P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY®

Special Report 2011

Content Services in
INDIA
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 Content Services in India 2011

May 2008 to 352,032 in February 2011,

Three hot areas requiring future-proof nearly 15% of which were games. And
the U.S. market for self-paced e-learning
content, interoperability, and rich media products and services, according to the
Ambient Insight Store, will reach $24.2
billion by 2015.

Of E-book, Mobile These astonishing numbers are the

stuff of dreams. But let’s be realistic.
Dealing with the accompanying chal-

App, and E-learning lenges (which may shatter those dreams)

calls for more than projections and expec-
tations.
The variety of e-deliverables, for
instance, is proving to be a headache. For
By Teri Tan
content services vendors, tweaking con-
tent to fit every device—whether an
The numbers are huge; the forecast, compelling. The message e-reader or smartphone—is time-con-
suming. For publishers, it is costly. And
is clear: e-books, mobile apps, and e-learning are hot, growing no one dares to favor one format or device
furiously, and not to be ignored. Not surprising, of course, over the other.
Some publishers are holding back
given the ubiquity of handheld devices and laptops around us. because they can’t be sure what to do,
given the proliferation of e-gadgets in
the marketplace. But can they hold out
for long? The answer is a definite no; the
reason, survival.
E-books might seem like a disruptive
format that cannibalizes existing revenue
streams, says CEO Dev Ganesan of
Aptara, “but as with all disruptive tech-
nologies, once it starts to gain acceptance
among users, there are only two options
left: adapt and extract maximum value
out of the technology, or accept that
someone else will use it to alter the eco-
nomics of the business and eventually
render you redundant.”
After all, the benefits of e-books are
obvious: eliminating the cost of printing
and distribution, shortening time to
market, allowing new business models
such as per-article or per-chapter pricing,
and creating enhanced content.
Production floor at Chennai-based Lapiz The challenge for publishers, notes

A
Ganesan, is that the market is controlled
COVER PHOTO © ISTOCKPHOTO / MBPHOTO, INC.

ccording to the Association
of American Publishers,
e-book sales at 16 publish-
ing houses jumped 115.8%,
to $69.9 million, during
the first three months of
2011. In Great Britain, a survey carried
out by Publishing Technology PLC
found that one-third of U.K. trade pub-
lishers predict that more than 10% of
their total book revenue will come from
e-books by 2012. And ABI Research pro-
jected that revenues from global mobile
commerce will hit a staggering $119 bil-
lion by 2015. Yet that figure represents
only 8% of the total e-commerce market.
The number of apps offered through
the Apple App Store grew from two in
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M
by just a few big players. “Even with the
recent shift to an agency model, pricing
power belongs to these e-tailers, which
constricts all but the largest of publish-
ers. But looking beyond the constraints
and challenges, publishers will find that
the opportunity and market access will
increase significantly. Furthermore, dis-
intermediation in the e-book channel
1
 Content Services in India 2011
means that small and medium publishers
will get a level of market access never
before available.”
Across the board, publishers are
mostly concerned about four interrelated
issues: market, pricing, future business
models, and the impact of technology,
says Jim Lewis, senior v-p for sales and
marketing at Innodata Isogen. “In the
e-book area, the new agency model is just
working its way through the system, but
there is the looming question of whether
an increase in unit sales will follow from
lower prices. In any case, most publishers
with titles that have commercial poten-
tial are already working on digitization
and e-book conversion.”
But the channels are changing and so
is the market approach. “It is not just a
shift from print to devices, but also the
integration of social media, new content
development initiatives driven by tech-
nology change, open Web access, and so
on. The list is long and the challenges
significant.” In the past year, there has
been a seismic shift in the bookselling
environment, Lewis adds, and “publish-
ers are looking everywhere for revenue.
Increasingly, the sources are digital in
nature.”
That brings us to the device part and
the race to go from monochrome to full-
color, e-paper to e-ink, and no camera to
two.
Today, the race is being won by the
multipurpose devices, iPad and iPhone.
The plethora of Android-powered
options with open-source operating sys-
tems has failed to erode Apple’s domi-
nance in the smartphone and tablet mar-
kets. The fact that Apple does not sup-
port Flash—which is primarily used to
create e-learning modules and multime-
dia e-books—and yet manages to come
out on top causes both consternation and
amazement among publishers and ven-
dors alike.
Naturally, all content services vendors
wish that there were one format for all
devices, saving them the hassle of tweak-
ing content to suit Apple, Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, Sony, and so on. (You
can be sure, however, that the vendors do
love tabulating and adding up the differ-
2 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
ent costs for different formats in the final
bill for their publishing clients.)
And what about the oh-so-addictive
mobile apps? (Angry Birds, anyone?)
Well, for a start, their market’s fast and
furious growth prompted PW to launch
a weekly online column, “This Week in
Apps,” last December. (The buzz needs
constant feeding, after all.)
“There is no denying that mobile
devices are going to be a huge part of
our daily lives—whether it is for read-
ing books, listening to music, watch-
ing movies, buying products, navigat-
ing an area, or doing office tasks,” says
Gurvinder Batra, cofounder and CTO
of KiwiTech, which is responsible for
redesigning the PW app. “But publish-
ers are cautious as they have yet to see
big revenue dollars associated with
apps.” As for which market segment
shows the biggest growth in apps, he
says, “We are seeing equal growth in
all segments. Demand comes in from
children’s, higher-ed, and medical
book publishers, besides the obvious
players—entertainment companies in
movies and music. Reference products
seem to be at the top of the list.”
The herd mentality, Batra notes, is
alive and well in the present app-creating
frenzy. He likens the situation to when
the Web was first launched. “Everyone
wanted to have an online presence, but
had not a clue why they were doing it,
how someone would find the Web site,
or why people would want to visit it in
the first place. They were doing it only
because everyone else was. Now this is
happening to the mobile space.”
Investments from publishers in digital
products will continue to grow in the
foreseeable future, says CEO Samudra
Sen of e-learning company Learning-
Mate. “Even Pearson Education, with a
balance sheet that already shows one-
third of its recent revenues coming from
digital products, is predicting that the
trend is going to continue at the com-
pany.”
Just three weeks ago, Pearson and
McGraw-Hill announced their invest-
ment in Inkling, a San Francisco com-
pany that creates interactive textbooks
from the ground up for various e-readers,
particularly iPad. Redesigning text-
books and adding multimedia compo-
nents is the way to attract the generation
of students that has grown up with
smartphones and tablets. And halfway
across the globe, in city-state Singapore
(where this correspondent is based), four
schools have handed out iPads to stu-
dents and teachers in a pilot project to
change the learning and teaching envi-
ronment.
The use of media-rich elements and
games in e-learning, Sen adds, is
becoming more prevalent. But pub-
lishers must always remember that the
focus should be on the learning. “Too
much jazzing up with rich media, ani-
mation, music, and interactivity—for
the sake of making it different and
entertaining—may turn a learning
module into an animated film. The
focus is then lost. On the other hand,
the usage of games is good. But when
learning is forcefully introduced into a
game, it becomes an interruption to
the gaming process. This would demo-
tivate the student instead. A good bal-
ance between entertainment and learn-
ing is often difficult to achieve.”
This brings us back to the fundamen-
tals that must be in place before you
think about e-books, mobile apps, or
e-learning modules. In order to pivot
content to fit the devices or platforms, it
must first be made flexible, neutral, reus-
able, portable, scalable, and obsoles-
cence-proof. The way to achieve all these
is with a digital workflow that uses
XML, the lingua franca that enables
delivery of content any time, any place,
any way. “Create once, publish many” is
the goal when there are devices galore in
the marketplace.
The shift from a print-centric tradi-
tion to an XML-first workflow is not
easy, but it must happen.
Need more convincing? Let’s go
back to the start of this article where
various figures foretell the future
trends in publishing. In order to be a
part of this future, you have to embrace,
and love, XML. There is simply no two
ways about it.  n
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 Content Services in India 2011

