Au Revoir

Apologies, but I am putting the blog on hiatus again. My time and energy will need to be devoted elsewhere, and I don't want to blog without really having something to say.

Until the next time, I wish you success in all your endeavors.

Don't Change for the Sake of Change

Change is an interesting thing. It is often talked about and there are books, courses, and probably songs dedicated to it. Most people fear it and even go to extremes to avoid it, yet many, once forced to accept it, often go overboard and change too much. That is change for the sake of change instead of to improve a broken process.

Publishing is all about change, and many would say,  has been since its inception. Many publishers resisted the change to digital but now that this is no longer possible, I feel that they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Yes, workflow and process need to change to accommodate this new era of publishing, and even thinking has to change. But before you discard all your resources, human or otherwise, take the time to reevaluate which can be adopted and which need to be upgraded. Some publishing systems still work: editorial still need to acquire good content; production editorial, the project managers of the publishing world, still needed to ensure quality content is produced--in whatever format--on time and on budget; and marketing, sales, publicity, etc. still need to work towards higher sales. Manufacturing is still needed regardless of the size of the print run, and if they have downtime, why not allow for employee development and cross-training? Unless you choose to have e-book producers in-house, there's no reason Manufacturing/Production staff cannot work with e-books and/or learn how to--and they already know your other systems and mission.

If current employees are not able or willing to learn new skills, or you choose to produce/convert files in-house, then additional resources are needed. But before you make them a standalone department, stop and think if this makes the most sense process and morale-wise. Process-wise, the less handovers the better since each handover is an opportunity for delay, errors, and redundancy. Morale-wise, why separate e- and p-production staff instead of having them work together to incorporate best practices and an efficient process?

Change is a catalyst and can be used to inspire innovation...or to just keep making the same mistakes but in different ways. And speed is not an excuse. If you have to catch-up on a system and/or get something to market sooner, hire a contractor or consultant to fill the short-term need and take your time to think through the long-term change. Haste makes waste...and some changes are too costly to undo or redo.

Expectations

"X is meant to be tough, but not so tough that you're set up to fail."

Last night I said the above to my son, with "x" being replaced with "school," when he was complaining about having too many quizes to study for. I obviously agreed with him in this instance.

But the "x" could be just as easily replaced with any number of words, including "work" and "life." And saying this to my ten-year-old got me thinking about expectations.

There is a fine line between a "stretch goal" and being set up to fail. If the goal is self-imposed, it's up to you to know your strengths, limits, and what's tough but achievable.

But what if it's set by your boss and you realize it's just not doable? Hopefully you don't feel that you're intentionally being set up to fail; if you are, that's another issue and can be dealt with in another post. Chances are, your boss just isn't aware because she hasn't done your job, so if you make a strong case, backed up by hard facts, she'll hopefully see the light. If she doesn't, clearly document your progress, bottlenecks, conflicts, issues, etc. so that you have a documented case to prove that you accomplished as much as was possible.

And if you're going into a new situation, whether at work or home, take the time to have your and the other party's expectations spelled out at the onset of the relationship. You know what they say about assuming...

Mea Culpa

As a mother, I remember having to explain to my son--repeatedly--that it's okay to make a mistake as long as you apologize and learn from it. Now that he's ten years old, I still watch him try to prove that he's right and knows better than the adults in his life. But he's only ten, so that can be forgiven...to a point.

As an adult, I own up to my mistakes and respect peers and staff that do so as well, but I have come across many who do not:

1. The person who will never see his mistake, even when it's glaring and staring him in the face.
2. The person who doesn't care when he's wrong and/or has hurt someone.
3. The person who will always try to blame anyone else for his mistakes.

Some of these people live in their own version of the universe, one where they are king and never wrong; that universe unfortunately is not ours, and therein lies the problem. Others, however, are just afraid.

I'm not sure why my son does not want to admit he is wrong (still working on that), but I do know that in some corporate cultures, people are afraid of losing their jobs and therefore feel the need to deflect any and all blame. Although they choose to act this way, their culture and management are the true culprits.

