Winter 2007 Vol. 8, No. 2

Rajiv Seth

Interactions . . . with Macmillan Publishing Solutions Staff Meet . . . Rajiv Seth Rajiv Seth has been appointed Executive Director of Macmillan Publishing Solutions, the division of Macmillan India Ltd. providing publishing services to international publishers. Rajiv joined MPS on April 9th, 2007. Based in Bangalore, he will be an active member of the Macmillan India board of directors. Prior to joining MPS, he held various senior-level positions as President, CyberMedia India Ltd., Managing Director, Techbooks Electronic Services (Delhi), Managing Director, InterSolution/Ezode Technologies, and Director of a business unit of BPL India. This appointment has been made to further Macmillan Publishing Solutions’ business toward a more powerful brand and achieve higher growth in sales and profits. Among various challenging responsibilities, at a time when the industry is seeing significant changes, Rajiv has been assigned the task of maximizing emerging opportunities by integrating multiple services to provide end-to-end, multiplatform, technology-driven, cost-effective solutions. In his own words, Rajiv shares his vision and lays the framework that will make these changes happen: “I have been given the task to lead an organization faced with numerous challenges at a time when the rules and practices of successful business management are rapidly changing; the dynamics of the new world call for very different paradigms to successfully manage a large work force with a wide range of skills and deliver world-class services at very competitive prices to customers in diverse industries. "Across my career spanning close to 32 years in the Indian industry I have closely worked with British, Japanese, and American managements. I am working to bring together the best practices from all of these and hope to change the DNA of this company. “Aligning the goals of all the management teams to customer expectations, industry trends, and the goals set by the board of directors is critical; this will be achieved by the concept of Balance Scorecard in addition to the traditional systems of financial measures. Important perspectives such as the health of internal business processes, contingency and continuity planning, learning, and growth will be emphasized and tracked closely. I am aware of the fact that lofty statements don’t translate easily to action on the ground and intend to use my experience to bring about a change in an organization that needs to reinvent itself to face the new challenges in the future. “The next major step would be to integrate the various work practices into a single one, and we are going to rely on technology to support this. In the coming months, we are preparing to implement CRM, HRM, and new PMS software from the best companies in the respective domains. “Another major area of focus is improving client satisfaction by changing the structure of the organization and creating a 'customer-focused' culture. A layer of business-savvy CSRs will interface with the client with a continuous effort to align delivery and production groups to client expectations. “Last, but not least, the focus shall equally be on making Macmillan a preferred employer with capability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals. I would like to see that quality of life improves for all the employees of the company.”

Expanding Our Reach as Macmillan Publishing Solutions BY SCOTT JOHNSON AND STEVE OLSON Many arms have become one helpful solution. Macmillan India, ICC Macmillan, and Charon Tec have become Macmillan Publishing Solutions, your author-to-reader solution for traditional and digital publishing services. Macmillan Publishing Solutions (MPS) brings together several established business arms into a single transparent solution that shortens the distance between authors and readers. MPS has integrated efficient production processes, leading-edge technologies, and best practices in a continuing effort to deliver outstanding products and excellent customer service. The benefits to customers are lower costs, greater agility, and expanded services. "The world of electronic publishing is converging, with common standards and integrated workflows leading to multiple content distribution options," says Rajiv Seth, Executive Director of Macmillan Publishing Services. "The synergies of these five business units advance MPS toward our vision of becoming the leading global provider of publishing services." Customers can continue to work with their Macmillan representatives and gain transparent access to the following business units: MPS Books MPS Books provides a wide variety of prepress services for textbooks, academic texts, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and directories, as well as technical, medical, and higher education content. The MPS Books team handles the entire range of functions from the editorial process through print and XML file delivery to the customer. MPS Journals MPS Journals excels in composition services for scientific, technical, medical, scholarly, finance, and legal journals. The journal group provides dedicated staff, processes designed specifically for journal production, and broad experience across the entire publishing cycle. MPS Digital Services MPS Digital Services specializes in the nuances of capturing and converting data for electronic publishing. From traditional services such as scanning and data entry to data archiving and sophisticated XML conversion processes, MPS Digital Services provides turnkey solutions for a broad range of data management challenges. MPS Advertising Studio MPS Advertising Studio offers innovative and cost-effective production of display and Yellow Book advertisements. In both print and online format, MPS Advertising Studio produces effective ads and catalogues ready for delivery. MPS eServices MPS eServices provides a broad range of technology-based services and solutions required by publishers. From multimedia and eLearning to software development and testing, MPS eServices approaches each project with a qualified team of IT and publishing professionals and thoroughly structured project assessment and planning.

