Many publishers are relying less and less on traditional print catalogues these days. With this decreased emphasis on print—especially to sell in frontlist—comes an increased emphasis on digital catalogues. Digital catalogues generally come in one of the following forms:
1. A digital PDF. Publishers still go through the full editorial, design, and production process for a catalogue, but mainly distribute it as a PDF file.
2. External platforms such as Catalist or Edelweiss.
Or, custom presentations via their own websites. For ReaderBound clients, this has taken the form of:
1. Showcasing frontlist titles by subject (such as this example from SUNY Press).
2. Website-generated catalogues. The press selects titles for the catalogue and the website exports the title data directly to an InDesign template. There is still some fine-tuning to be done for the final design, but this leverages the metadata and related workflows on the website to dramatically speed the process of a traditional catalogue production. Livres Canada Books offers examples of this method.
3. A custom digital presentation. For Wilfrid Laurier University Press, we created a new way to showcase seasonal catalogues using a custom landing page with lots of built-in features to engage buyers around lead titles for the season. Let us show you:
Many presses are looking for ways to reduce the staff time required to produce a traditional catalogue. We hope these examples can serve as helpful inspiration for the digital future of your catalogue.