tlawrence

Traci Lawrence is a writer from Montgomery, Alabama. She is a lover of literature and technology. She loves to learn about new technology and software.

Is digital marketing better than traditional marketing for publishing companies?

Publishing companies promote books written by new and veteran authors with digital and traditional marketing to get the public interested and excited for the latest books. Traditional marketing is when the publishing companies would use newspapers, tv ads, and sometimes billboards to promote a book. Even advertisements on most radio stations reach people commuting in their cars or relaxing in their homes. Traditional marketing may be an excellent way to start promoting, but it may not get to most people.  Some people may not have a tv or radio. They might not have to a newspaper stand near them or have a newspaper delivered to their house. This is where digital marketing help with reaching more people anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection and a social media account.  

              Digital marketing is any way for publishing companies and authors can promote books to people. Many people in the digital era do not watch cable tv anymore and prefer to use streaming their tv shows from streaming services. Some of the streaming services do not have advertisements, or the person can skip the ad to get straight to the show. Most people have a social media account with promotions throughout the website that companies pay to have. Some publishing companies can also send an email to people’s email accounts if they sign out for that opinion. To do this, people can put their email addresses on the publishing companies’ mailing lists. People can also re-post something about the book to help authors and publications with promotion. The more people talk about something on their social media account, the more people it reaches. Authors and publication companies have social media accounts to assist with their marketing needs. The accounts can range from Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, where both the publication and authors can post anything about the book to the public months before release. Digital marketing does have some drawbacks. Some people probably do not have access to an internet connection or prefer not to use technology. They also may not have social media or email account they use regularly. Most people may not be tech-savvy as well. Many people do not have a computer, smartphone, or tablet to access the internet.

              Both traditional and digital marketing can be used together to reach people in both ways. There is someone who would rather receive one form of marketing from publishers and authors. It comes down to their preference for advertisements from the two parties. Regardless of their skills with technology or they want to continue receiving mail and buying newspapers, there are many reasons people choose their method of receiving advertisements. Digital marketing may have a negative effect on people buying books from a publication company. Traditional marketing may also have the same impact on people as well. But there might be some positive impact on people from the two forms of marketing. It all depends on how the book is promoted to the public.  Which do you prefer receiving from publishers and authors of your favorite books? Would you want to have a digital promotion or a printed one?

E-textbooks: Are they a simple choice for universities and publishers?

College students have been using printed textbooks for years, but digital publishing students have purchased digital books or e-textbooks for their classes. There are some advantages and disadvantages for college students using e-textbooks. Textbooks for college students have been both necessary and expensive throughout their college careers. One book could cost over two hundred dollars even with the help of scholarships or financial aid. It also depends on if a student has more than three classes during a semester or term how many textbooks they have to carry with them to and from class. One course material could be cover in multiple books or maybe one book. Students could hold a decent weight of textbooks around campus daily for their classes. Going digitally for college would be easy for some students and publishing companies; there are some faults when using laptops or tablets for e-textbooks.

              Different companies are getting into digital textbooks. Pearson, Chegg, Cengage, and Amazon are four companies that students use to buy or rent their books. Because of the success of those four companies and most if not all students have eight a laptop or a tablet they use for their courses. Those companies have a reasonable price for e-textbooks for students to either rent or buy. While also affording any addition of the textbook as well. Students can rent a digital book for a semester from these companies through the companies’ app or the university during the first to second week semester or term. E-textbooks would have more manageable and quicker to correct any mistakes after publication. For students have an e-textbook would be an easy way with them at all times. They would find the chapter or session quicker by using the search feature. Some digital textbooks are much more affordable for students to purchase or rent. Students can have some or all of their classes’ books on one device for them to use.  

              The use of digital textbooks does have some drawbacks for both the students and the publishing companies. Some students may not have a laptop or tablet they can use for class, or they may not be as tech-savvy as other students.  If a student buys the e-textbook, the book can’t be resale or sent it back to the company at the end of the semester or term. The student will have textbooks in their digital library of the apps they used to purchase it. Even if they delete it from their library, it’s still there in cyberspace. There is also the harm of blue light from laptops’ and tablets’ screens for students’ eyes. Students are straining their eyes looking at these screens for an extended time when looking at any computer or tablet’s screen. These laptops and tablets need to be charged daily. Some students would instead use a printed text for their studies. At the same time, some of the apps need to have an internet connection to work correctly. If the app is not open within an internet connection once, some app features would be out of sync or have a glitch when open outside of wifi. Publishers might have found some glitches in the apps that are difficult to fix in time for the start of the semester or term. The digital textbook is not up to date, or they do not have all the different versions of the book. Professors would rather have their students use printed texts to save time for the class.   

