Future Think

Tomich's next steps include expanding the number of sliced books in their library, in part through building partnerships. They're partnering with Ingram to deliver sliced files through Ingram's CoreSource program. According to Ingram, "Any publisher integrated with Ingram Content Group's CoreSource digital asset management platform will be able to deliver their files to Slicebooks for 'slicing'; their content is already stored and served from the CoreSource system, so it is a seamless process, no new integration required."

The company, which currently has 15 employees, is meeting with investors and on a track for growth, looking for what Tomich calls "the next big adventure beyond remix."

—Lynn Rosen

DEMOCRASOFT

Better Data Through Community Building

For publishers, gathering data about the readers of e­books is shaping up to be one of those Really Big Issues in the era of monolithic e­book distributors. Because while those distributors — the ones with the devices and apps upon which publishers' customers are interacting with their content — are quite literally awash in crunchable, parseable, actionable data, those distributors aren't exactly sharing that data with publishers.

What's a publisher to do? Democrasoft, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based software company that specializes in collaboration and engagement solutions, thinks it has an answer. In May, publisher Rosetta released Kurt Vonnegut's collection of commencement speeches, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young, as a WeJIT-enhanced e­book. A WeJIT, as it's used in an e­book, is essentially a landing page for a question embedded in text. Asking a question and popping a link into an e­book might not seem groundbreaking, but what lives at the end of that link is. In order to take part in the discussion introduced in the e­book, the reader needs to sign into the WeJIT platform via Face­book, Google or a WeJIT account. So the publisher finds out some useful data about its readers, as well as what those readers think is, say, the best Vonnegut witticism or, as per JD Messinger's WeJIT-enhanced 11 Days in May, if they believe in angels, or miracles, or a sixth sense.