JustSystems announced the availability of XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 and XMetaL Reviewer 6.0, the latest versions of the company’s collaborative XML structured authoring and document reviewing software tools. New in this release is an integration between the two products that unifies the XML authoring process with real-time, distributed web-based reviewing to accelerate documentation cycle. The XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0 and XMetaL Reviewer 6.0 integration is designed for unified authoring and reviewing, so that authors have tools to initiate and manage reviews as well as a set of specialized editing commands that help them directly act upon suggestions. This integration works with the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard as well as other industry standards. Other key features of the new release include– an unlimited number of documents can now be managed within the realm of a single project; a rendition can be associated with the project and used for direct navigation from the place in the final document’s layout to the originating topic that is under review; and arbitrary attachments can be associated in any number with projects, project cycles and drafts. http://www.justsystems.com
Category: Publishing & media (Page 28 of 53)
As we have mentioned before, we have been very interested in leveraging the knowledge base we developed from our successful digital publishing study, Digital Platforms and Technologies for Publishers: Implementations Beyond "eBook."
With that in mind, we have moved forward and developed a strategic consulting offering, "Implementing Digital Publishing."
Consultation Description
Publishers face a wide range of strategic and tactical decisions when looking to start or build their digital publishing programs, and while publishers have taken many paths to success with digital product development, marketing, sales, and distribution, the organizational underpinnings of the most successful efforts have the common characteristics of technology spending consistent with business needs and opportunities.
The Gilbane Group’s Content Strategies service is offering a three phase consultation that is aimed at both management and operations personnel in educational, professional, trade, association, STM, and specialty publishing. The goal of the consulting is to assess the publisher’s current systems involved in digital publishing—planning, editorial and production, rights and royalties, manufacturing, promotion and marketing, sales and licensing, and distribution and fulfillment—and to provide decision-making support and guidance. The consulting targets and sets the course for achieving effective and efficient digital publishing business models.
Stakeholders
Depending on the size and scope of the publishing company, as well as the particular consultation phases sought, the stakeholders addressed in these consultations may include Publisher, VP and Editorial Director, VP of Production Services, VP of Digital Publishing, VP of Marketing, VP of Royalties, VP of Manufacturing, VP of Rights, VP of Business Development., VP of Digital Licensing, VP of Sales, VP of IT and CIO or CTO.
The Educational and Directional phase of the consultation (Phase One), which may be purchased as a standalone service or in conjunction with Phase Two and Phase Three, provides the publisher with a high-level assessment of the publisher’s current state of digital publishing capability across the multiple publishing systems. This phase concludes with a report and briefing that defines the publisher’s current state of digital publishing and provides recommendations for improving digital publishing capabilities.
The Analysis, Planning, and Recommendations phase of the consultation (Phase Two) moves the publisher from a general assessment of the conditions and challenges it faces in moving toward a more effective digital publishing business by providing an in-depth plan that a publisher can use to undertake its transformation into a more effective and efficient publisher for digital success. This phase concludes with 18-month action plans and on-site presentations and discussions of findings and recommendations with appropriate stakeholders.
The Implementation Support phase of the consultation (Phase Three) is designed to provide structured support as the publisher follows through on recommendations from Phase Two. Services within the Phase Three purview can include implementation progress reports, regular client visits, retainer and query programs, RFP assistance, prospective vendor research, and bid and implementation document review.
For a full data sheet describing the offering or for other information, you can email me or contact Ralph Marto via email or phone, 617.497.9443 ext 117.
