lot of time, energy and thought into their print catalogs,” Buser notes. “They … are an important part of their brand marketing. [This also makes them] candidates for digital catalogs because they can leverage their time, energy and resources of the print catalog into an enhanced digital reproduction.”
David S. Chartock is a New York-based freelance writer. He can be reached at Chartock@aol.com.
