Cool:
Adobe Digital Publishing Suite has reached a major new milestone: over 100 million cumulative folios downloaded since we first launched DPS in March 2011. The hockey stick growth curve in digital downloads confirms that mobile readership on tablets and smartphones is on the rise… The number of companies using DPS to accelerate their mobile marketing has increased 30% in the last six months alone.
Creative Cloud subscribers get unlimited InDesign-to-iPad publishing via DPS Single Edition.
I’m a long time DPS user (since the beta), and I think it’s a great product overall. The product team seems like great folks, and it’s developed very swiftly. Adobe has also been great about communicating new features.
That said, the pricing structure for it is a huge barrier to non-profits and anyone wanting to distribute a free magazine. The “unlimited” publishing in Single Edition is limited to single-issue magazines on iPad only: If you want to put your magazine on Android tablets (becoming the majority), iPhones or anything else, you have to pay Adobe .30 PER END USER DOWNLOAD. That can turn into a pretty big cost very quickly, making a free magazine for your users a huge cost to you. (Not to mention the separate Adobe DPS subscription plans that go along with it.)
Frankly, it feels like the “perk” of the “unlimited” single edition is a teaser to get you publishing, then upsell you into a plan that pays Adobe monthly AND per download (sound familiar?), because the include CC publishing abilities are actually so limited.
Again, I love the platform, and I hope Adobe will change the pricing to make those other platforms available to everyone.