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"Digitising The Editorial
Process"
Delivered to 30th Editur International Supply Chain
Conference, Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, 2008
Can we remember a week in publishing where we didn’t hear
anything about digitisation and technology? Today we open our
newspapers and turn on our TVs to hear about ebooks, online,
widgets, podcasts, what sometimes appears to be a new ereader
every month and a new mobile phone or development every week.
But these are just the delivery mechanisms and the consumer
devices.
Does it mean that we are digital? No. It merely means that we
distribute and potentially sell digital content.
Digital publishing not just about what we may or may not sell
its about how we acquire rights, develop them, market them,
store them, render them into saleable product, distribute and
profit from them. For this to happen we have to consider how
Digital publishing becomes publishing.
When we started this digital journey, many publishers found
that they didn’t even have their typesetter and printer files,
merely the physical book. Wrestling back the typesetters’ PDF
file was often at a prohibitive cost for not much gain. Many
started to digitise their backlist, scanning and converting
physical books to create digital content.
In addition to getting their files back from the typesetters
and printers publishers began, where rights were cleared, to
convert the typeset PDF to digital files. The fact was that
publishers often only went digital only after the printed book
was produced. The process from manuscript to finished physical
product remained exactly the same analogue process. As a result,
many ebooks are mere digital reproductions of the physical book
and for many purposes or requirements, this is perfectly
acceptable.
However, as we have often said, publishing in not one
industry but a number of sectors that were joined together by a
common format – the book. As we explode that book spine, the
differences become more marked. We see different sectors facing
different issues and moving in sometimes different digital
directions at different speeds. Importantly, some publishers now
have to view digital content very differently. As a result they
have had to look very hard at each of the editorial, production,
marketing and development processes. This has forced publishers
to rethink what they produce and how and when they produce it.
Moving the digital issue upstream into the editorial and
production process is about increasing the publishing output
options past print, delivering significant productivity benefit,
providing greater control of assets and reducing costs.
This means change.
Today I want to introduce ten issues to consider when you
look at supporting creativity or the heart of publishing.
However, first I want to share with you some other thoughts
about some the challenges in this area.
Store it once and render it many, is beyond a mere a battle
cry for digital distribution - it is a sensible strategy right
across the book’s lifecycle.
As we start to develop digital content we also need to
understand digital context that is to say the metadata,
marketing information and basic bibliographic record and its
creation, management and relationship to content. Very
importantly we now also need to understand Rights and their
relationship to content.
It’s ironic for an industry that is about content and rights
that we appear to separate the two at birth and manage them
separately thereafter.
Publishers in recent years have moved to make their PDF files
compatible with print on demand services and in doing so ‘keep
them in print.’ Print on demand may have started as short cycle
printing, but is now becoming a demand driven model and viable
for most backlist titles. Print on demand offers much but it is
still just another production print process and output. We still
await the flip from print books and distribute books, to
distribute files and print books. But that’s another story
Let’s look at the different content, complexities and inputs
and outputs that must be supported.
There is ‘living content’ such as dictionaries and
encyclopaedias. Here, the currency of the information is
important and therefore the online or digital product often has
greater value than the printed one, which is perpetually
becoming out of date. Publishers in sectors such as education
often wish to generate multiple renditions from the same content
source and generate the likes of course notes, students’ notes,
teacher’s notes, assessments etc. Children’s and reference book
publishers may wish to incorporate animation and other media in
one rendition whilst maintaining the more static print
rendition. Reference, Academic and STM Publishers are among
those who need to manage collaborative works with many
contributors, editors and where the content itself is often
managed as individual fragments. Others just want to manage the
various degrees of complexity such as found in textural works
and academic monographs.
The point is that there are many different outputs, inputs
and processes in publishing.
The first approach to moving upstream has been with us some 5
years. It involved converting the book to XML before
typesetting. This ‘XML First’ approach effectively converted the
publisher’s typeset-ready copy into XML, which could then be
rendered to print and also many digital formats. For complex
typesetting that could not be achieved via templates the XML
could be flowed into publishing typesetting tools such as
Indesign.
XML First was a short term solution and although it reduced
production and conversion costs, these were marginal.
Principally it was still dealing with finished print based
content and still presented challenges in providing effective
Workflow, enabling late changes, and providing materials such as
metadata and marketing.
As I have already said I would propose that there are ten
areas that you need to be consider in digitising the development
process and content. If there is nothing else you take away from
this presentation it should be these ten considerations.
First, there is the basic process.
Although we may add or modify the steps, we can all relate to
the step chart. The reality is that there is not one process. We
may start with a template but whether we are talking about
paperbacks, or highly illustrated works, childrens’ books,
tabular works, monographs, or anything and everything
in-between, the one reality is, that the process will change.
What is certain is that the process is at best reiterative, and
at worst, what some may call chaotic, and others, creative in
its nature.
This is not a problem, if you build content systems to
accommodate this dynamic workflow perspective and tolerance.
Second, let’s consider the editorial development tools
required.
Editors need tools that fully support document creation,
review and annotation, cross-referencing, indexing, tracking of
all changes, version control, rollback and forward revisions
management.
However Editing tools by themselves are not the answer but
only part of the answer.
Third, the development team is that a team who need to
communicate.
They may be Project Managers, Editors, Agents, Authors,
Production, Rights, Marketing, Legal, Sales. They may be in
different buildings, companies, countries and even time zones.
They will all have different roles and responsibilities and will
communicate not just on the content itself but via others tools
such as email, phone, post it notes etc.