Can you imagine a culture where people are afraid to argue or make mistakes? I've been reading a lot about teams and what make them work (I highly recommend Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni). Basically, without healthy debate and the opportunity for innovation, teams will not succeed. Neither of these are possible without trust: trust that their leaders will not punish dissent or mistakes.

And that too comes from fear: the leader's fear of being proven wrong and losing face or worst.

So the next time someone disagrees with you, thank them for their trust and feedback and learn from what they've shared. You don't have to ultimately agree, but do actively listen and consider. And the next time you or an employee make a mistake, deal with any repercussions and then stop to consider and learn from this. 

Our muscles need to be "torn down" (via exercise) and worked from different angles to grow stronger and more functional. We need our ideas to be challenged and to have the courage to try--and fail--to continue to grow and develop.

Children's E-books

When I upgraded my Nook First Gen to the new Nook Easy Touch Reader, I gave my ten-year-old son my original Nook. I honestly didn't know how many kids e-books were even available: last time I had checked (granted, a while ago) there hadn't been many. Both my son and I were pretty impressed with the selection B&N now had and he quickly bought a few (much cheaper than adult ones) to get him started.

Most agree that making children's e-books enhanced and interactive makes a lot of sense and adds value beyond what the p-book can offer. After reading about all the backlist titles that are being made digital and enhanced, I started thinking back to some of my favorite series.

The first one that came to mind was the Choose Your Own Adventure series. They're still around and I tried to get my son into them a few years back. Can you imagine the potential of that in e-books? There of course is the risk of making it more of an interactive movie than an enhanced e-book, but there may be demand for both.

What series did you love as a kid that would make a great enhanced e-series?

The Road Not Taken: from Frost to Jobs

Two roads diverged in a wood,  and I,  I took the one less traveled by,  And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken) 

Have you ever read a poem or heard a song that really resonated within you? One that you could not forget or stop analyzing its meaning? One that you felt was almost written for you?

When I first read Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, it did all that for me. It didn't compel me to always take the less traveled road, but it made me realize that choices, once taken, took on a life of their own. It compelled me to live a life where I avoided any and all what if's to the best of my ability. So if there was a boy who seemed to be interested but didn't have the courage to ask me out, I'd somehow force myself to start that conversation so that I wouldn't sit around thinking "what if." Conversely, if a relationship seemed to be headed nowhere, even if it hurt to do so, I'd start the conversation that was the beginning of the end. All to avoid the "what if" of lost opportunities or roads not taken.

As I grew up, this became more difficult so I modified my motto of avoiding what if's to staying true to myself at any given moment. At times this meant going out on a limb or making unpopular decisions, but if I couldn't see an alternative I could live with, then there was no other choice. I'd learned the difference between right and wrong and the boundaries of what was necessary--whether to succeed in business or in life--and what was wrong, under any and all circumstances. I make mistakes, but I try not to cross that line.

This is something I was raised with, and then took upon myself, so it's become so ingrained that I rarely think about it. But listening to Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement speech, reminded me of why I took this upon myself, of why I was so adamant to avoid those what if's at first and the regrets later. He reminded me that we cannot "connect the dots going forward," so we must do what is right for us and have faith that all will work out. I think we can all use that reminder.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” - Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address                                                                 

Migrating to Digital Publishing? Answers from the Experts

(The following article first appeared in Publishing Perspectives.)

I attended Publishers Launch: E-books for Everyone Else (presented by Publishers Launch Conferences and The Center for Publishing at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies) in the hopes of getting some answers to the questions I posed in my previous article, Migrating to Digital Publishing? The Six Key Questions to Ask. When I mentioned this to an industry friend at the event, his response “You have answers? I thought no one had any” was quite telling.

In addition to attending this event, I listened to a Digital Book World webcast on the same topic and spoke to several industry people who have first-hand experience on migrating content to digital.