Carol Noble, Chief Copy Editor

Introducing Carol Noble Carol Noble has worked as an editor for nearly 30 years for a diverse client list that includes publishing stalwarts such as Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, and Harvard University Press as well as advertising giants Digitas and Arnold. During that time she has also taught copyediting and proofreading at Northeastern University and hired, trained, and managed an in-house professional staff of editors and proofreaders for a Boston-area production company. All of this experience will come into play as Ms. Noble mentors Macmillan’s editors not only in the fine points of English grammar but in the subtleties of American usage and idiom. She will also be implementing metrics and organizing editing staff into tiered teams so that new hires will benefit from the supervision and experience of older hands. She is excited about her new assignment and sums up her challenge by saying: "My aim is to make the copyeditor invisible to the client - that is, our clients should not be able to tell where their text was edited, here or stateside." Ms. Noble is a native of the Boston, Massachusetts area, with a family history that stretches back to the Mayflower. Her immediate family, however, are more recent arrivals: her husband, Robert, was born and raised in England, and her children, Kali Jaba and John Henry, were adopted from Kolkatta as infants. All four appreciate the irony in the fact that, when her family visits this spring, it will be American-born Mom who will be showing her NRI* kids around India! Ms. Noble has a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of New Hampshire and a master’s degree in writing from Stanford University. We wish Ms. Noble all the very best and an enjoyable stint with Macmillan. NRI: Non-resident Indian; refers to an Indian who has dual citizenship. The term is commonly used to describe Indians residing in the US or UK who have not given up their Indian citizenship/passport.

Publishing workflow systems: K4 and Woodwing BY JIM LINK Macmillan Publishing Solutions is always looking for ways to become more efficient. Streamlining workflow is one way to do that. In the search for the best solution we are currently working with both SoftCare K4 and WoodWing Software’s SCEnt workflow solutions for Adobe InDesign/InCopy environments. What's the best way to speed up your workflow? Assuming the latest technology and experienced people (a safe bet with MPS!) the next best option is to provide tools for the simultaneous editing, correction, art placement, and composition of pages. This is the capability these workflow solutions bring to the business. Workflow management tools provide central administration of responsibilities and distribution of tasks within InDesign/InCopy as well as version control and immediate status reports, both within MPS and to our clients. Access level is determined by the production administrator. Notes among production teams can track problems and solutions. Notifications can be sent to clients, editorial, and authors automatically. Since some processes are sequential, these systems enable a smooth flow from one step to another. For example, after copy has been edited and approved it can be released to composition simply by updating its status. Because these are network—indeed, Internet-capable—systems, the production team is not restricted to a single location. Editorial can be in one building—or continent—and art or composition elsewhere. The check-out–check-in process enhances security and accuracy by ensuring only authorized users have access. An example of why this is desirable is being able to restrict the ability of editors (frustrated designers all!) to change fonts or styles to something not part of the specifications. Only authorized users would have that level of access. Each application provides custom tools to enhance the native capabilities of InDesign. For example, tables, styles, and XML production are all enhanced in ways not available from the standard Adobe products. While one article is being edited another can be flowed into pages; art placement can take place at the same time as well. A further inducement to using this sort of workflow is that it can be customized to a client's templates, workflow, notification requirements, as well as print production needs. If you have custom workflow requirements just let us know and we'll work something up for you.

