Digital Content Publishing - Getting Started

Publishers need to move to all digital production methods with some urgency. Really!

Digital publishing requires a different Production perspective – Each title must start in digital form, be edited in digital form, stored in digital form, and output in a variety of digital market channel ready forms.

Digital Publishing requires a different Archiving perspective – Your content must be prepared for permanence with plans for updating as technology progresses.  No more sticking a CD in some drawer.

Your digital content strategy cannot rely on outsourced conversion partners, PDF to ePub things, or as an after-thought to print. It's all changing too fast. Publishers must control their own digital content and have it ready for anything. It's not about creating an ePub. Its about being ready for the inevitable. 

I am not saying that print publishing is going away, only that digital publishing is "upon us", is an fast evolving and changing business, needs a mindset change and the tools to match the mindset.

This post describes in relative detail the business advantages of moving to an all digital environment, in this case IGP:FLIP for a lot of content.

As discussed in the previous post there are change requirements that should be considered for digital production, but it doesn't have to be difficult. IGP:FLIP has all the functionality built in to get you there more or less instantly.

Collaboration

1. IGP:FLIP has been designed for organizations of all sizes to empower multi-role, multi-location, collaborative publishing of the widest range and variety of documents in multiple formats simultaneously.
2. With IGP:FLIP a document never moves and can be accessed by anybody (meaning an authorized user) from anywhere, at any time. That "anybody", can see the current state of a document in any format, instantly, at any time. The document is always correct. Is always the truth.
   
3. IGP:FLIP can be easily and effectively used by a single person to create sophisticated documents. It is probably easier to learn and use than a word processor, and it retains all the familiar user interface components with which people are familiar.
4. IGP:FLIP can be easily and effectively used by a large multi-function team carrying out different roles and working on different sections of the document at the same time.

Not WYSIWIG

1. The IGP:Writer component, where the authoring, editing and layout are done, is not not a WYSIWIG environment. It's a What You See is What You Mean, interface. The reason for this is there is no one format that is a correct view for digital publishing. You can be creating multiple output formats including Online, eBooks and SCORM packages; reflowing and reusing content, and many other practical uses. Therefore, there is no correct WYSIWIG environment. This content abstraction is one of the biggest challenges in digital publishing.
   
2. It is NOT a word processor, although the primary text editing tools look and act in a similar manner. It is an XHTML editing  and format flow environment. This can be a little disturbing for people who work with Word processor binary formats. IGP:FLIP uses W3C standard XHTML so there is no proprietary binary format, just editing to output formats.

Not a Web CMS

1. IGP:FLIP is not a Web Content Management System CMS (W-CMS) in any respect. A Web Content Management System is optimized for authoring and maintaining content on dynamic websites. While it can be used as a Web CMS - for example the Infogrid Pacific Website pages are delivered from an IGP:FLIP installation - it isn't specifically designed for that. Pages should be moved to an optimized delivery environment.
   
2. The content of any IGP:Reader page can be delivered as a mash-up into any other site; as a fragment, or full XHTML page, with, or without CSS. This means more sophisticated documents can be maintained for Online access from a more suitable editorial environment, and delivered when and where required. Examples of where IGP:FLIP can enhance or better Web CMS products is the low cost and ease with which complex education, training and learning packages can be created, maintained and published to the Internet.

Product usage scenarios

Front list publishing

1. IGP:FLIP brings significant production productivity advantages for nearly any type of book or document, while always retaining powerful content reuse, online  and format publishing  features.
2. Using IGP:FLIP for front list publishing requires a cultural change if it is to be effective. An organization must generate the change management temperament to  take advantage of the new work methodologies.
3. IGP:FLIP has not really been designed for casual documentation, although the powerful remix functions do allow note-taking and memo type techniques. It is very effectively for fast authoring and revision of valuable maintained content - such as manuals, training material and of course books.
4. It shines when used in a environment where planning, coordination and control are in place. Then the quality, productivity and controlled freedom benefits are very large and immediate. Whether the composition and flow of a document is done in-house, or by a contractor working from off-site, the core control stays with the publisher.

Remix republishing

1. IGP:FLIP is designed to allow content to be reused, and it makes it very easy to bring different content items together from different sources for a wide variety of purposes. A significant application is localization (not translation), where selected locale contextual content replaces source content, and date, time, currency and other locale items are modified.
2. The content is correctly tagged using IGP:FoundationXHTML. This makes it immediately ready for a wide range of reuse options without extensive styling and layout work.

Content object publishing & reuse

1. Enterprises of all types are moving more to Topic based authoring where it is suitable. This immediately creates  long-term, high-value content assets.
2. Topic based content is currently dominated by XML systems based on DITA and SCORM to ensure interoperability but these two frameworks are specific to technical text and training text. It  is difficult and expensive to use them for a wide variety of document types.
3. IGP:FoundationXHTML in conjunction with IGP:ACOM brings most of the same benefits of content objects, without the technology cost overheads.

Reader Subscription Access

1. Subscription content means making content available to controlled users on a controlled basis through an Online Reader. IGP:FLIP has an Online Reader built right in to make it easy to publish content onto the Internet. In fact this feature is running all the time.

