March 27, 2000

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New Technologies Transform Publishing Industry
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In addition, online files for what's known as "pre-flighting" book designs, which translate into test versions of books with cover designs, can take place using offset printers and the Adobe Acrobat page document format, letting a publisher use phone calls to make any required changes. "Where we used to say camera-ready copy, we now say printer-ready file," he says.

Wiley also makes tips and tools such as manuscript templates, editorial style sheets, and other helpful guidelines available to authors and freelance support on the Wiley Web site. "This encourages would-be authors and freelance copy editors to check us out and get familiar with our processes before editing begins," Ipsen says.

The computer publishing division has cut the time it takes to edit a book in half by working electronically. "This has also allowed us to change manuscripts much later in the production process, providing fresher information and giving readers higher value with timelier content," he adds."

Technology and the growth of E-commerce provides many new options for the publishing industry. The best examples are print-on-demand and online subscription services.

Many publishers are planning to use print-on-demand to control inventory better and to offer tomes from lesser-known authors or volumes that are no longer in print. "We currently manufacture five books to sell three or four, because of the copies used for display, or those returned unsold. Print-on-demand creates a one-to-one correlation between what we publish and what we sell, and that will significantly increase our margins. It's a major priority," says Simon & Schuster's Tentler.

"It will help publishers better manage the life cycle of a book. It will also spur self-publishing and customized editions with special inscriptions, for instance," says Rich Troksa, director of customer segment marketing for IBM printing systems. Barnes & Noble Inc. and IBM have already teamed to print books on demand for customers at the bookseller's retail stores and Web site.

However, print-on-demand means publishers and book sellers must invest in high-quality, high-speed printers in stores and online distribution centers, says Gartner Group analyst Victor Votsch.

Another problem: compensation for authors for books considered out-of-print. A larger portion of the royalties for a book revert to the author when it goes out of print. "With the advent of print-on-demand, can any book ever go out of print?" Votsch asks.

Publishers say it will require substantial investment before online publishing produces a return. "We are a large production process geared for print and we are modifying this to provide parallel publishing of both print and online content," says Paula Baker, online publishing manager for Peachpit Press, a Berkeley, Calif., subsidiary of Pearson Education, a London publishing and educational company. "The transition to online publishing will remain a huge investment for the next year or two at least. For the near term, during this transition, we aren't saving any money."

Baker says savings aren't the top priority. "We know there will eventually be savings, but the key has been building stronger connections to our readers and creating new opportunities for selling different types of content--such as shorter volumes not practical in book length, but potentially more timely and quicker to produce," she says.

Peachpit specializes in publishing computer books, for which timeliness is critical. That's why Baker is enthusiastic about the idea of a subscription-based online service. "We want to give our readers access to updated revisions of books online," she says.

Peachpit is working with specialty online publisher Books24x7.com Inc. to create a subscription-based online publishing service under the Peachpit brand. Forrester Research says Baker has identified a growing market and predicts that business-to-business subscription Web sites will generate $1 billion annually by 2003.

Books24x7.com is a Web-based "aggregator of branded, high-value, business-to-business content offered on a subscription basis," says John Ambrose, VP of marketing for the Burlington, Mass., company. It's talking to several publishers that want to license the company's software and services to set up their own self-branded subscription services on the Web, Ambrose says.

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