Content Services in India

P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ® Special Report 2011

Providing obsolescence-proof, device-neutral, and media-rich content

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Content Services in

INDIA

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May 2008 to 352,032 in February 2011, nearly 15% of which were games. And the U.S. market for self-paced e-learning products and services, according to the Ambient Insight Store, will reach $24.2 billion by 2015.

These astonishing numbers are the stuff of dreams. But let’s be realistic. Dealing with the accompanying chal-lenges (which may shatter those dreams) calls for more than projections and expec-tations.

The variety of e-deliverables, for instance, is proving to be a headache. For content services vendors, tweaking con-tent to fit every device—whether an e-reader or smartphone—is time-con-suming. For publishers, it is costly. And no one dares to favor one format or device over the other.

Some publishers are holding back because they can’t be sure what to do, given the proliferation of e-gadgets in the marketplace. But can they hold out for long? The answer is a definite no; the reason, survival.

E-books might seem like a disruptive format that cannibalizes existing revenue streams, says CEO Dev Ganesan of Aptara, “but as with all disruptive tech-nologies, once it starts to gain acceptance among users, there are only two options left: adapt and extract maximum value out of the technology, or accept that someone else will use it to alter the eco-nomics of the business and eventually render you redundant.”

After all, the benefits of e-books are obvious: eliminating the cost of printing and distribution, shortening time to market, allowing new business models such as per-article or per-chapter pricing, and creating enhanced content.

The challenge for publishers, notes Ganesan, is that the market is controlled by just a few big players. “Even with the recent shift to an agency model, pricing power belongs to these e-tailers, which constricts all but the largest of publish-ers. But looking beyond the constraints and challenges, publishers will find that the opportunity and market access will increase significantly. Furthermore, dis-intermediation in the e-book channel

Three hot areas requiring future-proof content, interoperability, and rich media

Of E-book, Mobile App, and E-learningBy Teri Tan

The numbers are huge; the forecast, compelling. The message is clear: e-books, mobile apps, and e-learning are hot, growing furiously, and not to be ignored. Not surprising, of course, given the ubiquity of handheld devices and laptops around us.

Production floor at Chennai-based Lapiz

lishers predict that more than 10% of their total book revenue will come from e-books by 2012. And ABI Research pro-jected that revenues from global mobile commerce will hit a staggering $119 bil-lion by 2015. Yet that figure represents only 8% of the total e-commerce market.

The number of apps offered through the Apple App Store grew from two in

According to the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales at 16 publish-ing houses jumped 115.8%, to $69.9 million, during the first three months of

2011. In Great Britain, a survey carried out by Publishing Technology PLC found that one-third of U.K. trade pub-C

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from the ground up for various e-readers, particularly iPad. Redesigning text-books and adding multimedia compo-nents is the way to attract the generation of students that has grown up with smartphones and tablets. And halfway across the globe, in city-state Singapore (where this correspondent is based), four schools have handed out iPads to stu-dents and teachers in a pilot project to change the learning and teaching envi-ronment.

The use of media-rich elements and games in e-learning, Sen adds, is becoming more prevalent. But pub-lishers must always remember that the focus should be on the learning. “Too much jazzing up with rich media, ani-mation, music, and interactivity—for the sake of making it different and entertaining—may turn a learning module into an animated film. The focus is then lost. On the other hand, the usage of games is good. But when learning is forcefully introduced into a game, it becomes an interruption to the gaming process. This would demo-tivate the student instead. A good bal-ance between entertainment and learn-ing is often difficult to achieve.”

This brings us back to the fundamen-tals that must be in place before you think about e-books, mobile apps, or e-learning modules. In order to pivot content to fit the devices or platforms, it must first be made flexible, neutral, reus-able, portable, scalable, and obsoles-cence-proof. The way to achieve all these is with a digital workflow that uses XML, the lingua franca that enables delivery of content any time, any place, any way. “Create once, publish many” is the goal when there are devices galore in the marketplace.

The shift from a print-centric tradi-tion to an XML-first workflow is not easy, but it must happen.

Need more convincing? Let’s go back to the start of this article where various figures foretell the future trends in publishing. In order to be a part of this future, you have to embrace, and love, XML. There is simply no two ways about it. n


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means that small and medium publishers will get a level of market access never before available.”

Across the board, publishers are mostly concerned about four interrelated issues: market, pricing, future business models, and the impact of technology, says Jim Lewis, senior v-p for sales and marketing at Innodata Isogen. “In the e-book area, the new agency model is just working its way through the system, but there is the looming question of whether an increase in unit sales will follow from lower prices. In any case, most publishers with titles that have commercial poten-tial are already working on digitization and e-book conversion.”

But the channels are changing and so is the market approach. “It is not just a shift from print to devices, but also the integration of social media, new content development initiatives driven by tech-nology change, open Web access, and so on. The list is long and the challenges significant.” In the past year, there has been a seismic shift in the bookselling environment, Lewis adds, and “publish-ers are looking everywhere for revenue. Increasingly, the sources are digital in nature.”

That brings us to the device part and the race to go from monochrome to full-color, e-paper to e-ink, and no camera to two.

Today, the race is being won by the multipurpose devices, iPad and iPhone. The plethora of Android-powered options with open-source operating sys-tems has failed to erode Apple’s domi-nance in the smartphone and tablet mar-kets. The fact that Apple does not sup-port Flash—which is primarily used to create e-learning modules and multime-dia e-books—and yet manages to come out on top causes both consternation and amazement among publishers and ven-dors alike.

Naturally, all content services vendors wish that there were one format for all devices, saving them the hassle of tweak-ing content to suit Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and so on. (You can be sure, however, that the vendors do love tabulating and adding up the differ-

ent costs for different formats in the final bill for their publishing clients.)

And what about the oh-so-addictive mobile apps? (Angry Birds, anyone?)

Well, for a start, their market’s fast and furious growth prompted PW to launch a weekly online column, “This Week in Apps,” last December. (The buzz needs constant feeding, after all.)

“There is no denying that mobile devices are going to be a huge part of our daily lives—whether it is for read-ing books, listening to music, watch-ing movies, buying products, navigat-ing an area, or doing office tasks,” says Gurvinder Batra, cofounder and CTO of KiwiTech, which is responsible for redesigning the PW app. “But publish-ers are cautious as they have yet to see big revenue dollars associated with apps.” As for which market segment shows the biggest growth in apps, he says, “We are seeing equal growth in all segments. Demand comes in from children’s, higher-ed, and medical book publishers, besides the obvious players—entertainment companies in movies and music. Reference products seem to be at the top of the list.”

