Crash Course for Multichannel Publishing

What is multichannel publishing?

Multichannel publishing means publishing the same information to several different media formats. For example, an organization may publish medical information as a printed book for doctors' offices, but also publish it for mobile devices for doctors and nurses to access when they are seeing patients in examination rooms. Schoolbook publishers may publish their textbook in print form for classrooms and also publish an electronic accessible version of that same text on a DVD for visually-impaired students.

Let's compare multichannel publishing to something that everyone can relate to: ice cream! Suppose Content Man has chocolate ice cream as his information. He can serve that information in different varieties: in a dish, in a cone, or as a milkshake. The information - chocolate ice cream - stays the same, but it is served to the consumer in different ways.

Similarly, information such as a medical reference book can be delivered as a printed book and as an electronic file on a DVD. Simultaneously, the same information can also be published to a Web page and a mobile device. The reference book's information doesn't change; only the form in which it is delivered to the intended "consumer" changes. The information is published in more than one media channel, allowing the information to reach a wider audience through these different channels.

 

 

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• Introduction
• What is information?
• What is media?
• What is multichannel publishing?
• Who should consider multichannel publishing?
• How will multichannel publishing benefit my organization?