Kolkata, Madurai, Pune, Trivandrum,

The plethora of new and upcoming and Chandigarh. Or even Thimphu in
Bhutan.
gadgets needs obsolescence-proof But whatever the size of the vendors,
and wherever they are located, XML is at
publishing methods the front, back, and center of their oper-
ations. To speed up the XML-ing pro-
cess, vendors have developed special

Transforming Content scripts, automation tools, and even pro-

prietary software that can be incorpo-
rated into any existing publishing work-

For Tomorrow flow. Their experts can pivot XML-based

content to fit any required device, for-
mat, or platform.
By Teri Tan For publishers, being a part of the
digital world means being pro-XML and
choosing an XML-first workflow. But
In an increasingly app-centric and e-book world, gadgets are you don’t have to be an expert in XML
getting smaller, more portable, and capable of catering for tags or XML schema, or worry about
XSL-FO, XSLT, or XQuery. Leave that to
more than one purpose. Add common Web-based program- the following 15 companies (in reverse
ming standards, where switching platforms is as easy as A-B- alphabetical order)—and many that are
not listed here but thriving in India—to
C, and you know content has to be dynamic, agile, and com- help transform your content. It is up to
pletely neutral (read: loyal to no device or format). you to evaluate, choose, and determine

W
hile the tech industry
is looking out for the
next iPad/iPhone/
Google/Facebook/
Twitter killer, the
publishing industry
is busy finding partners to enhance
e-books using multimedia authoring
tools, to provide periodic updates of
mobile apps, or to redesign a course book
for the digital classroom. Or for help
with editorial development, page design,
photo research, creative illustration, per-
missions management, technical writ-
ing, abstraction, and localization. On an
even more basic level, to take over tedious
keyboarding, typesetting, and scanning/
conversion processes. All eyes are on con-
tent—how to create, deconstruct, con-
vert, improve, aggregate, archive, de-
chunk, or repurpose it.
Meanwhile, consolidation is in. Pub-
lishers with vast outsourcing experience
in India are shortening their vendor list,
since more companies are offering full-
service project management through a
combined onshore/offshore outsourcing
model. It makes perfect sense not to have
4 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
20 vendors when 10 would do the work
and make managing all that much easier.
The same is happening on the supply
side. Larger vendors that prospered
through the dour economy are now look-
ing to grow through acquisitions. The
smaller ones that managed to survive are
looking for like-sized counterparts to
merge and combine resources in order to
carve out their own niche.
Now that all multinational publishing
houses—in SSTM, higher-ed, or k–12—
are deep in the offshoring process, ven-
dors are shifting their attention to tier
two and three publishers, those with siz-
able lists but still doing everything in-
house (or onshore). Persuading these
smaller publishers to take the plunge
may not be easy, but with limited
resources to shift from one vendor to the
next, they are perceived to be more loyal.
Vendors are also venturing further
afield to seek out cheaper but equally
green pastures. Creeping costs and
shrinking margins spare no one, not even
in India. In fact, in the next couple of
years, your production facility visit may
be a city-hopping itinerary that includes
which of the vendor(s) can best be your
partner(s) on a successful trip down the
XML road.
Thomson Digital India
The school segment, says executive
director Vinay Singh, has begun to travel
offshore for development services and
support, following the same path taken
by the higher-ed and STM segments:
“We see major opportunities in the seg-
ment, hence our investment in Orlando
[Fla.]-based Element LLC last July. Our
focus since the inception of Thomson
Digital in 1988 had been on the STM
book and
journal seg-
ments, and we
have built our
expertise and
reputation
there. Then,
in the past five
years, we were
focused on
higher-ed and
professional Vinay Singh, executive
p u b l i s h i n g director at Thomson Digi-
verticals, and tal
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 Content Services in India 2011
succeeded in securing a substantial mar-
ket share. Our current goal is to expand
and diversify into other segments glob-
ally, and that’s where Element LLC comes
in.” The Element team will focus on
front-end content development and edi-
torial services, creative design, art and
photo management, and full-service
project management for the k–12,
higher-ed, and adult learning segments.
“Both our India and U.S. teams are fully
integrated so that we can offer respon-
sive, timely, and cost-effective solutions
to all the clients and markets that we
serve around the world.”
Singh is aggressively pursuing growth
in technology and new media solutions
in order to sustain Thomson Digital’s
status as a market leader. Exploring
investment opportunities to supplement
organic growth is on his to-do list.
“Interactive products, whiteboards, and
e-learning modules, online assessments,
multiplatform e-books and apps, you
name it.” Singh says. “We are keeping
our eyes on each growing segment, and
tailoring our expertise and services to
offer the best possible solutions to cli-
ents.”
Meanwhile, ever-increasing price pres-
sure and rising costs in India have
prompted Singh to consider setting up
new operations in unconventional loca-
tions. The northeastern and Himalayan
parts of India come to mind. “I would
even consider neighboring countries like
Bhutan, where one would find almost
100% English-medium schools with aca-
demic evaluations affiliated to the Indian
Central Examination Board. Cost is stable
and so is its workforce, and since no other
content services vendor has set up shop
there, we do not have to worry about
attrition and poaching.” That does not
mean that Thomson Digital is moving
away from Noida or Chennai. “On the
contrary, we will equip the existing facil-
ities—including our Mauritius opera-
tions—with better infrastructure and
technology. One top priority is to further
strengthen our European-language capa-
bilities.” Thomson Digital offers French,
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and has
recently added Polish to its portfolio.
6 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
Repro India
Not many vendors can boast of having two
publishing experts—Robert Baensch and
Chris Curtis—on their advisory board or
having the foresight to organize a series of
seminars on future trends in publishing.
The latter, Knowledge Forum, gets the
Indian publishing community together to
discuss shifting trends that have forced
some changes in the fundamental process
of bringing out a book. The first forum was
held in September 2010 in Delhi, attract-
