My colleague shared an interesting quote from today's Outsell newsletter:

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Reading on mobile phones is becoming more common both in the US and abroad. "Literature on mobile phones is massive in China," says general manager of Penguin China, Jo Lusby. "The tube is so packed in Beijing you can't physically open a book, so everybody is reading on their mobiles."

O'Reilly Media just went live with a new directory: Tools of Change for Publishing Directory. You can browse various listings based on services or you can browse the calendar for upcoming industry events. O'Reilly TOC is all about connecting people,... Marianne Calilhanna Associations Publishing

O'Reilly Media just went live with a new directory: Tools of Change for Publishing Directory. You can browse various listings based on services or you can browse the calendar for upcoming industry events. O'Reilly TOC is all about connecting people, companies, and organizations with tools and information that is transforming the publishing industry. You'll want to bookmark this page and use it as your first resource to connect with publishing innovators:

http://directory.toc.oreilly.com/

Many of my RSuite colleagues will be attending the Mark Logic User Conference next week in San Francisco. Once again Mark Logic has put together an outstanding program and it looks like they are well on their way to surpassing... Barry Bealer Events Publishing

Many of my RSuite colleagues will be attending the Mark Logic User Conference next week in San Francisco.   Once again Mark Logic has put together an outstanding program and it looks like they are well on their way to surpassing 300 attendees.  In a conversation I had with Dave Kellogg last year when he was the keynote speaker at our first RSuite CMS user conference, Mark Logic had only 30 people attend their first event a few short years ago.  My have times changed. 

If you are attending the user conference, please stop by our exhibit table and take a test drive of RSuite CMS.  In addition, our client, Art Zegarek, Director of Data Architecture, Audible.com will be discussing how his team leveraged RSuite CMS to manage their wealth of audio book metadata.  It's a pretty amazing story on the efficiencies gained by implementing RSuite, but I'll let Art do all of the story telling.

I was just in a conversation the other day about when to break up XML into smaller files within a content management system and when in the workflow to bring a number of articles together into a single publication file.... Michael Edson Publishing

I was just in a conversation the other day about when to break up XML into smaller files within a content management system and when in the workflow to bring a number of articles together into a single publication file.  It struck me that this kind of thinking is now outdated.  With a next generation content management system like RSuite, the idea of an XML 'file' is far less important than it used to be. 

In many ways, it doesn't matter how the XML is assigned to 'files'.  The use of that XML is the same.  This is because RSuite has the capability of reaching deep into XML files to check out and edit content at a node level, to reuse content at the node level and to retrieve content at the node level when searching.  How cool is that?  The fact that you can work with a file or a node with the same ease makes it doubly cool.  And it means that a lot of worry in designing the use of your system can be dispensed with.  This is truly the meaning of next generation content management.  Just dive in!

I was just reading Mark Logic CEO Dave Kellogg's post on XBRL and Microsoft's claim to be the first company to use it. After taking a look at the filing from Dave's blog link, it struck me that: - The... Michael Edson Authoring Tools Content Management Systems Standards XML Publishing

I was just reading Mark Logic CEO Dave Kellogg's post on XBRL and Microsoft's claim to be the first company to use it.  After taking a look at the filing from Dave's blog link, it struck me that:

- The poor pilot companies that are outputting XBRL - presumably by hand!  This is clearly no language to be editing or even converting without software/system support.

- Wouldn't it be great to have a publishing oriented XML CMS like RSuite to help author, edit, and pull required information together! 

InDesign and InCopy are built for desktop publishing - giving great power to design and editorial. This is all great news. However, it makes exporting XML rather tricky - particularly the development of fully automated XML exports. Sure you can... Michael Edson Authoring Tools Book Publishing Composition Content and Data Modeling Education Media Workflows XML Publishing

InDesign and InCopy are built for desktop publishing - giving great power to design and editorial.  This is all great news.  However, it makes exporting XML rather tricky - particularly the development of fully automated XML exports.  Sure you can capture XML coming out of these applications, but can you really push that XML into your CMS without having text processing look at it? 

We've looked at this over many projects and the key issue is, of course, the discipline required by each group in the process.  If they don't follow the rules, then their content might not match what your CMS is looking for.  A deck must be labeled as a deck somehow.  Likewise, a B-Head or run-in head must be labeled appropriately. There are also customer or genre specific structures and metadata that must be maintained - with paragraph or character styles (or one of several other techniques).

The point is that you can't look over everyone's shoulder.  Styling and other structure related errors are bound to creep into your content on occasion.   If you only want to accept well structured XML, then you need the capability to automatically identify errors and only ingest acceptable documents.