Front List Publishing

1. The immediate benefits gained by using IGP:FLIP for front list publishing are:
2. Dramatically shorten publishing times
3. The production output is valuable and ready for:
   1. Print production
   2. Online Publishing
   3. eBook and other format generation
   4. Content Object  creation
      1. without any further processing. And with additional editorial inputs.
      2. Multiple variant localization
4. New business models are opened
5. Manuscript preparation
   1. Manuscripts are generally provided to publishers as MS Word documents. There is little automation possible between MS Word (or any other word-processor input) and the system. What can be done is manuscripts can be styled with IGP:FLIP Structure Styles and imported. Any general wordprocessor styles are stripped off and the basic HTML structures are imported. If you are preparing manuscripts for import into RW don't spend too much time overstyling them.
6. Editorial processes
   1. Copy and proof editing can be carried out directly Online by any participant. All changes are recorded in the revision tree, and saved versions can be compared at any time. There is no need for a separate markup process. However if the house work method is for markup history to be maintained, once imported the manuscript can be published and editors can do their markup in IGP:Reader using annotations at the paragraph level .
   2. Of course there is nothing to stop historical PDF markup processes being carried out. It is easy to create special wide-margin versions to allow PDF annotation or print and annotate, and PDF's can be produced by page (Chapter / Topic / Article) or as the entire document.
7. Design, flow and extent control
   1. IGP:FLIP uses flow rendering engines to replace typesetting applications. The main advantage of this approach is a document can be seen in its final form at any time, and within section limits, multiple participants can work on different parts of the same document significantly reducing time to market. Remember, the document never moves.
   2. There are a lot of aspects to flow control and in a high-volume, high-quality production system the issues that are taken into account are:
      1. Character and word kerning
      2. Line turns and hyphenation
      3. Paragraph turns
      4. Page turns with Widow/Orphans
      5. Chapter ends and turns – page line count and last line character count.
      6. Page extent control
      7. Page float controlled content objects and their relationship with the galley (figures, images, illustrations, tables, etc.)

Generated Content

1. Generated content completes any sophisticated document for any purpose. IGP:FLIP allows multi-format generated content strategies with the subtleties and variations required to support print, online and multiple e-book formats.
2. Generated text (running headers, tables of content, Glossaries, indexes, etc.)
3. Notes and footnotes positioning, processing and numbering, with different strategies for different documents.
4. Inserted text (templated advertising pages, etc.)

The Frontlist Publishing Roles

1. Depending on the organization and how IGP:FLIP is used, some combination of the following roles is required to get the best from the production environment. These are roles and depending on the organization and project, and can be carried out by one person, or a multi-function, multi-location team.

1. Project Manager. The Project Manager is usually (or ideally) the document owner and activity coordinator when there are multiple participants, multiple document production stages, and multiple document parts or types. The document owner has the full control over who can access and modify the document.
2. Authors, reviewers and Authorizers. Sophisticated revision management allows organizations to apply formal review and authorization processes to every IGP:FLIP page of a document. In addition both IGP:FLIP and IGP:Reader allow notes and comments to be added directly into the content at appropriate points. These can be stripped out at any time. They are always stripped out when any type of format is produced so they never appear in output documents.
3. Manuscript Editors and Copy Editors. Once imported into IGP:FLIP manuscripts can be immediately seen in the output formats in the IGP:Reader online View, or as a Preview PDF. This is a unique advantage of the tool. While the production environment is optimized for production, the finished output is only a single click away at any time. Text can be changed instantly from the editing interface and the results seen in all required output formats. The edit revision tree maintains a complete list of minor, draft, edit or revision changes so all document modifications, and who made them can be seen at any time. Annotations can be applied directly into the bodytext.
4. Metadata Editors. This is probably a sub-role of Copy Editors, but depending on the publication type and purpose, may have independent responsibilities. Metadata can be applied at the document level, but in addition, each section (chapter) can have independent metadata if it is going to be reused for a Content Object strategy. By default IGP:FLIP supports descriptive, pedagogical, rights, and functional metadata. Metadata can be modified and customized for any additional or different requirements.
5. Indexers. Indexers can work in a number of ways. The most direct is to put index markers directly into the text. The Index field markup will be visible in the Writer view. Direct index items will be generated when the print PDF is made, or for other formats when the document is processed through the PublishNOW! toolkit. This can of course happen at any time.  If an Indexer has a target page extent for the index they can view this by generating the book PDF at any time.
6. Template Designers. Books can be purely template driven, in which case the template is pre-defined and used without modification; or templates can be changed and extended as the book progresses. IGP:FLIP gives designers control over the smallest issues, important for more sophisticated layouts such as text books. Template designers can start with one of the basic designs and modify it as required, or create their own designs following the templating rules. Templates can be changed right up to the last minute, because it takes just a few seconds to generate the final print PDF.
7. Graphic Artists. Every image placed into a document comes with a default production positional image. Graphic artists work with their normal tools and create images and upload them to the Media Manager. They can replace positionals with a single click. Images need to be created in Print resolution using the Image guidelines and are automatically converted to Reader formats.
8. STM Editors. Where books contain maths, chemistry notation or similar there are two approaches that can be taken. The items can be prepared as images and inserted, or MML+SVG can be used.
9. XML Flow Editors, Compositors. XML flow editing is a new role, but on large and complex books with multiple participants is possibly a required skill set. When books require image floating and flow controls, it is fastest and probably generates the best quality output if a specialist focuses on the task.