And the truth is, there are very few “answers” everyone agrees to:

• Everyone agrees that with the constant developments in technology, it’s important to “future proof” your content as much as possible, and the current thinking is that an open-format, multiple-platform workflow, such as an XML workflow, is the way to go.
• More companies are using third-party suppliers to assist with this migration, both because they have the skill set to do so efficiently and to keep costs down. Whether you choose to use a third-party service or bring the skill set in-house, it’s still important to have people in-house with the understanding to intelligently interact, oversee, and assure the quality of the work from the third-party suppliers.
• Quality control is more important than ever. With multiple reading devices needing different outputs and tweaks, automation can only take it so far. Someone knowledgeable needs to review the files for formatting and other errors before they are released to the public.
• Metadata is more important than ever in the world of digital.

Below are some highlights from my interviews.

Michael Weinstein (most recently VP, Global Content and Media Production at Cengage Learning, and prior to that held VP positions at Oxford University Press, Pearson, Prentice Hall, and several others)

• If conversions can be automated, outsource them.
• Since don’t know what’s coming, be generic and build workflows/tagging that’s updatable: it doesn’t pay to build proprietary.

Andrea Colvin (Director, Publishing Operations at Open Road Media)

• Don’t skimp on any quality control, which most publishers do right in the print world.
• Learn the types of errors introduced by OCR and educate your proofreaders on these, creating guidelines and checklists to facilitate this.
• Have as many sets of eyes as possible looking something over to ensure that nothing has been missed, and review things at different stages for different things.
• Strive for “graceful degradation” of content: since EPUB is HTML-based it can gracefully degrade.
• “Reading is an immersive experience” and the publisher has to decide when to interrupt it and when this adds value.
• Test out different conversion partners to determine their strengths and weaknesses so you can choose the best partners for your projects. Also look for developers and different types of expertise depending on the type of the book.
• Important to have someone in-house with technical skills to go in and correct files plus have an editorial point of view.
• “Don’t split the branch of time” until it’s concluded: so print and e-files should be on same path until one goes to printer and the other to conversion house; this also allows everyone to learn best practices and makes edits easy to both parallel streams.

Pauline Ireland (Former Production and Design Director, Cambridge University Press)

• Best archive: keep a print copy of everything — you can always scan it; keep typesetting files, but be aware that proprietary typesetting systems have a limited shelf life.
• Small publishers should have robust relationships with service providers who can help them; many will be offshore, requiring time and effort upfront to get them to understand your workflows and to get it right. Go visit them and if possible; have staff on the ground at the suppliers (even for a limited period) since it’s a worthwhile investment.
• XML-preserving today’s content for an unknown future. XML allows you to do what you like and when you like with files; unless files are open-format, they won’t be usable in 10 years.
• Use conversion and content suppliers, but do have staff on-site who understand quality assurance (QA), workflows and managing suppliers; ideally they should have a background in publishing, not only technology.
• If scanning a hard copy for POD, you might as well use it for online/digital as well.
• Make the workflow for third-party rights a priority.

Cathy Felgar (Current Production Director, Academic and Professional, Cambridge University Press)

• Work on simultaneous e- and p-books. Challenges include third-party rights and non-XML workflows (e.g., LaTex files). Come to grips with third-party e-rights from contract stage, if possible.
• Use a CMS (CAMS) with XML parsing capabilities, which could be used for e-book conversions, too. Problem is, if standards change, conversion routines will have to be reconfigured.
• Future-proof content with XML or other well-structured file type so your files remain format agnostic.
• Decide what skills you want to keep in-house, which depends on size of organization: small companies should outsource; large companies can hire in-house talent.
• Taxonomy is important, and publishers need people with SEO knowledge, especially since indexing may disappear as keyword search becomes more dominant.

Overall, although every new “answer” — and new development — brings more questions with it, publishers and industry people are more aware of the viable options and the pros and cons for each choice made, as the Publishers Launch speakers demonstrated. Like much else in life, there is no one right answer for everyone, so just to stay aware, keep asking questions, and if you don’t succeed at first, try another option.