Gene Therapy: Managing Workflow: How Top Publishers Keep Their Houses in Order
Electronic Publishing
For some time, Wiley has been committed to electronic publishing through its journals, and e-books for trade and reference markets in various platforms. Consequently, prepress workflow is in PDF format, with XML as one of the outputs.
XML files for titles that pass the marketing screen are automatically passed to the publishing technology group, which manages proofing, quality control, formatting, storage and distribution with in-house and outsource resources. “We currently have about 7,500 titles available as e-books,” says McDonnell. “We’re doing about 80 [percent] to 90 percent of new titles as e-books, except for higher-ed titles, which are not part of the program.”
All slow-moving, inventory-depleted backlist titles enter Wiley’s digital POD program. “We also use POD for ultra-short runs to cover out-of-stock situations,” McDonnell says.
RAND, headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., has a backlist of about 20,000 publicly available documents and an average new list of 150. Trade distribution is handled by National Book Network.
Regnery is a subsidiary of the Eagle Publishing Group, which also publishes the newspaper Human Events. It has a backlist of about 100 active titles and averages 30 titles a year for its front list, distributed by Perseus.
Both Paula Currall, former managing editor for Regnery, and Jim Zerr, director of production and distribution for Eagle, describe a workflow-management system that relies on traditional, paper-based reporting and “word of mouth” among a small staff. The managing editor manages scheduling for project editors who move the titles through copy editing to a five-person design department, which assembles a file in Quark and delivers a PDF to one of two printers.
- Companies:
- John Wiley & Sons
- Simon and Schuster Inc.
Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.