The herd mentality, Batra notes, is alive and well in the present app-creating frenzy. He likens the situation to when the Web was first launched. “Everyone wanted to have an online presence, but had not a clue why they were doing it, how someone would find the Web site, or why people would want to visit it in the first place. They were doing it only because everyone else was. Now this is happening to the mobile space.”

Investments from publishers in digital products will continue to grow in the foreseeable future, says CEO Samudra Sen of e-learning company Learning-Mate. “Even Pearson Education, with a balance sheet that already shows one-third of its recent revenues coming from digital products, is predicting that the trend is going to continue at the com-pany.”

Just three weeks ago, Pearson and McGraw-Hill announced their invest-ment in Inkling, a San Francisco com-pany that creates interactive textbooks

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20 vendors when 10 would do the work and make managing all that much easier.

The same is happening on the supply side. Larger vendors that prospered through the dour economy are now look-ing to grow through acquisitions. The smaller ones that managed to survive are looking for like-sized counterparts to merge and combine resources in order to carve out their own niche.

Now that all multinational publishing houses—in SSTM, higher-ed, or k–12—are deep in the offshoring process, ven-dors are shifting their attention to tier two and three publishers, those with siz-able lists but still doing everything in-house (or onshore). Persuading these smaller publishers to take the plunge may not be easy, but with limited resources to shift from one vendor to the next, they are perceived to be more loyal.

Vendors are also venturing further afield to seek out cheaper but equally green pastures. Creeping costs and shrinking margins spare no one, not even in India. In fact, in the next couple of years, your production facility visit may be a city-hopping itinerary that includes


Kolkata, Madurai, Pune, Trivandrum, and Chandigarh. Or even Thimphu in Bhutan.

But whatever the size of the vendors, and wherever they are located, XML is at the front, back, and center of their oper-ations. To speed up the XML-ing pro-cess, vendors have developed special scripts, automation tools, and even pro-prietary software that can be incorpo-rated into any existing publishing work-flow. Their experts can pivot XML-based content to fit any required device, for-mat, or platform.

For publishers, being a part of the digital world means being pro-XML and choosing an XML-first workflow. But you don’t have to be an expert in XML tags or XML schema, or worry about XSL-FO, XSLT, or XQuery. Leave that to the following 15 companies (in reverse alphabetical order)—and many that are not listed here but thriving in India—to help transform your content. It is up to you to evaluate, choose, and determine which of the vendor(s) can best be your partner(s) on a successful trip down the XML road.

Thomson Digital India The school segment, says executive director Vinay Singh, has begun to travel offshore for development services and support, following the same path taken by the higher-ed and STM segments: “We see major opportunities in the seg-ment, hence our investment in Orlando [Fla.]-based Element LLC last July. Our focus since the inception of Thomson Digital in 1988 had been on the STM b o o k a n d journal seg-ments, and we have built our expertise and r e p u t a t i o n there. Then, in the past five years, we were f o c u s e d o n higher-ed and professional p u b l i s h i n g verticals, and

The plethora of new and upcoming gadgets needs obsolescence-proof publishing methods

Transforming Content For TomorrowBy Teri Tan

In an increasingly app-centric and e-book world, gadgets are getting smaller, more portable, and capable of catering for more than one purpose. Add common Web-based program-ming standards, where switching platforms is as easy as A-B-C, and you know content has to be dynamic, agile, and com-pletely neutral (read: loyal to no device or format).

While the tech industry is looking out for the next iPad/iPhone/Google/Facebook/Twitter killer, the publishing industry

is busy finding partners to enhance e-books using multimedia authoring tools, to provide periodic updates of mobile apps, or to redesign a course book for the digital classroom. Or for help with editorial development, page design, photo research, creative illustration, per-missions management, technical writ-ing, abstraction, and localization. On an even more basic level, to take over tedious keyboarding, typesetting, and scanning/conversion processes. All eyes are on con-tent—how to create, deconstruct, con-vert, improve, aggregate, archive, de-chunk, or repurpose it.

Meanwhile, consolidation is in. Pub-lishers with vast outsourcing experience in India are shortening their vendor list, since more companies are offering full-service project management through a combined onshore/offshore outsourcing model. It makes perfect sense not to have

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Vinay Singh, executive director at Thomson Digi-tal

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showcased our content capabilities and hosted two discussions: one on monetiz-ing content and the other about adding efficiencies to a publisher’s value chain.”

Established in 1984 and listed on the Mumbai Exchange in 2006, more than 50% of Repro’s business comes from overseas markets. “Our goal is to manage our clients’ content to provide a zero inventory solution by printing and deliv-ering books just in time—whether it is one copy or a million copies,” adds Rajnish Shirsat, v-p of print solutions. “We see the synergies in working with clients to integrate three different divi-sions into a one-stop shop. Few in India can offer such a service in a seamless workflow. And instead of waiting for cli-ents to discover us and our integrated services, we have decided to be more aggressive in marketing ourselves and making our services known to all.”

PreMediaGlobalAt PMG, school and college projects grew around 20%–25% last year, even though, as co-CEO Kapil Viswanathan concedes, “the school market in general has had a difficult time recently. But we have substantial experience in k–12 con-tent development and this has helped us to grow. In terms of trends, we are seeing more demand for interactive white-boards, Web portals, and so on that inte-grate the development of print with digital products.” There is also more demand for translations and new content in non-English languages, especially Spanish, French, and German.

There has been a significant rise in nonconventional services such as creative design, permission clearance, and image

research. For the latter, PMG has just the right product to offer: Right-Photo, its proprietary engine for ser-vices covering image research, per-missions, rights management, and image archiving. The challenge in offering this service, Viswanathan says, “lies in creating a highly effi-cient process that is scalable to large volumes, something that we have been able to do with our seamless onshore/offshore workflow.”



succeeded in securing a substantial mar-ket share. Our current goal is to expand and diversify into other segments glob-ally, and that’s where Element LLC comes in.” The Element team will focus on front-end content development and edi-torial services, creative design, art and photo management, and full-service project management for the k–12, higher-ed, and adult learning segments. “Both our India and U.S. teams are fully integrated so that we can offer respon-sive, timely, and cost-effective solutions to all the clients and markets that we serve around the world.”

