StartWithXML: Making the Case for Applying XML to a Publishing Workflow

by Mike Shatzkin, Laura Dawson

Publishers face a "Copernican change." Until recently, the book was "the sun" of a publishing solar system, and all other opportunities were subsidiary rights revolving as planets around it. Now, the intellectual property is the sun, and the book becomes just one of the orbiting opportunities. To be successful in the 21st century environment, publishers must produce agile content: content that can be rendered in different forms without great additional expense. XML provides both a path to agility and opens opportunities for current and future digital content revenue streams.

StartWithXML is an industry-wide project to understand and spread the knowledge publishers need to move forward with XML. It's about the business issues driving the "why" of XML and the technical and organizational issues, strategies, and tactics underlying the "how" of getting started. This research report takes a pragmatic look at XML workflows, 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?

103 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009