Adopting a Device-Neutral Approach to Electronic Publishing: A Q&A With Springer's Timothy Griswold

... The other thing that I alluded to in [my Publishing Business Conference] presentation [is that] as you start going down this road, the structure of your organization changes, meaning that different people have different responsibilities ... . For example, the continued delivery of the content, the continued delivery of the pricing—who is going to handle that? Most companies have a division that handles the delivery to ... online bookstores, but it becomes a whole different kettle of fish when you have to do it on a weekly or even a monthly basis. ... What I'm doing now is developing a whole strategy plan across all of the different e-readers that we're going at. For any given publisher, I think one of the things you need to do is look at your type of products ... and then decide what's the best strategy given the various e-readers you're working with.

Extra: Because many STM books and textbooks are heavily formatted with tables, illustrations, etc., do you find that they are not as well-received on more traditional e-readers such as the Kindle because those devices aren't optimal for that type of content compared to, say, the iPad?
Griswold: ... The forecasting of the revenue that's coming in from ... a Kindle standpoint, I can't forecast high enough. ...

Extra: You mentioned in the conference session that custom publishing is a new opportunity. Has Springer gotten involved in custom publishing yet?
Griswold: They haven't. I consider it an opportunity both from the print and the electronic side, but from Springer's standpoint, I'm sure if we were to approach it, we would do it from an electronic standpoint. ... That's going to be part of my strategic plan going forward. ... It's a nightmare from a production standpoint, from a warehousing standpoint, from a delivery standpoint, when you're talking about [custom publishing in] print. ... There are fewer issues when you do it electronically. So yes, it's on the list of things we want to explore in the near future.