What prompted Simon & Schuster to digitize and convert its backlist titles?
Simon & Schuster has been digitizing its books in since we began publishing eBooks in 1999. S&S initiated other digitization projects with its print on demand efforts and when we entered the search-inside programs offered by select retailers and search engines. Simple disaster recovery needs have been a part of publishing for years. For many of our books that only exist in paper form, our author’s intellectual property has been at risk of loss due to fire, flood or simple deterioration and decay over time. Several factors converged to make a broad digitization effort appealing and beneficial to our authors and the consumers who buy our books: • Consumer interest and purchasing volume of digital content reached critical mass, with publishers seeing the strongest growth in the downloadable audiobook business. • The explosive growth of search engines allows publishers the ability to reach new audiences and inexpensively target a depth and breadth of niche markets previously unreachable by
