9.0

When you're thinking about advertising, you might also want to think about analytics.
Do you want your app to provide you with information about how it's being used, and
how your content is being consumed? Both iAd and AdMob include options for gathering
such information and using it to tailor advertising.
Finally, how many different platforms do you want to deliver on? Here, custom apps are
the least appealing option, because they must be written separately for each platform. A
better option may be to use a framework such as the App Studio framework, which currently
supports only iOS but is planning to also support Android. This will allow you to create
issues once and then distribute them on both of these major platforms. For maximum
coverage, consider an industry standard format such as ePub.
For more information about the formats discussed here, see "Hardware, operating systems,
and formats."
Assessing your infrastructure needs
Creating content for digital distribution is only one part of the digital publishing process.
If you plan to deliver content for digital devices, you need to make sure that you have all
of the infrastructure necessary to do so.
For example, if you plan to host content on a Web site, you need to consider how much
space you're planning to need and how many downloads you anticipate having, because
both of these typically affect the amount you are charged for hosting. In any case, you
should track your usage information once you have launched, analyze it, and make any
necessary adjustments to your hosting plan. (If you create an app or App Studio issue that
includes content served over the Web, you should also consider the hosting plan used for
that content.)
Billing is another important aspect to consider. If you are selling individual apps or issues,
you need to make sure you have the infrastructure necessary to take payments for that
content in every market where you want to make that content available. Probably the
easiest way to do this is to use an established network such as the App Store, the Blio
bookstore, or Amazon, because these organizations are designed to make this aspect of
business easy and transparent for content creators.
Finally, you should probably have a plan for promoting and marketing your content. You
can hire an expert to handle this for you, or promote your content yourself using social
media such as Facebook and Twitter, or you can do a combination of both.
DIGITAL PUBLISHING WITH QUARKXPRESS 9 | 9
DEFINING YOUR GOALS AND LIMITATIONS