LexisNexis in the UK has made its professional information available digitally for over a decade and is well-known by legal and tax practitioners for its leading online databases, LexisLibrary and TolleyLibrary, so why the interest in eBooks?
Over the past couple of years, a virtual team from across LexisNexis’ traditional and online editorial, production, publishing and online fabrication departments have investigated what the format can offer lawyers and tax professionals, resulting in the LexisNexis eBooks program, which saw 24 frontlist practitioner textbooks published in epub format in 2010.
At the start of our analysis, we were interested in how we could offer customers instant access to individual practitioner textbooks, targeted particularly at the long tail of small and sole practitioners. We understood that, for many of these customers, subscriptions to online databases could be unattainable and they relied heavily on hard copy.
In 2008, we piloted a hosted (online) model for eBooks which could be accessed from a laptop, but it quickly became apparent that a small minority of our customers across all segments (not just in small firms) needed core reference materials in a digital format, but were unable to rely fully on internet access due to being:
* In court
* At a client’s premises
* Travelling (and experiencing 3G blackspots on trains and planes)
* Overseas on business or even
* On holiday (yes, we found they really do take their Butterworths Company Law Handbook to the beach!)
We ran a further pilot in 2009 and experimented with formats (epub, mobipocket and PDF) and content types. Through extensive dialogue with a range of customers we came to understand that, alongside LexisNexis’ successful online strategy, this mobile contingent were struggling to transport the core reference texts they needed whilst out of the office, like the hugely well-used Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook (the five-volume paperback collection of tax legislation).
Over the last year, I've demoed our current model of eBooks (in the epub format) to lawyers, tax practitioners, regulators and information professionals on: smartphones, computer and iPad, and the response has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
The increased speed, improved screens, ease of use and memory size of smartphones in particular now makes it easy to physically transport offline information resources that would normally require a trolley! The epub format allows easy customisation of the display (font size, font type, colour etc) making it particularly suitable for small screens and the visually impaired. As our recent survey made clear, practitioners feel the pressure of clients’ expectations of them to be available 24/7, and knowing that their core legislation can be accessed on a device that is always with them gives them greater confidence and ability to their job.
As a result of the enthusiastic response, increasing demand and enquiries, and further developments in devices, LexisNexis’ eBook strategy going into 2011 is to expand the eBook offering across almost the entire practitioner textbooks frontlist; about 80 titles in total next year. Nearly all of these titles are available on our online database LexisLibrary, as well as in print. However, eBooks meet a different need, that of the ‘busy practitioner on the move’, and the flexibility of the open epub format means we can make essential resources instantly and always available to the highly mobile practitioner on: Blackberry, eReader, iPad, laptop or smartphone.
In 2011, we will continue to listen to customers to understand which types of information are most heavily relied on away from the office, and we will be keeping a very close eye on developments with eReader applications and devices. Currently, the software available for both tablets, mobiles and PCs have some limitations (we’d like to see these applications enhanced so that researchers can refine their searches further and they can be able to compare two or three pages at once). 2011 also sees the launch of the Playbook, made by RIM (the manufacturers of the Blackberry). Given that our recent survey found two-thirds of respondents had a BlackBerry, we will be watching the impact of this closely.
