nyu publishing program: overview of technology in publishing
DESCRIPTION
Overview presentation delivered to visiting Chinese publishing industry executives participating in NYU's publishing executive management program.TRANSCRIPT
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Overview of New Technologies in Publishing
Michael Cairns
Executive Management for the Chinese Publishing Industry
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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’
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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
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HarperCollins: Browse Inside
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Authonomy.co.uk
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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
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Pearson: My Math Lab
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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
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Reed Elsevier: OncologyStat
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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
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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?
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Lulu.com
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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
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Librarything.com
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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