Sandy’s Impact on Publishing, The Random House-Penguin Deal, Microsoft’s Surface Tablet, Tablet Users’ Reading Habits, Nat Geo’s iPhone App, TFP InDesign Tip: Temporarily Hide Panels
Welcome to TFP’s weekly roundup of interesting and noteworthy stories from the publishing world. This week, we’re discussing Superstorm Sandy’s impact on East Coast publishers, the potential market power of Penguin Random House, magazine apps for Windows 8, and more.
- While Superstorm Sandy disrupted many East Coast publishers this week, it also gave digital media an opportunity to shine, an Adweek article suggests. As the storm knocked several digital news sites offline, including The Huffington Post and Gawker, social media outlets like Twitter and Tumblr became key tools for disseminating information and filtering out false rumors.
- Bertelsmann’s Random House publishing unit and Pearson’s Penguin group have agreed to join forces to create Penguin Random House. The publishers hope that the larger entity will be better positioned to compete in the growing e-book market and to negotiate pricing terms with booksellers like Amazon.
- Some publishers, including Condé Nast and Bonnier, were ready with apps for Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system and 10.6-in. Surface tablet when they went on sale last week. Although the iPad competitor has received some positive reviews, there are significantly fewer apps available for it than there are for iOS devices.
- According to comScore, a study conducted in August found that 40% U.S. tablet owners read newspapers and/or magazines on their devices monthly, and 1 in 10 read them almost daily. Kindle owners in particular were found to be the top consumers of those publications.
- This past week, National Geographic launched a version of its digital magazine for the iPhone. Created with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and InDesign CS6, the iPhone edition of the November issue is specifically tailored to the device—from button and text size, to the handling of photography, text, and audio. It’s available now in the iTunes Store.
- Have you ever needed a larger viewing area when working on an InDesign layout? There’s an easy way to get it: Temporarily hide all panels on the InDesign workspace. For more TFP tips, such as how to set up custom workspaces, visit the InDesign Tips page on the TFP blog.
This Week in Publishing appears every Friday on the TFP blog. Every week we compile interesting and noteworthy stories from the publishing world and put together a wrap-up to help our readers stay up-to-date. Think we missed something great? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Posted by: Gina Barrett