Print to digital,
digital first,
simultaneous publishing –
what’s your strategy?
An SPi Global Whitepaper: Published march 17, 2014
We inSPire success.
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The road to the future
can be built…But not
if we insist on building it
with models from the past.
John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media
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Rise of Content
in the
Information Age
The move to a digital content
world has been a rapid one.
The amount of digital information
created and shared globally—
from documents to pictures to
texts to tweets—increased from
1.8 zettabytes in 2011 to
4 zettabytes in 2013, an increase
of 112%, and is expected to reach
6.6 zettabytes in 2020. To give you
an idea of the scale of our growing
digital output, 1 zettabyte equals
1 trillion gigabytes. It’s almost
unfathomable.
In addition to the uptick in
the sheer amount of digital
information in the world,
powerful user interfaces for
content consumption are
becoming ubiquitous.
GLOBAL DIGITAL INFORMATION CREATED AND SHARED,
in zettabytes*
8
Amount of global digital information created and
shared (from documents, to pictures, to tweets)
6
to nearly 2 zettabytes in 2011.
4
grew 9 times in 5 years
2
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013E
2015E
*1 zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes. Source: IDC Report “Extracting Value from Chaos”, 6/11
Content consumption is
increasingly a screen-based
endeavor. 90% of all media
interactions are through
smartphones, laptops/PCs, tablets,
and television. Smartphone
users will total 1.75 billion in
2014, according to estimates by
eMarketer. Meanwhile, the
average person spends 4.4 hours of
their leisure time per day in front
of screens.
Publishers are now in the midst
of massive change, responding
to the information inundation
and multi-platform consumption
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U.S. EBOOK SALES TO SURPASS PRINTED BOOK SALES IN 2017 (US$ BILLION)
20
15
PRINT AND
AUDIOBOOKS
10
5
EBOOKS
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
Source: Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2013
habits the above statistics indicate.
Where once publishers were
accustomed to delivering content
through a single, simple, static
medium, they now must publish
in immersive, interactive, and
adaptive forms. It’s not just the
arrival of the ebook, but a whole
ecosystem of digital delivery
mechanisms that have disrupted a
long-established way of
doing business.
This is not news per se for most
publishers. Many digital platforms
are already profitable and
publishers expect this growth
to continue. Both consumer and
education publishing show the
ebook market expanding and print
contracting. It’s predicted that for
the U.S. trade book industry ebook
sales will surpass printed books
sales as soon as 2017. And many of
the larger publishers are already
demonstrating a significant shift
from print to digital revenues. In
the education industry, the overall
market for ebooks is growing and
the proportions of units sold in
print textbooks, digital textbooks
and whole-course solutions
(combination print and digital) are
shifting tremendously.
Digital: A Splintered
Publishing Model
Really, digital is a very broad term
for a plethora of products, from
print replica ebooks to digital-first,
enhanced ebooks and native apps,
as well as websites and web-based
interactive solutions. While digital
offers publishers a whole new set
of opportunities to access readers
and deliver content, it also presents
workflow and delivery obstacles.
One of the problems presented by
the Digital Age is that the number
of output formats (EPUB, HTML5,
PDF, .PRC, MOBI) and output
devices (iOS tablet and mobile,
Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Android) has
multiplied. Instead of one static
output—the printed book—
publishers now must manage a
host of changing output formats.
And although digital publishing
offers a rich ecosystem for content,
it is also a far more complex one.
As a result, digital publishing has
presented workflow difficulties
that have aggravated publishers’
production processes. Following
is a list of some of the common
digital intricacies that have
confounded traditional workflows.









M
ultiple authors
M
ultiple versions of author
manuscript and review
I nteractive assets
S
equencing print and
digital products
S
emantic/content in context
D
ynamic/real-time
W
orkflow/CMS
Content reuse, custom
publishing and aggregation
M
ulti-channel publishing
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How the
Industry
Works
Essentially the dynamism of
digital publishing is both a gift
and a curse. Generally speaking,
friction points exist because many
publishers are still using legacy
workflows, in part or in full, to
produce digital-era products.
