The world-renowned publication house, Penguin, is all set to explore exciting opportunities in digital content domain in India. The company CEO, John Makinson, is confident that they will be able to successfully deliver and monetize content over mobile handsets and e-readers. Justifying the move, he has stated: “You’ve to innovate to sell them (the new generation) books.”

With around 500 digital titles already there, the publication house wants to tap the potential of Indian market that they feel is a tough one for doing business largely because book prices tend to be lower coupled with the looming threat of pirated editions freely

available even before original copies are placed at the bookstores.

The digital distribution thrust has become necessary as the aggressive march of e-books –Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle reader – can well threaten offline publishing the very way the Internet altered the whole dynamics of the music & entertainment industry.

Penguin India is mulling to embed audio, video and streaming for ebooks on the iPad, particularly for the children’s titles. “We’ve to face the fact that this is a generation, which learns to swipe on touchscreens before the first steps are taken,” quips John Makinson, and adds that there is clear lack of solid physical distribution especially in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

Penguin will tweak its current marketing strategy backed by a dynamic digital marketing team. Extensive use of social networking sites will mark the new strategy. The company will release video interviews with established writers on video streaming sites or come up with teasers of upcoming book on the Web. A website or a Facebook page for promoting certain book titles is also under consideration. They have also decided to turn books into apps with live ‘online communities’ for fans, chat between readers and a host of multimedia effects.