JP2003141210A - Electronic publication system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a system for enabling Internet users (readers) to order and subscribe magazines at ease and to contrive magazine promotion and market research for publishing companies. SOLUTION: This system selects feature articles from electronic articles of magazines created/stored by DTPs of a plurality of publishing companies, registers and opens them to the public in an Internet server, advertises/sells the feature articles by the Internet and is provided with a means for conferring with the respective publishing companies 2, for keeping the magazine contents selected based on commission/management/sales contracts by digital data d1, for converting the magazine contents into XML and PDF, etc., storing/managing them by a contents server 102 and opening title headers of the magazine articles on homepages by a web server 101, a single article sales means for performing electronic sales of specified articles from the articles opened on the homepages and a bookbinding and sales means 110 for enabling the Internet users 3 to select a plurality of articles from the articles opened to the public on the homepages and for printing/bookbinding the plurality of articles and performing distribution sales.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention cooperates with each publisher to select specific articles that are likely to be of interest to readers, and sells them electronically on the Internet, or accepts electronic orders on the Internet to print / bind. Related to the electronic publishing system of magazines that are sold.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In the past, in the publishing industry, handwritten manuscripts of reporters and writers were input by a specialized operator from a keyboard, converted into digital data, and placed on DTP. Recently, writers have also created manuscripts by word processors and have begun to send them by computer communication. The Internet has been the driving force behind this. This is because the Internet has made it possible to communicate freely from any place at any time.

At present, the publishing industry is computerizing a series of publishing operations from editing to printing, including manuscript preparation and layout. Image data such as graphic data and photographs are treated in the same way as document data (text data), and are all stored and managed in the database.

With the development of the Internet, the introduction of books has become popular through the Internet. Each publisher opens a website on the Internet and advertises its own books. Among them, electronic publishing is one that positively takes advantage of the digitization of publications. For example, there are electronic comic books currently being sold on the Internet. When you connect to this manga electronic publishing site, the title, manga artist's name, cover, etc. are displayed on the screen as a menu of multiple manga books. If there is a book you want, you can download it by selecting the book you want. However, a broadband environment is required because the entire book is downloaded. Also, since the file format is PDF format, electronic book browsing software is required.

As open patents relating to electronic publishing, "electronic publishing system" (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-155023), "electronic publication distribution system" (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-67269), "electronic publishing system"
(Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-325836). Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-155023 proposes a system for dynamically reorganizing the structure of copyrighted data from registered copyrighted data groups based on the content of the reader's request and providing it to the reader. There is.

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-67269 describes an electronic publication distribution system for preventing delivery information from being illegally copied by a user and used by others. Further, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-325836, a method of converting a publication into digital information (including characters and figures), recording the compressed data on a recording medium, and distributing it to users, and decompressing the distributed digital information are performed. And convert it to visible information,
It mentions an electronic publishing system having means for displaying on a monitor.

[0007]

As has been seen in the prior art, the publishing world is now computerized from manuscript preparation to editing / printing. This computerization is supported by DTP technology. Electronic publishing (electronic book sales) via the Internet is a form that has taken computerization one step further. A concrete example is electronic publishing of comics. Comic book 1
Although there is the drawback that it takes time to download the entire book, broadband compensates for this drawback.

Since image data such as comics and photobooks has a large amount of data, there is a problem that it takes time to download. In that respect, in the case of magazine articles where text information is central, although image data such as photos and illustrations are partially included, the total amount of data is different from that of manga, which is image data, so the amount of data is small, It is advantageous for data transmission. However, if one magazine is sent as an electronic publication, the amount will be enormous. For this reason, conventional book publishing images are not always well-suited for the ease of use by users other than broadband.

Therefore, the problem to be solved by the present invention is as follows.
It is to provide a system for Internet users (readers) to easily order and subscribe to magazines. The present invention also takes into account the role of publisher magazine promotion (marketing promotion) and market research.

[0010]

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to solve the above problems, the invention described in claim 1 is a DTP of a plurality of publishers.
In a system that advertises and sells special articles on the Internet by selecting specific articles such as feature articles from electronic articles of magazines created and stored by, registering them on the Internet server and publishing to the Internet users, (1) A web server that manages the publication of articles to users, acceptance of orders, sales of ordered articles, issue and collection of questionnaires, etc. (2) Registration of consigned electronic articles from each publisher or specially selected electronic articles Content server, (3) Billing and settlement server that manages billing and settlement, (4)
An electronic publishing system comprising a customer management server for recording and storing customer's email address, address, name, subscription history, questionnaire, etc.