Singh is aggressively pursuing growth in technology and new media solutions in order to sustain Thomson Digital’s status as a market leader. Exploring investment opportunities to supplement organic growth is on his to-do list. “Interactive products, whiteboards, and e-learning modules, online assessments, multiplatform e-books and apps, you name it.” Singh says. “We are keeping our eyes on each growing segment, and tailoring our expertise and services to offer the best possible solutions to cli-ents.”

Meanwhile, ever-increasing price pres-sure and rising costs in India have prompted Singh to consider setting up new operations in unconventional loca-tions. The northeastern and Himalayan parts of India come to mind. “I would even consider neighboring countries like Bhutan, where one would find almost 100% English-medium schools with aca-demic evaluations affiliated to the Indian Central Examination Board. Cost is stable and so is its workforce, and since no other content services vendor has set up shop there, we do not have to worry about attrition and poaching.” That does not mean that Thomson Digital is moving away from Noida or Chennai. “On the contrary, we will equip the existing facil-ities—including our Mauritius opera-tions—with better infrastructure and technology. One top priority is to further strengthen our European-language capa-bilities.” Thomson Digital offers French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and has recently added Polish to its portfolio.

Repro IndiaNot many vendors can boast of having two publishing experts—Robert Baensch and Chris Curtis—on their advisory board or having the foresight to organize a series of seminars on future trends in publishing. The latter, Knowledge Forum, gets the Indian publishing community together to discuss shifting trends that have forced some changes in the fundamental process of bringing out a book. The first forum was held in September 2010 in Delhi, attract-ing around 120 publishers; the second was in Hyderabad in January 2011, attended by 45 publishers.

“Publishers must rethink how to man-age content right from the start, and they need to connect the dots between different processes: content management, printing, and fulfillment,” says Amit Chavan, who is in charge of publishing services, a seg-ment currently representing 5% of the company’s total turnover. “At Repro India, we want to be a custodian of our clients’ content from start to finish. We can help in designing books, developing content, converting print titles into vari-ous deliverables, or setting up digital asset management or digital rights manage-ment systems.” Recently, his team helped a client to redesign and print 10 children’s books, consisting of around 1,200 pages with 2,500 illustrations to be altered or created—all within four months.

Increasingly, adds Chavan, “clients rec-ognize that Repro India is more than a printing company—even though that was our primary business in the past—and that we offer end-to-end solutions.” To raise the company’s profile, Chavan and his team participated in the 2010 Frank-furt Book Fair Hot Spots, where “we

Rajnish Shirsat (l.) and Amit Chavan of Repro India


taxonomy, METS/ALTO output and even cataloguing services. We will be launching consulting services in devel-oping digital libraries soon,” says Vishal Salgotra, v-p of business development, adding that the demand for high quality content in different formats has increased two- to threefold in recent years. “Tradi-tional book publishers are now more open to technology and are making stra-tegic moves into the digital space in order to maintain their market leader-ship. At the same time, there are niche digital publishers that are seeing double-digit growth within just a few years of operation.” Naturally, Planman is invest-ing heavily in crucial new technologies and software knowledge.

Among the new technologies thrown into focus are HTML5 and Flex. “There is huge interest from the U.K. and U.S. markets in these. We have done several interactive whiteboards [IWBs] and e-book projects using Flash/Flex in which our team handled everything from story-boarding, content writing, animating, illustrating, to programming. Develop-ing mobile and tablet apps is another area that we are working on aggressively,” says v-p of sales Amit Vohra. One recent proj-ect, Learn & Draw, aimed at eight- to 10-year-olds, effectively illustrates Plan-man’s capabilities. The team developed digital components such as IWBs with interactive videos, background music, and animation to give kids a fun-filled experi-ence as basic facts about various subjects from the print product were included.

Last July, Planman opened a new office in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a strong and experienced editorial and project man-

O n t h e higher-ed side, f u l l - s e r v i c e project man-a g e m e n t r e m a i n s i t s f o c u s . “ A n increasing pro-portion of our higher-ed proj-ects involve t h e w h o l e

works, from content development, design, and image research up to deliver-ables,” says executive v-p (higher-ed divi-sion) Rick Vayo. And e-books are a grow-ing part of those deliverables. “E-book volumes are certainly growing, and this growth will outpace that of print. How-ever, print will still play a role in certain types of material. E-reader devices will continue to get more usable and feature-rich, and while there has been no single killer device yet, we might see a clear leader emerging soon.”

Senior v-p (pre-k–12 division) Jane Petlinski adds, “When we develop e-books and other digital products simul-taneously with the print product, we can customize them by weaving in new media, interactivity, and additional con-tent for a more exclusive, value-added, and tailor-made feel. Storyboarding right from the start would help both print and digital formats.”

Confident of the growing opportuni-ties in the publishing marketplace, PMG increased its office space last February and will be expanding its current 1,000-mem-ber team.

Planman TechnologiesNo other vendor has so much going on in the library space. With a clientele consisting of national libraries from around the globe, Planman offers end-to-end services ranging from microfilm scanning to data crunching. “We provide digital library support and portal development, metadata cre-ation, and schema conversion,

Kapil Viswanathan, co-CEO of PreMediaGlobal

(l.-r.) Vishal Salgotra, Sourav Chatterjee, Amit Vohra, and P.S. Narang of Planman Technologies

www.reproindialtd.com

Creation-Conversion-Conservation

Content Management Archival, IPR, DRM, Content Distribution Channels

Publishing Services Development, Composition

Alternate Format Conversions ePub, eBook, XML, XHTML, SGML

Graphics & Digital Imaging Scanning, Images & Illustrations

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Newgen ImagingWhile other vendors are working to build developmental editing or creative services capabilities, these are nothing new at Newgen. “Our Texas and New York offices support acquisitions editors by working with authors to ensure man-

agement team to provide full-service sup-port to American publishing clients. One recent project in literature for grades six–12 fully illustrates the team’s exper-tise. “For this project, our Cincinnati edi-torial team worked with the Delhi pro-duction team using a K4 InCopy work-

flow,” says Orville Dykes, director of publishing services. “We will expand our Cincinnati office, enhance editorial devel-opment expertise in core subject areas, and continue building technology devel-opment capabilities, in our ongoing effort to be a valued partner to our clients.”

At STM publisher CRC Press, a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis, outsourcing to India was a gradual process that started with typesetting, then on to graphic work (such as relabeling and redrawing illustrations) and finally the whole workflow covering copyediting and project management to deliverables. V-p of production Rick Beardsley talks to PW about his outsourcing experience and offers some dos and don’ts.

