Responding to the rapidly changing marketplace for ebooks and digital content, the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP), has announced that its digital suite of services known collectively as Canadian Publishers Digital Services (CPDS) has been newly and separately incorporated as eBOUND Canada.
“The ACP membership clearly sees the development of digital services as critical to the health and growth of independent publishing in Canada,” says Carolyn Wood, Executive Director of the ACP. “Establishing eBOUND with a broad mandate to explore all aspects of digital publishing is a huge positive step in that direction.”
Heading the new not-for-profit organization as President and CEO is Robert Hayashi, well known to the publishing community from his time as a Vice-President at Indigo. “Robert has been running CPDS since January and, in that time, has brought to fruition a number of projects that will create enormous value for our members,” continues Wood.
From its original objective of converting print to ebook files, eBOUND has added to its services the negotiation of licensing deals to partners like Kobo, Apple and Barnes & Noble, digital distribution, professional development and, soon, digital asset management. Plans for adding marketing support for ebooks, international distribution and other services are in the works as well.
“eBOUND’s goal is to be able to advance any publisher’s digital engagement no matter their size or their level of expertise,” says Hayashi. “Working on behalf of a large group of very talented publishers gives us the ability to leverage our collective volume to negotiate favorable rates on services and to lower the entry barriers that members can face moving into this marketplace.”