ing around 120 publishers; the second was
in Hyderabad in January 2011, attended
by 45 publishers.
“Publishers must rethink how to man-
age content right from the start, and they
need to connect the dots between different
processes: content management, printing,
and fulfillment,” says Amit Chavan, who
is in charge of publishing services, a seg-
ment currently representing 5% of the
company’s total turnover. “At Repro
India, we want to be a custodian of our
clients’ content from start to finish. We
can help in designing books, developing
content, converting print titles into vari-
ous deliverables, or setting up digital asset concedes, “the school market in general
management or digital rights manage-
ment systems.” Recently, his team helped
a client to redesign and print 10 children’s tent development and this has helped us
books, consisting of around 1,200 pages
with 2,500 illustrations to be altered or
created—all within four months.
Increasingly, adds Chavan, “clients rec-
ognize that Repro India is more than a
printing company—even though that was
our primary business in the past—and
that we offer end-to-end solutions.” To
raise the company’s profile, Chavan and
his team participated in the 2010 Frank-
furt Book Fair Hot Spots, where “we
Rajnish Shirsat (l.) and Amit Chavan of Repro
India
showcased our content capabilities and
hosted two discussions: one on monetiz-
ing content and the other about adding
efficiencies to a publisher’s value chain.”
Established in 1984 and listed on the
Mumbai Exchange in 2006, more than
50% of Repro’s business comes from
overseas markets. “Our goal is to manage
our clients’ content to provide a zero
inventory solution by printing and deliv-
ering books just in time—whether it is
one copy or a million copies,” adds
Rajnish Shirsat, v-p of print solutions.
“We see the synergies in working with
clients to integrate three different divi-
sions into a one-stop shop. Few in India
can offer such a service in a seamless
workflow. And instead of waiting for cli-
ents to discover us and our integrated
services, we have decided to be more
aggressive in marketing ourselves and
making our services known to all.”
PreMediaGlobal
At PMG, school and college projects
grew around 20%–25% last year, even
though, as co-CEO Kapil Viswanathan
has had a difficult time recently. But we
have substantial experience in k–12 con-
to grow. In terms of trends, we are seeing
more demand for interactive white-
boards, Web portals, and so on that inte-
grate the development of print with
digital products.” There is also more
demand for translations and new content
in non-English languages, especially
Spanish, French, and German.
There has been a significant rise in
nonconventional services such as creative
design, permission clearance, and image
research. For the latter, PMG has just
the right product to offer: Right-
Photo, its proprietary engine for ser-
vices covering image research, per-
missions, rights management, and
image archiving. The challenge in
offering this service, Viswanathan
says, “lies in creating a highly effi-
cient process that is scalable to large
volumes, something that we have
been able to do with our seamless
onshore/offshore workflow.”
 Content Services in India 2011
On the
higher-ed side,
full-service
project man-
a g e m e n t
remains its
focus. “An
increasing pro-
portion of our
higher-ed proj-
Kapil Viswanathan, ects involve
co-CEO of PreMediaGlobal t h e w h o l e
works, from content development,
design, and image research up to deliver-
ables,” says executive v-p (higher-ed divi-
sion) Rick Vayo. And e-books are a grow-
ing part of those deliverables. “E-book
volumes are certainly growing, and this
growth will outpace that of print. How-
ever, print will still play a role in certain
types of material. E-reader devices will
continue to get more usable and feature-
rich, and while there has been no single
killer device yet, we might see a clear
leader emerging soon.”
Senior v-p (pre-k–12 division) Jane
Petlinski adds, “When we develop
e-books and other digital products simul-
taneously with the print product, we can
customize them by weaving in new
media, interactivity, and additional con-
tent for a more exclusive, value-added,
and tailor-made feel. Storyboarding right
from the start would help both print and
digital formats.”
Confident of the growing opportuni-
ties in the publishing marketplace, PMG
increased its office space last February and
will be expanding its current 1,000-mem-
ber team.
Planman
Technologies
No other vendor has so much
going on in the library space.
With a clientele consisting of
national libraries from around
the globe, Planman offers end-
to-end services ranging from
microfilm scanning to data
crunching. “We provide digital
library support and portal
development, metadata cre- (l.-r.) Vishal Salgotra, Sourav Chatterjee, Amit Vohra,
ation, and schema conversion, and P.S. Narang of Planman Technologies
transforming
content
taxonomy, METS/ALTO output and in any format
offering
even cataloguing services. We will be
launching consulting services in devel-
oping digital libraries soon,” says Vishal
Salgotra, v-p of business development,
adding that the demand for high quality
multiple delivery
content in different formats has increased
two- to threefold in recent years. “Tradi-
options
tional book publishers are now more
open to technology and are making stra-
tegic moves into the digital space in
order to maintain their market leader-
ship. At the same time, there are niche
digital publishers that are seeing double-
digit growth within just a few years of
operation.” Naturally, Planman is invest-
ing heavily in crucial new technologies
and software knowledge.
Among the new technologies thrown
into focus are HTML5 and Flex. “There is
huge interest from the U.K. and U.S.
markets in these. We have done several
interactive whiteboards [IWBs] and
e-book projects using Flash/Flex in which
our team handled everything from story-
boarding, content writing, animating,
illustrating, to programming. Develop-
ing mobile and tablet apps is another area
that we are working on aggressively,” says
v-p of sales Amit Vohra. One recent proj-
ect, Learn & Draw, aimed at eight- to
10-year-olds, effectively illustrates Plan-
man’s capabilities. The team developed Creation-Conversion-Conservation
digital components such as IWBs with
interactive videos, background music, and Publishing Services
animation to give kids a fun-filled experi-
Development, Composition
ence as basic facts about various subjects
from the print product were included.
Last July, Planman opened a new office
Graphics & Digital Imaging
in Cincinnati, Ohio, with a strong and Scanning, Images & Illustrations
experienced editorial and project man-
Alternate Format Conversions
ePub, eBook, XML, XHTML, SGML
Content Management
Archival, IPR, DRM,
Content Distribution Channels
www.reproindialtd.com
 Content Services in India 2011
PW Talks with Rick Beardsley

