1

Overview of New Technologies in Publishing

Michael Cairns

Executive Management for the Chinese Publishing Industry

2

Technology in publishing, how it is implemented and how it is used is

increasingly the differentiator - not the content! - between the publishers that will

succeed and those that will fail.

3

Introduction and Agenda

Introduction & background

Historical perspective

Technology in the back office

Supporting the product development value chain

Customer-centric technology

Democratization of the publishing process

Forecasting the future of publishing technology

4

Historical Perspective

Over the past 500 years we have gone from: One Book => Bible One Author => Monk One Process => Years

But only in the past 10 years have we achieved: Any Book => Including ‘my book’ Any Author => Including me (and my friends) Any process => Within minutes

Functionality has expanded at the expense of cost: Far more for far less

Publishing operations are increasingly centered on technical solutions: enterprise resource planning, financial modeling, supply chain logistics

Publishing is less about print on paper and increasingly about technology

5

Technology in the back office

Until mid 1980s may publishing companies relied on batch processing and card key processing

No technology integration of back office functions: Accounting a manual process until wide adoption of personal computers in mid 1980s

Book publishing followed newspaper publishing in automation: i.e.: desk-top publishing

In mid-1990’s larger publishing companies began implementing ERP (SAP, Oracle, BAAN) systems in accounting

In late 1990’s more publishing companies adopted data warehouse technology (Oracle, Sybase)

In early 2000’s publishing companies began adopting supply chain and process improvement technology

6

Technology in Back Office

Significant benefits of scale for publishers that implemented these solutions early

Enabled gains in productivity

Raised reliance on in-house technical expertise: IT department became part of executive management

Expanded publisher’s control over processes: all page layout, data keying, etc. brought in-house at significant cost savings

Created ‘technical capacity’ and ‘capability’ that is now important for expansion

Greater appreciation for technology as a business driver

7

Supporting the Publishing Value Chain

Desk-top production in early – mid 1980’s Rapid increase in productivity Speed to market Significant reduction in expense Quark, Pagemaker, dBase SGML: highly ‘expensive’ mark-up language

Database publishing Creation of structured databases that were searchable by

customers CDROM launch in mid 1980s: Huge expansion in information

products Online information products: MAID, Dialog, with structured query

formats and regimented ‘professional’ only products

Merchandising Prior to Amazon.com virtually no marketing and merchandising was

‘electronic’

8

Supporting the Publishing Value Chain - Trade

Entire publishing process is now automated Authors submit files Files are databased Increasingly content is tagged for merchandising

Merchandising driving content management Amazon.com and on-line retailers Publisher’s developing own web presence Creation of content warehouses: Harpercollins, Random House,

Hachette, etc. Recognition that ‘sampling’ via web browser should be similar to an

in-store experience

Community Development of author specific sites Interlinking is a powerful tool for author/publisher success

9

HarperCollins: Browse Inside

10

Authonomy.co.uk

11

Supporting the Publishing Value Chain - Education

Similar process improvements to Trade

Maintains a print model Experimentation is gaining ground Implementation limits: Level of technical capacity at schools, costs

of technology, capacity to evaluate technology based tools

CDROM publishing partially successful Stand alone products Supplemental products

Using technology to broaden product offering Educational content Assessment and remediation Student performance and monitoring, Class planning Infrastructure

Education publishers become solution providers

12

Pearson: My Math Lab

13

Supporting the Publishing Value Chain – Professional

Current large information publishers were founded on ‘old proprietary’ database businesses: MAID, Dialog, Infotrak

Some included hardware: Reuters, Thomson

Vast consolidation around segments: Medical, Financial, Legal, Tax

Professional publishing leads way in development of ‘unstructured databases’: migrating away from table driven (Oracle db) approaches

Increased importance of xml tagging: programmatic importation of data from multiple sources creates valuable whole

Information publishers are innovators in use of technology to power their businesses

14

Reed Elsevier: OncologyStat

15

Customer-centric Technology

Development of ‘platforms’: from print journal to e-delivery of specific articles Publishers are developing tools and applications to support use of

content Content in context Content as part of the work-flow Elsevier, Reed, West,

Books and e-Books Early promise/hype never delivered Kindle isn’t an “e-book” reader it is an “e-platform” Sony e-Reader, Iliad, IPhone Flexible screens, Converged content

Subscription models replace purchase Library context Consumer: content on the move

Database marketing: Profiling/behavioral

16

Democratization of Publishing Process

Incredible explosion of content Anyone is a publisher Any type of content

Driven by access to professional tools From InDesign to Dreamweaver to Blogger: Barriers are eliminated Computing power cheap Network effects significant

Self-publishing process 45,000 titles with Lulu: $99/per title for a printed book On-demand publishing programs: no title out of print

Photobooks Blurb.com, Photobucket, etc.

Increasingly ‘mystique’ of publishing is eliminated: Consumers will source their own content, produce it and consume it without (direct) involvement of traditional publisher

What happens in nations where traditional publishing is less entrenched – India, China, Africa?

17

Lulu.com

18

New Entrants and Wild Cards

Google and the Google Book Program Not fully resolved Closed system Benefits unknown but potentially significant

Digitization generally To what end? How much is too much? Who is in charge and are we making mistakes we will regret later?

The Network Effect Potential vast productivity and effectiveness gain from network

computing Collaboration and Crowdsourcing Shared applications and application development

Maintaining the value of content vs ‘good enough’ Significant challenge for all publishers: commoditization

19

Librarything.com

20

Forecasting the Future of Technology in Publishing

Publishing and technology will become synonymous (if it hasn’t already)

Many losers who are slow to migrate to web delivery, xml based and ‘open’ social network orientation

Expansion of solutions based publishing: content is secondary to the provision of a work-flow solution, an integrated application and/or an open ‘widget’ application enabling further leverage Amazon web services

Education publishers will follow information publishers in rapid adoption of solutions based applications

All publishers will be slow to adopt open social networks and new entrants will take market share Google isn’t finished