As the quote at the opening of
this paper suggests, overlaying
existing legacy production models
does not get us to where we must
go. New roads must be paved
that better correspond with the
digital publishing landscape. New
techniques must be embraced.
“Any organization that wants
its content to be transformed—
whether education, STM, or trade
publishers—will benefit,” says
The pressures of the current publishing
environment including consumer demand
for both print and digital formats, pressure
from distribution channels, evolving
technology and mobile consumption, all
require a focus on results, speed-to-market,
and low cost. There is really no alternative
but to adopt some form of simultaneous
publishing to make this happen. Whether
it’s XML-first, immediate conversion, or
true simultaneous production, the print
and digital editions must come out at the
same time. Most leading publishers are
already making this happen.
Ken Brooks
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, Global Supply Chain Management
McGraw Hill Education
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John Prabhu, Vice President,
Solutions Architect at SPi Global.
However, Prabhu cautions: “The
actual implementation of new
workflow strategies will vary
depending on an organization’s
needs and capability and readiness
for transformation.”
Following is a snapshot of
common workflows in the
publishing industry. Of course,
no two organizations have the
same production footprint,
but certain commonalities
exist as publishers explore the
management of digital and print
products. Overall, these models
indicate how publishers are
gradually introducing
digital processes earlier in a
product’s genesis.
Traditional Workflow:
Print First, Digital Last
Simultaneous Publishing:
Print & Digital (XML intact)
“Traditionally what we’ve seen is a
workflow where people make their
print product first and their digital
last,” says Prabhu. Here an author
manuscript is generated, sent for
styling, then to proofreading/copy
edit, artwork is made, it is typeset,
and then a PDF is sent to print.
Then the PDF content is extracted,
content styled, transformed to
XML, edited, and released for
digital uses.
In order to capitalize on the
efficiencies of digital, organizations
are working to get their content
into XML much sooner in the
workflow. In this approach, we’re
seeing content being transformed
to XML after copyediting/
proofreading but before the
artwork and typesetting steps.
During the print styling and
proofreading stages, tags are being
inserted into content to make
the transformation to XML much
smoother. At the same time that it
goes out for typesetting, the XML
can be exported and converted
into a digital product, for example
into HTML for an online product.
Instead of waiting until a PDF is
ready for print, once content is
being sent to typesetting it can be
picked up and sent on to digital
products. In some cases fragments
of the printed content are picked
up for digital.
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TRADITIONAL WORKFLOW: PRINT FIRST, DIGITAL LAST
Print-Edit/
Content Style
Print-edit/
Content Style
PDF
QC/QA
Copyedit/
Proofread
Author
Manuscript
PDF for
Print
Typesetting
(InDesign/
Quark/3B2/XPP)
Transform to
XML
Pre-edit/
Content Style
XML to
HTML
XML
Parser QA
XML Edit
Content and
Image Extraction
HTML Loaded
into Online /
Product
Online
QA
Release
SIMULTANEOUS PUBLISHING: PRINT & DIGITAL (XML INTACT)
Artwork
Print-edit/
Content Style
Copyedit /
Proofread
Transform to
XML
PDF
QC/QA
XML Edit
Author
Manuscript
PDF
for Print
Typesetting
(InDesign/
Quark/3B2/
XPP)
Rich Media
Export XML
XML Edit
XML
Parser QA
XML to HTML
HTML loaded
into Online/
Product
Online
QA
Release
07
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UNIFIED APPROACH: PRINT & DIGITAL
legend:
Open Source eBook
XML-first Production
Proprietary eBook
Proprietary Platform
--- eBook, Courses,
Assessments &
Interactive Assets
Rich Media, HTML5, Course
Cartridge & Assessments
created using Proprietary or
Open Standards
Manuscript
(Word)
Typecoded/
Copyedited
Manuscript
Final XML Export
from InDesign File
Transform
XML to EPUB
Rich Media/
HTML5 Assets
Edit/Digital
Suppressions
applied to XML
Edit/Update
Stylesheet
Course Objectives
& Assessments
XML Parser/
Validation
XML (Generate
from Manuscript)
InDesign Master File
(New/Re-used)
XML imported into
InDesign Master File
EPUB Check/
Validation
XML Courses &
Media Ingested
into Online Platform
PDF Print
QA
(Desktop/
Mobile)
QA
(Online
Platform)
PDF Proof
EPUB Distributed to
Retailers
eBook to Production/
Live Server
PDF for Print
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As the number of devices our content is ingested on explodes and the formats and
technology continue to evolve, it is essential for us as content creators to make sure
our process is platform agnostic. We have adapted our production workflows to
make sure digital is not an afterthought and digital formats are considered at every
stage of our process.