At STM publisher CRC Press, a subsidiary of Taylor &
Francis, outsourcing to India was a gradual process that
started with typesetting, then on to graphic work (such
as relabeling and redrawing illustrations) and finally
the whole workflow covering copyediting and project
management to deliverables. V-p of production Rick
Beardsley talks to PW about his outsourcing experience
and offers some dos and don’ts.
When did you start outsourcing to
India, and how many vendors do you
use?
That was 10 years ago, and we currently
use eight full-service vendors: one based in
Singapore, one in the U.S. (that partners
with Indian vendors), and the rest, India.
What is the basic format for your
frontlist?
A majority of our books are in InDesign,
with the basic page layout scripted to
follow a particular template.
How about backlist conversion?
Mass backlist conversion to XML is something that we
have avoided. As we develop more interactive products, we
want the products to determine the conversion format, not
vice versa. We have, however, converted most of the titles
for our online subscription database, CRCnetBASE, in
which each title is broken up into chapters of metadata-
rich interactive PDFs.
How do you deal with the rising demand for e-books
and content flexibility?
We have adjusted accordingly. More of our frontlist is now
available as e-books, and we have expanded our conver-
sion capabilities as well as the number of formats provided.
On the archival side, we have instituted stricter quality
control and tighter organization on our files. As more oppor-
tunities to use and reuse our content emerge, we need the
files to be accurate, complete, and in a usable format.
What is your concern about e-books?
Equation- and table-heavy content may be broken up and
become meaningless on a small screen. As an STM pub-
lisher, we have to be careful with that. Also, preventing
piracy is a major concern with e-books.
What are your words of wisdom on vendor selection?
Firstly, consider carefully the type of work you are look-
ing to outsource. Copyediting and proofreading could be
tricky. We have an easier time with STM publishing
because we can usually live with a light basic grammar
and spelling edit, and not worry so much about the
author’s voice. But if your author is a non-native English
speaker, then it is probably not wise to have another
non-native English speaker as the editor. Many of our
Indian vendors use copyediting and
project management resources not
only from their own country but
also from the U.S. and U.K.
Secondly, test new vendors thor-
oughly and rigorously. Low prices
can be tempting, but, as we have
discovered, there is a wide range of
ability and quality control out there.
Thirdly, one or two successful proj-
ects do not mean that the vendor is
ready for a regular flow of work. We
consider a vendor to be in test mode in the first year, and
we have rejected far more vendors than what we ended
up using.
Any specific areas to look out for?
In general, explicit instruction is crucial, and it is good to
put every detail in writing. Building a full-service instruc-
tion manual is one way we have dealt with it. And don’t
be overly tempted by volume discounts because growing
volume too quickly can be disastrous.
Your thoughts on the current Indian content services
industry?
Overall, we have seen it becoming more stable and better
prepared to handle our work. The price advantage over
domestic sources is not as dramatic as in the past, but
India is still a good deal. We have come to a point where
we outsource large and complex handbooks to India with
confidence, but the process has taken a number of years to
develop. In the past, some of our biggest problems came
from a lack of proper project management, but that is no
longer an issue. Moving slowly while developing our sup-
pliers and forming a long-term relationship with them
has certainly paid off.

agement team to provide full-service sup-
port to American publishing clients. One
recent project in literature for grades
six–12 fully illustrates the team’s exper-
tise. “For this project, our Cincinnati edi-
torial team worked with the Delhi pro-
duction team using a K4 InCopy work-
8 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
flow,” says Orville Dykes, director of
publishing services. “We will expand our
Cincinnati office, enhance editorial devel-
opment expertise in core subject areas,
and continue building technology devel-
opment capabilities, in our ongoing effort
to be a valued partner to our clients.”
Newgen Imaging
While other vendors are working to
build developmental editing or creative
services capabilities, these are nothing
new at Newgen. “Our Texas and New
York offices support acquisitions editors
by working with authors to ensure man-
We
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2011 awards of the Year
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by JoseMaria Rodriguez
Maria Garcia
Rodriguez Garcia

