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Making the Decision to Publish Okanagan Bookworks provides the services required to take your ideas and needs and turn them into tangible objects - or digital objects - that will deliver value for money, and real results. Publishing, no matter what form it takes, can be daunting, complicated, and potentially wasteful of time, money, and resources - unless it's done right. We make it easy, and cost-effective.
Here are the most common reasons companies, organizations, institutions, and individual decide to publish: To Celebrate Your Successes. You're an individual with a story to tell about your achievements or insights. You're a family who wants to have a memorial of one of its members, or the whole clan. You're a business that wants to contribute something to your community, or celebrate a benchmark in your history, or ensure that your customers are aware of all you have to offer them. You're a community, or community group, with a story to tell, or funds to raise, or people to acknowledge for their contribution.
To Sell. A lot of business is simply making connections with other people. Every smart business person knows that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Every business person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into a sale. And every business person can tell more than one story how a brochure or catalog, or some other printed material, was the key factor in getting new business. Whether it's a new product or service you want to introduce, or a regular reminder to your existing customers, print materials - brochures, catalogs, spec sheets, manuals, posters, inserts, magazines, and other sales collatoral - help keep your message in front of those who drive your business: your customers.
To Make Information Available. If you could keep your customers informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don't you think you could do more business? A consistently applied publishing program delivers real results for just that reason. The more information a potential customer has about you, the more likely they're going to remember you when it comes time to buy. By using print publications in tandem with online media, you can achieve real results cost-effectively. Similarly for organizations and associations - an important part of your mandate is member information services. The better job an organization or association does at keeping information flowing, the more successful it will be. Finding a cost-effective and effiecient way to create, package, and deliver that information is the reason for you to use Okanagan Bookworks. To Serve Your Customers. Making business information available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. If you take serving your customers seriously, you'll find lots of ways to use print and online technology. How about making forms available online so potential customers can pre-qualify themselves? Whoever answers the phones in your organization can tell you that their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again.
To Influence the Media. Every kind of business, every organization and institution, needs the exposure that the media can bring. Press kits are becoming more and more common as promotion tools for business, because every newspaper, magazine, radio and television station is starved for good news. Digital images of your products and services, and digital text covering every aspect of your business can be edited and outputed on tight deadlines - all available on your website for easy downloading and use by busy journalists. To Reach Specialized Audiences. If your market is specialized, consider whether print or online media are the most effective to reach it. For example, most universities already offer Internet access to their students and most K-12 schools will be on the Internet within the next few years. Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion and anything else that would want to reach these markets needs to be on the Web. The more specialized, the more practical digital publishing becomes. To Open International Markets. You may not be able to make sense of the mail, phone and regulation systems in all your potential international markets, but online you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. Effective use of digital media is certain to bring international opportunities your way, and is an efficient and cost-effective way to grow your business. Going the Digital Route Digital publishing uses the computer as a communications medium. It is the use of the computer to present information that might otherwise appear on printed pages, and putting it onto disks, CD-ROMs, or on the World Wide Web.
Also, digital publishing is not a means of replacing paper publications. Its role is complementary to paper, a medium that is unlikely to be replaced in the near future because of its portability and ease of use. However, online publications can be distributed and updated much faster than their paper equivalent. A further advantage is that they integrate the product information with the product. Deciding What to Put Online. There is a basic rule of thumb to answer this question. Put a document online if the value of having it online exceeds the cost of putting it there. In general, the following kinds of documents are suitable for online display:  Information that is urgent.
Documents that frequently change.
Documents that have many cross references.
Large reference works.
Instructions, reference manuals and tutorials.
Documents that take advantage of computer display and storage.
Documents that should not appear online include: Anything that requires detailed reading.
Documents that are needed away from the computer or by non-computer users.
Those with graphics that are too complex or too large.
Organising Digital Publications. There are four elementary structures used in digital publications: sequence, grid, hierarchy, and web. The most effective way to organise material is by means of linked topics. It is possible to incorporate this into all four of the above structures. To improve use on the part of the reader, the links should provide a sequential path through the main thread of the publication.
To make the material more user-friendly, organise the document the way the user naturally thinks it is organised. An imposed, artificial structure will quickly discourage the reader from making full use of the publication. Progressive disclosure of information, beginning with very simple concepts, also gives the reader a better feeling of familiarity with the material.
An Aside: the Beginning and End of Books  The book is the culmination of the long and difficult development of language, in a sense the largest grammatical construct, far beyond the sentence, the paragraph or even the more quickly digestible story, essay or article. It is the most integral and complex means of conveying one mind to others through words, calling upon, and seemingly reciprocating the most complex form of verbal attention.
Is the age of the book as we know it coming to an end? Not the material thing - the bound book with paper pages - but rather the book in its wider meaning as a unique mode for channeling and holding our attention and imagination. If, as some insist, the book is in decline, then the sustained, reflective and disciplined mode of thought the book made possible may be declining as well. And, if so, the generations that follow us will be different kinds of people, living in a different kind of world. Okanagan Bookworks | books@booksokanagan.com | 250.870.2690
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