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the availability of Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 (ES2), a major software release enabling businesses and governments to build applications to improve interactions with customers and constituents across devices and channels. LiveCycle ES2 provides a rich Internet application (RIA) framework for building customizable RIA workspaces, mobile and desktop access to critical applications, and deployment in the cloud. Adobe LiveCycle Workspace ES2 Mobile offers access to LiveCycle ES2 from iPhone, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices. Adobe LiveCycle Launchpad ES2, an Adobe AIR application, provides easy access on the desktop to kick-start LiveCycle ES services such as Adobe LiveCycle PDF Generator ES2. Adobe LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 is a composite RIA framework for rapidly assembling and engaging activity-centric enterprise applications. LiveCycle Mosaic ES2 provides knowledge workers with real-time, contextual information from multiple sources in a single, personalized view. Developers can extend existing applications by exposing their business logic and user interfaces into application “tiles” that can be assembled to create unified views. Adobe enterprise customers will have the option to deploy LiveCycle ES2 in the cloud, hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud computing environment. LiveCycle ES2 Solution Accelerators now include‚Äî human capital management, eSubmissions, correspondence management, new account enrollment and services and benefits delivery. LiveCycle Forms ES2 streamlines format-driven business processes and improves data accuracy and LiveCycle Reader Extensions ES2 activates functionality within Adobe Reader, extending document and form-based operations outside an organization. New features allow users to generate RIA interfaces that leverage shared data models. Document and Information Security‚ LiveCycle can now apply rights management on the server to Microsoft Office documents for automated secure document workflows. Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES2 enables business users to manage ad-hoc content reviews without involving IT. Users can publish content, create a list of reviewers and define approval stages, deadlines and escalation guidelines. The content can then be automatically converted into PDF, enabled for inline commenting, rights protection and distribution. Users can monitor and modify the process at any time. Adobe LiveCycle ES2 is currently available worldwide. The Adobe LiveCycle ES2 cloud deployment option is expected to become available in early 2010. http://www.adobe.com/livecycle
The list of the 20 largest publishers in the world shows a profoundly changing landscape in book publishing. The chart below is provided by Rüdiger Wischenbart from Publishing Perspectives in Germany. He has contributed some good insights into the transformation of the publishing industry. I offer my analysis on the state of the industry and its future.
Some publishers are fairing much better economically, while others are steadily sliding downward in revenue and in their global standing. The changing dynamics between the professional information, education and trade sectors has affected this year’s ranking. The good news is that publishers that have reinvented themselves (responded to market demand by listening to the customer) have done much better than most.
Pearson, Thomson Reuters, Cengage are identified as star performers on the list. Four out of five dollars is generated through the digital integrated value chain. The digital content and e-book industry for professional information content is the high growth segment of the publishing industry. As an industry, we are weak in our recognition of the current size and opportunity of the digital marketplace. Education publishers and trade publishers are having trouble evolving. There is broad need for knowledgeable skilled digital workers, experienced strategic thinkers, scalable and flexible technology infrastructure, and streamlined workflow/processes that allow publishers to execute on updated strategic initiatives.
Asian publishers are becoming a force, as they are in many other market segments. They include companies like Korea’s Kyowon and China’s Higher Education Press. Their strong suit is “localizing” content (i.e. cultural adaptation), and the power and economics of a huge growing audience. They are hungry. They want their piece of the pie.
Trade publishers, experiencing a steady decline in revenues, are poorly positioned to compete. However, the strong performance of Penguin and Hachette are current exceptions in this segment. It remains to be seen if trade publishers can transform into a sustainable business model. Trade’s poor performance and outlook is due to several reasons, beginning with the fact that they have the farthest to go to find and serve today’s and tomorrow’s readers.
We have seen endless debate in trade on digital pricing and searches for new business models. The best solutions will leverage and be respectful of the stakeholders…all of them! That includes, but is not limited to; authors, agents publishers, libraries, distributors, wholesalers, physical bookstores, digital bookstores, printers, service providers, the media, reviewers, technology companies, etc. If publishers burry their heads in the sand by refusing to experiment with new content, pricing models, and sales channels, then there will be serious trouble.
On the bright side, if publishers aggressively discuss new ways to sell content with their channel partners, and seek out non-traditional channel partners that have the audiences with the demand for their products, there is the potential, not to just maintain current revenue, but to actually grow the size of the pie. I know that is a radical statement to make, yet the ‘book’ is being redefined, and publishing is becoming something new.
Several key findings:
- The majority of Top Ranked Global Publishers are based in Europe.
- Professional/knowledge, STM publishers have course corrected and are doing well.
- The first major Asian Publishers are positioning towards competing as top global players.
- Education sector is unstable.
- Trade Publishers are, and will be, hit the hardest in the rapidly emerging digital marketplace.
- Publishers that have reinvented themselves…are prospering!
