Publishing Case Studies and Papers

Paper - Content, Content, Content

Martyn Daniels, VP Marketing, Media Publishing, VCIL

Delivered to EBOG Digital Publishing Conference, Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, May 2008

Digitization is a complex publishing issue and is not unlike climate change in that we all know that it’s happening and we all know the impact is going to be significant, however, no one knows when, by how much and what the result will be. Like climate change it also has its dome mongers, prophets and analysts and wild predictions.

Today we see a relentless bombardment of press and media coverage on the digitisation of the book. The book is dead, the book is digital, the book will survive. Penguin is doing this, Hatchette is doing that, HarpeCollins is adopting this, Cambridge University Press that. Amazon has bought this, Sony has launched that. ,
As one who writes on publishing digitization issues, it is often hard to distinguish the news from the noise, the public posturing, from the real initiatives. It is not surprising therefore that the press often gets it wrong and those that get the biggest headlines are the major publishers and often the news is mere noise.

So will the book die? No, unlike music it is already the content, the format and a reader. It will be the major format for many years and represent the major sales revenue for all.

However there are two issues.
Firstly, the book has joined together a number of different sectors into one. As we digitize then these differences will become more distinct and the various sectors will diverge often in different directions and at different speeds. This in turn will create a further challenge to distinguishing between news and noise.

Secondly, we all love and are comfortable with books. Authors love to write them, editors love to edit them and readers love to read them. We have been educated with them and have grown up with them. If asked to describe a book many would describe its size, even the number of pages and authors the number of words. All books consist of front matter, content and end matter.

I would suggest that the form has always dictated the content format and its creation. Some would argue that the bound book has been a straightjacket to creativity in that it has dictated what many write even how they write. Have creators adapted to it? Yes. Have some great works been created in it? Yes.

However, digitization now creates the opportunity to explode the spine of what we have known for the last few centuries and present content differently. Will it replace the book? No. Will it help redefine it and how we develop and sell it – most definitely? Will the digital book be the same as the physical one. I hope not otherwise we will have fallen into the same trap as we did between the hardback and the paperback and to a lesser degree the audiobook.

In removing the straightjacket we also start to potentially express ourselves differently. Look at some online reference works, at what travel publishers are now starting to do with their content and what authors such as Kate Pullinger are doing. There are many examples we could quote as reference and some will work and others will not. But the common thread and enabler is digitization.

Is that wrong or right? Who cares? Creativity and expression is not a book nor is it a blog or anything between. Dickens wrote in instalments as did Stephen King when he wrote ‘Riding the Bullet’ and some Japanese authors are doing similar today in their writing for mobiles. You can’t squeeze multi media in between a cardboard jacket nor create it as an afterthought.

So what of this digital landscape? We have ebooks, audio downloads, kiosks, online, social sites, print on demand and what appears to be a new device every year.
But this is where we have to understand that digitisation is not about ebooks, audio downloads, online, podcasts, blogs, widgets etc. these are merely the delivery and marketing formats. It is about the creation, development and distribution of content, the development and distribution of the contextual information that supports and helps qualify content and rights that are acquired, developed, produced, marketed, sold and read. It is also about the changing roles and relationships rights across the life cycle from Author to Reader.

 
It is about Publishing and digital publishing being publishing. It is about the three words that are publishing; Content, Content, Content

When you look at the current roles within the publishing life cycle We see the Author as the content creator, the publisher as the content Manger, the retailers and libraries as the content portals and the readers as the content consumers.
When we look at it this we have to ask what it means to manage content and is it different from managing books. What does it means to be a portal and is that different from a bookshop or library.

When I wrote the Brave New World report there were many changes that we recognized impacted the digital environment. Time doesn’t permit me to go through them all but here are three which you may wish to consider.

First. When we read we all read differently according to the role we play the criticality of he content and what we want from it. If you were to place an academic book in front of a student, a researcher, a lecturer, a librarian they would probably use and digest the content differently. This doesn’t matter when they are all reading the same book but when the content is digital these differences can become marked. Therefore when content is presented digitally we now need to understand the demands of the audience reading it. We also need to respect that the audience may have different demands and may not all wish to digest the same way.
Which audience do you build your content for, or do you build the flexibility to accommodate all?

Secondly the world is now consumer centric. Digitization has broken down the communication barriers that once existed in the old world and has created ‘My World’ and social networking. This has even extended to consumers contributing to as well as commenting on content. The reader now can communicate effectively with the creator and the creators communicate directly with their audience and fan base. They no longer need an intermediary or interpreter. So do publisher provide the total platform and experience or merely the content and leave others to build the relationships?

