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Patti Ward is the director of product management for Wolters Kluwer Health, a $900 million division of international publisher Wolters Kluwer. She joined the company in 1996 as a production assistant, but new responsibilities found her re-engineering business processes for the past five years. “We were no longer responsible for putting ink on paper, and paper in the mail. As the industry demands have shifted, so have our production technologies,” Ward explains. As has been the case with most publishers, the impact of digital media has been profound for Wolters Kluwer Health (www.WKHealth.com), which serves professionals and students in medicine, nursing, allied health,

Content is still king in book publishing. The challenge to publishers today is to move, manage, exchange and manipulate that content in the most efficient and profitable ways. In the age of new media, publishers must be able to accept content from external sources, traffic it through all the pre-publishing phases and then be agile in the way they output it, so that it’s cost-effective but also meaningful to readers. As with any new technology, publishers should evaluate software solutions with these basic considerations in mind: Functionality: What solutions out there have the types of capabilities your company needs? Once the field has

First Installation of Wireless RFID System in U.S. Library Deployed The first-known totally wireless Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system in a U.S. library has been successfully deployed at the Prairie Trails Public Library (www.PrairieTrailsLibrary.org), located in Burbank, Ill. The wireless system provides the library with the flexibility of moving its self-check units to the most convenient areas of the library, even if those locations change over time. The decision to go wireless was made during the planning stages of the RFID installation, when Checkpoint Systems Inc., the Thorofare, N.J.-based company that planned the installation of its Intelligent Library System (ILS), realized that the

I started my career as a general studio assistant; I made tea and did basic paste-ups and other entry-level tasks. Over the years, I worked my way up the ladder through various roles in publishing until I became art director at Simon & Schuster UK. From there I have become a freelance designer producing book jackets for some major names in book publishing in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as Wes Craven and Jackie Collins. And, I've used a lot of design software in my day. In the mid-1980s when I began working in design, desktop publishing was just beginning. With all

Publishers, distributors and e-retailers expect the advent and growth of smart phones and multifunctional personal digital assistants (PDAs) to stimulate the growth of the young e-book market. Yet, no matter how young or how small the market is, publishers have made a commitment to e-books and are anticipating the market will take off. The size of the e-book market in terms of revenue is based on the number of available titles, publishers' revenues or the revenues generated by e-retailers. For example, the New York-based International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), formerly the Open eBook Forum, reported in its "eBook Statistics" for the fourth quarter

In the last year or two, the topic of offshore printing—particularly in China—has gone from being industry background noise to a headline-making concern for many U.S printers, observes Dr. Joe Webb, president of Strategies for Management. By mid 2004, the need for a comprehensive research initiative to report the facts and dispel the myths became clear, Webb says. "A Critical Look at Offshore Printing"—a 138-page report published by the noted industry researcher with the help of Vince Naselli, Deborah Papineau and Joe LiPetri—is the result. For the purposes of this study, "offshore" printing is defined as domestic print demand sent outside the U.S. and

Is it time to take another look at Hi-Fi printing? Hi-Fi is any printing technology that delivers a higher-quality product than the normal four-color process. This is usually done with custom ink applications of five, six, seven or even eight-color Hi-Fi ink sets that deliver a wider range of colors than the standard CYMK process. Hi-Fi breaks the color barrier and achieves far superior brightness levels. Ten years ago it was touted as the next great innovation in high-quality printing. The flexography market has done well with it for the packaging industry, but it somewhat fizzled in the publishing industry. However, a devoted group

Book publishers are keeping their fingers crossed that 2005 will be the year the industry shakes off the period of stagnation that has coincided with the U.S. economic downturn. The domestic market continued to remain essentially flat in 2004, but industry insiders are hopeful that the market will soon show growth. The shift toward more flexible production schedules, and resurgence in educational and reference titles will likely be the engines that drive any industry upswing. Another trend in 2005 will be publishers aiming to enhance profitability by leveraging the cost benefits of digital printing and international sourcing. Setting the Stage for Growth

Since paper is central to their business, it is understandable that book publishers have become very comfortable in continuing to use a paper trail to document transactions with suppliers. But the reliance on printing and scanning invoices, inventory status reports and receiving statements instead of completely moving to electronic communications has perpetuated a number of unnecessary business practices that should be treated as dead wood. However, most 20th century supply chain management practices and proprietary technologies will soon be filed under "H" for history. New XML-based standards for sending documents (called messages in the electronic age lingo) are beginning to revolutionize how publishers and

Bill Rosenblatt has been dealing in digital rights management (DRM) since before DRM even had a name. He has helped develop industry DRM standards, he has penned a book called "Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology," and he edits the newsletter DRM Watch (www.DRMWatch.com). For him, DRM isn't only about protecting online content from piracy, it's a way of doing business in today's digital marketplace. Rosenblatt spent some time answering some of our questions about DRM and how it can impact your future. 1. In today's marketplace, what does digital rights management involve and why is it important to book