The Challenge
What challenges did you face prior to using Kotobee?
For more than a decade, we used printed books to accompany our lectures and online course material. Often, these books were more than 1,000 pages in length. This involved design, editing, printing, and shipping challenges for more than a dozen course books. The printing and shipping costs were huge. Making any edits or updates to our materials was costly and difficult, and in the world of medical education, information changesrapidly. We could update our online content but could notreflect those changes in real-time through printed materials.
What other options did you explore?
Printing and shipping costs had escalated and ate into our profit margins. Which is why we djusted our printing and delivery strategies. They ranged from printing large inventory and housing our materials in-house, to using regional, on-demand printing and shipping services.
These efforts did improve our profitability but were unable to address the issues relating to the ever-changing content updates.
The Solution
What drove you to choose Kotobee?
First, we were concerned about controlling access to our content. Our business model is dependent on the unique educational material we provide, and we needed to be able to control who could access our books. Kotobee allowed us to give our customers access to books or categories of books. It also allowed us to control what they were able to do with that material including restricting the number of devices, ability to print or post online. Second, we wanted to be able to dynamically update books after in the hands of customers as edits were made. Kotobee gave us this option.
Has Kotobee's support team contributed to your selection criteria in any way?
We spoke with two of Kotobee's customers before making our decision. Both indicated that kotobee's support was very open to continuing to support and develop features based on their input. Since selecting Kotobee, we have found the same to be true. Kotobee has done some customization for us for very reasonable prices. In addition to that, they made updates according to our requests for free if they found them to be beneficial to all their customers.
How difficult was the onboarding process with Kotobee, transitioning from an older system?
We moved from paper books to ebooks, but the usability of Kotobee Author made that transition fairly easy. We were able to convert our files and import them. It was a large project, and we did a great deal of style formatting, but it went smoothly.
Is there a particular aspect of Kotobee that you rely on the most?
We have a robust library. We have found being able to put books into categories to be very helpful. It allows us to quickly assign a set of books to a customer and as we add new books to that series, the customer gets automatic access. Everyone wins! A critical feature for us is the ability to download an active ebook, make an edit and apply that edit without disrupting our customers' access.
“A critical feature for us is the ability to download an active ebook, make an edit and apply that edit without disrupting our customers' access.”
The Results
How did Kotobee influence the success of your business? Any metrics would be useful.
The move from print to online materials has increased our profit margin for individual subscribers by more than 10% Kotobee ebooks have also opened the door for us to develop other educational materials that we can provide for a lower price point to our customer base. Printing and shipping costs would have made this impossible with paper books However, ebooks have given us another way to engage our customers and allowed another business line to develop.
In what ways has your competitive advantage enhanced?
We are the only company in our niche market that offers ebooks. Our ability to reach the younger market and get materials into the hands of current and potential customers immediately has been a huge boost to our customer satisfaction.
The Future
What are your project's plans for the future?
We plan to continue to develop a wider variety of products than we’ve ever been able to sell before Many of these small reference type products can now go with our customers into their healthcare practice right in their pocket on their phones or devices. We are excited to continue to have a positive impact on healthcare through the highest quality of content and delivery methods!