Copyediting. .Project
Copyediting Management. .Composition
ProjectManagement Composition. .ePub
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sales@newgenimaging.com
sales@newgenimaging.com
Chennai, India -+91
+9199406
9940638938
38938||Austin,
Austin,USA
USA +1
- +1512
512478
4785341|
541| Oxford, UK -+44
+44186
186586
5861988
1988
 Content Services in India 2011
uscripts arrive in proper
shape, on time, and with the
agreed subject coverage. We
prepare author guidelines,
create Word authoring tem-
plates, manage schedules
and the review process, and
ensure content compli-
ance—the whole works. We
even create model chapters
to guide authors on the
structure and features. Maran Elancheran, presi-
dent of Newgen Imaging
Developing print and digi-
tal ancillaries is also part of developmen-
tal editing—and all these tasks call for
considerable subject matter expertise.”
Digitization of legacy content has
always been a major segment at Newgen,
especially with its SCOOP (SCan, OCR,
Online PDFs) services. Nowadays, out-
puts are no longer PDFs only. “In 2010,
we converted more than one million
pages to ePub format, and the figure is
expected to more than double this year.
Our proprietary conversion engine can
deliver ePub files from any input format
at a fast clip with consistent quality,”
says president Maran Elancheran, adding
that the software converts backlist and
frontlist titles to all major e-book for-
mats on the fly.
Currently, Newgen is the only India-
based vendor (with no printing facility)
to offer a manufacturing coordination
service to publishers. “Coordinating
with the publishers’ printers and compo-
nent suppliers, managing warehouse
delivery schedules, estimating, creating
book covers, and ensuring correct brand-
ing—these are just some of the services
that we provide,” adds Elancheran,
whose printing engineers also manage
the delivery of final files in specific for-
mats to different aggregators on behalf of
their clients.
Elancheran and his team are seeing
increasing demand for multiple print
products from the same XML content.
For one legal publisher, for instance,
Newgen produces a serial title with one
annual and two bimonthly print and
online editions. He says, “Even though
all three products are derived from the
same content, the style, format, and cov-
10 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
erage are different for each.
When the project came to
us, the three editions were
managed as three separate
databases. We created a
master XML database that
allows them to be generated
from a single source, so con-
tent updates need be made
just once to be reflected in
all three editions. The data-
base workflow ensures
100% data integrity
between products while reducing work
duplication.” And that is the very aim of
the industry: creating robust and effi-
cient single-source content that can be
moved into different channels without
losing data integrity.
LearningMate
With tier two and three publishers
aggressively investing in digital strate-
gies, CEO Samudra Sen sees “an oppor-
tunity for publishers to leverage Learn-
ingMate’s digital services to achieve their
goals. For instance, we helped a midsize
legal publisher create its e-book plat-
form, and now we are in the process of
building its enterprise portal to serve
litigation lawyers across the U.S.” More
recently, LearningMate executed one of
the largest digital transformation proj-
ects ever: creating, building, and deploy-
ing several hundred courses over four
months for a major educational pub-
lisher. “Our process automation tools and
integrated project management systems
helped us accomplish this seamlessly.”
Sen is transforming his company from
an e-learning pure-play to a global,
Samudra Sen (r.) and Abhijeet Sethi of
LearningMate
diversified, enterprise-scale content and
technology business. “Large publishers
are increasing investments in the Asia
Pacific region and creating market-spe-
cific digital products. In fact, some of
these projects are a complete overhaul of
the original product lines with different
language and cultural contexts. Our
team works with our clients in Japan,
Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia, and we
are learning to collaborate with local
experts in these countries as well.”
In the past six months, LearningMate’s
revenues from consulting services have
shot up. “We have been called to design
enterprise-wide content architectures
that provide for the way content will be
used in years to come. A great example is
a content model we developed for a major
higher-ed publisher on which their new
product and distribution strategy is
built. They can now configure and sell
their content in new ways and through
new channels—unthinkable just five
years ago. We have also created innova-
tive tools and automated workflows for
XML transformation and content deliv-
ery to emerging mobile device plat-
forms.”
Meanwhile, plans to set up another
office in India are in the works. “We con-
sidered Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad,
and Pune before settling on Kolkata. The
city impressed us with its academic infra-
structure, local talent pool, and reason-
able cost structure. It’s a great fit for a
midsize company like ours. The city is
also emerging as the destination for many
software companies from tier one cities in
India.” Across the oceans, in New Jersey,
Sen is busy building a content develop-
ment team. “Our customers want to out-
source the entire value chain from content
authoring and media development to
packaging and delivery. Naturally, we are
gearing up to meet their needs.”
Lapiz
Acquiring more editorial capabilities in
the k–12 segment and making process
improvements in projects involving con-
tent management systems and digital
devices are on CEO Indira Rajan’s to-do
list for 2011. She is also in the process of
Instructional Design Publish Everywhere.
That’s Where Students Learn.
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With an e-publishing partner who understands your business,
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New York Vancouver London Mumbai
 Content Services in India 2011
recruiting a
senior execu-
tive responsi-
ble for “for-
mulating and
implementing
departmental
and organiza-
tional policies
and proce-
dures to maxi-
Indira Rajan, CEO of mize output,
Lapiz freeing v-p V.
Bharathram to focus on creating more
strategic partnerships.”
How to maximize productivity for dif-
ferent digital devices such as iPad and
Kindle is constantly on Rajan’s mind.
Her team is busy with R&D on the crop
of e-readers in the market, looking for
the best way to tweak content to suit
each format. She adds, “Digital content
is the way forward, and more schools will
be opting for digital textbooks. But there
is a big difference between producing
digital content for trade, college, and
k–12. Admittedly, we have a very strong
hold in the trade book division, and visu-
alization, interactivity, and instructional
design are much more complex in k–12
projects. We need to acquire these capa-
bilities given the rate of e-textbook
adoption.” Her team is currently produc-
ing print and digital products simultane-
ously for a major publisher’s program
that involves 4,000 pages, 80% requir-
ing Flash animation.
For now, Rajan sees her team as having
a competitive edge because “we are one of
the few companies that have worked with
different publishers’ content manage-
ment systems. We have worked on K4
and, recently, Documentum.” Asked
about major challenges in working with
such systems, she says, “Nothing major
thus far. At times, connectivity was an
issue, but we resolved it by buying addi-
tional bandwidth.” And she does not
think that there is any loss of control,
even though everything is done through
the client’s FTP server. “In fact, there is
more transparency,” she says. “The work-
flow is powerful and highly customized,
and all activities are logged and therefore
12 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
traceable. There is much better version
control, and any human errors can be
tracked and rectified quickly. The best
part is that our team members can work
on different parts of the same project
simultaneously, and our client can track
up-to-the-minute progress. The only
thing that we need to be sure of is to have
a very well-defined internal workflow
prior to working on such projects.”
KiwiTech
The mobile apps frenzy is evident in
KiwiTech’s growth spurt: 26 months
since its inception, it already has 80-some
people on its payroll. “We add around
five to six people every month—mostly
for our development team—and have
launched a new Web site to better show-
case our expertise,” says cofounder and
CTO Gurvinder Batra. The company has
also established a sales and marketing
team in New York, headed by cofounder
and president Anita Gupta.
Mobile commerce is going to be huge,
Batra adds, saying, “We want to stay very
focused on this particular space. Our goal
is to stay aggressive and move ahead of
the market. Most of all, we want to con-
tinue having fun creating innovative app
solutions that will help our clients achieve
their goals.” For those thinking of turn-
ing print into apps, he has a few tips to
offer: “Figure out your digital strategy
based on specific product lines. Remem-
ber that an app is only one of the solutions
from the mobile delivery perspective.
Some other options may be more cost-
effective. And having one successful app
does not mean that the same approach or
style will work for all other products.
Experimen-
tation is cru-
c i a l . Yo u
need to test
the platform
using your
top product
lines. While
bigger play-
ers have
m o r e
Gurvinder Batra, cofounder resources to
and CTO of KiwiTech experiment,
smaller ones have more at stake with each
app project.”
Scalability, he says, is a very important
factor for the publishing industry. And
with scalability comes cost. “You can
choose to create a unique solution for a
book, but doing so for each and every book
is simply not practical. The more practical
approach is to avoid recreating the wheel.
Take book design, for instance. Publishers
can create a series of book and page
designs, and fit a book into one of these
designs. It helps to keep costs low as well
as standardizing the process. We can take
a similar approach to apps development—
keeping the individuality of the book
intact while reducing the development
costs.” In general, an app may cost
between $8,000 and $15,000 to develop.
Partnering with large players to help
them with their digital strategy and fig-
uring out how to scale and provide a
digital solution across their product lines
are the goals of KiwiTech. “We are work-
ing on some exciting projects that will
be the first of their kind in the mobile
industry. But this is too early for us to
divulge any details. Suffice it to say that
the next 12 to 16 months looks extremely
exciting for us.”
Integra
Unveiling a new logo and the vision of
“powering content transformation” a few
weeks before entering 2011 marks a new
chapter at Pondicherry-based Integra.
“We have used the old logo for more than
16 years, and it’s high time for a change.
The feedback from our clients has been
encouraging. They really like the new,
more colorful logo, our focused vision
and mission statement, and the way they
are in sync with our business goals and
industry trends. One large educational
publisher, in particular, likes the use of
the word ‘joyful’ in our mission state-
ment because he finds that Integra really
lives its vision,” says Sriram Subramanya,
cofounder, managing director, and CEO.
Clients, especially nonnative speakers
of English, are also “joyful” to find copy-
editing and proofreading services readily
accessible at Language-Polishing.com.
“We position this service as a product, and
 Meeting all
Meeting all your
your
it’s only available through our Web
publishing needs
publishing needs
site. We launched this site last Octo-
ber, so the traffic is just picking up. end-to-end!
end-to-end!
Clients are mostly from European and
Asian countries. It is really encourag-
ing to see a large STM publisher list
Integra as an approved source for lan-
guage polishing services. We have
seen it gaining traction and many
Editorial Development
Editorial Development
projects have already been com-