Thirdly, the value chain between the creator and the reader changes when the transaction and communication goes online. In the pure physical world readers value the selection of the bookseller, the quality of the content provided by the publisher and access to what they need on the high street. In the digital online world irrespective of whether the readers want a physical or digital rendition, the value flips. They now seek aggregation, search and discovery, authentication and relevance, and trusted and reliable management and fulfillment. This change is both significant and can influence the channel to market.

So I have talked about the issues raised in the Brave New World report but what about the publisher and their part in the life cycle? I would like to offer some considerations you may wish to review in developing your digital strategies.

Fist is where do you start? Here we split the publisher’s part of the life cycle into composition (the development and production of the content), conversion (the transformation of the content from one format to another) and distribution (the presentation and fulfillment to the channel). Where does the publisher start to digitise?

Do they start at the beginning of the process, or the middle or in several places?
Many to-date have taken their back list and converted it to digital content. This means that they are not impacting on their editorial and production processes and that they can focus on converting the winners so reducing investment. Others have taken the opportunity to start at the typesetting stage, effectively digitally typesetting for editing in XML and rendering into PDF for print. Others have now started to go back to the manuscript and change the previous analogue process and make it digital all the way through. Irrespective of the route adopted the key is to hold the content once and not build DAM, DAR and DAD silos.

Today we produce textural works and if we want to add any multi media it is often as an afterthought or at the end of the process. To produce media neutral output you have to be able to process all media through the process and thereby accommodate media neutral input. It is not about text and books but media and content.

We talk about content but associated with every piece of content is rights and what I refer to as context, the information that describes content and enables you to qualify, value and purchase it. Time does allow me to talk about rights in the digital world but to say they grow in importance, have a different emphasis and present opportunities in their own right. What I would like to point out is that content, context and rights all coexist across the life cycle and that probably 85% of all context is drawn directly from the content itself but today is often held in different silos and is administered by transaction orientated systems. Viewing the three together one can see new opportunities that do not exist in today’s analogue world.

The final consideration is the most obvious. It demands that digital repositories are built to accommodate the total organization and not just part of it. The rights, editorial, production, sales, marketing, publicity and fulfillment people will all want different views of the same content, context and rights. It’s like looking into the same house but through different windows it’s the same house but we all see something different. It may be interesting to know that in the last 18 months I have sat down with many publishers and publishing boards and covered a wide spectrum of digital issues but only once have I met a Rights Director. Publishing is a rights business and they are integral to digitization but appear not to be visible in the strategy.

You may now start to understand why I believe Digital Publishing is Publishing

So what is happening and what are some of the changes taking place today. The following examples are drawn directly from our experience.

Editorial and production potentially offers much. We are all familiar with the editorial production flow from the author to the printer. The process may vary but the basic tasks exist and as we are all aware the flow will always involve reiterations and these can be sometimes complex. This complexity increases with the number of people involved and also the complexity of the product.
Two major publishers HarperCollins and Cengage Learning decided to collaborate on a series of English-language dictionaries for non-native speakers. HarperCollins was in the UK and Cengage was in the US.

HarperCollins produced the A-Z standard text while Cengage was to produce the boxed ‘features,’ used to explain words and their usage to non-native speakers. Thousands of entries were being updated continuously, with features sprinkled on every page of the book. Some 15 dictionaries had to be produced on a very tight schedule. Content and style changes to these features meant accessing several hundred files at a time. And integrating these features within the A-Z text of the main dictionary presented additional hurdles and stretched the time and cost to produce the finished books.

Web-based collaboration editing was introduced with built-in workflow features which advised each user what they need to work on next at a fragment level. All communication was also fully integrated between the system and email.
While editors work within a familiar rich-editing Word-like WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) environment, the content is actually stored in XML. Any editor can ‘render’ an entry, or page, and generate a PDF to see what it looks like on demand in real time. In another publisher we enabled both automatic rendering into both PDF and HTML.

All comments, emails, documents, are stored allowing everyone to see the portions of the project relevant to them and roll back and forward can be performed by those authorised. At publication time, content can be automatically generated into a particular publication and transform it into a format that can be easily imported by HarperCollin’s production and composition systems.

Cengage Learning achieved a cost reduction saving of 90% reducing the cost from some $10,000 to around $800. Productivity improved, replacing the old time-consuming ‘author-composition-proof-circulate-review-comment-correct-back-to-composition’ circle, ‘Time to market’ was radically reduced and much more.

