The Digital Handyman: Retooling the Publishing Workflow

More than a decade into the “CTP revolution,” many of the promises of digital workflow have yet to be fulfilled. The publishing industry is far from achieving the hands-off, utopian workflow many envisioned when film went away and content went digital.

While some in the industry once resisted the notion of a digital workflow, most now agree that the evolution from film to files has been a positive for the publishing world—as profound a development as desktop publishing. With digital content, publishers can now cut out much of the prepress expense for their print workflow, and perhaps even more importantly, their content is now nimble enough to make other types of “output” possible.

No longer is the industry confined to print; it’s producing everything from custom DVDs to branded Web sites, from podcasts to digital replicas of their print publications. All of these strategies are enabling content owners to reach new audiences and extend their brand reach (often beyond U.S. borders), all the while un-damming new revenue streams derived from a growing audience and advertisers interested in tapping “new media.”

Consumer and trade periodicals alike have jumped on the digital edition bandwagon, with publishing houses such as Condé Nast Publications, Meredith Corp., Hearst Magazines, Hachette Filipacchi Media and Farm Journal Publications leading the way.

And as publishers continue to face print-centric challenges, such as paper and postal hikes, new media is looking all the more attractive.

Does this mean that print will eventually lose out to electronic media?

Many industry experts believe that it’s not a question of print or electronic media for publishers; rather, publishers have to be prepared to deliver it all, and to create a content-driven workflow that facilitates all of these efforts. But building the workflow is complicated when output intentions vary so greatly, and only those publishers with deep pockets have been able to iron out wrinkles in workflow phases, such as digital ad submission, prepress and multimedia publishing.