StartWithXML: Making the Case for Applying XML to a Publishing Workflow
Making the Case for Applying XML to a Publishing Workflow
1st Edition
Published on 13. January 2009
45 pages
978-0-596-55091-2 (ISBN)
Description
Publishers face a "e;Copernican change."e; Until recently, the book was"e;the sun"e; of a publishing solar system, and all other opportunitieswere subsidiary rights revolving as planets around it. Now, theintellectual property is the sun, and the book becomes just one of theorbiting opportunities. To be successful in the 21st centuryenvironment, publishers must produce agile content: content that canbe rendered in different forms without great additional expense. XMLprovides both a path to agility and opens opportunities for currentand future digital content revenue streams.StartWithXML is an industry-wide project to understand and spread theknowledge publishers need to move forward with XML. It's about thebusiness issues driving the "e;why"e; of XML and the technical andorganizational issues, strategies, and tactics underlying the "e;how"e; ofgetting started. This research report takes a pragmatic look at XMLworkflows, addressing questions such as:Where am I and where do I want to end up?How much benefit do I want to obtain from content reuse and repurposing?How much work do I want to do myself?How much time and money will this take?What can I do internally to increase my chances of success?
More details
Content
- Intro
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Executive Summary
- What is XML? And should it really make a difference to what I do?
- 1.1. What the trends mean, economically
- 1.2. So, what's a publisher to do?
- 1.3. That's where XML comes in
- 1.4. So why isn't everybody doing it?
- 1.5. How important is a migration to XML?
- Why StartWithXML: The Business Perspective
- 2.1. The business case
- 2.1.1. Identifying ways in which XML provides a return on investment (ROI)
- 2.1.2. Different impacts for different books
- 2.1.3. Different models for different publishing programs
- 2.1.4. Creating options for the future
- 2.1.5. Taking company culture into consideration
- 2.1.6. Balancing investment resources and strategic goals
- 2.1.7. Alternatives to XML (uses/shortcomings)
- 2.2. Shortcomings of prevailing workflows
- 2.2.1. Optimized for only a single use of content
- 2.2.2. Difficulty outputting multiple formats
- 2.2.3. Cumbersome storage and retrieval
- 2.2.4. Lead times lengthened by process itself
- 2.2.5. Internal silos and resulting rework
- 2.2.6. Limits to marketing and product use
- 2.3. Product benefits available from adopting an XML workflow
- 2.3.1. Shorter lead times, improving market responsiveness
- 2.3.2. Readily identify, tag and monetize chunkable assets
- 2.3.3. Produce multiple versions from a single source
- 2.3.4. Support recombinant and reusable content
- 2.3.5. Enable one-to-one or many-to-many marketing
- 2.4. Process benefits available from adopting an XML workflow
- 2.4.1. Readily support search
- 2.4.2. Reduce errors and make corrections more easily
- 2.4.3. Improve cross-departmental interaction (break down silos)
- 2.4.4. Easily embed rights information
- 2.4.5. Designing to output in XML-write once
- read many
- 2.5. Collecting data to support a business case: a planning checklist
- 2.5.1. Establish and evaluate customer (end-user) requirements
- 2.5.2. Assess processes across functions (handoffs)
- 2.5.3. Model both current (operational) and future (strategic) benefits
- 2.5.4. Solicit senior-level support for sustained change
- 2.5.5. When do you "StartWithXML"?
- How to StartWithXML: The Operational Perspective
- 3.1. Planning for change
- 3.1.1. Establishing where you are
- 3.1.2. Determining where you want to be
- 3.1.3. Creating a plan to get to a future state
- 3.1.4. Managing a content workflow transition
- 3.2. How deeply do you want to tag content?
- 3.2.1. Setting business goals to shape future planning
- 3.2.2. Developing taxonomies
- 3.2.3. Impact of publishing characteristics
- 3.2.4. Metadata rights
- 3.2.5. Iterative nature of tagging
- 3.3. Making a transition to XML workflows
- 3.3.1. In-house software options
- 3.3.2. Vendor segments
- 3.3.3. Working with vendors
- 3.4. Operational planning and transition management
- 3.4.1. Estimating project development timeframes and costs
- 3.4.2. Working in XML when you use both internal and freelance resources
- 3.4.3. Implementing XML while still publishing
- 3.5. A common-sense implementation checklist
- 3.5.1. Obtain and maintain operating buy-in, support and continuing dialogue
- 3.5.2. Rank the key business benefits and measure progress openly
- 3.5.3. Plan for early wins, ideally spread across multiple functions
- 3.5.4. Exploit the value of prototyping
- 3.5.5. Capture and share deep editorial knowledge
- 3.5.6. Foster objective measurements
- 3.5.7. Capitalize on the value of downstream uses
