Workflow

Technology folks have for decades gotten more than their share of ribbing. Much of the hilarity comes from the cultural friction between technical and the non-technical. This cultural divide was perhaps most cuttingly portrayed in the hilarious UK sitcom The IT Crowd, in which an IT staffer routinely answered the phone with the greeting, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Another IT support guy I work with in the past manned his post beneath a large sign that read "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part."

PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire refers to his company as “the indie rock band of ebooks startups,” which is why, unless you’ve been watching PandoDaily really closely, you wouldn’t have seen much of it in the media.

Today, just like an indie band that relies on its fan base for its survival, two-year-old PressBooks has announced that it is making its free book publishing software open source. McGuire, a Montreal-based entrepreneur who also founded crowdsourced audiobooks publisher Librivox, hopes that third-party developers can help PressBooks expand the meaning and utility of ebooks.

Audubon, Pa.—November 29, 2012—RSuite CMS, a content management system for publishers, today announced the latest version of its software, RSuite 4. Combining a superior user experience with proven and secure content management provides publishers with the ability to use the best of today’s technologies to create, store, manage, transform, and deliver any content to any format.

RSuite CMS, powered by MarkLogic®, has been the software of choice for many of the world’s leading publishers. RSuite 4 offers a redesigned, more intuitive user experience to enable users to efficiently find and interact with their content with minimal effort. Improved usability is based on Nielsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics and manifested in action-oriented contextual menus, search-based content navigation, accordion-style search results, and a user interface (UI) with intentional color design. The new UI provides even greater productivity while dramatically reducing the learning curve.

Columbus, OH, November 15, 2012 – DataCurate announces the publication of The Metadata Handbook, a one-stop guide for book publishers — large, small, and independent — offering help in understanding how metadata works and outlining the essential components of successful metadata creation and distribution.

Topics covered include:

• How metadata for books operates in the real world
• Metadata fundamentals & the history of metadata for books
• Standards and best practices for creating and distributing accurate and comprehensive metadata
• The basics of ONIX for Books, including ONIX 3.0
• The basics of EPUB 3 metadata options
• The latest metadata trends, including metadata for self-publishers.

Now that Amazon has announced that it's selling more books in digital form than in print, it's only logical that even the smallest of independent publishing houses are racing to make their entire backlist available as ebooks. Book Business solicited a wide range of advice about the ebook conversion process from digital publishing pros. Here's what they had to say:

If you've been following the printing world—and if you're reading this column we've got a hunch that you have—you know that advances in digital printing have transformed the technology from the world of the small-run to a viable print-on-demand option for publishers of all sizes and stripes. But don't be fooled: Digital and offset lithography remain quite different beasts.

When publishing teams wax enthusiastic about their vision for digital media and technology, director

Are publishers confronting digital change, or is digital change confronting publishers? So wondered Chris Lederer, a director at AlixPartners and the moderator of "Organizations Confronting Digital Change," one in a series of educational webinars at September's free Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo, a production of Book Business and its sister publication Publishing Executive. Lederer, along with Ania Wieckowski, Managing Editor of Harvard Business Review Press, and Holly Gilly, VP, Product Development at Human Kinetics, provided deep knowledge and great takeaways for publishers who are grappling with digital change:

Impelsys, a global leader in providing electronic content delivery solutions, is powering the innovative new Bowker(R) "Book as an Android App," with its award-winning iPublishCentral software platform.

"Book as an Android App" allows authors and small publishers to use Bowker's popular

to create Android-compatible eBook apps from any PDF or ePub document, opening new sales channels such as Google Play and the Amazon App Store.

"We've partnered with Bowker to make available to their customers a simple option for creating their own eBook app, which helps authors and small publishers better market their titles to potential readers," said Sameer Shariff, founder and CEO of Impelsys.

Frankfurt, Germany - October 11th, 2012 HarperCollins Publishers today announced that it will roll out a new global publishing system, one of the largest undertakings of its kind to be implemented by a trade publisher.