Globally publishing is revolving largely due to the exponential growth of the internet and the benefits it offers compare to traditional media. New media has been termed the new big deal and if you aren’t exploring it, you are looked upon as an alien.

The internet has provided a whole loads of possibilities when it comes to publishing works be it books, magazines, audio/video materials and so on creating a global accessibility to contents/materials regardless of the publisher’s location.

There have been a lots of discussions centered on encouraging traditional media to go digital or face extinction – I would discuss this at a later time. A couple of days back, I dropped by to see an older colleague whom I haven’t seen in almost 4 years. The first question he asked me was: “Why isn’t Behind Magazine online?”, I clearly told him Behind Magazine is online and has an operational website and also we publish every of our edition digitally. He further asked what do I mean by digital publishing? That question actually inspired me in writing this article because lots of misinterpretation exist in the digital hemisphere.

I have had to explain myself on many occasions when I tell people Behind Magazine publishes digitally, infact mostly the advertising agencies who supposedly are meant to be better informed. Each time I mention the statement, the next question that follows is: “Can I have your website?” and then I would have to explain all over again.

Digital publishing or electronic publishing (also referred to as e-publishing or digital publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogs. In clear terms, digital publishing is creating an online accessible version of your books, magazines etc. So owning a website or a blog doesn’t define the term “digital publishing” while blogging on the other hand involves writing about an event, situation or topic.

Presently, we have more blogging platforms when compared to digital publishing platforms because of the misinterpretation both terms have been given. Owning a website and updating it regularly with posts in being defined as digital publishing which is entirely not correct. There are digital newsstand with Apple, Amazon being the popular ones. Can these websites/blogs publishes their contents in downloadable format for their readers to access? The answer is clearly NO.

In essence, Blogging is a smaller part of picture while digital publishing is the entire picture in totality. When discussed on Quora, some describe the difference as: “Blogging is like the worldwide web, while digital publishing is like the internet”

culled from: http://www.tushmagazine.com.ng/blogging-digital-publishing/