Aptara to Publish Vatican eBooks

The advanced technology has also entered Vatican, as recently, the Pope himself got a Twitter and a Facebook account. Now with the help of Aptara, Vatican eBooks are made available to the Catholics through the Internet. Since the beginning of May, the Vatican and Aptara have been providing Pope Benedict’s weekly addresses.

All thirteen addresses have been released in an illustrated form to be viewed on the iPad from Italy’s Apple Store. All weekly addresses are focused on important personalities in the history of the Church and they come with elaborate paintings, photos, illustrations and visual effects to capture the attention of the viewers.

This advancement through digital technology has brought a new hope in the Vatican circle to reach out to the larger audience and to the digital focused groups. They are hoping to expand their teachings to the younger world and technology savvy generation through this new venture they have taken.

The CEO of Libreria Editrice Vaticana (the Publishing Company of the Vatican), Father Giuseppe Costa said in a newsletter from Aptara: “Every new communication technology is important to the church’s missionary activity and the most obvious way to reach young people today is via their mobile devices.”

With a growing interest for fixed layout digital publishing, the Vatican eBooks are using Apple’s layout for its publications in order to bring out a uniform format in all digital editions. This layout retains the pagination of the books’ printed versions. Father Costa also added: “We’re thrilled with the quality of the series, in fact the eBooks give new life to the texts’ magnificent imagery.”

Dev Ganesan, the President and CEO of Aptara stated: “The adoption of eBooks by an institution founded before Gutenberg represents a significant coming of age for publishing. The Vatican has a centuries old tradition of printing. So to be the first organization to help the Church embrace digital publishing is quite an honor.”

This was the first series of illustrated books made available by the Vatican to Apple’s Italy Store. With the help of Aptara, the 2000 year old institution has stepped into the digital world for a promising future to extend its teachings to the next generation. The next venture of Vatican is the English translation of these eBooks.

Apara’s President said in the company’s newsletter: “Invited by the CEO of Libreria Editrice Vaticana, The Publishing Company of the Vatican to discuss the Catholic Church’s first foray into eBooks, my accommodations were a 14th century building on the Vatican grounds. The contrast between old and new couldn’t have been more striking. There’s something momentous about a 2,000 year old organization issuing its first eBook. While I thought to myself, “eBooks have officially arrived,” it also put in perspective just how new this new book medium is. I have no doubt that eBooks will stand the test of time, but my visit to Rome reinforced that we’ll never lose the tradition of the printed word, in any corner of the world.”

 

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