Milestone Documents 2.0
After a lengthy development process (is there any other kind?), we have finally launched version 2.0 of our MilestoneDocuments.com site. Over at the new site, you can read a welcome message from me that explains what the revamp is all about, the new content readers will find, and so forth.
When we released version 1.0 of the site about 18 months ago, I wrote here that the endeavor was admittedly an experiment. We wanted to see what kind of traffic we could draw, and what kind of per-article sales we could ring up, with a Web site built around our encyclopedia content but aimed squarely at students and teachers rather than librarians. That first version was indeed an experiment, and it looked it. It was hardly a design for the ages. Nonetheless, we learned a lot with that first incarnation, enough to make us want to invest in a more serious and robust iteration.
During the intervening 18 months, of course, the content industry–by which I mean book publishing, library reference publishing, Web publishing, textbook publishing, et al.–has been going through major upheavals, and there is no end in sight. As you would expect, we built the new site with many of these upheavals in mind, e.g. social media integration and a more nuanced treatment of the free/premium content mix that we are offering. At the same time, though, our eyes are still very much on the future, in the sense that more than anything, we see the site as a platform on which to launch future products aimed at students and teachers. Thus, expect to see further iterations as the educational publishing environment continues to change and as we continue to work on building new relationships with our audience.
But enough with the “vision thing.” I hope you will take a look at the new site and browse what we think is a pretty large amount of terrific content.