Pubsoft

Last updated
Pubsoft
Developer(s) Isaac Shi
Initial release 2012
Type Cloud-based eBook publishing platform

Pubsoft [1] is a cloud-based eBook publishing platform headquartered in Houston, Texas. It serves as the publishing engine for Kbuuk, LLC, [2] a self-publishing software company that provides digital conversion, distribution and marketing services for authors. [3] Pubsoft is designed to allow publishers to create and manage an online eBook store [4] for direct consumer sales. [5] Publishers can also use Pubsoft to handle social media marketing, deliver eBooks to mobile devices, [6] manage author and reader relationships and distribute royalties [7] through an administrative portal that uses PayPal.

Houston City in Texas, United States

Houston is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas, fourth most populous city in the United States, as well as the sixth most populous in North America, with an estimated 2018 population of 2,328,419. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with a population of 6,997,384 in 2018.

Texas State of the United States of America

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.

Self-publishing publication of a book or other publications by the author or authors

Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. In common parlance, the term usually refers to physical written media, such as books and magazines, or digital media, such as e-books and websites. It can also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, video content, zines, or uploading images to a website.

Contents

The Pubsoft system also provides book-level analytics designed to help publishers and authors move toward data-driven publishing. Originally designed for the trade publishing sector, the Pubsoft system is currently used for a variety of applications by agencies, education and creative writing programs, enterprises, industry experts and religious organizations.

Education Learning in which knowledge and skills is transferred through teaching

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators and also learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

Pubsoft allows companies to manage content by uploading documents and converting them to EPUB 3.0 eBooks, which can then be read in a web browser or on an iOS device. Through the Pubsoft backend system, an administrator or instructor can then evaluate reading progress and engagement, as well as assess reading comprehension through customized quizzes.

EPUB E-book file format

EPUB is an e-book file format that uses the ".epub" file extension. The term is short for electronic publication and is sometimes styled ePub. EPUB is supported by many e-readers, and compatible software is available for most smartphones, tablets, and computers. EPUB is a technical standard published by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It became an official standard of the IDPF in September 2007, superseding the older Open eBook standard.

iOS mobile operating system by Apple

iOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that presently powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It is the second most popular mobile operating system globally after Android.

History

Pubsoft was founded and launched in 2012 by CEO Isaac Shi [8] and COO Dougal Cameron. [9]

Technology

Pubsoft is a multi-tenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) eBook publishing platform [10] that is designed to support digital publishing industry standard EPUB 3.0, an XML-based eBook content standard. [11] Pubsoft utilizes a Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern, and the system contains three layers: a database layer created in MySQL, a business logic layer built on a Zend framework and a responsive user interface [12] layer created with HTML5 and CSS3.

XML Markup language developed by the W3C for encoding of data

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The W3C's XML 1.0 Specification and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.

MySQL SQL database engine software

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL", the abbreviation for Structured Query Language.

HTML5 fifth and current version of the hypertext markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web

HTML 5 is a software solution stack that defines the properties and behaviors of web page content by implementing a markup based pattern to it.

As an enterprise-grade application, the Pubsoft database is built on a relationship schema compatible with Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF), which is designed to ensure scalability, reliability and data integrity.

The Pubsoft SaaS application is deployed on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon Relational Database Service.

Related Research Articles

Publishing process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information

Publishing is the dissemination of literature, music, or information. It is the activity of making information available to the general public. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers, meaning originators and developers of content also provide media to deliver and display their content. Also, the word "publisher" can refer both to an individual who leads a publishing company or an imprint and to an individual who owns/heads a magazine.

Mobipocket SA was a French company incorporated in March 2000 that created the .mobi e-book file format and produced the Mobipocket Reader software for mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA) and desktop operating systems.

Blurb, Inc.

Blurb is an American self-publishing platform that enables their users to create, self-publish, promote, share, and sell their own print and ebooks. Blurb offers book-making tools catering to diverse digital skills.

Adobe Digital Editions

Adobe Digital Editions is an ebook reader software program from Adobe Systems, built initially using Adobe Flash. It is used for acquiring, managing, and reading eBooks, digital newspapers, and other digital publications. The software supports PDF, XHTML and Flash-based content. It implements a proprietary scheme of Digital Rights Management ("DRM") which, since the version 1.5 release in May 2008, allows document sharing among multiple devices and user authentication via an Adobe ID. ADE is a successor to Adobe eBook Reader.

The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.

Calibre (software) E-book management and editing software

Calibre is a cross-platform open-source suite of e-book software. Calibre supports organizing existing e-books into virtual libraries, displaying, editing, creating and converting e-books, as well as syncing e-books with a variety of e-readers. Editing books is supported for EPUB and AZW3 formats. Books in other formats like MOBI must first be converted to those formats, if they are to be edited.

E-book Book-length publication in digital form

An electronic book, also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, but also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Barnes & Noble Nook 1st Edition

The Nook 1st Edition is the first generation of the Nook e-book reader developed by American book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform. The device was announced in the United States in October 2009 and was released the next month. The Nook includes Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity, a six-inch E Ink display, and a separate, smaller color touchscreen that serves as the primary input device. In June 2010 Barnes & Noble announced a Wi-Fi-only model of the Nook. On June 5, 2018 Barnes and Noble announced support for logging in to BN.com and adding new content to the device will end on June 29, 2018. The second-generation Nook, the Nook Simple Touch, was announced May 25, 2011 with a June 10 release date.