Sanj Kharbanda
Senior Vice President, Digital Markets
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade
Unified Approach:
Print & Digital
As noted earlier, the number of
publishing output formats has
grown from one (the printed book)
to upwards of twenty. Applying
legacy production flows has
frustrated publishers big and
small. The unified approach to
publishing workflows is intended
to make the splintered publishing
model scalable.
Fulfilling
the Promise of
Digital
In a unified workflow model, print
becomes one component of a
multi-media portfolio, and is no
longer the starting point. As digital
processes move further upstream,
publishers are able to utilize the
digital medium to its fullest and
harness the efficiencies enabled
by XML. “We’re seeing this more
and more where content is being
shared across delivery modalities,”
says Nicolai Agcaoili, Senior Vice
President, Philippine Operations,
SPi Global. “In a unified approach,
content is created and sometimes
immediately transformed into
XML that’s used to generate
digital products such as EPUB,”
says Agcaoili.
The incorporation of rich assets
is also eased. For example, with
educational coursework, course
objectives or assessments can
be planted in digital products
simultaneous with print
production, instead sequencing
production end-to-end. The
flexibility of XML means that in
many instances only a portion of
the print book finds its way into
digital or, conversely, where assets
that are created digitally are used
in print products. Prabhu says there
are a lot of variances in this kind
of approach, but it’s very common
with organizations that are
targeting both print and digital.
Overall, a unified approach is a
reaction to user demand that
content be available faster, easier,
and in a word, responsive. “People
are not going to consume at the
book level or chapter level in one
shot,” says Prabhu. “The attention
span has come down. They want
it much faster, they want it much
more immersive, they want it more
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responsive. Which means your
approach has to go away from
pages and books and chapters and
go to the ‘chunk’ level.”
Education: Modular,
Interactive & Adaptive
In the education sector,
a structured approach to
manipulating content modules
is becoming more and more
common. Publishers are moving
away from page-based or “pagefidelity” publishing and looking at
content assets that are organized
and flowed into the array of
screens that exist. Text is only one
of the content modules among rich
elements such as images, sound,
and video. How these modules are
organized and identified determine
how content is structured into
lessons, and then into courses and
an overall curriculum.
A unified digital and print
workflow also engenders the
adaptive powers of digital
publishing. Through the use
of content metadata tagging,
relevant content can be served
based on student competencies
and interactive elements can be
added. For example, a chemistry
student could click or hover on a
chemical compound to see a
visual of the compound or
reveal menus that allow further
investigation. Or based on a
student’s demonstrated aptitude,
harder or easier assessment
questions could be streamed into
adaptive coursework.
Digital Asset Management &
Dynamic Content
A unified workflow also makes
the increasingly complicated task
of digital asset management—
well, more manageable. It
enables publishers to efficiently
tag content, protect assets for
appropriate use, search and
retrieve content, and bulk-edit
multiple versions on multiple
platforms.
All this can be done dynamically,
too—which is a necessary response
to how people are consuming
content. Marked-up content
(XML, HTML5) becomes the
centerpiece for the future of multichannel publishing.
This allows for the “chunking”
of content, as is often done in
education and scholarly publishing.
It represents the departure from
the page as the most fundamental
element of content, sorting content
down to a more granular level
for more sophisticated content
management. Such chunking
increases the dexterity of a
publisher and reveals new content
monetization opportunities.