When did you start outsourcing to India, and how many vendors do you use?That was 10 years ago, and we currently use eight full-service vendors: one based in Singapore, one in the U.S. (that partners with Indian vendors), and the rest, India.What is the basic format for your frontlist?A majority of our books are in InDesign, with the basic page layout scripted to follow a particular template.How about backlist conversion?Mass backlist conversion to XML is something that we have avoided. As we develop more interactive products, we want the products to determine the conversion format, not vice versa. We have, however, converted most of the titles for our online subscription database, CRCnetBASE, in which each title is broken up into chapters of metadata-rich interactive PDFs. How do you deal with the rising demand for e-books and content flexibility?We have adjusted accordingly. More of our frontlist is now available as e-books, and we have expanded our conver-sion capabilities as well as the number of formats provided. On the archival side, we have instituted stricter quality control and tighter organization on our files. As more oppor-tunities to use and reuse our content emerge, we need the files to be accurate, complete, and in a usable format.What is your concern about e-books?Equation- and table-heavy content may be broken up and become meaningless on a small screen. As an STM pub-lisher, we have to be careful with that. Also, preventing piracy is a major concern with e-books.

What are your words of wisdom on vendor selection?Firstly, consider carefully the type of work you are look-ing to outsource. Copyediting and proofreading could be tricky. We have an easier time with STM publishing because we can usually live with a light basic grammar and spelling edit, and not worry so much about the author’s voice. But if your author is a non-native English speaker, then it is probably not wise to have another non-native English speaker as the editor. Many of our

Indian vendors use copyediting and project management resources not only from their own country but also from the U.S. and U.K. Secondly, test new vendors thor-oughly and rigorously. Low prices can be tempting, but, as we have discovered, there is a wide range of ability and quality control out there. Thirdly, one or two successful proj-ects do not mean that the vendor is ready for a regular flow of work. We

consider a vendor to be in test mode in the first year, and we have rejected far more vendors than what we ended up using. Any specific areas to look out for?In general, explicit instruction is crucial, and it is good to put every detail in writing. Building a full-service instruc-tion manual is one way we have dealt with it. And don’t be overly tempted by volume discounts because growing volume too quickly can be disastrous.Your thoughts on the current Indian content services industry?Overall, we have seen it becoming more stable and better prepared to handle our work. The price advantage over domestic sources is not as dramatic as in the past, but India is still a good deal. We have come to a point where we outsource large and complex handbooks to India with confidence, but the process has taken a number of years to develop. In the past, some of our biggest problems came from a lack of proper project management, but that is no longer an issue. Moving slowly while developing our sup-pliers and forming a long-term relationship with them has certainly paid off.

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CongratulateWe

Winner of the Independent Publisherof the Year at the 2011

IPG Awardsand

The Ingram Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year Award

Winner of AAP’s Prose Awardfor Literature, Language & LinguisticsforThe City of Translation byJose Maria Rodriguez Garcia

Copyediting . Project Management . Composition . ePub . Design . Data Archival

[email protected]

Chennai, India - +91 99406 38938 | Austin, USA - +1 512 478 541| Oxford, UK - +44 186 586 1988

CongratulateWe

Winner of the2011 awards for IPG Independent

Publisher of the Yearand

Ingram Academic & Professional Publisher of the Year

Winner of the2010 PROSE Award for Literature, Language & LinguisticsforThe City of Translationby Jose Maria Rodriguez Garcia

Copyediting . Project Management . Composition . ePub . Design . Data . Archival

[email protected]

Chennai, India +91 99406 38938 | Austin, USA +1 512 478 5341| Oxford, UK +44 186 586 1988

diversified, enterprise-scale content and technology business. “Large publishers are increasing investments in the Asia Pacific region and creating market-spe-cific digital products. In fact, some of these projects are a complete overhaul of the original product lines with different language and cultural contexts. Our team works with our clients in Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia, and we are learning to collaborate with local experts in these countries as well.”

In the past six months, LearningMate’s revenues from consulting services have shot up. “We have been called to design enterprise-wide content architectures that provide for the way content will be used in years to come. A great example is a content model we developed for a major higher-ed publisher on which their new product and distribution strategy is built. They can now configure and sell their content in new ways and through new channels—unthinkable just five years ago. We have also created innova-tive tools and automated workflows for XML transformation and content deliv-ery to emerging mobile device plat-forms.”

Meanwhile, plans to set up another office in India are in the works. “We con-sidered Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune before settling on Kolkata. The city impressed us with its academic infra-structure, local talent pool, and reason-able cost structure. It’s a great fit for a midsize company like ours. The city is also emerging as the destination for many software companies from tier one cities in India.” Across the oceans, in New Jersey, Sen is busy building a content develop-ment team. “Our customers want to out-source the entire value chain from content authoring and media development to packaging and delivery. Naturally, we are gearing up to meet their needs.”

LapizAcquiring more editorial capabilities in the k–12 segment and making process improvements in projects involving con-tent management systems and digital devices are on CEO Indira Rajan’s to-do list for 2011. She is also in the process of



uscripts arrive in proper shape, on time, and with the agreed subject coverage. We prepare author guidelines, create Word authoring tem-plates, manage schedules and the review process, and ensure content compli-ance—the whole works. We even create model chapters to guide authors on the structure and features. Developing print and digi-tal ancillaries is also part of developmen-tal editing—and all these tasks call for considerable subject matter expertise.”

Digitization of legacy content has always been a major segment at Newgen, especially with its SCOOP (SCan, OCR, Online PDFs) services. Nowadays, out-puts are no longer PDFs only. “In 2010, we converted more than one million pages to ePub format, and the figure is expected to more than double this year. Our proprietary conversion engine can deliver ePub files from any input format at a fast clip with consistent quality,” says president Maran Elancheran, adding that the software converts backlist and frontlist titles to all major e-book for-mats on the fly.

Currently, Newgen is the only India-based vendor (with no printing facility) to offer a manufacturing coordination service to publishers. “Coordinating with the publishers’ printers and compo-nent suppliers, managing warehouse delivery schedules, estimating, creating book covers, and ensuring correct brand-ing—these are just some of the services that we provide,” adds Elancheran, whose printing engineers also manage the delivery of final files in specific for-mats to different aggregators on behalf of their clients.

Elancheran and his team are seeing increasing demand for multiple print products from the same XML content. For one legal publisher, for instance, Newgen produces a serial title with one annual and two bimonthly print and online editions. He says, “Even though all three products are derived from the same content, the style, format, and cov-

erage are different for each. When the project came to us, the three editions were managed as three separate databases. We created a master XML database that allows them to be generated from a single source, so con-tent updates need be made just once to be reflected in all three editions. The data-base workflow ensures 1 0 0 % d a t a i n t e g r i t y

between products while reducing work duplication.” And that is the very aim of the industry: creating robust and effi-cient single-source content that can be moved into different channels without losing data integrity.

