Aptara, ScrollMotion Team to Convert Content for the iPhone

Aptara, ScrollMotion Team to Convert Content for the iPhone
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 9/23/2009 6:18:00 AM
Aptara, an international developer of content conversion, authoring and management systems, is teaming up with iPhone applications developer ScrollMotion to create a streamlined and comprehensive system to transform book content into interactive e-book material for the iPhone. ScrollMotion is the creator the Iceberg Reader, an e-book reader for the iPhone.

Aptara CEO Dev Ganesan said the partnership with ScrollMotion will offer publishers a way to minimize production and distribution costs, add a variety of interactive content features customized for each publisher, and create a new revenue stream through the growing popularity of the iPhone and the convenience of the iTunes store, as well as through other mobile reading devices.

Ganesan said the venture is aimed at getting Aptara involved “from the beginning of the editorial process; we can help to plan how the content will be used—graphics, multiple languages, composition, educational content and how to deliver it—and make the process more cost effective for conversion to mobile devices.” Aptara currently works with the content of such publishers as Random House, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Penguin Group USA.

In ScrollMotion CEO John Lema's view,“Aptara delivers the absolute highest-quality e-book conversion capability,” and emphasized that the new partnership will allow “publishers to work with Aptara to convert their content and with ScrollMotion to monetize it.”

ScrollMotion’s Iceberg Reader is being used on “hundreds of thousands” of iPhones, Lema said and he also emphasized the importance of working with publishers very early n the conversion process to create detailed interactive functionality around their content. “As conversions become more complex, you need to add value earlier in the process,” he said. The Iceberg Reader, said Lema, not only offers the usual stuff—fonts, pagination, color and images—but can also provide searching, e-mail sharing, textbook content, quizzes, editable text and multimedia.

“Combining this application with Aptara’s e-book production expertise now offers publishers a new option for delivering content to the iPhone market in a highly cost effective manner,” said Ganesan.