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For Pearson to become a global education company focused on digital delivery and
learner outcomes a compact content architecture is required that moves beyond
the linear, PDF based models of the past to single source multi-output models
based on open source industry standards. This will allow us to develop more
efficient, “output ready”, production models that lower cost and bring product to
market faster. To ensure the success of this strategy, Pearson will remain committed
to global efforts like EDUPUB, which is defining a lightweight superstructure for
the interchange and deployment of educational content to ensure that industry
standards mesh and meet the requirements of next-generation learning content.
Paul Belfanti
Director Content Architecture
Pearson Education
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MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENTS
31%
57%
Having the right culture to foster and
support innovation
44%
The ability to capture ideas throughout
the organization
31%
Strong visionary business leadership
37%
Having a capacity and capability for creativity
30%
The willingness to challenge organizational norms
and take risks
For example, mining content
archives has become a fresh
revenue stream for many
publishers based on existing
assets. “Publishers are mining
their backfiles, cutting up a lot of
reference titles into core concepts
and making those available
for sale,” says Prabhu. “It’s not
cannibalizing anything. It’s a great
revenue source.”
Standards
One thing that makes such a
unified approach workable is
all of the standards that have
begun to emerge around digital
publishing. These allow publishers
to evolve workflow models from
a simple print-centric world to a
complex electronic world while
ensuring scalability. The standards
for EPUB, Kindle, HTML5 and the
standards bodies that help ensure
accessibility and interoperability
all combine to ensure digital
products work and publishers
don’t have to constantly reinvent
the wheel.
HTML5 is an especially promising
standard empowered by the
collaboration of standards bodies,
(such as W3C and IDPF), browser
manufacturers, and technology
providers. “There’s a huge swell of
support for HTML5 as a standard
on which rich media assets can be
built and made interoperable,”
says Raman Tiwari, Senior Vice
President, India Operations,
SPi Global.
Collaborating with customers
Digital
Transformation:
Risks, Challenges
& The Ingredients
for Success
Based on conversations with
publishers, it becomes clear
that a number of elements are
consistently viewed as risks and
challenges to transitioning to a
unified print and digital workflow;
such things as a lack of innovative
skills for defining the right digital
strategy, difficulty finding the
talent to implement, escalating
costs, and/or unwillingness to
cannibalize existing revenue
streams. In other cases, complexity
of existing infrastructure makes
digital transformation prohibitively
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09%
26%
Being able to locate and train the right people
11%
Being able to secure the right levels of funding
04%
Use of new technology (such as social media)
to support innovation
None/Don’t know
11%
Collaborating with suppliers
impractical. Many organizations
also fail to understand or are
unconvinced of the potential
benefits of changing and the
importance of starting that
change now.
John Prabhu uses the term
“corporate drag” to describe the
friction that often exists when
large organizations are trying to
make changes. Certain segments
or important players may
hinder progress. “Your existing
organizational culture may not
be embracing this. You have to
effect change management within
that culture.”
Prabhu continues: “Organizations
say they’re going to be 98 to 100%
digital within some period of time,
but when you talk to them, all of
their processes are based around
print, from how salespeople are
compensated selling books to how
they know what products they
have. So it’s a significant shift in an
organization’s thought pattern.”
Of course, constraints on
transformation are also very
practical: there are financial costs
involved in making personnel
changes, investing in new
workflows, and investigating
new delivery methods. Publishers
rightfully question what the return
on investment is, how you measure
such large-scale organizational
changes, and what the time frame
for metamorphosis is.
Ingredients for Success
Based on its work with publishers
and conversations with potential
clients, SPi Global has also
been able to glean the most
important ingredients needed
for transformational success.
Tellingly, digital transformation
proves to require a cultural
shift as much as it does a
technological or procedural one.
57% of respondents to a survey
on digital transformation said
having the right culture to foster
and support innovation is key, 44%
stated strong visionary business
leadership is important, and 37%
think a willingness to challenge
organizational norms and take
risks is needed.
