Joaquín González
Joaquín González is the executive director of visualMANIAC, a Madrid-based, independent distributor of digital books and magazines. visualMANIAC specialises in publications from the domain of art, design, photography and architecture. Their books are accessible on iPads, Androids and computers.
As Joaquín remarked at the very beginning of the session, when he bought an iPad back in 2011, he was fascinated by it, yet the market of digital publications he could access left a lot to be desired. While some magazines had already begun experimenting with apps, in the field of visual culture and arts there was nothing. The founders of Visual Maniac decided to fill in the niche and explore the possibilities that the digital publishing offered.
Having received positive feedback on their plans from many separate publishers, Joaquín and his friends decided to put their plans into practice. The first obstacle they encountered, however, was the choice of format for their publications. Out of all the formats available, they chose PDF for its well-rounded features and the preservation of the visual layout (as opposed to the austerity and re-flowability of EPUB). Preserving the unique nature of each publication, as well as the high quality of pictures, was of essence. While PDF clearly has its limitations, mainly its ‘flatness’, team at Visual Maniac worked to modify it to allow for ‘enhanced’ content like video and sound links, yet this extended form is not yet embraced by publishers.
Joaquín González explaining the tough choices Visual Maniac had to make
visualMANIAC clients can add their purchases to their accounts and access them from any device. On top of that, users can take advantage of online reader and tablet apps, however the content is not available on e-readers and phones.Visual Maniac collaborates with over 100 publishers and offers over 12000 publications in their catalogue.
Another obstacle Joaquín and friends encountered in their work is that publishers are constantly overworked and lack the time to involve in innovative attempts. Subsequently, the ownership of copyrights is stopping some publishers from moving to digital formats. Furthermore, publishers desire a perfect product, one that would be cheap (or, ideally, free) to produce and easy to use on a variety of devices. The situation on the market is not easy either, because, as Joaquín explained, it is challenging to attract . As a solution to the harsh market situation, Visual Maniac started offering its services to institutions.
visualMANIAC wants to become an international ‘go-to’ publisher for everyone who is interested in digital publications in the field of arts. Their plans include incorporating new formats, like apps and HTML. Joaquín’s final remark addressed the specificity of current mediascape, which is highly heterogenous and, as a result, any successful enterprise must provide content in diverse formats so users can enjoy it on a variety of devices.
You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Jouquin Gonzales
Check out visualMANIAC’s blog : http://visualmaniac.com/visualmag
Contact Teresa and Joaquín :