In a move geared partly toward making publishers more comfortable with selling ebooks directly to libraries, Impelsys announced last week that its iPublishCentral software now enables publishers to set expiration terms for patron downloads of their titles, institution by institution. iPublishCentral 4.0 will also enable patrons to access ebooks from iPads, laptops, and desktop computers offline, regardless of the form of online patron authentication that is set up by their library.
“The content protection feature in this new version of iPublishCentral provides additional opportunities for eBook publishers to monetize their content and build direct relationships with their customers,” Anil Gopinath, executive vice president of global engineering for Impelsys, explained in a release. “Publishers can offer offline reading of eBooks on iPads and define the duration of access to content based on their business relationships with various institutions and libraries.”
Impelsys founder and chief executive officer Sameer Shariff added that publishers view the library market as an important and growing segment for their businesses, but “many publishers have been challenged by the reality that library patrons are increasingly demanding access to ebooks on all of the major mobile devices,” he said in the release. “With iPublishCentral 4.0, publishers can more aggressively pursue this key market segment with the confidence that they’re able to deliver mobile content to library patrons whenever and wherever they want that access.”
Impelsys currently warehouses and distributes ebooks for leading publishers including McGraw-Hill, Sesame Street, Houghton Mifflin, Benchmark Education, Marshall Cavendish, MIT Press, Elsevier Science, F&W Media, Wolters Kluwer, Thieme Publishers, American Academy of Pediatrics, Lerner Education, and Hong Kong University Press.
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