Sriram Subramanya,
pleted,” adds Subramanya, who
recently set up an office in Ely, Cam-
Design
Design
cofounder, managing bridgeshire, U.K., with three senior
Photo Research & Text Permission
director and CEO of staff to handle full-service project
Integra
management. Photo Research & Text Permission
Publishers, he says, are currently “in the transformation
stage, and it will take two to three years until e-gadgets sta-
bilize before they have more clarity in their direction. In the
meantime, everyone is merging traditional and new media.
New Media
New Media
This convergence has taken the educational publishing indus-
try by storm, and it has spread through publishing BPOs like
Integra. Higher-ed and school publishers are looking to part-
ner with vendors who can provide both media services and
Project Management
Project Management
high-value end-to-end services. At Integra, having editorial
development and full-service offices in the U.S. and U.K.
means that we can have certain services either executed
onshore or brought back to Pondicherry.”
But it is not all work for Subramanya and his wife, cofounder
and joint managing director, Anu Sriram. Aside from greening ePub Conversion
the local environment with tree-planting campaigns, the Sri- ePub Conversion
ram Charitable Trust has also started a program to bring diag-
nostic tests and free medicine to people in neighboring rural Composition
Composition
areas. “We have carried out 24 Eye Camp programs to provide
specialist eye care services, including cataract and cornea oper-
ations. This is just one of the ways Integra gives back to society,”
adds Subramanya.

Innodata Isogen
“The iPad has compelled publishers to look at how its sophis-
ticated technology can support content enrichment,” says Jim
Lewis, senior v-p for sales and mar-
keting, whose team has been pro-
viding e-publishing services for
Apple’s iBookstore since last
November. “I think we are just at Single Source Publishing from Integra
Single Source Publishing from Integra
the beginning of a trend in book
publishing: enhanced design, cov-
ering graphical design, animation,
Powering content transformation
increased interactivity, and better Powering content transformation

use of text. There are also ties with

social networking and the vast
linkable resources of the Web.” Jim Lewis, senior v-p for
Overall, Lewis continues to see sales and marketing at
“increased demand for traditional Innodata Isogen
 Content Services in India 2011

In January, it was announced that the BookMasters supplier, onshore or offshore. Managing expectations and
PW Talks with David Wurster

Group Inc. had formed a strategic partnership with
Bangalore-based Macmillan Publishing Services to offer
clients a complete array of services covering digital
publishing, fulfillment, and print and electronic distri-
bution. CEO David Wurster of BMI talks to PW about
the benefits this partnership brings to both sides, and
how clients can leverage both partners’ expertise.
When did you start working with MPS?
It began a few years ago. We met with MPS
executives in the U.S. and U.K., and worked
out an arrangement where BMI provides
warehousing and fulfillment in the U.S. while
MPS takes care of call center and order taking
in India. Then Rajiv Seth, CEO of MPS, and
I met last summer and we began talking about
leveraging our companies’ expertise and mar-
ket share.
What factors determine your choice of
partner?
We seek vendors based on resource needs, and we have
many active relationships with offshore vendors based on
their strengths and our needs. Since we have already tried
and tested these resources, it enables us to better customize
our publishing clients’ production processes. And when-
ever we have new publishing challenges, we turn to our
diverse resources for solutions and information.
Did you look at vendors outside of India at all?
The market dictates that offshore vendors be used since
there is a pseudo-commodities market that has sprung up
around composition and conversion price points. This
transition has happened in the industry over the past decade
and we have accepted it. Our talented U.S. team itself has
transitioned to managers of offshore composition and con-
version services. Given our established rapport with Indian
vendors since the late 1990s, we don’t have the need or
impetus to move work to another region.
Teething problems in partnerships are normal. How
do you deal with them?
Communication is the main issue when dealing with any
developing proactive solutions are crucial. We have imple-
mented a very transparent production reporting system
that works not only internally but allows our publisher-
clients direct access as well. By casting MPS as part of our
U.S. team pulling for the same publishing client, we get
buy-in to the project’s goals, thus achieving higher stan-
dards in execution and delivery. Basically, everyone likes
seeing a job well done, regardless of culture or time zone,
and MPS has put great focus in this area for BMI.
How does your e-book conversion and
distribution program, Converso, fit into
this partnership?
Converso allows publishers to defer their
e-book conversion costs until sales volumes of
the e-books are able to cover the initial invest-
ment. This means that publishers can convert
backlist titles—which often do not have the
production budget of frontlists—and pay for
the conversions out of reported sales accrued
through our online retail partners.
So the publisher only needs to contract with BMI
instead of tens of online retailers?
That’s right. We handle the contracts and terms as well as
report sales back into one central place for the publisher’s
online account management. Converso also remedies
metadata issues by creating one set of standard metadata
from which we then disseminate to the various online
retail partners in their preferred format. We also ensure
that the e-book files adhere to specifications required by
different e-reading devices.
A couple of months down the partnership road with
MPS, what is your assessment?
We are seeing great interest from both American and over-
seas publishers looking to leverage the low-cost composi-
tion/conversion services while receiving a well-managed
electronic distribution and production workflow in the
U.S. The digital printing component—on a print-to-order
basis—has received lots of attention as well. No major
deals yet, but it’s still early days. I’m very optimistic
about this partnership.