LearningMateWith tier two and three publishers aggressively investing in digital strate-gies, CEO Samudra Sen sees “an oppor-tunity for publishers to leverage Learn-ingMate’s digital services to achieve their goals. For instance, we helped a midsize legal publisher create its e-book plat-form, and now we are in the process of building its enterprise portal to serve litigation lawyers across the U.S.” More recently, LearningMate executed one of the largest digital transformation proj-ects ever: creating, building, and deploy-ing several hundred courses over four months for a major educational pub-lisher. “Our process automation tools and integrated project management systems helped us accomplish this seamlessly.”

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smaller ones have more at stake with each app project.”

Scalability, he says, is a very important factor for the publishing industry. And with scalability comes cost. “You can choose to create a unique solution for a book, but doing so for each and every book is simply not practical. The more practical approach is to avoid recreating the wheel. Take book design, for instance. Publishers can create a series of book and page designs, and fit a book into one of these designs. It helps to keep costs low as well as standardizing the process. We can take a similar approach to apps development—keeping the individuality of the book intact while reducing the development costs.” In general, an app may cost between $8,000 and $15,000 to develop.

Partnering with large players to help them with their digital strategy and fig-uring out how to scale and provide a digital solution across their product lines are the goals of KiwiTech. “We are work-ing on some exciting projects that will be the first of their kind in the mobile industry. But this is too early for us to divulge any details. Suffice it to say that the next 12 to 16 months looks extremely exciting for us.”

IntegraUnveiling a new logo and the vision of “powering content transformation” a few weeks before entering 2011 marks a new chapter at Pondicherry-based Integra. “We have used the old logo for more than 16 years, and it’s high time for a change. The feedback from our clients has been encouraging. They really like the new, more colorful logo, our focused vision and mission statement, and the way they are in sync with our business goals and industry trends. One large educational publisher, in particular, likes the use of the word ‘joyful’ in our mission state-ment because he finds that Integra really lives its vision,” says Sriram Subramanya, cofounder, managing director, and CEO.

Clients, especially nonnative speakers of English, are also “joyful” to find copy-editing and proofreading services readily accessible at Language-Polishing.com. “We position this service as a product, and



recruiting a senior execu-tive responsi-ble for “for-mulating and implementing departmental and organiza-tional policies a n d p r o c e -dures to maxi-mize output, freeing v-p V.

Bharathram to focus on creating more strategic partnerships.”

How to maximize productivity for dif-ferent digital devices such as iPad and Kindle is constantly on Rajan’s mind. Her team is busy with R&D on the crop of e-readers in the market, looking for the best way to tweak content to suit each format. She adds, “Digital content is the way forward, and more schools will be opting for digital textbooks. But there is a big difference between producing digital content for trade, college, and k–12. Admittedly, we have a very strong hold in the trade book division, and visu-alization, interactivity, and instructional design are much more complex in k–12 projects. We need to acquire these capa-bilities given the rate of e-textbook adoption.” Her team is currently produc-ing print and digital products simultane-ously for a major publisher’s program that involves 4,000 pages, 80% requir-ing Flash animation.

For now, Rajan sees her team as having a competitive edge because “we are one of the few companies that have worked with different publishers’ content manage-ment systems. We have worked on K4 and, recently, Documentum.” Asked about major challenges in working with such systems, she says, “Nothing major thus far. At times, connectivity was an issue, but we resolved it by buying addi-tional bandwidth.” And she does not think that there is any loss of control, even though everything is done through the client’s FTP server. “In fact, there is more transparency,” she says. “The work-flow is powerful and highly customized, and all activities are logged and therefore

traceable. There is much better version control, and any human errors can be tracked and rectified quickly. The best part is that our team members can work on different parts of the same project simultaneously, and our client can track up-to-the-minute progress. The only thing that we need to be sure of is to have a very well-defined internal workflow prior to working on such projects.”

KiwiTechThe mobile apps frenzy is evident in KiwiTech’s growth spurt: 26 months since its inception, it already has 80-some people on its payroll. “We add around five to six people every month—mostly for our development team—and have launched a new Web site to better show-case our expertise,” says cofounder and CTO Gurvinder Batra. The company has also established a sales and marketing team in New York, headed by cofounder and president Anita Gupta.

Mobile commerce is going to be huge, Batra adds, saying, “We want to stay very focused on this particular space. Our goal is to stay aggressive and move ahead of the market. Most of all, we want to con-tinue having fun creating innovative app solutions that will help our clients achieve their goals.” For those thinking of turn-ing print into apps, he has a few tips to offer: “Figure out your digital strategy based on specific product lines. Remem-ber that an app is only one of the solutions from the mobile delivery perspective. Some other options may be more cost-effective. And having one successful app does not mean that the same approach or style will work for all other products.

Experimen-tation is cru-c i a l . Yo u need to test the platform using your top product lines. While bigger play-e r s h a v e m o r e resources to experiment,

Gurvinder Batra, cofounder and CTO of KiwiTech

Indira Rajan, CEO of Lapiz

it’s only available through our Web site. We launched this site last Octo-ber, so the traffic is just picking up. Clients are mostly from European and Asian countries. It is really encourag-ing to see a large STM publisher list Integra as an approved source for lan-guage polishing services. We have seen it gaining traction and many projects have already been com-pleted,” adds Subramanya, who recently set up an office in Ely, Cam-bridgeshire, U.K., with three senior staff to handle full-service project management.

Publishers, he says, are currently “in the transformation stage, and it will take two to three years until e-gadgets sta-bilize before they have more clarity in their direction. In the meantime, everyone is merging traditional and new media. This convergence has taken the educational publishing indus-try by storm, and it has spread through publishing BPOs like Integra. Higher-ed and school publishers are looking to part-ner with vendors who can provide both media services and high-value end-to-end services. At Integra, having editorial development and full-service offices in the U.S. and U.K. means that we can have certain services either executed onshore or brought back to Pondicherry.”

But it is not all work for Subramanya and his wife, cofounder and joint managing director, Anu Sriram. Aside from greening the local environment with tree-planting campaigns, the Sri-ram Charitable Trust has also started a program to bring diag-nostic tests and free medicine to people in neighboring rural areas. “We have carried out 24 Eye Camp programs to provide specialist eye care services, including cataract and cornea oper-ations. This is just one of the ways Integra gives back to society,” adds Subramanya.

