DPS Single Edition for Creative Cloud

Unlimited DPS Single Editions for all Creative Cloud members!

Does the cost of DPS seem too daunting for your small agency? Can your clients afford to publish their projects with DPS? Does it seem like you have to make a major investment to make your publications available for the iPad? If so, then you're in luck.
Big announcement from Adobe on September 19th: all Creative Cloud members are now able to publish DPS Single Editions as iPad apps.

DPS Single Edition is now available for Adobe Creative Cloud members.

Creating for the iPad without writing code, now available for InDesign users and mere mortals with the familiar Creative Suite apps and a few Cloud-only tools.

Free For All (DPS apps, that is)

Purchase Single Edition serial numbers for each app,
or submit unlimited Single Edition apps
with Creative Cloud.

What a deal: unlimited submission of Single Edition iPad apps for all members of the Creative Cloud! The price for publishing single editions for iPad (still available separately for $395 per app) is now included as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription at no additional cost.

Adobe has certainly made the value proposition compelling: With the current reduced subscription price special offer for Creative Suite upgrades to the Cloud of $29.99/month for a year subscription, you can almost make up the cost for a full year on your first DPS publication. At the regular price of $49.99/month for a year (just shy of $600) it would still be cheaper to subscribe to the Cloud than to publish two DPS titles.

This removes a MAJOR barrier to entry for businesses who want to offer single titles in the App Store, or for designers to create other kinds of stand-alone (non-series) documents like brochures, catalogs, annual reports, and other publications as iPad apps. You can now be involved with DPS without a huge investment, and anyone using the Creative Cloud can (with minimal extra investment) become a digital magazine publisher.

Technology changes, again 

Install the DPS App Builder
to replace the Viewer Builder.

With these changes, there are some updates and installations required for anyone using DPS:

• The Viewer Builder is now known as the DPS App Builder (which is more descriptive than its former title). Watch for warnings that your version of Viewer Builder has expired and will need to be replaced. You may have to remove your existing version before downloading the latest release. 
• The Digital Publishing Suite Desktop Tools update must be installed for InDesign (CS5/CS5.5/CS6).  
• DPS Single Edition can still be purchased as a standalone product outside of a Creative Cloud subscription, with individual app serial numbers (valid for one year) available in the Adobe store through Adobe.com

Apple/Mac specific

Apple appears to be heavily involved in this deal, which should drive lots of new content to be created for their iPad, encouraging a demand for the device. Looks like you can still build your InDesign articles using either Mac or PC, with either a stand-alone installation of CS5/CS5.5 or a Cloud subscription to CS6, but the newly named DPS App Builder is an application that works on Macs ONLY, and it's required to use a Mac to submit your completed app to the Apple App Store.

Single Edition vs. other options

The Single Edition publishing option is a stand-alone app, not part of a multi-folio publication or a subscription service. The DPS Single Edition FAQs address many of the issues with the recent changes for this segment of DPS. Professional and Enterprise accounts can publish to Android as well as iOS platform, but Single Edition is for iPads through Apple only.


With the cost barriers down and more open access to digital publishing for the basic user, it will be interesting to track how the DPS statistics for iPad will change.