Workflow

All publishers have had to deal with changes to their business due to the rise of digital book reading. At the recent Publiching Business Virtual Conference & Expo (a production of Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines), an expert panel convened to discuss strategies for publishers who need to beging transitioning their workflows to accomodate the myriad digital products the marketplace is demanding.

This year our Publishing Business Virtual Conference kicked off with a keynote by Rory O’Connor, blogger, filmmaker, journalist and author most recently of “Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, and Killing Traditional Media” (City Lights).

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling’s new book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, was published yesterday to great fanfare and decidedly mixed reviews. Some ebook readers are holding on off on purchasing the digital edition because it’s priced at $17.99 (here’s why), but e-reader owners who did buy it right away are in for a disappointment: It’s basically unreadable, unless you have a magnifying glass.

It used to be you really only had one distribution platform: The print version. In fact, back then it would have been redundant to call it "the print version." There was only one version. Now that we're living in the much ballyhooed four-screen world—TV, computer, smart phone, tablet/ereader—it's really no longer efficient or feasible to create for print and then backtrack to get your products into digital streams.

Who needs publishers anymore, right? With all that great new technology for print and ebooks, are we just becoming obsolete?
 
Well I sure hope you’re all standing up and shouting “NO WAY!!!” But the fact is, we do have adjustments of one sort or another to make, and some of us are struggling to figure out how to remain relevant in a changing world.

Ironically enough, success in digital publishing has more to do with people than machines. Digital publishing requires publishing houses and their partners to work in materially different ways. Digital publishing is not merely delivering an EPUB file along with a print-ready PDF. Successful initiatives require the development of new skills, processes and business practices. Publishers that successfully execute these changes will be able to take advantage of the unique characteristics of digital, and bring new value to the marketplace.

Do you judge a book by its cover? Designers Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan shared their theories on attracting readers – from cute cats to alluring perfume – at the Edinburgh book festival.

1. Face theory: Research suggests that human beings spend 48.6% of their lives decoding facial communication, so a big draw for a potential book buyer will be the familiarity of a face. The cover of Nick Hornby's Otherwise Pandemonium, for example, uses a cassette tape to create the image of a face.

July 24, 2012 (New Providence, NJ) – The 2012 London Olympics has prompted record levels of publishing activity focused on the Games, according to Bowker Books In Print®, a leading and reliable source of information on books and publishing metrics.  One hundred twenty books – in print and e-versions --have been brought to market in 2012, eclipsing the previous record 109 titles released in 2008 in time for the Beijing Summer Games. Bowker is an affiliate of global information company ProQuest.

In many cases, outsourced service providers connect directly with one another to create an externalized production flow. For example, an external compositor may send the final PDF files used for print to an ebook conversion service provider. The publishing staff therefore assumes the role of an orchestrator of vendors, never actually directly performing the tasks involved in creating digital products. And therein lies the danger. If publishing organizations remain outside the direct creative process, they have a limited ability to impact product innovation.

NEW YORK – June 26, 2012 – McGraw-Hill Education CEO Lloyd “Buzz” Waterhouse today announced a restructuring of the company’s international business in order to create an integrated organization that leverages content, global distribution, and regional expertise to better capitalize on higher education, professional, and school publishing opportunities around the world. Philip Ruppel, president of McGraw-Hill Professional and a 30-year publishing industry veteran, has been appointed to the additional position of president for McGraw-Hill Education International.