Innodata Isogen“The iPad has compelled publishers to look at how its sophis-ticated technology can support content enrichment,” says Jim Lewis, senior v-p for sales and mar-keting, whose team has been pro-viding e-publishing services for Apple’s iBookstore since last November. “I think we are just at the beginning of a trend in book publishing: enhanced design, cov-ering graphical design, animation, increased interactivity, and better use of text. There are also ties with social networking and the vast linkable resources of the Web.”

Overall, Lewis continues to see “increased demand for traditional

Jim Lewis, senior v-p for sales and marketing at Innodata Isogen

Sriram Subramanya, cofounder, managing director and CEO of Integra

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is the application of ‘e’ to just about every aspect of the publishing process: e-pro-duction, e-discovery, e-marketing, e-sell-ing and so on. Print is still the archival medium of choice and access where band-width is slow or nonexistent. But increas-ingly, the print version is not the publica-tion of record.”

As for e-books, Lewis sees the next wave coming from emerging markets and

services related to content transforma-tion and mobility, as well as greater demand for authoring, content creation, and other high value-added services. As the movement toward open access text-books and educational materials contin-ues to grow, we have been producing more topic maps and first drafts of important texts.” Innodata Isogen also creates a lot of abstracted and summa-

rized content as well as short descriptions or articles for numerous Web-based pub-lishers. “There is significant demand for technology-enabled educational materi-als, along with short topic summaries for people who want quick access to perti-nent information.”

E-publishing, he adds, is gaining momentum: “Product development around new technologies is increasing, as

In January, it was announced that the BookMasters Group Inc. had formed a strategic partnership with Bangalore-based Macmillan Publishing Services to offer clients a complete array of services covering digital publishing, fulfillment, and print and electronic distri-bution. CEO David Wurster of BMI talks to PW about the benefits this partnership brings to both sides, and how clients can leverage both partners’ expertise.

When did you start working with MPS?It began a few years ago. We met with MPS executives in the U.S. and U.K., and worked out an arrangement where BMI provides warehousing and fulfillment in the U.S. while MPS takes care of call center and order taking in India. Then Rajiv Seth, CEO of MPS, and I met last summer and we began talking about leveraging our companies’ expertise and mar-ket share. What factors determine your choice of partner?We seek vendors based on resource needs, and we have many active relationships with offshore vendors based on their strengths and our needs. Since we have already tried and tested these resources, it enables us to better customize our publishing clients’ production processes. And when-ever we have new publishing challenges, we turn to our diverse resources for solutions and information.Did you look at vendors outside of India at all?The market dictates that offshore vendors be used since there is a pseudo-commodities market that has sprung up around composition and conversion price points. This transition has happened in the industry over the past decade and we have accepted it. Our talented U.S. team itself has transitioned to managers of offshore composition and con-version services. Given our established rapport with Indian vendors since the late 1990s, we don’t have the need or impetus to move work to another region.Teething problems in partnerships are normal. How do you deal with them?Communication is the main issue when dealing with any

supplier, onshore or offshore. Managing expectations and developing proactive solutions are crucial. We have imple-mented a very transparent production reporting system that works not only internally but allows our publisher-clients direct access as well. By casting MPS as part of our U.S. team pulling for the same publishing client, we get buy-in to the project’s goals, thus achieving higher stan-dards in execution and delivery. Basically, everyone likes seeing a job well done, regardless of culture or time zone, and MPS has put great focus in this area for BMI.

How does your e-book conversion and distribution program, Converso, fit into this partnership?Converso allows publishers to defer their e-book conversion costs until sales volumes of the e-books are able to cover the initial invest-ment. This means that publishers can convert backlist titles—which often do not have the production budget of frontlists—and pay for the conversions out of reported sales accrued through our online retail partners.

So the publisher only needs to contract with BMI instead of tens of online retailers?That’s right. We handle the contracts and terms as well as report sales back into one central place for the publisher’s online account management. Converso also remedies metadata issues by creating one set of standard metadata from which we then disseminate to the various online retail partners in their preferred format. We also ensure that the e-book files adhere to specifications required by different e-reading devices. A couple of months down the partnership road with MPS, what is your assessment?We are seeing great interest from both American and over-seas publishers looking to leverage the low-cost composi-tion/conversion services while receiving a well-managed electronic distribution and production workflow in the U.S. The digital printing component—on a print-to-order basis—has received lots of attention as well. No major deals yet, but it’s still early days. I’m very optimistic about this partnership.

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of the medical publisher Thieme, the publisher named DiTech as one of its most preferred vendors. For Ahmed, that acknowledgment is an encouragement to do even better. In fact, after completing one major project for the U.S. division, DiTech was referred to one of Thieme’s German imprints and subsequently awarded 500 titles for production based on CoreSource/VitalSource specifications.

To date, Braille/NIMAS/DAISY con-version continues to be one of DiTech’s strongest services, but so too are its cus-tomized solutions for educational institu-tions. Recently, one Australian university approached Ahmed for urgent help to con-vert 55,000 pages to RTF format. “Chal-lenges abounded. The source files were poor quality scans, so extraction of text and images was near impossible. On top of that, we were staring at a 45-day deadline because the material was needed for the coming semester. We formed a dedicated team for the project, did complete key-


different language groups. “Until very recently, the e-book market was U.S.- and English-based with a small amount of Spanish thrown in. This is changing rapidly as more languages outside the major ones, including the ideographic languages, are being supported by more reading devices.” Annually, Innodata Isogen produces hundreds of thousands of e-books for almost two dozen e-book dis-tribution platforms. The volume has con-tinued to grow as new and varied types of publications enter the mix. “We see an increase in frontlist work, but backlist projects continue to grow as well. If I could make a general statement based on what we are seeing today, it would be that we will see more frontlists from major publishers and more backlists from small and midsize publishers.”

DiTech Process SolutionsSince taking over DiTech (formerly IBH Process Solu-tions) in May 2010, CEO Nizam Ahmed has been focused on expanding his publishing services, espe-cially in the digital/e-book area: “Our revenue has dou-bled in the past six months, and our e-book conversion

business has shown double-digit growth. Our strategy is to have a CAGR [com-pound annual growth rate] of 150% year-on-year through organic and inorganic expansion.” Acquiring a mid-tier com-pany in the publishing/conversion vertical to strengthen DiTech’s offshore presence is in the cards, and the deal should be sealed before the year is out.