The invention described in claim 2 is selected on the basis of the consignment / management / sales contract after (1) consultation with each publisher in the electronic publishing system of the magazine described in claim 1. Store the magazine contents as digital data,
A means for converting the digital data of the magazine content into a file format such as XML or PDF, storing and managing the content server, and publishing the title or header of the magazine article as a homepage on the web server, (2) Articles published on the homepage A single article selling method that electronically sells a specific article as a single article from (3) Have the Internet user select multiple articles from the articles published on the homepage, print and bind the selected multiple articles The electronic publishing system according to claim 1, further comprising a bookbinding and sales means for delivering and selling the book.

According to the invention described in claim 3, in the electronic publishing system of the magazine described in claim 1, market record such as sales record, article access frequency, age group or occupation analysis, or monitoring or questionnaire survey. By grasping the reader's interests, interests, trends, etc. by implementing the above, a market report was created and distributed to each publisher, and a means for supporting the latest issue of magazines / books / new publications / new media promotion was provided. The electronic publishing system according to claim 1, wherein:

The system of the present invention takes two approaches. One is electronic publication of individual magazine articles on the Internet (single electronic article sales), and the other is to order multiple magazine articles from the Internet for printing, binding, and magazine This is a method of distributing in the form of (print on demand <binding / delivery sale>).

The former is, literally, a selection of articles of particular interest from a plurality of magazines by a plurality of publishers,
Send order articles in the form of emails on the Internet. Although the file format of the article to be transmitted is not specified, a PDF that allows encryption and handling of image data is preferable. In any case, sending a single article can shorten the sending time. The latter is a form in which an ordered article is printed by an ordering party, bound, and delivered. For delivery, use mail or home delivery. In this case, since the content of the bound book is a mixture of a plurality of articles from a plurality of publishers, it becomes a magazine unique to each user (reader).

In order to enable the above electronic publication, in the present invention, a publisher (magazine company) and an Internet electronic publication management mechanism (usually a company different from the publisher) cooperate with each other to digitize magazine articles. Will be provided to the Internet users (readers) at the electronic publishing station. The magazine articles published on the electronic publishing station are not all the magazine articles themselves, but the magazine articles that are of particular interest to the reader are selected. Basically, the selection is made by the publisher. So-called consignment disclosure / sales is the basis.

[0016] Another object of the present invention is online promotion (sales promotion on the Internet) and market research. For the former, the headline of the feature article of each publisher is enlarged, and a part of the article (for example, the header part) is sent to the reader for free. For the latter,
Customer management analyzes age, occupation, gender, subscription article contents, etc., and provides the analysis results to each publisher. Regarding the electronic publishing system that enables the above sales form,
An embodiment of the invention will be described.

When a magazine article is extracted from the database, it is possible to introduce not only a list of genres and article headings, but also a general search and a detailed search found in search engines on the Internet.

For example, an article search (ordinary search) is divided into free words, magazine names, publisher names, author names, genres, etc., and detailed search (combined search) includes AND, OR, etc. in the search items of the article search. You can use the arithmetic symbol of to perform advanced searches.

As another function, a kind of ASP service using the purchase history can be provided. For example, as an example of the ASP service, a purchase article storage service using purchase history can be provided. By storing the history of once purchased articles and entering the user's ID and password, you can provide a service that allows you to browse and print the purchased articles from anywhere on the Internet.

Most of the article data from publishers is digital data for DTP, but since there are cases where only "paper" articles remain, in such a case, a paper article is scanned once and digitally printed. Used after converting to data.

[0021]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be specifically described with reference to the drawings. The center of the present invention is an electronic publication management mechanism.
Is 1. Electronic Publishing Management Organization is Electronic Publishing Station 100
And a print / bookbinding management mechanism 110. The electronic publishing station includes a web server 101, a content server 102, a billing / settlement server 103, and a customer management server 104. In other words, the electronic publishing station is in charge of computerized publishing work that serves as a window between the comprehensive management of magazine articles provided by the publisher 2 and the user 3 (reader). The print / bookbinding management mechanism retrieves / extracts the articles requested by the user for delivery from the content server and prints them 111, bookbinding 112,
Delivery 113 is performed. Bound articles are user-specific books 114
Delivered to User 3 as (magazine).