I have high hopes for the publishing industry. However, until we can meet Peter Drucker’s market-centric definition where he says “…the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” Are we there yet? When we achieve this value statement the industry will once again be healthy. As for me…being part of the solution? I am passionate about helping our clients build a stronger publishing industry that is focused on improving the reading experience.
What are you thinking now?
*The “Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry” is an annual initiative of Livres Hebdo, Paris, researched by Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, and co-published with buchreport (Germany), The Bookseller (UK) and Publishers Weekly (US).
Follow Ted Treanor on Twitter: twitter.com/ePubDr
McAfee, Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. have announced a global alliance partnership to jointly deliver new solutions that should offer more comprehensive security to both companies’ customers. Together, McAfee and Adobe will deliver an integrated Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Enterprise Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution to expand the reach of data protection beyond the enterprise boundaries. The combination of McAfee’s experience in policy-based data classification with Adobe’s experience in policy-based document protection should allow organizations to secure critical business information such as intellectual property or regulatory compliance data. With this new solution, organizations worldwide can automatically apply access control to sensitive information based on classification of the data, then enforce corporate governance policies to reduce information loss. Further, as part of the partnership, McAfee has made a free diagnostic tool, McAfee Security Scan, available as an optional download to customers when installing Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player software from Adobe.com. The McAfee tool enables consumers to check for anti-virus software and firewall protection on their computers. When the scan is complete, users see a report detailing the presence and status of security protection, and are presented with special offers for McAfee security software. http://www.mcafee.com/ http://www.adobe.com/
Avantstar, Inc.has announced the release of Transit Solutions 9, file conversion and web publishing software that takes content originally designed for print or offline use, such as policies and procedures information, and publishes it as fully formatted web content. Transit Solutions is designed to help IT departments and web content managers keep up with the high volume of website changes generated everyday by not only automatically converting and publishing hundreds of file types as HTML, but also recognizing and automatically linking within documents (not just among them). Transit also publishes entire information folders on a preset schedule. New features in Transit Solutions 9 include: a redesigned Edit Template window that combines preview, publication hierarchy and properties into one window, making it easier to access commonly used features to edit web page templates; enhanced support for embedded content in Microsoft Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007; support for merged cells in Excel and tables within tables; as well as enhanced conversion support for Star Office and Open Office suites. http://www.avantstar.com
We have been very pleased with the interest in our new report, Digital Platforms and Technologies for Publishers: Implementations Beyond “eBook.” We have had hundreds of downloads already, the vast majority of which are senior people in the publishing industry. This tells us that the timing for the research is good and that interest is strong, and we are thinking about what to do next with this topic.
One idea we have thought about is helping publishers think through their eBook strategy. If our research (and other recent research) is correct, many larger publishers are jumping in with both feet, but some larger publishers, many medium-sized, and perhaps most smaller publishers are staying on the sidelines or testing the waters with pilots and low-cost and low-impact tests with third parties. Perhaps these efforts are part of developing a strategy? Perhaps some of you think the market is too nascent?
An eBook strategy would necessarily be multi-faceted, and would include input from sales, marketing, editorial, production, fulfillment, and others with a stake in the process. It would need to be informed by good market data, and with good understanding of what technology and channel partners can truly offer publishers. It would also need to be pragmatic, balancing the capabilities of your organization with a realistic assessment of the market opportunities you have.
We’d like to gauge interest in this kind of offering through the following simple poll. Just one question, and no requirement to log in or register. If you would like to talk in more detail about this idea, please email me with any questions.
Ken Brooks is senior vice president, global production and manufacturing services at Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) where his responsibilities include the development, production, and manufacturing of textbooks and reference content in print and digital formats across the Academic and Professional Group, Gale, and International divisions of Cengage Learning. Prior to his position at Cengage Learning, Ken was president and founder of publishing Dimensions, a digital content services company focused in the eBook and digital strategy space. Over the course of his career, Ken founded a Philippines-based text conversion company; a public domain publishing imprint; and a distribution-center based print-on-demand operation and has worked in trade, professional, higher education and K-12 publishing sectors. He has held several senior management positions in publishing, including vice president of digital content at Barnes & Noble, vice president of operations, production, and strategic planning at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and vice president of customer operations at Simon & Schuster. Prior to his entry into publishing, Ken was a senior manager in Andersen Consulting’s logistics strategy practice.
This interview is part of our larger study on digital publishing.
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