They all need to communicate, and what is important is that
all this communication is captured and is part of the solution.
All too often the communication and decisions are captured in
other systems and not against the content itself. They lie
within email silos and are not tagged to the work.
It makes sense to exploit the capabilities of these systems
and ‘post them’ to the content for future reference.
Fourth, some works may be collaborative in their nature with
several creators, editors etc each responsible for individual
fragments. This extension of the team is often very complex and
demands tighter alignment of roles, responsibilities and
permissions.
Collaborative works can often extend the team even outside
the enterprise.
Fifth, there is often now a real need to break away from this
‘digitise last and only when the physical book has been
produced’ approach to content.
An editor working at any stage of the process should be
capable of rendering the content to multiple formats, Print PDF,
ebooks, ONIX, XML, HTML web pages, Flash, preview chapters,
blurbs, widgets, syndication portals, whatever.
This enables them to see the different look and feel of the
content within different templates. It also enables them to
generate pre production inspection copies, reviews, widgets, web
copy, marketing copy, Advanced Information sheets, catalogues,
whatever.
Digital opportunities should not be an afterthought,
restricted to content or tethered to physical production.
Six, reporting and information isn’t just about financial
control. These are important, but the process is about content
development and its workflow and providing a real-time dash
board or control panel.
Seven, Project Management needs to be able to manage in real
time and by exception and not be bogged down in the detail and
yesterday’s status reports from other systems.
Eight, people’s knowledge is a risk. Projects can often be
long. People change roles, move on and therefore
institutionalising their knowledge is an important factor in
mitigating risk.
Nine, I would like you to consider another important element
about supporting Editors and creative people. We have built
transactional systems to manage transactions and many have tried
to shoehorn these into the editorial space with varying degrees
of success.
A number of years ago, I was part of a research programme
looking into supporting creative publishing functions. With Mark
Bide or Mike Shazkin, I saw a system in a major trade publisher
in New York. It was obviously not going to make the grade. I
can’t remember if it was Mark or Mike who commented that, in
asking editors to perform basic data entry for others, they were
on a mission destined to fail.
My take was that its user interface was written like a
transaction system and was clearly disliked by many editors. I
said that if a customer service clerk refused to use a system,
you sacked them. if the editor refused, you sacked the system.
Intuitive, friendly screens and tools that enable Editors to
work smarter are vital. Importantly we now need to deploy
content systems not transactional ones.
Finally, Ten, this framework is dependant on an underlying
XML database that underpins all. To do this we have to
understand that there are many different ways to view a
database.
It’s just like looking into a house through different windows
and seeing different rooms. Same house different perspectives.
I take my hat off to Mike Shatzkin in his mission to raise
the bar with his ‘Start with XML’ research. We have already
given our input into this research programme and fully support
its principles.
When we start with XML we must however also consider how we
get there.
‘Ingestion’ appears to be a new word and one I personally
hate but it says what it does on the can so maybe I’ll succumb.
Although I couldn’t help laughing when I saw that Amazon’s
Kindle programme has an ‘Ingestion Manager’. Imagine being at a
party and asking someone what their job was to be told
‘Ingestion Manager’.
How do we create XML?
Many publishers have created automated front end processes
that take the manuscript and through a series of word macros
perform a pre-copyedit decomposition process, converting it to
the house template, tagging the document, checking references,
indexing graphics, illustrations etc and presenting the
copyeditor with text.
Once edited, this can be rolled back into a process which
recomposes the file for typesetting, indexing, corrections and
often conversion into the likes of Adobe’s Indesign publishing
toolset.
One major academic publisher using this approach has already
saved significant costs through this automation and better still
has dramatically shrunk time schedules and improved their
quality control.
Word macros may tag elements and although they are not really
the answer long term, but they do offer a potential quick
conversion, or should I say ingestion into XML.
You may ask, ‘So what?’ Is this theory or reality?
Time doesn’t permit me to demonstrate nor is it appropriate
to do so in this forum but a number of projects have already
been achieved using this new platform and others are in various
stages of development.
One involved a dictionary which was developed in the UK by
one publisher and then enriched by a different publisher in the
US and translated into different languages. This joint project
was complex both in its construct, the fact that the dictionary
development by both publishers was on-going, and the obvious
extended relationships and different tools used. A solution was
implemented for the US publisher within weeks and has been
delivered, along with other benefits - an 80% plus cost saving.
Another project involved ELT content where interactive course
assessment content was created to dynamically enrich the student
experience.
Other projects have involved exploding content to create
localised editions for different markets and embedding audio,
images and video for online, whilst also generating different
print and CDRom renditions.
Elsewhere it is being used to fully integrate complex works
into InDesign render to Flash, render to ebooks, create
marketing copy on the fly, support multiple XML schemas and
manage more traditional publishing workflows.
We have just started a project to ingest manuscripts through
word macros to XML, thereafter provide the total platform to
deliver media neutral content and context for a major publishing
programme.
Savings in excess of 25% of overall editorial and production
costs are perfectly feasible and that is without the softer
benefits associated with digital workflow, project management,
quality, asset management and productivity.
Finally we now are now at the stage when Digital Publishing
does become Publishing and in doing so perhaps we are entering a
stage where the content development platforms should not only
support digital content but also digital context and digital
rights.
Once we break down the transactional mindset that once
separated them and look to fully support the creative people and
processes we truly do explode the spine that has
straight-jacketed us all for so many years.
Publishing will then be Digital.
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