Each server has the following functions.・ Web server 101 Open a website on the Internet, introduce magazines,
It is a server that manages the Internet for users 3 such as receiving order mails and sending articles directly (article download <single item sale>). Note that the interface
The 107 has a function of checking whether a mail etc. sent from the user via the internet d4 contains a virus or the like.

Content server 102 is a server for storing and managing consignment articles sent as digital data d1 from the publisher 2. Since the publisher 2 stores the magazine articles as electronic typesetting, it receives the digital data of the electronic typesetting as it is, saves it in the content server, and stores it. Especially popular articles and feature articles can be saved for an extended period. The interface 106 manages the copyright of contents and the like.

[Billing / settlement server 103] Bills users 3 (readers) who download articles or requests bookbinding and delivery of selected articles, and publishers 2
It is a server that saves and manages the history of payment margin payment d2 (settlement) etc. Billing to users is accepted by credit card or bank transfer, and electronic payment is made to publishers. However, the method of payment is outside the scope of the claims of the present invention, and it does not matter what form is adopted.

Customer management server 104 Addresses, names, ages, purchase articles (or articles showing interest), billing / settlement, hobbies, etc. for users who have purchased articles and who have responded to questionnaires , A server that stores and manages user information obtained through the Internet. It analyzes the information stored and managed by this server and provides each publisher with the material that will serve as the basis for future article creation and sales strategies.

In the print / bookbinding management mechanism 110, if the customer management server has been searched for billing / settlement and there is information on a bookbinding request, the user request article is extracted from the content server, read, and printed. 111, binding 112, and then binding bound book 114 to user 3 1
13

In the sale of a single item, the web server directly extracts the digital article from the content server in response to the user's request and transmits it via the internet d4. If the file format is PDF, it is also possible to send encrypted digital articles. However, it is a requirement that the user has software that supports the file format.

The publisher 2 and the creator 4 are individually contracted. Creators here are people who are involved in the creation of articles such as writers, designers, illustrators, and photographers, and generally have copyright.
The present invention basically discusses only the relationship between the publisher and the electronic publishing organization, and the relationship with the creator is outside the scope of the claims. However, if the publisher requests direct negotiations with the creator regarding copyright, communication with the creator will also occur. In that case, you may receive articles and photos directly from the creator.

FIG. 2 is a diagram focusing on the flow of digital data (article). Articles from each publisher 2 (identifiers A, B, ... Z) are edited in the form of digital data Article editing database
Stored at 0. A magazine 210 is created from this article editing database and distributed to each store. On the other hand, among the individual articles, particularly popular series articles and special articles are selected and transmitted as digital data 220 (articles) to the electronic publication management organization 1. Digital data transmitted from each publisher is stored in the content server 102 (recording place is content database). Here, a home page corresponding to the content is created and published on the Internet.

There are two methods for distributing articles to the user 3, namely, single item sales and printing / bookbinding sales. The former delivers digital data 120 directly via the Internet. 1
Only one article (single item) is sent per transmission. The latter extracts one or more articles 121 selected by user 3,
Booklet 114 and distribute to users. That is, when the latter method is selected, the user can obtain the user's own magazine. Users can choose their favorite articles across publishers.

[0031]

[Advantages of the Invention] Apart from regular subscribers, when a reader buys a magazine, he / she decides whether or not to buy the magazine based on whether there is an article to read. The article may be only one, or it may be multiple, such as two or three. However, it is normal to read one or two and read other articles since I bought it. For this reason,
When publishers plan their magazines, they focus on feature articles. This is the reason why we are making headlines for feature articles in advertisements on trains and other vehicles.

Since the present invention collects the articles on which the publisher is most focused, it is also an advertisement for the publisher. From the perspective of the reader, you can select and purchase only the articles you want to read, so you do not have to purchase the whole magazine,
It has the merit that you can get the article you want to read cheaply and easily (specifically, by downloading in a short time). Also, in the case of printing and binding sales, you can select magazine articles from each publisher and obtain them as one book, so you do not have to purchase multiple magazines and you can get your own magazine There are merits.

According to the present invention, since the magazine articles are stored and managed retroactively, the user can obtain the articles of the magazine that he / she bought. Publishers have the advantage of increasing the opportunity to sell past articles as well as magazines currently on sale.