services related to content transforma-
tion and mobility, as well as greater
demand for authoring, content creation,
and other high value-added services. As
the movement toward open access text-
books and educational materials contin-
ues to grow, we have been producing
more topic maps and first drafts of
important texts.” Innodata Isogen also
creates a lot of abstracted and summa-
14 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
rized content as well as short descriptions
or articles for numerous Web-based pub-
lishers. “There is significant demand for
technology-enabled educational materi-
als, along with short topic summaries for
people who want quick access to perti-
nent information.”
E-publishing, he adds, is gaining
momentum: “Product development
around new technologies is increasing, as
is the application of ‘e’ to just about every
aspect of the publishing process: e-pro-
duction, e-discovery, e-marketing, e-sell-
ing and so on. Print is still the archival
medium of choice and access where band-
width is slow or nonexistent. But increas-
ingly, the print version is not the publica-
tion of record.”
As for e-books, Lewis sees the next
wave coming from emerging markets and
 Content Services in India 2011

different language groups. of the medical publisher Thieme, the

“Until very recently, the
DiTech Process publisher named DiTech as one of its
e-book market was U.S.- and Solutions most preferred vendors. For Ahmed, that
English-based with a small Since taking over DiTech acknowledgment is an encouragement to
amount of Spanish thrown (formerly IBH Process Solu- do even better. In fact, after completing
in. This is changing rapidly tions) in May 2010, CEO one major project for the U.S. division,
as more languages outside Nizam Ahmed has been DiTech was referred to one of Thieme’s
the major ones, including focused on expanding his German imprints and subsequently
the ideographic languages, publishing services, espe- awarded 500 titles for production based
are being supported by more cially in the digital/e-book on CoreSource/VitalSource specifications.
reading devices.” Annually, Nizam Ahmed, CEO area: “Our revenue has dou- To date, Braille/NIMAS/DAISY con-
Innodata Isogen produces of DiTech Process bled in the past six months, version continues to be one of DiTech’s
hundreds of thousands of Solutions and our e-book conversion strongest services, but so too are its cus-
e-books for almost two dozen e-book dis- business has shown double-digit growth. tomized solutions for educational institu-
tribution platforms. The volume has con- Our strategy is to have a CAGR [com- tions. Recently, one Australian university
tinued to grow as new and varied types of pound annual growth rate] of 150% year- approached Ahmed for urgent help to con-
publications enter the mix. “We see an on-year through organic and inorganic vert 55,000 pages to RTF format. “Chal-
increase in frontlist work, but backlist expansion.” Acquiring a mid-tier com- lenges abounded. The source files were
projects continue to grow as well. If I pany in the publishing/conversion vertical poor quality scans, so extraction of text and
could make a general statement based on to strengthen DiTech’s offshore presence images was near impossible. On top of
what we are seeing today, it would be that is in the cards, and the deal should be that, we were staring at a 45-day deadline
we will see more frontlists from major sealed before the year is out. because the material was needed for the
publishers and more backlists from small Last month, during a Business Review coming semester. We formed a dedicated
and midsize publishers.” interview to mark the 125th anniversary team for the project, did complete key-

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 Content Services in India 2011
boarding and proofreading, and developed
internal quality control tools to check the
final files against client specifications.”
Soon after the project was successfully
delivered ahead of schedule, the university
began awarding DiTech more work for
DAISY, Braille, and PDF conversion.
The next 12 to 16 months will also see
Ahmed opening full-time sales and proj-
ect management offices in three different
regions across the globe. “Historically,
our energies have been focused on culti-
vating North American businesses, but
we are now going to make a move into
Europe and Asia Pacific.” And augment-
ing his sales force while looking into
growing the publishing business is none
other than Jan Zucker, former v-p of
Hudson News, who joined the team in
January this year. “Then we hope to
attain certification in information secu-
rity management system [ISMS] and
work on providing a truly green office
environment for our 350-odd staff.”
+91-44-4288-9000 | sales@diacritech.com | www.diacritech.com
diacriTech
Working with an American
aggregator to convert 12,000
titles into ePub format by
April is one project that is
keeping v-p A.R.M. Gopi-
nath and his team on their
toes. The source files are
batched to diacriTech in dif-
ferent formats, including
PDF, InDesign, and QuarkX-
Press, and some are math-
heavy. “Extraction scripts are
written to automatically con-
vert the content into XML
based on a DTD that was
developed earlier, while
images and math equations Mahesh Balakrishnan (standing) and A.R.M. Gopinath of
diacriTech
are turned into GIF. Valida-
tion and quality control comes next, and validates, and dispatches them to their
all corrections are made directly to the client. “We assign around 80 people to
XML files,” adds Gopinath, whose team this project, and they finish between 180
then converts those files into ePub using and 200 titles a day.”
a combination of PerlScript and XSLT, For v-p Mahesh Balakrishnan, “EPub,
Offshore | Onshore | Hybrid
Project Management
Composition
XML First Workflow
XML/NIMAS Conversion
Content Development
(Writing, Editing and Accuracy Checking)
Design and Illustration
Multimedia
eBooks / ePub
iPad, Android Apps
Interactive Whiteboard Apps
deas with no boundaries
+1-603-606-5800, +1-617-236-7500 | www.laureltech.com
 Content Services in India 2011
mobile app, and e-book projects are the
next wave. And we anticipate that cli-
ents—publishers and content aggrega-
tors—will be constantly looking for a
single vendor who can take care of the
full product cycle.” He recently had a
client looking to develop an app for an
image repository of skin infections.
“Since the client wanted to display the
list of skin ailments by region, our team
incorporated a GPS [global positioning
system] function into the app as well. So
far, we have been called to develop apps
that perform very specific tasks, such as
improving general knowledge using
crossword puzzles, teaching simple
math using card games, or enhancing
business communication using language
translators.”
There have been a lot of Adobe Flash-
based projects in recent months as well.
Adds Gopinath, “Most of our Flash proj-
ects are based on technical simulations
that require subject matter experts to
collaborate closely with the Flash team
and the client. Being a full-service pro-
vider, we are also asked to create interac-
tive Flash content that goes into com-
panion Web sites or CDs. In such cases,
we have to create storyboards based on
the focus of the curriculum. So a good
understanding of the book publishing
process is crucial to the Flash develop-
ment process.”
Meanwhile, business from the U.S.
has picked up in recent months. “The
indicators are positive: more new proj-
ects are being developed, publishers are
starting to visit India again, and there is
lots of interest in apps, e-books, and
Flash coming from different
market segments. I think
the publishing industry has
gotten over the tough time
and is now looking at how to
capitalize on the craze for
tablets and smartphones,”
adds Balakrishnan.
Datamatics
The formation of Datamat-
ics Global Services from the Krishna Tewari, global head for ogy team has developed
merging of the company’s online, publishing, and media
software and BPO divisions solutions at Datamatics
in the past two years has brought “a shift
in the strategic direction of our com-
pany, from providing software develop-
ment, back-office processing, and body
shopping to solution-based services,”
says Krishna Tewari, global head for
online, publishing, and media solutions.
“To enable this shift, several modular
tools and applications have been devel-
oped to make back-office processing
faster, cheaper, and better. Then, by
applying intelligent rules to these appli-
cations, we error-proof the processes,
leading to easier training and scaling
processes while reducing our depen-
dency on skill-based resources. You can
say that we are no longer a traditional
pre-press house.”
One major back-office project at
3,000-strong Datamatics involves main-
taining the Web catalogues of one of the
world’s largest retailers. Says Tewari, “It
involves writing any missing product
descriptions, ensuring correct product
and category listing, calculating ship-
ping cost and other pricing information,
verifying details such as UPC [Universal
Product Code], images, brand, features,
etc. Sometimes, multilingual work is
required. The biggest challenge is related
to the project’s seasonality, which makes
capacity and production planning com-
plex, but working closely with the cli-
ent’s product managers has helped to
smooth the process.” The goal, he says, is
“to make sure our client’s customers are
able to find the products they are search-
ing for accurately and quickly.”
As of now, around 85% of Datamat-
ics’s clients come from the U.S., and
many publishers, espe-
cially from the reference
and textbook segments,
are doing e-books for
their front lists. Says
Tewari, “We have sepa-
rate teams for this ser-
vice line and have
enhanced our capabili-
ties to grow the e-book
business. Our technol-
module-based conver-
sion/transformation
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 17
 Content Services in India 2011
JOBp
ZONE applications that make conversion from Noida (Delhi), and Bangalore, besides
1-BrilliancePW102510_1-BrilliancePW102610 10/18/10 4:54 PM Page 1