Collaborative Editing isn’t the only digital Editorial opportunity.
Taylor and Francis have developed and adopted a XML-first workflow which goes back the manuscript. This effectively automates the decomposition of the manuscript into a series of quality steps and automated XML tagging which is managed by exception by the copy editor. The result is that the editor can then copy edit the pure text and once finalized can then activate an automated process that re-composition the work and produces a fully typesetter ready file.

The effect has been to greatly reduce the cost of producing structured content, particularly compared to XML-last workflows. It also has dramatically reduced time to market and improved productivity. We now are migrating the software onto a different platform with Taylor and Francis and will be deploying it in the market.
We have also deployed XML First services with many other clients where the process has given them up to 40% cost savings.

Marketing has seen an explosion of digital opportunities. You only need to open up any trade paper to read about the exciting new marketing materials and initiatives aimed at increasing sales. Podcasts, videos, first chapters, reviews etc. Digitisation is enabling people to see more contextual information than ever before. I remember when Amazon first started to demand jackets and the wholesalers started their ‘book in hand’ programmes. The world has moved on and the jacket is now da facto and no longer enough.

We are building the digital warehouse and infrastructure to support Gardners Books, the UK’s largest wholesaler. Today we have to deal with every conceivable digital file you could imagine. One major publisher had over a thousand author video clips.

No one can be immune to the rise of the mighty widget. In less than a year it has clearly made an impact and given publishers the opportunity to share a limited part of the book itself with the consumers. It may be the first 10 pages, the first chapter or any combination of the total work. It offers full search inside and the also the ability for the consumer to copy the widget to friends or post it on a web site or blog.

The widget we have developed is built on our online reader and is being deployed by Taylor and Francis, CUP and Gardner’s publishing clients. We will be deployed over 20,000 in the coming month and producing them as standard to all our clients as part of their deliverables.

We must remember that widgets will sell both physical and digital content.
This next diagram is about the difference between widgets and inspection copies.
Widgets are for mass market and are deployed as samplers to all and sundry. Inspection copies are about reviewing titles for adoption and are prevail in the academic world. They are more direct targeting mailings are critical in some sectors. It is estimated that somewhere between 6 and 12% of print runs are given away as gratis copies.

We are working with a number of publishers to develop an online inspection copy service that not only will reduce the cost of inventory and postage but also enable publishers to see who actually reads what, potentially capture and share annotations, bookmarks and recommendations and even help create ecompile^TM customised works that can be used by the reviewer or sold to others.

Many are looking at the same issues but merely replacing the physical with digital copy. They miss the prize of developing closure relationships, understanding their clients and closing the marketing loop. If we save only 50% of today’s waste it will be good but if we increase sales and adoptions as well then it is not an opportunity to be missed.

Finally one of the exciting opportunities - Digital Drop Ship^TM

When I embarked on digital drop shipment some 2 years ago, I was amazed that no one had really thought this out. To me it was simple and logical. Why distribute all your files to everyone when you can retain them, hold them once and distribute them when someone buys one.

Digital drop ship enables the publisher to retain control, ensure DRM standards are applied and that they know exactly what has been sold. They can literally enable anyone to sell their titles and only need to agree the commercials. Importantly it mirrors the highly successful drop ship model used in the physical world and therefore if implemented in parallel enables physical, digital and audio to be bought in the same basket.

The model is now real within Gardners Books where thousands of files are being deposited today by publishers. The likes of Taylor and Francis and others are retaining their files separately in their own repositories but are connected and can respond and distribute files when sold via the service. The service is therefore truly inclusive allowing all to participate. Gardners are now busy rolling it out to their 1,500 internet accounts which range from Play.com and Tesco to independent bookstore and enabling them all to offer customers digital content.

But digital drop ship is not just about Gardners. We have also developed a further feature which now enables Taylor and Francis to sell on line subscriptions within the drop ship model. The first store to sell these will come on line this month and will promote the subscription, manage the consumer, handle the transaction and control subsequent access and authentication. We will just service up the subscription for their individual’s term.

This enables Taylor and Francis to sell subscription through any outlet and obviously potentially generate more sales without incurring any more cost.

We also have gone live with a UK publisher who were unable to enable their web site to interact with the drop ship messages but are taking drop ship orders on the phone via their customer service desk. The service operator merely enters the details on a web service. The distribution of the file from somewhere else is totally transparent to the consumer and importantly retailers who would be unable to participate in the digital world, now can.

Unlike climate change, it is not time to defend ourselves against the threat but it is time to engage with it and as Gail Rebuck eloquently said in her speech last month, see it as a glass half full and offering all new and exciting opportunities for all.