Customer story: Osborne Books

How Osborne Books Uses FlippingBook Salespal to Create Ebooks for their Customers

Osborne Books is a leading publisher of educational accounting resources in the UK. They provide training centers, instructors, and students all over the world with high-value study texts for a range of accounting qualifications. In addition to making top-notch materials, Osborne Books serves their customers by using the latest innovations to make the educational process easy and comfortable.

Challenge

When Maz Loton, Digital Products Manager at Osborne Books, began receiving multiple ebook requests from current and potential customers, ebooks were a huge trend. People kept pointing out the features they could use if their textbooks were on their tablets or smartphones.

For instructors, access to ebooks could provide an excellent opportunity for in-class use. Students wanted to always have important materials on hand without having to carry around heavy physical copies all the time.

Distance learners and distance learning centers reached out to Osborne Books with ebook requests as well. Those potential customers needed the ebook format, because ordering and receiving physical books was time-consuming. With digital versions, they could start using the materials right away.

Search for Solution

Osborne Books considered creating their books in the PDF format with the help of Adobe. However, this way of sharing their publications would not have been secure. They also looked into digital publishing with Amazon, but that solution was costly, so they weren’t making a profit. In the end, Osborne Books decided they needed a mobile-friendly tool.

We wanted our customers to be able to take the books with them, so delivering them to mobile devices seemed reasonable.

Solution

Osborne Books chose FlippingBook to help them provide their customers with ebooks through a custom mobile app, Salespal, available in the App Store and on the Google Play Market for smartphones and tablets.

The company’s key requirements were to:

• protect materials from uncontrolled sharing and downloading;
• give people a comfortable reading experience with the ability to make notes, search and highlight text;
• make it easy to access ebooks offline, so that students and instructors could use them in class and on the go;
• integrate API with Osborne Books servers to provide customers with a single login and password for their personal accounts on the Osborne Books website and in the mobile apps;
• sync important information (e.g., highlights and notes) between different devices to let readers use the same ebook on their tablets and smartphones.

The FlippingBook team addressed the requirements of Osborne Books to provide them with a technically superb product that was easy to use and manage.

The company's customers now use ebooks to check and review materials on the go. They used to have access to the materials only at their schools or learning centers, so they appreciate the ability to view the materials offline on their devices. They can also access the materials on up to three devices, and the content sync feature allows them to start reading a document on a smartphone or tablet and continue with the online version on a PC.

The ebooks in the app include all the must-have features that make the reading experience pleasant. Text searching and bookmarking make it easy to navigate around the textbook. With the options to highlight text and take notes, users can mark the most important information and quickly find it later, if needed.

Because Osborne Books provides educational materials, including a check-mark option was a good idea. Educational materials often include self-revision sections, and if students don’t have a physical copy on hand, they can check the answers right in their ebooks, which is quite convenient.

The overall user feedback has been very positive. The app has a 4.5-star rating in the App Store and a 4.4-star rating on the Play Market. And the positive reviews keep coming in.

On the back end, Osborne Books has a very smooth system for managing their ebooks. Thanks to the API integration, any user who buys a title from the Osborne Books website gets a unified login and password for their personal space on the website and in Salespal. When the user logs in to Salespal, all of their purchased ebooks are available there.

If the access to any of the books needs to be revoked, the Osborne Books team can do so easily. They also don’t have to worry about uncontrolled sharing of their ebooks, because the materials are protected from unwanted sharing and can only be viewed on up to three devices. Thus, Osborne Books can provide ebooks to their customers without any risk of an information breach.

Results

FlippingBook Salespal gives Osborne Books a competitive edge. Their existing and potential customers appreciate the new ebook format.

We’ve beaten our competitors by providing this service; it’s one of the things that pushed us ahead.

Salespal has proven to be a great solution for the customers of Osborne Books: they can now use a physical book in combination with its ebook version, which makes the educational materials much more convenient and accessible. In addition, FlippingBook Salespal helped Osborne Books provide new clients with more opportunities and possibilities.

Salespal totally met the demand. People are loving it, so the feedback that we’re getting has been brilliant. Salespal has helped us provide materials to distance learning centers, which we couldn’t do before. We have a bit more work now as we have more customers on board, so I would say our opportunities have definitely expanded, and our relationships with certain customers have improved.