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Workflow Part 2

One of the ‘joys’ of not getting quite enough sleep at night is that you don’t always say things with the kind of nuance that you might intend. Sometimes the coffee speaks for you.

Unfortunately that happened yesterday with my post about production, which was taken in some quarters as a damning indictment of publishers, rather than a post about some of the problems we face creating decent e-books. Coffee 1, Optimist 0.

Anyway, after I published the post, I was chatting with a friend and colleague at one of the big publishers about their production process. She told me that although they have been converting PDF files into e-books, they are moving towards changing their workflow. This can’t happen overnight though, she said. Changing something that complicated takes time, especially when people have to learn new skills.

She also reminded me that we have to put things into context. Publishers are not the hold-outs they are often portrayed as (or at least not all of them are) — e-books are still only a small part of the overall business, and even though we’ve seen a rapid growth in the market, it is not the same for every genre, category, or publisher. New devices (with different standards) are also appearing on the market with alarming regularity.

None of which means that publishers should sit on their hands of course. But — as my friend rightly pointed out — this a process not “a flip a switch situation.”

10 Comments

  1. Jeff

    I’m a production guy at a (very) small publisher and I have to disagree; you were right the first time. Polished eBooks are not that hard to create if you have someone who groks HTML and CSS. Image- or footnote-heavy books, the DRM layer, and platform-proofing are the only things that take even a little effort. Even the most backwards PCS or desktopping program should be able to spit out some XML that someone can hack together into something that Calibre can work with. If a big- or medium-sized publisher’s production department can’t handle this sort of thing on their own then they’re one sorry-ass production department.

  2. Dan

    Thanks for your comment Jeff. I’m going to respectfully disagree. I have no doubt that production departments at medium and large publishers can Macgyver individual e-books (believe it or, they hire talented people), but that’s not we’re talking about here. We’re talking about mass producing quality e-books and changing the in-house workflow accordingly — not creating one or two titles on an ad hoc basis.

    Multiply what you’re saying by the volume of titles these folks work on (and factor in a sizable backlists for most publishers) and consider the time and effort it would take. E-books represent less than 5% of most trade publishers business, is it any wonder they’re concentrating on their print editions right now?

    Yes, publishers need to consider e-books and rethink their workflow. My point today was that we can’t expect them to do it overnight.

  3. note to self: Buy ebookdesigners.com

  4. Jeff

    Ah yes, I hadn’t considered back catalogs (did I mention my publisher was small?). Point taken. But choices made in the past 5 or 10 years, such as the investment in XML to tag assets for future-proofing or a strong web development skills are what production should have been on top of before now. That production managers would be willing to turn this into contract work doesn’t just mean that they’ve been caught flat-footed, but they they aren’t willing to catch up to all of the workflow improvements they could have been taking advantage of over the past decade.

    My corner of the publishing world (legal reference materials) simply wouldn’t have survived without shifting its posture to web-based publishing. The same sort of sea change is coming for books. Publishers are going to have more time to convert, obviously, but it’s disappointing to see such half-hearted first steps.

    • Dan

      Thanks Jeff. I think your point is similar to the one that Pablo was making, and, broadly speaking, I think we agree — publishers do need to moving on this. My second post was just intended to provide some context — to explain some of the underlying business issues and why change isn’t happening as fast as perhaps we think it should. Don Linn’s post on that very subject, which I link to today, is also worth reading I think…

      Anyway, thanks again Jeff — I really appreciate your thoughts and comments. Keep ’em coming… :-)

  5. Off subject but Dan what’s your coffee or method of choice just curious? Intelligent comments from both sides; dialogue is healthy. I think you all three make excellent points including Dan’s friend.

    Re: the poll I had a thought recently to encourage you to strive to bring offline online. Everyone is getting good at reposting and sharing what’s already online but I think the more examples of things like this discussion with your friend that you can bring offline here the better this site will be. Of course that’s really easy for me to say from the sidelines so take it with a grain of salt, your site is great as it is.

    • Dan

      Hollis: LOL. When I’m making it myself at my leisure: a stovetop Bialetti. But these days it’s mostly filter or, if I’m out, a black Americano or straight-up espresso.

      Thanks for the feedback as always. I will definitely try and bring in more conversations when they’re relevant. :-)

  6. Lindsey Thomas Martin

    I’m curious about why major publishers are not better prepared and have not long ago made, as Jeff put it, ‘the investment in XML to tag assets for future-proofing’. The technology for this has been available for at least 25 years (SGML, mid1980s; XML, late 1990s). When I worked for an academic publisher during the first half of the 1990s we were marking up texts with SGML that went directly to the Press. Today, if a one is laying out and prepping press-ready PDFs for printing or web-ready PDFs for posting, InDesign will probably be somewhere in the workflow but this doesn’t preclude tagged source documents.

    • Dan

      Thanks for your comments today Lindsey. I think the simple answer is that hasn’t been a necessity (or at least a priority) for most trade publishers… I’m just speculating, but I don’t suppose most trade publishers (operating entirely in print) would have seen a need until now. Suddenly it’s very important and it’s going to take time to adjust.

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