This is a guest post by Helen Elmsley. Helen is the Marketing Manager at Virtusales Publishing Solutions, creator of the industry leading Biblio3 suite of publishing software. 

You could say that a book is much like an atom. Split it open and there’s a wealth of publishing potential inside. With modern consumers reaching beyond the more traditional printed, digital and audio book formats, publishers have an exciting opportunity to innovate and distribute their content in new ways.

By putting content first, a recipe book suddenly becomes hundreds of individual content items that can be added to an online platform or subscription service. A children’s book becomes a collection of characters and stories that can be repurposed into digital apps, games and other formats. Chapters, graphs and tables in reference books and journals can be published on blended learning or content platforms. Capitalizing on content in this way can make traditional books reach a wider audience and produce more revenue at the same time.

Technology has a huge role to play in this change, providing a springboard for publishers experimenting with new business models, formats and processes. Here are five ways that publishers can use technology and systems to maximize discoverability and revenue from their content.

1) Create Metadata for Granular Content

Good metadata is vital for all publishers and is proven to have a positive impact on sales. It’s important to start thinking about metadata from the earliest point in a product’s inception, clarify ownership and incorporate it into everyday workflows. Systems that enable you to add and feed out metadata for chapters, articles, images and graphs will maximize content discoverability online, and get that content into the hands of more readers.

2) Integrate Metadata With Digital Files

Integrated publishing and digital asset management systems can make it easy to search and organize content into new formats or collections. Linking metadata with digital files will streamline distribution to retailers, websites and aggregators and using a system that supports automatic updates will achieve significant time managing, repurposing and distributing content.

3) Repurpose and Categorize Content

There are now advanced solutions available that enable publishers to work collaboratively on files throughout the product life cycle. A DAM system that facilitates the rapid retrieval of content, and then provides tools to repurpose or revise content into new formats, will quickly become an invaluable tool to generate new revenue streams.

4) Record Permissions and Rights for Content

Managing income and royalties for content is becoming increasingly important for publishers so that they can correctly apportion royalties and sales. A system with the tools to do this can also help analyze and increase revenue. By applying permission sales, rights and royalties management to content items, publishers can gain unique sales insights into which content pieces are most successful, to inform strategic publishing decisions and increase income.

5) Back-up Instincts With Real-Time Intelligence

The use of Business Intelligence, dashboards and other tools can be great at visualizing and displaying the positive impact on sales that rich metadata can have. Publishers can extend the use of these tools further, to get feedback on experiments with new content formats, sales channels and business models across different regions, retailers and platforms. By collating real-time sales data, publishers can benefit from an overview of their content in all its formats to improve future decisions.