Innovation in Parallel Publishing BY SCOTT JOHNSON AND STEVE OLSON Also known as "parallel processing" or "multipurposing of content," parallel publishing is a combination of technologies and processes to simplify the publication of multiple products from a single source of content. For example, a single author file can be published simultaneously as a textbook, a CD, websites, and other ancillary products. Recent technical innovations and industry consolidation have placed new emphasis on effective parallel publishing, and Macmillan Publishing Solutions is riding the leading edge of this wave. The key technology for parallel publishing is eXtensible Markup Language (XML), the general-purpose document format that enables the separation of the user-readable text from its formatting. At some point during the authoring or production process, content must be encoded in XML, from which parallel publishing processes can be initiated. Macmillan Publishing Solutions has developed proprietary technologies to enable XML encoding from within Microsoft Word, so authors and editors can deliver XML content for page markup at any time. MPS also provides an XML-first composition process using either InDesign or 3B2, allowing for simultaneous corrections to XML and page files, and delivery of XML files as required in a parallel publishing scenario. By separating content from its various formats, XML breaks open bottlenecks that might otherwise prevent forward progress. By making the XML files more accessible throughout the process, publishers gain the flexibility required to deliver multiple products at the same deadline. While pages are being completed, XML can be delivered to other production groups to create ancillary websites and CDs, e-books, or database product. Content changes during production can be integrated into each product through effective workflow and project management. Costs are significantly reduced, and by single sourcing the author’s content, quality standards are maintained. When multiple products are being created, project management plays an important role. Final delivery dates coincide, requiring more complex schedule management, communication between diverse production groups, and greater understanding of production technologies. Macmillan Publishing Solutions has placed particular emphasis on Project Manager recruitment and training, as well as the procedures and processes that enable successful parallel publishing. Preparation, organization, and communication are the key components of successful projects. MPS Project Managers have well-documented processes for defining projects and roles and determining critical dependencies. Through effective job planning and coordination, MPS Project Managers ensure that all stakeholders fully understand the end products to be delivered, processes to be used, and schedules for delivery of each component. At MPS, we have developed a suite of services to address the majority of publisher production needs. To deliver quality and cost benefits to our customers, we have streamlined coordination between our business units. We are also quite experienced in working with third-party vendors, allowing us to adapt to a wide range of roles. Please feel free to contact us if we can assist in any parallel publishing endeavor.

Tech Corner: XML First to InDesign BY JAMES LINK In this section, we intend to highlight some of the best technical innovations from MPS to help keep our publishing clients on top of the game. MacXIN—InDesign-based XML composition engine: Publishers the world over have discovered the benefits of XML for post book production. For website development, interactive CDs, or even conversion to eBooks, XML is the de facto starting point. Publishers are also discovering Adobe InDesign as a platform of choice for book production. Now MPS has developed MacXIN, bringing XML as a pagination tool based that works within InDesign. Developed by Macmillan Publishing Solutions, MacXIN is one of the most technically advanced and valuable tools we have for efficient pagination capability. The benefits provided by any tool depend in large part on the automation features it makes available. MacXIN not only helps streamline the production process, but also enables us to reduce production expenses and provide the fast turnaround time expected by our customers. In the case of automatic pagination, MacXIN works as a server, where it will watch for the presence of XML and image files in a designated folder. The system will automatically import the XML file by selecting the appropriate template based on the job type. After pagination, it will automate the creation of a PDF file. This tool has been designed in such a way that customization is easily and quickly available for different DTDs and other customer specifications. To download a Flash demo of MacXIN in action, visit our website here:http://www.macipd.com/SoftDemo/Macxin.html MacEdit: MacEdit is another advanced and powerful tool developed and offered by Macmillan Publishing Solutions. This Word-based XML editing tool helps in increasing productivity, quality, and consistency of copyedited content. As more books and journals publishers are moving towards XML-based publications, we have been further enhancing and customizing the copyediting features in MacEdit for journals, books, MRWs (major reference works), and XML preparation. This is also helping us move any existing conventional workflow into an XML-first workflow as the customer requires. In addition to the regular update/customization component of MacEdit, a dedicated team is working on updating MacEdit to be compatible with Microsoft Word 2007, which will help us in utilizing its additional features. We are also overhauling the entire technology base used in the current version of MacEdit for improved efficiency, features, and extensive customization. MPS also provides authoring and editing templates for manuscripts. This reduces turnaround time and, more importantly, creates the quality documents that conform to the book or journal style our customers expect. Automated issue generation: MPS has completely automated the generation of PDFs at issue stage for journal publishers. From the time the electronic issue make-up hits our database a sequence of activities is triggered. These include the auto insertion of page numbers and volume/issue information in the typeset files, updating the files with the latest copyright status and first online published date, and auto creation of both print and web-optimized PDFs with auto pre-flighting. These files are then made available in our tracking system for our internal editors to do a quick online QA. After our internal editors approve the files, they are collated for the issue and dispatched to printers via FTP and notification is automatically generated. The whole process is not only paperless but also highly efficient through background processing, thereby enhancing quality and accuracy while drastically improving productivity. To download a Flash demo of MacEdit in action, visit our website here:http://www.macipd.com/SoftDemo/MacEdit.html