              Digital textbooks do have advantages and disadvantages for both students and publishers. Publishers still sell the printed versions to universities to be acceptable from selling printed and digital texts. It would have to be the choice of the user and their preference whether a student wants to have all their textbooks on one device or wish to have physical text to have zero distance when studying. It’s entirely up to the students and their choice for their class. Which would you choose? Printed textbooks or e-textbooks to use for your classes.     

Wattpad and Copyright

What is Wattpad? Wattpad is a digital-based entertainment company for storytelling for both fanfiction and original works of fiction. At the same time, Wattpad is both a website for people to publish their stories while also being a place where people can read novels. It’s also a place where people from around the world to share their creativity with readers. The website has original work and fanfiction. That ranges from horror to romance to fantasy to supernatural to anything from a person’s imagination. Wattpad is beneficial to both the reader and the authors by providing a safe place to upload stories and reading them.  Some writers can have their stories published by Wattpad or other publishing companies or self-publish their works through digital publication. Wattpad believes in protecting all users from plagiarism by coming up with a way to preserve all stories uploaded. Many people believe that Wattpad is only for fanfiction, stories written by fans of different books, tv shows, and movies; it’s much more than that. While in the effort of gaining their users’ trust and protecting them as best as legally possible.

Wattpad has made it easy for authors to protect their stories from plagiarism by taking copyright and DMCA very seriously. A person can not post a story they have copy onto the site, not without some consequences on their part from Wattpad’s legal team. If an author’s work is upload from another website to Wattpad without their consent, the author can report the uploader for copyright infringement. The author of the original work would have to fill out a form by pervading personal information. Wattpad has a link to the form need, or the author could go to the DMCA website to fill out a DMCA takedown form. The author can also ensure that their novel is protected by copyrighting the language in the advanced setting when they upload it. There have been some cases regarding fanfiction that have gotten some companies in legal trouble. However, Wattpad has been careful by having a fanfiction genre on the website and opinion for an author to use when they publish. Wattpad made it possible for their website users to be comfortable and protected as both readers and authors.

              Wattpad does have a way to protect authors on their website. One of those ways is by disabling the copy and paste function. The disabled copy feature stops other users from copying an author’s story on another account or website like Fanfiction.net, Archiveofown.org, or a third-party website. The disabled paste feature is to prevent users from pasting another author’s work to the Wattpad website. If the stories are of the fanfiction variety, the author can reserve some of the rights to the books, tv shows, or movies. The fanfiction part is in a different genre on Wattpad. There have been some cases of copyright on the fanfiction side of Wattpad with various fandoms. When a story is uploaded to Wattpad, there are three standard opinions a writer must check before the novel is published all right reserved, no rights reserved, and creative commons. All right reserved give the writers complete control of their story while other users can write reviews about the novel or recommend someone else to read. No right reserve allows other users to use the author’s story in any way the user wants. Most if not all writers would not use this function when they upload their stories to Wattpad. The last one creative common give the author some rights to their novel while giving the public some rights to the author’s novel. That right could be translated into another language or a movie with the author’s permission and helpful input. Wattpad has made its website safe with the different levels of protection for both itself and the authors. Because without the functions that it has now, Wattpad would have had as much legal trouble as Fanfiction.net.

Where Can You Read Webcomics?

What are webcomics? Webcomics are comics published on the internet and/or mobile apps. That way more people can enjoy them from anywhere. There are different websites for webcomics that artists can use to digitally publish their work whether they use a publishing company or self-publish their work on these websites. Now that the internet is easy to access from all over the world with the use of smartphones, tablets, and computers. So webcomics websites are on a rise as well with the new influx of readers. There are different websites for comics artists to upload their comics to their readers. The well-known websites would be Tumblr and Line Webtoons. These sites are helpful to anyone looking to discover new comics to read.  

Tumblr has been a creative outlet for artists who want to share their work and gain a following to help promote their page. Tumblr would be a website for beginner comics artists to share their style of drawing to slowly get viewers interested in the story of the comic or for advanced artists who would just share their works with their viewers. The artist can share a short scene or full page of the comic. This way the artists do not have to meet a deadline to turn in their work to a publisher and they could take their time to get make their comics right for their viewers. The viewers do not have to follow the artists. They just follow the tag or keywords for a comic genre.  

Line Webtoon is one of the most popular apps and websites for comics artists to share their work. The viewer can follow the comics series to keep up to date with the latest installment.