Apple Books e-book application by Apple

Apple Books is an e-book reading and store application by Apple Inc. for its iOS and macOS operating systems and devices. It was announced, under the name iBooks, in conjunction with the iPad on January 27, 2010, and was released for the iPhone and iPod Touch in mid-2010, as part of the iOS 4 update. Initially, iBooks was not pre-loaded onto iOS devices, but users could install it free of charge from the iTunes App Store. With the release of iOS 8, it became an integrated app. On June 10, 2013, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Craig Federighi announced that iBooks would also be provided with OS X Mavericks in fall 2013. Prior to iOS 12 and macOS Mojave, the application was named iBooks.

Kobo eReader family of e-readers from Kobo, Inc.

The Kobo eReader is an e-reader produced by Toronto-based Kobo Inc. The company's name is an anagram of "book". The original version was released in May 2010 and was marketed as a minimalist alternative to the more expensive e-book readers available at the time. Like most e-readers, the Kobo uses an electronic ink screen.

Rakuten Kobo Inc., or simply Kobo, is a Canadian company which sells e-books, audiobooks, e-readers and tablet computers. It is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario and is a subsidiary of the Japanese e-commerce conglomerate Rakuten. The name Kobo is an anagram of book.

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon.com's e-book publishing unit launched in November 2007, concurrently with the first Amazon Kindle device. Amazon launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), originally called Digital Text Platform, to be used by authors and publishers, to independently publish their books directly, to Kindle and Kindle Apps worldwide.

Lektz is an eBook business platform developed by AEL Data, operating from UK and India. The solutions available in the Lektz platform include DRM, ebook reader applications, virtual book store, ebook conversion, elending, consumer analytics, and digital marketing solutions for small, medium-sized publishers and independent authors. Dr. M.S. Mohammed Sadiq, Sr. Vice President of AEL Data, is the chief architect of the Lektz platform and it draws support from AEL Data's ePublishing, digitization, accessibility solutions and application development services.

Kobo Aura

The Kobo Aura is the fifth generation of E-book readers designed and marketed by Kobo Inc. It was revealed 27 August 2013 at Kobo's Beyond the Book Event in New York City, along with three new Kobo Arc devices. Available for pre-order the same day, it cost $149.99 USD/CAD.

Oyster (company) business

Oyster was a streaming service for digital e-books, available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and NOOK HD/HD+ devices. It was also available on any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Oyster held over 1 million books in its library, and as of September 2015, the service was only available in the United States.

Google Play Books eBook store

Google Play Books is an ebook digital distribution service operated by Google. Users can purchase and download ebooks and audiobooks from Google Play, which offers over five million titles, with Google claiming it to be the "largest ebooks collection in the world". Books can be read on a dedicated Books section on the Google Play website, through the use of a mobile app available for Android and iOS, through the use of select e-readers that offer support for Adobe Digital Editions, through a web browser and reading via Google Home. Users may also upload up to 1,000 ebooks in the PDF or EPUB file formats. Google Play Books is available in 75 countries.

Tablo Publishing is a social self-publishing platform that allows authors to write books, build an online profile, and self-publish in eBook and paperback to 40,000 retailers including Amazon, the Apple iBooks Store, and physical bookshops such as Barnes & Noble and Readings. The platform is used by more than 70,000 authors who want to easily create and distribute their books, and by readers who want to discover and follow emerging writers across all genres. Tablo's author community spans more than 150 countries.

FBReader e-book reader application

FBReader is an e-book reader for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Android, and other platforms.

References

  1. Schneider, Andrew. "Houston IT Firm Aims To Woo Publishing Giants At Book Expo America". KUHF News for Houston. Retrieved 2013-12-26.
  2. Lanham, Fritz (April 7, 2013). "E-book startup hopes cloud is solid". Houston Chronicle.
  3. Abrams, Dennis (April 2013). "Ready For Kbuuk? Another New Self-pub Ebook Company". Publishing Perspectives.
  4. Karr, Douglas. "Pubsoft: Ebook Publishing, Reader Portals and Stores". Marketing TechBlog. Retrieved 2013-12-26.
  5. Dilworth, Dianna. "Pubsoft Lets Authors & Publishers Sell eBooks Direct". MediaBistro. Retrieved 2013-12-26.
  6. Hebbard, D.B. "New start-up Pubsoft offering cloud-based, software-as-a-service for eBook publishers". Talking New Media.
  7. McNally, Victoria. "Want To Self-Publish All On Your Own? Someday Pubsoft Might Be Your Biggest Asset". BookWorks: The Self-Publishers Association. Retrieved 2013-12-26.
  8. Shi, Isaac. "Software, Innovation and Entrepreneurship". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
  9. Cameron, Dougal. "Featured Startup Pitch: Ebook publishing startup Pubsoft wants to help publishers and authors reclaim the 'reader relationship'". StartUp Beat. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
  10. Pilkington, Mercy. "Crowdfunding to Expand Transmedia Story Stream "Gamifying" Platform". Good eReader. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
  11. Wied, Heather. "Which E-Book Format Is the Best?". MarketingProfs. Retrieved February 4, 2014.
  12. Magoo, Sara. "New Platform to Leverage Facebook Video Game Mechanics to Allow Readers to Interact, Earn Rewards while Reading Ebooks". DailyGame. Retrieved February 4, 2014.