Although there are some archives (databases) of magazine articles for each publisher, according to the present invention, it is possible to search magazine articles of different publishers in a crosswise manner according to the interests and preferences of the reader. Articles can be viewed, purchased, and book bound on the spot.

The reader can omit the very troublesome work of visiting individual publisher sites for the same theme or topic and confirming whether or not there is an article he or she is looking for. The present invention has a search function that comprehensively and reasonably converges the article contents of a large number of publishers and can quickly extract the desired article. We also efficiently convert DTP data to PDF, XML, etc.

The present invention is a database of articles of general commercial magazines of various genres (comprehensively) like a bookstore, and combines browsing, printing and bookbinding services.

The present invention can also support the publication and market research of publishers' publications. For example, it is possible to aggregate and analyze which articles the user shows interest (determined by the number of times of access, etc.), what types of articles are often purchased, and notify each publisher. This allows publishers to help plan new magazine articles and non-magazine books.
Further, it is possible to promote a magazine sale by publishing a specific article (special article) on the Internet at the same time as the publication of the magazine or by putting a notice advertisement of the article before the publication of the magazine.

Also, what is secondarily derived from the business of selling articles of magazines separately is reader marketing data, which is used by various publishers and other publishers.
It is useful for B2C companies.

The data derived from the reader's purchasing history and statistical analysis is useful for planning, producing, selling, surveying, and monitoring new publications, and is also one-to-one for various companies.
It can also be the target list of advertisements (permission type).

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram of an electronic publishing system of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram focusing on the flow of digital data (magazine articles) in the electronic publishing system of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Electronic Publishing Management Mechanism 100 Electronic Publishing Station 101 Web Server 102 Content Server 103 Charging / Payment Server 104 Customer Management Server 105 Interface (Interface with Printing / Bookbinding Management Mechanism) 106 Interface (Interface with Publisher) 107 Interface (interface with user) 110 Printing / binding management mechanism 111 Printing 112 Binding 113 Delivery 114 Custom-ordered article (bound article, book) 120 Single digital data (single electronic article) 121 Selected for binding Electronic data (plural electronic articles) 2 Publishers (A, B, ... Z indicate individual publishers) 200 Article editing server (article editing database,
Content database of publisher) 210 Magazine 220 Digital data (electronic article, article) 3 User 4 Creator (writer, designer, photographer, etc.) d1 Digital data (electronic article) transmission d2 Sales margin payment d3 Article search / extraction / Clearing (clearing is printing and
(This means setting the binding / delivery signature in the customer management database.) D4 Internet (searching homepages, sending homepages, sending and receiving e-mails via the internet, etc.)

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued Front Page (51) Int.Cl. ⁷ Identification Code FI Theme Coat (Reference) G06F 17/60 502 G06F 17/60 502 504 504 ZEC ZEC

Claims (3)

[Claims] [Claim 1] Select specific articles such as feature articles from electronic articles of magazines created and stored by DTPs of multiple publishers, register them on the Internet server, publish them to Internet users, and select articles on the Internet. In the system that advertises and sells, (1) Web server that manages the publication of articles to users, acceptance of orders, sales of ordered articles, issue and collection of questionnaires, etc.
(2) Content server that stores outsourced electronic articles from each publisher or specially selected electronic articles, (3) Billing and settlement server that manages billing and settlement, (4) Customer's email address, address, name , A customer management server that records and stores subscription history, questionnaires, and the like, and an electronic publishing system. 2. In the electronic publishing system of a magazine according to claim 1, (1) after consulting with each publisher, depositing the magazine content selected based on the consignment / management / sales contract as digital data. , A means for converting the digital data of the magazine content into a file format such as XML or PDF, storing and managing it on the content server, and publishing the title or header of the magazine article as a home page on the web server, (2) publishing on the home page A single item sales method that electronically sells specific articles from articles as single articles,
(3) A bookbinding sales means for causing an Internet user to select a plurality of articles from published articles on the homepage, printing and binding the selected plurality of articles, and delivering and selling the articles, The electronic publishing system according to claim 1. 3. The magazine's electronic publishing system according to claim 1, wherein the reader's interests include sales records, access counts to articles, analysis of age groups and occupations, or market research such as monitoring and questionnaires. Interest,
The method according to claim 1, further comprising means for grasping trends and the like, preparing and distributing a market report to each publisher, and supporting means for promoting the latest issue of magazines / books / new publications / new media. Electronic publishing system.