At MAX, Adobe’s annual worldwide conference, Adobe announced the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (http://adobe.com/digitalpublishing), providing publishers a set of turnkey hosted services and viewer technology to create, publish, optimize and sell digital content direct to consumers, through content retailers or leading mobile marketplaces.

Built on the foundation of Adobe Creative Suite and Adobe InDesign CS5 software, the Digital Publishing Suite enables the design and delivery of innovative publisher-branded reading experiences, paired with flexible commerce models and support for deep analytics reporting, says David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager for Creative and Interactive Solutions, Adobe.

Using InDesign CS5, PDF, HTML5 and the Digital Publishing Suite, publishers will be able to author both fixed and adaptive layouts, natively build new levels of interactivity directly in InDesign, distribute and monetize their digital editions, and optimize their editorial and advertising content for a complete end-to-end digital publishing workflow, he adds.

The Digital Publishing Suite will support the Adobe Content Viewer for Adobe AIR and iOS that can be fully publisher-branded to support immersive reading experiences on tablet devices, such as the iPad, Blackberry PlayBook, Samsung Galax and the Android-based devices expected to come to market soon. You can upload articles directly from InDesign CS5 into a hosted service in which publishers can collaborate on design, assemble final content in the correct order, add issue and article metadata and preview the complete issue as it will appear in final published form on the desktop and tablet devices. The Production Service will support a range of file formats, including PDF and HTML5.

The Adobe Digital Publishing Suite lets you store, host and distribute digital content across leading tablet devices and desktops. Publishers can manage content available for fulfillment from within a library content dashboard, including publication metadata and archival as well as notify readers within the Content Viewer when a new magazine issue is available for purchase or download.

Users can leverage payment and merchandising models with the ability to monetize content directly, through retailer platforms or leading mobile marketplaces such as the Apple App Store, Blackberry App World, Android Market or Google Apps Marketplace. Publishers can create merchandising programs such as print and digital content bundles and enable readers to purchase content directly from within the magazine application on their device. Direct publisher e-commerce support for interoperability will allow readers to purchase content once and read it on their desktop or tablet devices.

The Digital Publishing Suite is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2011 and offers both a Professional and Enterprise Edition. Pricing for the Professional Edition is expected to be US$699 per month plus a per-issue fee, which scales with publisher volume. The Professional Edition price allows publishers to access the Digital Publishing Suite and create applications for all of their titles and publications.

The Enterprise Edition is a custom, multi-year platform agreement that includes access to application programming interfaces for integration of back-end publishing services such as subscription management, print fulfillment and e-commerce. Adobe also offers professional services to support enterprise level custom engagements.