Here are some further crucial
ingredients for success that
publishers have highlighted:
Collaboration
It’s very important for publishers
to embrace a collaborative
work environment, which often
didn’t need to exist previously.
This collaboration is especially
important between editorial
and technology departments
as print functions are unified
with typically separate digital
functions. Coordination on
products may take place more
frequently and among a much
larger group of stakeholders,
including commissioning
editors, developmental editors,
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CONSTRAINTS
43%
30%
Financial resources
Lack of talent
41%
21%
Existing organization culture
programming staff, and IT. This
affects how a product is made and
brought to market.
There has to be a transfer of
knowledge between divisions
within an organization, says
Prabhu. “Often it’s happening in a
fragmented way. It’s not happening
in a unified way, in a collaborative
way.” Currently print teams are
so focused on print and the static
page while digital teams don’t
understand the nuances of how
layout and pedagogy are related.
Product Planning
Product planning requires a whole
new set of questions to be asked
at the outset: What is this product?
What are you trying to achieve?
Is it global or for the U.S. only? Do
you want to reach people with
disabilities? Are their translations
needed? Will it require HTML5
coding to allow functionality in
both iOS and Android? All this has
to be coordinated among different
Political and regulatory factors
working groups, where previously
the product would be handed
off to the next person in the
assembly line.
Professional Development
Some personnel may need
to be developed into knew
functionalities. For example, a
copy editor might be moved into
a quasi-programmatic position,
doing XML mark-up in addition
to traditional copy editing. In
other cases difficult human
capital decisions may also need
to be made as print and digital
unification creates redundancies.
Proof of Concept
Being able to show empirically
how a unified approach would
work, what the workflow would
look like, and what the deliverables
will be can go a long way to
ensure alignment exists across
different groups.
An Endurance Race
Prabhu, Agcaoili, and Tiwari all
agree that the industry is only in
the beginning of a shift from a
print centric business model to a
content centric model. “All of the
major publishers are going through
or have gone through major
reorganizations to unify print and
digital in the U.S. and international
markets because they need to
have a unified technology that will
benefit faster time to market, use
the content more intelligently,”
says Prabhu. “The unification
between print and digital is a
major decision to be taken by
the publisher and SPi Global as
a partner cannot demand and
enforce change. It’s an organization
change that has to happen first.
We can prove the concept but if
you want to implement it across
an organization it is a change
within the publisher. That’s what
publishers are going through
right now.”
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18%
09%
Inadequate technology
14%
Nothing is stopping me from being innovative
But such cultural and
organizational transformation
takes time. A mindset change must
occur from thinking of oneself as
a book publisher to thinking of
oneself as a content publisher. And
this shift takes time, says Prabhu.
“Most organizations have now
realized that this is a marathon.
These changes are going to
happen over time not just in a big
bang or a sprint. So culture and
workforce dynamics, the people,
the technology, the processes are
all hugely important in developing
a strategy as you move from print
to a unified digital approach.”
Weak governance/leadership
15
About SPi Global
SPi Global empowers leading publishers and content providers to
maximize the value of their content online and offline by infusing
technology, know-how, and innovation into their businesses. SPi Global
provides its clients with a competitive advantage by creating unique
strategies in redefining a business model, enhancing an existing
or developing a new service offering and increasing operational
efficiencies by introducing a system or redefining workflows.
With a complete suite of digital, publishing, content development
and enrichment, marketing, and customer support services, we help
companies adapt to the rapidly changing demands and needs of their
own customers through our unique and innovative solutions.
For over 30 years, SPi Global has been helping leading publishers,
not-for-profit organizations, information providers, and
Fortune 1000 companies to increase their revenues, reduce costs,
improve time-to-market, and automate operations. With over 500
clients and 9,000 content specialists, no job is too large for us.
For more information on how SPi Global can help you maximize
your content online and offline, please contact:
Jamie Israel
Director of Global Marketing, Content Solutions
M 732 662 8345
[email protected]
www.spi-global.com