Keeping You Up With the Times

By Brian Holding

June 19, 2012

It is a brave, new publishing world. Or to put it another way, one has to be brave to be in publishing. Bookstores are closing. Amazon is recruiting authors. E-readers require publishers to create a dizzying array of products.

The publishing world has seen more change in the past 15 years than in the previous 500 years. The printing technology invented by Johannes Gutenberg circa 1439 and then reinvented through the next five centuries is being pushed aside by digital technology. The new technology is allowing the flow of products through a variety of channels to a growing number of e-reader devices. In the past 12 months, Human Kinetics published 95 new print books. Those 95 print books were joined by 660 e-versions. HK creates e-books to be delivered through our own website, Amazon to the Kindle, Barnes & Noble to the Nook, Apple to the iPad, iLibrary to public and academic libraries, Dawson to libraries in the United Kingdom, Google to their online customers, and many other outlets.

We are transforming the way we create products—not just printed books but suites of products—and providing our audiences with a vast menu of media. Small pieces as well as large collections of material, interactive and static media, and video and print media are among the options. The choices will be endless. Tomorrow’s products will be limited only by our imagination. Already, we are building digital products blending text, video, animation, and interactivity with readers.

Some sales channels are closing, as in the case with Borders Bookstores, but more markets are opening. Books, which were once out of the financial reach of much of the world’s population, will be become more readily available. Just as millions of people who never owned a land-line telephone now own a cell phone, millions who never owned a printed book will own e-readers.

That will allow HK’s information to reach more people in more corners of the world than we had previously dreamed.

-- Brian Holding, CEO, brianh@hkusa.com