Technology to Rescue Publishers

How a High Technology Company in South India Helps Publishers in 35 Countries Reduce Costs and Increase Revenues in the Current Economic Downturn

London – October 30th, 2008 / PRNewswire

Newspapers are continuing to feel the pinch of the impending recession with redundancies affecting national, regional, paid-for and free titles. The cost of energy, paper and printing has risen dramatically in the last year, forcing some newspapers to close and save money. Circulation has been shrinking, and advertising sales have fallen greatly in the last year causing many Publishers to re-think their economic models.

But what is the solution, and what will work, as newspapers seek an alternate income stream to replace print decline? The public is increasingly looking to gather information from many different sources. Readers want their information now - not tomorrow or even next week.

"Several publishers are evaluating replacing print edition with digital edition on alternate days of the week. " Said Myles Fuchs, President (North America), Pressmart.

Leading the digital publishing revolution, Pressmart, a company based in South India and a presence in London and New York is offering an easy-to- deploy and pay-as-you-go service with no set up costs. Everyone from a start- up magazine to a daily newspaper can have their digitized edition, online, within hours.

"The digitisation of publications presents publishers with the greatest opportunity to extend their reach allowing them to expand into new markets without great expenditure. I predict that the majority of successful publications will be relying upon their digital editions to improve their bottom line in the next year or so." says Tom McGowran, Sales Director (UK), Pressmart.

Touted as a 360-degree full-service offering, Pressmart offers a hosted service that includes ePublishing, delivery, hosting, subscriptions, single-copy sales, online payments, online ads and analytics, on a single platform.

Pressmart's proprietary technology strips the pre-press PDF pages it receives from publishers and pushes the content intelligently on multiple delivery channels like Web, Mobile, RSS, Podcast, Blogs, Search Engines and Social Media.

"The adoption rate of our print-to-digital service has been remarkable over the past 24 months. While leading international publishers and global publishing associations like the World Association of Newspapers, Suburban Newspapers of America and National Newspapers of America, trust our technology, it is the Small to Medium Publishers (SMP) that derive the maximum benefit from it. With Pressmart's pay-as-you-go hosted service it fits publishers' needs like a glove." Says Sanjiv Gupta, CEO, Pressmart.

Pressmart says some of its customers have seen a 9 times circulation jump by adding digital publishing to their delivery strategy and have saved millions in distribution costs

When wild fires hit Southern California and a part of San Diego Union Tribune's delivery infrastructure was gutted, it was Pressmart in South India that rose to the occasion and upon the paper's request, put up their print edition online, within a couple of hours. Whether holed up in their homes or in motels, Subscribers received their print edition (online), like on any other day.

The world's oldest newspaper (formed 1645), Post-och Inrikes Tidningar of Sweden, has announced that it will publish only digitally. Could this be the destiny of many more newspapers around the world?

About Pressmart:

Pressmart (http://www.pressmart.com) is a New Media Delivery Partner of leading newspapers and magazines published in over 22 languages across 35 countries. Pressmart takes over where the pre-press ends and delivers the electronic edition on multiple distribution channels including web (as a print-replica ePaper edition), Mobile, RSS, Podcasts, Blogs, Social Networking Sites, Article Directories, Search Engines, etc.

Pressmart also offers digitization of legacy archives from multiple physical formats into re-usable and monetizable digital formats. It has digitized over 400 years' worth of newspapers, magazines and journals. Pressmart is headquartered in Hyderabad and has a customer support presence in US and UK.