Jennifer Ziegler, Content Project Manager Cengage Learning

Customer Success Story Another project in good hands. That’s my reaction when I assign a new full-service project to ICC Macmillan/MPS. As a content project manager for Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning), I juggle 5–7 books on average and do not have time to supervise the copyeditor, art house, compositor, indexer, etc. When the project managers at ICC Macmillan/MPS are at the helm, I can rest assured that the end result will be a quality job, done on time, and will run smoothly from start to finish.

MPS Ad Studio celebrates its first anniversary As the youngest member of the Macmillan Publishing Solutions family, MPS Ad Studio recently celebrated its first anniversary. The day-long ceremony was attended by the Managing Director, the Technical Director, Senior Vice President of MPS Ad Studio, and other members of the Macmillan family. Along with a round of speeches, cake cutting, music, and dancing, key employees were recognized and congratulated for their excellent performances during the past year. Coinciding with this happy event, MPS Ad Studio also received an ISO Certification for process and delivery excellence. In the short span of one year, the studio has been able to grow to an 80-member team and to develop a wide range of creative design skills for various applications. On this occasion, Mr. Rajiv Beri, Managing Director, took the time to acknowledge the hard work of the team and to provide direction for the coming year: "In the first year we focused predominantly on Yellow Pages print products; however, that was only a first successful step in moving toward the core objective of setting up our business and service offerings. MPS Ad Studio wishes to address the complexities of ad creation across multiple medias. With the experience and new talents on board, we are uniquely positioned as a competent service provider to fulfill the design needs of print, Internet, and the fast-evolving mobile media." The young team is very excited about the opportunities of expanding in the existing market as well as the challenges of addressing ad creation needs across multiple media. There is a lot happening at MPS!!

MPS eServices: Technology Services for Publishers BY SCOTT JOHNSON Founded in 2000, MPS eServices was formed to provide high-end IT services to publishers. Originally, the group’s focus was the development of production management and fullfillment applications, VISTA support, software testing, and other IT support services. During the past few years, eServices has broadened its service offerings to place more emphasis on electronic publishing, including multimedia publishing, websites, and e-learning. Through its experience in building software applications, MPS eServices has refined a strong development methodology for all of its products and services. Following the consultation phase with the customer, eServices produces a detailed requirements document to be reviewed by all stakeholders. This document discusses all elements of functional and technical design, coding specifications, user interface standards, and testing and quality control processes. The requirements phase is a vital step toward ensuring that the final product conforms to the customer’s wishes in terms of appearance and functionality. MPS eServices currently has a staff of 118, including programmers, multimedia experts, and experienced publishing professionals. Along with its technical expertise, the eServices group places a strong emphasis on the quality of published material for the end-user. Recently, eServices has seen considerable growth in demand for production of websites and electronic companions to print products. For each of these projects, MPS eServices places the same emphasis on publishing quality that can be seen throughout each division of Macmillan Publishing Solutions. In addition, MPS eServices’ quality management systems are ISO 9001:2000 certified.