Aptara Delivers Content for Breakthrough iPhone eBook Reader

ScrollMotion has carved out a niche as a leading provider of iPhone applications, including the revolutionary Iceberg Reader, which transforms eBook content into “books-as-apps” that allow users to download books, newspapers and other publications from iTunes and read them on their iPhones. The Iceberg Reader differentiates itself with unique functionality for full pagination, linking tables of content and interactive graphics.

Challenge Fill the Pipeline of eBooks for a Rapidly Growing Sales Channel

The Iceberg Reader holds great potential not just for ScrollMotion, but also for the entire eBook market. While devices like Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony eReader have enjoyed growing popularity, their numbers are dwarfed by the 271 million mobile phones, including almost 20 million iPhones in the hands of U.S. consumers.

To make the Iceberg Reader app marketable, ScrollMotion needed a rich library of eBook content, one with enough variety to spark demand across a wide-range of consumers. To that end, ScrollMotion set a target of creating a content repository filled with some 50,000 titles by the end of 2009.

Solution Aptara's eBook Production Platform to Transform Thousands of Titles

To meet the strict technical and accuracy specifications of a new eBook format, ScrollMotion turned to Aptara for its deep experience in complex eBook conversion. In the first half of 2009 alone, Aptara converted more than 2 million eBook pages from a variety of content sources, each with its own complexities.

For ScrollMotion, Aptara is converting books from Quark, InDesign, PDF and other formats into the emerging “ePub” eBook format standard and then into ScrollMotion’s .ice format for instant uploading to the iTunes store. Aptara’s uses .Net, PERL and Java scripts developed in-house to automate the conversion process, significantly reducing the time and cost required to convert the titles. Aptara’s stringent quality standards ensure that the initial ePub content meets the high standards and expectations established by ScrollMotion and users of the Iceberg Reader app.

Results A Vast Library of eBook titles for the iPhone and Strong Competitive Advantage for ScrollMotion

Thanks to Aptara, ScrollMotion is on its way to achieving its goal of having some 50,000 titles converted in time for the 2009 holiday season, and fueling higher sales of its Iceberg Reader iPhone application.

Added Value ScrollMotion Delights Its Publishing Partners

Random House, Harper Collins, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group and others welcome the ability to make their titles available through additional market channels in a novel way. By turning the iPhone into a new sales channel for reader-friendly eBooks, ScrollMotion’s technology is likely to have far-reaching benefits for all eBook publishers.