While you can create scripts to QC the content during production, this poses a scripting update problem every time you want to change your format structure (every time you do a redesign, perhaps).  And while scripting is extremely powerful in CS2 & CS3, it is pretty low level stuff and time consuming to produce anything complicated.  It is also problematic if you don't have a specialist on staff.  Better to write scripts once and move QC somewhere else.

So what to do?  One solution is a Schema (or DTD) validation technique that allows this QC operation to proceed during an automated export.  The Schema will be more restrictive than just looking at Adobe structures - it will overlay structures specific to your content.  And while updating a schema requires some technical knowhow, it is more straight forward and much faster than updating scripting of any kind.  The reason, of course, is that this is what Schemas are meant to do well.

Using a Schema to validate InDesign/InCopy content can detect a surprising number of human errors with styling and other structuring techniques.  Not all errors, but it can do a solid job if your content is moderately complex.  Content flows into an interim format and is validated before being transformed into its final form in your CMS.  This means that valid content can be fully automated from InDesign to the CMS.  Invalid documents can be automatically siphoned off for review and correction by production.  Users can then be retrained if necessary.

Beats checking every exported document ad nauseum, doesn't it?  Especially at 2am.

Last April (2007), International Data Group (IDG) transitioned its magazine, InfoWorld, into an online only publication. A year later, the company reports ...the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of... Marianne Calilhanna Content Delivery Publishing

Last April (2007), International Data Group (IDG) transitioned its magazine, InfoWorld, into an online only publication. A year later, the company reports

...the InfoWorld Web site is generating ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37 percent. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.

My colleagues and I attempt to track the demise of print publications  that have been discontinued in favor of sole digital delivery of the content. There's always a twinge of sadness documenting this trend, so it was nice to finally read this report in The New York Times.

German publisher Bertelsmann is publishing "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia" in print. The book will go on sale in September for 19.95 euros. The initial print run is anticipated to be about 20,000 copies and Bertelsmann agreed to pay one euro... Marianne Calilhanna Book Publishing Content Reuse Publishing

German publisher Bertelsmann is publishing "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia" in print. The book will go on sale in September for 19.95 euros. The initial print run is anticipated to be about 20,000 copies and Bertelsmann agreed to pay one euro per copy sold for use of the Wikipedia name.

“We think of it as an encyclopedic yearbook,” Dr. Beate Varnhorn [editor in charge of Bertelsmann’s reference works] said, leaving open the possibility of new editions if the 2008 version is successful.

It will be interesting to see what happens this fall.

Inhalt Wiederverwendung auf Deutsch...viel Glück.

Read the full story here.

On Earth day, April 22nd, Lisa Bos will present: Content Recycling with RSuite CMS Reduce production time and streamline your workflow. Learn how RSuite can automate common workflow steps and integrate business rules, requiring human interaction only when an exception... Marianne Calilhanna Conferences & Events Publishing

On Earth day, April 22nd, Lisa Bos will present:

Content Recycling with RSuite CMS

Reduce production time and streamline your workflow.
Learn how RSuite can automate common workflow steps and integrate business rules, requiring human interaction only when an exception condition occurs.

Re-use your content at any level, from abstracts to Word files.
See how RSuite offers re-use at the XML element level and manages many other content types, including Word files, images, InDesign, InCopy, PDFs, etc.

Recycle text, images, searches, workflow, XQuery statements.
Discover new ways to use your content, whether creating parallel renditions in multiple formats or creating dynamic content assemblies

Webinar Details
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT
Register here

Something to keep an eye on for STM publishers . . . Microsoft released a add-in for Word 2007???called the Article Authoring add-in???that assists in creating XML in the NLM DTD. You can also import a NLM DTD XML document... Ed Stevenson Authoring Tools Standards STM Publishing

Something to keep an eye on for STM publishers . . .

Microsoft released a add-in for Word 2007—called the Article Authoring add-in—that assists in creating XML in the NLM DTD.  You can also import a NLM DTD XML document and load it into Word. It seems to be targeted to the authoring point of view, that is, the add-in is designed for the authoring stage, as opposed to the production/editing stage, where  more common (and robust) Word-based tools, like Inera eXtyles, live.  I assume it could also fit into the editing stage, which seems a much more likely place for this thing to happen.

But before you jump in too quickly, realize that even Microsoft warns that the add-in is a beta and not production ready.  And Inera has some cautionary words about Word 2007.

Other links:

• Download the plug-in  
• A blog from Pablo Fernicola, the Microsoft product manager, overseeing the project.
• A video demo of the add-in (from the blog)
• I'll be bookmarking anything I see on my del.icio.us links

The American Association of Publishers reported this week that book sales saw a 7.2% increase for the month of January 2008. The breakdown looks like this Adult hardcover category - $94.4 million sales Adult paperback category - $135.2 million sales... Marianne Calilhanna Book Publishing XML Publishing