Last month, during a Business Review interview to mark the 125th anniversary

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validates, and dispatches them to their client. “We assign around 80 people to this project, and they finish between 180 and 200 titles a day.”

For v-p Mahesh Balakrishnan, “EPub,

boarding and proofreading, and developed internal quality control tools to check the final files against client specifications.” Soon after the project was successfully delivered ahead of schedule, the university began awarding DiTech more work for DAISY, Braille, and PDF conversion.

The next 12 to 16 months will also see Ahmed opening full-time sales and proj-ect management offices in three different regions across the globe. “Historically, our energies have been focused on culti-vating North American businesses, but we are now going to make a move into Europe and Asia Pacific.” And augment-ing his sales force while looking into growing the publishing business is none other than Jan Zucker, former v-p of Hudson News, who joined the team in January this year. “Then we hope to attain certification in information secu-rity management system [ISMS] and work on providing a truly green office environment for our 350-odd staff.”

diacriTechWorking with an American aggregator to convert 12,000 titles into ePub format by April is one project that is keeping v-p A.R.M. Gopi-nath and his team on their toes. The source files are batched to diacriTech in dif-ferent formats, including PDF, InDesign, and QuarkX-Press, and some are math-heavy. “Extraction scripts are written to automatically con-vert the content into XML based on a DTD that was developed earlier, while images and math equations are turned into GIF. Valida-tion and quality control comes next, and all corrections are made directly to the XML files,” adds Gopinath, whose team then converts those files into ePub using a combination of PerlScript and XSLT,

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Mahesh Balakrishnan (standing) and A.R.M. Gopinath of diacriTech

W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 17


mobile app, and e-book projects are the next wave. And we anticipate that cli-ents—publishers and content aggrega-tors—will be constantly looking for a single vendor who can take care of the full product cycle.” He recently had a client looking to develop an app for an image repository of skin infections. “Since the client wanted to display the list of skin ailments by region, our team incorporated a GPS [global positioning system] function into the app as well. So far, we have been called to develop apps that perform very specific tasks, such as improving general knowledge using crossword puzzles, teaching simple math using card games, or enhancing business communication using language translators.”

There have been a lot of Adobe Flash-based projects in recent months as well. Adds Gopinath, “Most of our Flash proj-ects are based on technical simulations that require subject matter experts to collaborate closely with the Flash team and the client. Being a full-service pro-vider, we are also asked to create interac-tive Flash content that goes into com-panion Web sites or CDs. In such cases, we have to create storyboards based on the focus of the curriculum. So a good understanding of the book publishing process is crucial to the Flash develop-ment process.”

Meanwhile, business from the U.S. has picked up in recent months. “The indicators are positive: more new proj-ects are being developed, publishers are starting to visit India again, and there is lots of interest in apps, e-books, and Flash coming from different market segments. I think the publishing industry has gotten over the tough time and is now looking at how to capitalize on the craze for tablets and smartphones,” adds Balakrishnan.

DatamaticsThe formation of Datamat-ics Global Services from the merging of the company’s software and BPO divisions

in the past two years has brought “a shift in the strategic direction of our com-pany, from providing software develop-ment, back-office processing, and body shopping to solution-based services,” says Krishna Tewari, global head for online, publishing, and media solutions. “To enable this shift, several modular tools and applications have been devel-oped to make back-office processing faster, cheaper, and better. Then, by applying intelligent rules to these appli-cations, we error-proof the processes, leading to easier training and scaling processes while reducing our depen-dency on skill-based resources. You can say that we are no longer a traditional pre-press house.”

One major back-office project at 3,000-strong Datamatics involves main-taining the Web catalogues of one of the world’s largest retailers. Says Tewari, “It involves writing any missing product descriptions, ensuring correct product and category listing, calculating ship-ping cost and other pricing information, verifying details such as UPC [Universal Product Code], images, brand, features, etc. Sometimes, multilingual work is required. The biggest challenge is related to the project’s seasonality, which makes capacity and production planning com-plex, but working closely with the cli-ent’s product managers has helped to smooth the process.” The goal, he says, is “to make sure our client’s customers are able to find the products they are search-ing for accurately and quickly.”

As of now, around 85% of Datamat-ics’s clients come from the U.S., and

many publishers, espe-cially from the reference and textbook segments, are doing e-books for their front lists. Says Tewari, “We have sepa-rate teams for this ser-v i c e l i n e and h av e enhanced our capabili-ties to grow the e-book business. Our technol-ogy team has developed module-based conver-s ion/trans formation

Krishna Tewari, global head for online, publishing, and media solutions at Datamatics

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Noida (Delhi), and Bangalore, besides three facilities in the U.S., serving many of the largest k–12, higher-ed, and STM publishers. “The synergies of the com-bined organization have allowed us to build and launch a new suite of tools that includes ePublish, an e-book converter capable of high quality conversion of complex content,” says v-p of operations Waseem Andrabi. “We now have the ability to convert complex content that has graphics, math, tables, and interac-tive and enriched formatting for any mobile device platform.”

In view of the multitude of e-reader devices, standardization of deliverables becomes necessary. Andrabi adds, “Our simple solution is Mobile dPub, a prod-uct that we launched last month. It is a device-neutral, browser-based e-reader that is highly customizable so that pub-lishers do not have to worry about pre-paring different formats for different devices. E-books can be delivered to any mobile or desktop device, providing educational publishers the flexibility to

offer content to students on any device.”

Cenveo has increased the speed at which new proj-ects and services hit the market, and embarked on an intense marketing pro-gram to raise awareness of some new workflow tools. Says Andrabi, “As we develop more new tools, we see growth in our full-service business because more publishers are mov-

ing toward a single-source solution. We undertake onshore/offshore project man-agement, composition and creative design, copyediting, and a wide array of related publishing services such as work-flow management and consulting.”

AptaraAptara’s focus for the next 12 to 16 months, says CEO Dev Ganesan, centers on helping publishers capitalize on the exploding e-book and tablet markets by doing digital right the first time. “The more the mobile device market grows,

applications that make conversion from various XML or SGML formats to e-books simple, fast, and easy.”

In order to continue offering cutting-edge solutions, the company is growing its capabilities organically and inorgani-cally. Recently, Datamatics opened a new delivery center in Bosnia to offer multilingual services. “We acquired Devoteam Danet in October 2009 and have streamlined its operations to offer billing solutions to content merchandis-ers and other content information pro-viders. As for our joint venture with Cignex, we will use its open source plat-form to build next-generation digital asset management solutions,” says Tewari, adding that clients “can expect much larger capacity from onshore and offshore Datamatics facilities, and be sure that the tools and platforms that we enhance and develop will cater to the ever-changing industry needs.”

