The market for small publishers with sales of $1M to $10M is dominated by competition between Cyberwolf, Media Services and iPUB.
Cyberwolf's Acumen product has over 180 client. Acumen is a totally integrated ERP system. Most vendors consider Acumen to be the market leader in this segment and consistently signs up more new clients each year than its two major competitors combined.
Media Services Group has about 200 book publishing clients spread out among its four product lines; Bookworks, CisPub Cats Pajamas and Élan. The Cats Pajamas product line (acquired in 2006) is focused on meeting the demands of publishers with sales of $1M thru $5M with solutions that start as low as $10K and has about 160 clients.
IPUB is a relatively new competitor in this market and offers hosted and standalone solutions along with a choice of financing options that includes sales based financing - i.e. your financing payment varies according to your monthly sales.
In the middle market of publishers with sales in the range of $10M thru $50M no one book publishing software solution dominates the market.
We estimate that 80% of book publishers in this market use non-publishing specific software including custom designed applications and off the shelf ERP solutions.
The introduction of new book industry standards, the increasing market share of on-line resellers and the growing importance of digital products has led more publishers in this market segment to switch to publishing specific software solutions.
In this market Bookmaster, Klopotek, and Vista as the primary competitors due to their scalability and large client base.
From our point of view, Bookmaster has the strongest distribution oriented solution, Klopotek the strongest editorial focused solution and Vista the strongest marketing oriented solution in this market space.
In 2008 we see Eclipse (Microsoft Dynamics GP) and Solution Dynamics (Microsoft Dynamics NAV) making a stronger attempt to penetrate the North American market.
in 2007, Acumen enhanced its software with advanced warehouse management functionality and a rights marketing module. This increased its appeal to larger publishers. In 2009 we expect that Acumen's offering will be enhanced with tighter integration to MS Office as they upgrade systems to the SQL version of 4D.
In 2008 we Media Services will be more competitive for sales in this market segment with the rollout of their Microsoft .NET based Élan hosted solution and an MS SQL upgrade path for existing CisPub, Cats Pajamas and Bookworks clients.
Furthermore, Media Services has uniquely positioned itself in the market as a vendor that offers a best of breed royalty & rights solution that works with any of the standard accounting packages - such as MAS90, Great Plains and QuickBooks.
KnK, a provided of Microsoft Certified Solutions to the publishing industry recently signed a distribution agreement with Solution Dynamics in the United States. The entry of a system that is integrated with with the Microsoft Dynamics line of products could is the wild card for the 2008/2009 marketplace.
At the high end of the publishing software market (for publishers with sales of $50M thru 1B+) Bookmaster, Klopotek, and Vista are the primary competitors with no one solution having a dominate market share.
International publishers, with sales above $100M, also consider SAP.
From our point of view IBS Bookmaster is stronger in distribution and warehouse management, Vista is stronger in book marketing and Klopotek is strongest in editorial and production management.
Bookmaster is enhancing their marketing functionality with improved tools for CRM and rights marketing.
The strength of the Klopotek offering in North America has increased with their purchase of the Global Turnkey Systems and access to Global's experienced implementation staff.
With representation in China Vista has signaled its intention to expand in the largest market that is untapped by rival vendors.
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Updated March 26, 2008
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