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The Periodical Publishers Association (more commonly known as the PPA) has opened their doors again to all those wishing to enter the Independent Publisher Awards, 2009. To be eligible for the Awards, each entrant must be an independent publishing company or individual, who are operating with less than a £7 million pound turnover per annum.

For the 2009 event, the PPA has expanded the number of categories to eleven this year, by including Customer Magazine of the year and Team of the year. This year’s event is taking place at Vinopolis, located at the heart of uba cultural Bankside in London, commencing on the afternoon of Tuesday, 1st December. It’s expected over 150 people will attend the awards ceremony which is to be presented by entrepreneur and business mogul James Cann, famed more recently for his fiery joint hosting of the BBC’s Dragons Den television series.

The PPA expects to be inundated with entries as the closing date of the 12th October looms closer. Now in its 6th year of running, the awards have gained great momentum and create a lot of interest in the independent publishing sector, with just a nomination for a campaign being a big accolade to anyone who entries, as it pushes them up the ranks to wider markets and exposure of their brand.

The digital revolution which spawned the internet has created a perfect route for publishers and authors alike to reach an audience with their literal ramblings anywhere in the world.

By using the web as a distribution base, this digital medium can carry vast amounts of content and provide a mass of electronic resource, accessible by all those searching for information. Initially, the web allowed existing written work to be published online with electronic versions of weekly and monthly periodicals as well as books and reports, available through websites. Blogs have now become a very popular medium for allowing quick excerpts of text to be available to the masses as well as an extra option for regularly communicating with those people most interested in what you have to say.

By publishing works on the web, you’ll automatically save costs on the likes of printing, paper and any sales and marketing programmes you would use by going down the traditional channels to promote your works, whether it’s via radio or television, bill board or leaflet advertising, or in store promotional activities.
That’s to say that you still have to have a budget available to spend to publish via the web – it’s just you’ll be spending it on the likes of a web or blog site design and install, plus hosting issues if you’re creating your own, or alternatively, there will be joining fee’s if you choose an existing site which could publish your material on your behalf.

Whether you publish as printed material or direct to web, you must ensure you have full copyright covering your work, otherwise you leave your work open to be duplicated which could lead to a loss of revenue and possible court action if someone contests they wrote the work first. Even unpublished works require some kind of copyright authentication, as works can lie dormant for years, so it’s best to copyright to protect it in case someone stumbles across the same or similar story or idea.