Cenveo Publisher ServicesThis global full-service publishing company was built from the combined technology and experience of Cadmus Communica-tions, KGL, and Glyph. While Cadmus and KGL operations have been part of Cenveo since 2007, G l y p h w a s a c q u i r e d almost a year ago, in May 2010. Atul Goel, senior v-p of global operations and technology, says, “By combining the service, technology, and knowledge of these three entities, we have created a comprehensive service and technology platform ideally suited to serve the needs of today’s global pub-lishers. By adding Glyph to our existing portfolio, we have been able to share our tools, training programs, and workflows across the larger organization, and better position our company to offer a higher level of service and more innovative products to our customers.”

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as much or as little of the end-to-end publishing platform as they need within their existing workflows. There is no need to disrupt long-standing produc-tion processes to implement a new tech-nology.”

He adds, “There are too many options in the e-book market right now. But once the format and medium conun-drum is sorted out, barriers to growth will be lowered and the cost of market access reduced. Moreover, content that is unencumbered by formatting gives pub-lishers the flexibility and freedom to always be prepared for whatever device that comes next, regardless of its make or model. And this is one challenge that Aptara is uniquely poised to help pub-lishers solve. PXE is giving publishers their own multichannel digital work-flows and the right foundation for prof-iting from print, online, and e-book revenues.” n

duce an XML-first work-flow, and incorporate online proofing capabili-ties. With PXE, Wiley-Blackwell’s turnaround time was reduced by more than 75% for six of their medical, pharmaceutical and physics journals, from over nine weeks to 15 days, helping them to get critical peer-reviewed sci-entific and medical find-i n g s o n l i n e w e l l i n

advance of the print editions,” adds Ganesan, whose company continues to partner with other key players in the value chain, including LibreDigital, Inkling, ScrollMotion, and MarkLogic, to further expedite the content manage-ment and distribution process for Aptara customers.

PXE, he says, allows publishers “to use

the more consumers are setting the rules for how, when, and where they want content.”

To compete, publishers must be able to quickly and efficiently convert their content from a single source to digital formats for multichannel distribu-tion without requiring reformatting. Enter Apta-ra’s PXE end-to-end Web-based t echnology fo r authoring and producing multichannel content. Last year, PXE was imple-mented across three Wiley-Blackwell locations in two countries, for the use of more than 1,000 staff, and customized to Wiley’s existing workflows. “They were looking for a fast publishing solu-tion that would reduce their time to market from 75 days to 15 days, intro-

Dev Ganesan, CEO of Aptara

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real time. Some contributors were ini-tially reluctant to try the paperless approach, but they were later convinced by the efficient end-to-end and faster XML workflow.

DiTech With only 25 days to convert 240 full-color design-intensive titles (approxi-mately 40,000 pages) to XML and ePub formats, the team had to first produce a sample for approval for each of four cat-egories of titles. All images had to be processed in a variety of sizes following the client’s specifications. The team developed proprietary XML and e-book tools to enhance productivity, and cre-ated a CSS style sheet to check the qual-ity of finished files.

Integra The premier cosmetology textbook from Milady landed in Integra’s New York office, requiring full-service project management that included copyediting, design, photo research, image purchase, and production of the core text as well as nearly 2,000 pages of supplementary material. The team also provided devel-opment services for portions of Hough-ton Mifflin Harcourt’s bestselling Sci-ence Fusion program, including student editions, flip charts, and teacher editions.

Lapiz A 70,000-page legacy conversion project for a client’s asset management system was the highlight last year. Additionally,


there were 45,000 pages for MathML conversion. Tight deadline and frequent DTD updates were among the top chal-lenges. Highly customized and auto-mated solutions were developed to meet the short turnaround time, quality requirements, and productivity level.

Planman Technologies A collaboration with Danish company xml-tekst resulted in the IDA Reader, a user-friendly software application for the dyslexic and visually impaired users. A multiformat reader, it reads aloud text from a variety of file formats including DAISY (2.0 and 3.0), HTML, RTF, and XML. Launched last month at the CSUN Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities in San Diego, Calif., it also has additional features such as book-marking, highlighting, text search, and a library for dyslexics. Best of all, the software does file encryption at multiple levels to prevent piracy.

Repro India For a publisher that has more than half of its catalogue out of print (around 700 titles), the team suggested digitizing the titles to put them back on sale. A pilot project consisting of 10 titles was carried out. Titles were converted on an XML workflow, and deliverables included print-ready PDFs and ePub files. From there, the titles were archived and then distributed through Repro’s Digital Storefront, allowing customers to buy and print on demand.

Thomson Digital The team was given three days to turn around 7,700 pages of a Spanish reprint program. Input files arrived in batches of 600 to 700 pages, and the task involved incorporating corrections marked on tear sheets and relinking images from the client’s FTP folder. Version control was managed effec-tively through the use of Thomson Digital’s proprietary FMS (File Man-agement System), and only the team leader had access to the FTP to avoid work duplication and confusion. n

Proving themselves across segments and domains

Projects Showcase

No project, it seems, is too complex or daunting for Indian vendors. PW randomly selects some notable projects to show-case these vendors’ capabilities and domain expertise.

Cenveo For one publisher, the team developed programs to convert files in various for-mats (QuarkXPress, InDesign, and PDF) to end-XML. Converting 2,000 to 3,000 articles daily, the entire journal backlist was completed in 10 weeks. It took another two weeks to tweak the content to fit new requirements, and the files were then uploaded onto the publisher’s content management system for online publication. The team is now working on the client’s backlist of books.

Datamatics Providing end-to-end back-office publish-ing services for a leading legal publisher requires the team to turn around input files within 14 hours or risk being penalized by the printing company for the publisher. Daily volume may go from 400 pages to 1,500 pages (submitted by two to seven reporters), and deliverables include print-ready PDFs, Web-ready documents, and media-ready files. An XML-based work-flow is provided, and all reports (with enhanced search capabilities) are stored in the publisher’s repository for reuse.

diacriTech A medical series with more than 4,500 pages and 12,500 images required the team to use an online workflow to enable simultaneous collaboration with and among various contributors. The titles were hosted on diacriTech’s server to allow authors to make changes, and coau-thors to collaborate and share notes, in

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