Branded publishing model offers an alternative to iTunes-style aggregations
Tizra, Inc. announced that Duke University Press has signed an agreement with Tizra to use Agile PDF, a hosted publication sales and delivery service, to repackage, deliver and sell their book-based content in an easy to read electronic form.
The white-labeled Tizra platform will allow Duke to create and manage a fully searchable, Duke-branded online storefront to sell their books to individuals and institutions. Buyers will be able to purchase individual chapters or pages, as well as collections combining multiple works under a variety of licensing and pricing models.
Duke University Press publishes approximately 120 books annually, placing it among the 20 largest university presses in America. Its journal program is in the top 5, with more than 30 titles.
“Our readers are a diverse audience of scholars and educated readers,” stated Stephen Cohn, Director of Duke University Press. “We expect that Tizra's innovative system will over time allow many new readers to discover our content, as well as allow us to deliver new mix-and-match capabilities to those who already view our publications as crucial for research, teaching, and intellectual stimulation.”
Driven by a web-based control panel, the storefront is easy to use and designed to be controlled by non-technical publishing staff. With direct control over visual design, content, and sales terms, the Agile PDF web service enables rapid exploratory development and testing of products and pricing, differentiating it from sites like Google and Amazon, whose product organization and presentation are not under the control of the publisher.
According to David Durand, CEO of Tizra, “Duke University Press holds a leadership position among university presses in applying technology to scholarly communication. We are delighted have them as a charter customer, and to have the opportunity to help them deliver content with such enduring value. Agile PDF simplifies the management of a branded publication site just the way blogging software simplified personal homepages, delivering PDF content that was originally developed for print to readers with the ease and familiarity of a custom-designed HTML website.
”We think that Tizra’s on-demand platform offers advantages to publishers who want a partner to help them get online without being subsumed into a single iTunes-style marketplace that limits control of product definition and branding.”
About Duke University Press
Duke University Press is the publishing arm of Duke University. It publishes cutting-edge academic work, primarily in the humanities and interpretive social sciences--including both books intended entirely for academic audiences and books appealing to broad audiences. For more information, please visit www.dukeupress.edu.
About Tizra, Inc.
Tizra’s mission is to help businesses to flexibly package, deliver, and sell information online. Tizra’s hosted solution enables publishers to generate immediate revenue and gain experience in the critical expansion of online information sales beyond periodicals and databases and into longer forms of content. As the internet continues to transform information delivery, Tizra enables customers to control their website, product and terms of sale, and lets them focus on tuning their products and strengthening customer relationships rather than worrying about their technical infrastructure. The company is headquartered in Providence, RI. For more information about Tizra, please visit www.tizra.com