Pressroom

Fresh Meadows, NY, Mar. 16, 2015 – Due to tremendous growth in the eBook market, Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (Penerbit USM, thereafter USM Press) tapped Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) to convert its inventory of books and academic journals to EPUB format. In the past 21 months, this partnership has facilitated growth of USM Press’s list of eBook titles and digitized journals, and penetration of the global distribution channels that extend its product reach.

“DCL’s solution for USM is of the highest quality, with fast turnaround times. The result to date is a 15 - 20 percent increase in market penetration for our titles,” says Akhiar Salleh, the Director of USM Press. “We are considered the pioneer of end-to-end EPUB production and distribution for academic publishers in Malaysia. Our eBooks are available locally and globally on Amazon, Google Play and e-Sentral through our aggregators such as OverDrive and Trajectory, with more distribution channels in the pipeline including Kobo and Barnes and Noble.”

“Our work with USM Press began in earnest with a pilot conversion of two of their books to EPUB back in 2013,” said Mark Gross, President of DCL. “The geographic distance between us proved to be no barrier, and the digital collaboration between our teams has been outstanding. We’re delighted to see USM’s successful entry into the eBooks market and are proud to be a part of the effort.”

DCL worked closely with the publisher to streamline the overall process of conversion, proofing and final production. “As the collaboration progresses, we continue working hand in hand closely to improve the conversion process,” said Zulkifli Musa, Publication Officer, who is the technical liaison for USM Press. “Our continued partnership indicates the level of confidence and comfort we have with DCL.”

DCL originally performed conversion work on some of USM Press’s journal titles in 2011, converting from PDF to XML. Following the successful EPUB pilot, the publisher chose to convert its books and journals to EPUB, and has to date converted a series of books and journal issues, representing more than 10,000 pages of text. Prior to DCL’s involvement, textbook conversion took nearly two months per title; DCL’s automated conversion and quality control processes honed turnaround time down to one to two weeks per title.

Akhiar notes, “USM Press has been around for more than 40 years with over 1,000 titles in print; so we have a lot of ambition for future work. More importantly we aspire to always be in the forefront of technological advances. Digitizing these products helps us achieve that.”