WoodWing Next Wave Tour yielded interesting insights into multi-channel and digital publishing

WoodWing's Next Wave Tour in South Africa on February 21 attracted 82 visitors from newspaper and magazine publishers as well a corporates. The event yielded interesting insights into multi-channel and digital publishing.

Under the title of "Old Dogs, New Tricks and Low, Low Budgets", Alistair Fairweather, General Manager Digital Operations Mail & Guardian, gave a sterling presentation about how the Mail & Guardian has embraced the Digital Publishing world: "Newspapers are institutions, not paper products." The Mail & Guardian have found that more and more people are paying for digital content, with their iPad edition already accounting for 20% of their subscriber base. Within less than a year, Mail & Guardian has already made their App profitable and is seeing consistent growth month on month.

For Digital Publishing PDF is like paper behind glass

"Think Digitally First" - this was how Ryk Benade, Head of Digital Magazines for Media24, opened his presentation. He explained how WoodWing Enterprise has vastly improved the current print workflow of over 43 main titles and 58 extension brands and how it enables Media 24 also to roll out their digital workflow. Ryk Benade also explained his opinion of digital publishing: "PDF is a product for print, it´s like paper behind glass. For digital publishing, PDF is not a solution, nor even an option when you see the real value of .folio. There is a 40% higher satisfaction level with magazines designed for tablets over straight replicas from print in the form of PDF flippers."

Sneak preview of WoodWing Enterprise 9

"The goal is to improve workflow efficiency and to monetise media assets", this was the underlying message from Tim Cole, WoodWing´s Product Evangelist, discussing Digital Asset Management and its integration into the workflow. "If you publish, digital asset management is indispensable." When asked about what he believes is the biggest benefit of multi-channel publishing - the answer was simple: "It's using an existing skill base to reach new markets and new digital platforms". Tim Cole delivered a demo of WoodWing´s digital asset management solution Elvis DAM. He also gave a sneak preview of an upcoming new release of WoodWing´s multi-channel publishing system Enterprise, where WoodWing has revamped and streamlined the user interface for publishing content to multiple channels.

Weekly downloads via Adobe DPS have doubled

Finally, Roger Risdal, Senior Business Development Manager Digital Publishing Team at Adobe, presented the road map for Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite and explain what they have learnt about Digital Publishing from around the world. Weekly downloads via Adobe DPS have doubled in the last 12 months alone, with over 60 million issues in the last 15 months." The challenge is to convert readers to paying subscribers. The message was simple: "Publishers need a clear commercial strategy, platforms must remove the 'Wall' aspect of the 'Paywall'. On-board functionality is getting the audience in front of the content as fast as possible and keeping readership up."

Charles Parrington, CEO of Automated Publishing Services, delivered a presentation about the financial benefits of multi-channel publishing. He surprised the audience with stats showing the tremendous return on investment and productivity increase WoodWing´s solutions present to publishers.

Global tour on Digital Asset Management

This spring, WoodWing will launch a global tour focused on efficient Digital Asset Management for publishers, corporates and agencies. Attendees will learn how they can use WoodWing´s Elvis DAM to manage their assets and how Elvis helps to generate additional revenue and to control cost - both as an independent system or tightly integrated with WoodWing´s multi-channel publishing system Enterprise. Details about the new tour will soon be available on www.woodwing.com.

About WoodWing

WoodWing Software develops and markets a premier, cost-efficient multi-channel publishing system, Enterprise, and the next generation digital asset management system, Elvis DAM. WoodWing's solutions are aimed at magazine, newspaper and book publishers, corporate publishers, agencies and marketing departments to reach their goals for quality, economy and time-to-market.

WoodWing's publishing system Enterprise - including the editorial management application Content Station - coordinates and streamlines the process of creating, managing and publishing static, dynamic and interactive content for all media channels - print, Web, social, smart phones and tablets. Elvis DAM enables users to securely store and efficiently manage the increasing collection of rich-media files.

WoodWing Software, founded in the year 2000, has its headquarters in Zaandam, The Netherlands, and has regional sales offices in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. Customers are served locally by over 90 selected partners in more than 100 countries. WoodWing's long-standing relationship with Adobe as a Technology Partner and its close cooperation with a large number of other technology vendors worldwide, confirm WoodWing's position as one of the leading suppliers of publishing software. WoodWing is a privately owned company, with all founders actively engaged. Additional information regarding WoodWing's products and services can be found at www.woodwing.com.