various XML or SGML formats to three facilities in the U.S., serving many
Tom Clancy Is Back…
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PublishersWeekly.com
O ctober 25, 2010 $8.00
Fictional Characters with Him!
In order to continue offering cutting- publishers. “The synergies of the com-
edge solutions, the company is growing bined organization have allowed us to
its capabilities organically and inorgani- build and launch a new suite of tools that
cally. Recently, Datamatics opened a includes ePublish, an e-book converter
Available in
Multiple Media
Formats
new delivery center in Bosnia to offer capable of high quality conversion of
PublishersWeekly.com
O ctober 18, 2010 $8.00
multilingual services. “We acquired complex content,” says v-p of operations
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Devoteam Danet in October 2009 and Waseem Andrabi. “We now have the
have streamlined its operations to offer ability to convert complex content that
from BrillianceAudio

billing solutions to content merchandis- has graphics, math, tables, and interac-
ers and other content information pro- tive and enriched formatting for any
PublishersWeekly.com
w w w. r e g n e r y. C O m
viders. As for our joint venture with mobile device platform.”
Cignex, we will use its open source plat- In view of the multitude of e-reader
O ctober 4, 2010 $8.00

RegneRy Publishing
hits AnotheR home Run
Country’s Leading Conservative
form to build next-generation digital devices, standardization of deliverables
Publisher Lands Another
#1 Best-Seller
How Does This
asset management solutions,” says becomes necessary. Andrabi adds, “Our
Independent
Publisher Defy
The Odds?
Tewari, adding that clients “can expect simple solution is Mobile dPub, a prod-
much larger capacity from onshore and uct that we launched last month. It is a
offshore Datamatics facilities, and be device-neutral, browser-based e-reader
sure that the tools and platforms that we that is highly customizable so that pub-
enhance and develop will cater to the lishers do not have to worry about pre-
ever-changing industry needs.” paring different formats for different
Publishers Weekly, devices. E-books can be delivered to any
the go-to voice for the Cenveo Publisher mobile or desktop device, providing
publishing industry Services educational publishers the flexibility to
This global full-service offer content to students
is launching publishing company was on any device.”
built from the combined Cenveo has increased the
Job Zone— technology and experience speed at which new proj-
of Cadmus Communica- ects and services hit the
Publishers Weekly’s new tions, KGL, and Glyph. market, and embarked on
job board that will reach While Cadmus and KGL an intense marketing pro-
publishersweekly.com’s operations have been part gram to raise awareness of
400,000 unique monthly of Cenveo since 2007, some new workflow tools.
users. What does this Glyph was acquired Says Andrabi, “As we
mean to you? Engaging almost a year ago, in May develop more new tools,
the most qualified and 2010. Atul Goel, senior Atul Goel, senior v-p of global we see growth in our full-
talented employment v-p of global operations operations and technology at service business because
seekers in the publishing and technology, says, “By Cenveo more publishers are mov-
industry. Post your job combining the service, technology, and ing toward a single-source solution. We
knowledge of these three entities, we undertake onshore/offshore project man-
for $250 monthly and
have created a comprehensive service agement, composition and creative
relax while PW and technology platform ideally suited design, copyediting, and a wide array of
recruits the industry’s to serve the needs of today’s global pub- related publishing services such as work-
best talent for lishers. By adding Glyph to our existing flow management and consulting.”
your employment portfolio, we have been able to share our
opportunity. tools, training programs, and workflows Aptara
across the larger organization, and better Aptara’s focus for the next 12 to 16
ZONE position our company to offer a higher months, says CEO Dev Ganesan, centers
JOBp level of service and more innovative on helping publishers capitalize on the
products to our customers.” exploding e-book and tablet markets by
The company now has operations in doing digital right the first time. “The
www.publishersweekly.com/jobzone India, including in Mumbai, Chennai, more the mobile device market grows,
 Content Services in India 2011

the more consumers are
setting the rules for how,
when, and where they
want content.”
To compete, publishers
must be able to quickly
and efficiently convert
their content from a single
source to digital formats
for multichannel distribu-
tion without requiring
reformatting. Enter Apta-
ra’s PXE end-to-end Web-
Dev Ganesan, CEO of Aptara
based technology for
authoring and producing multichannel
content. Last year, PXE was imple-
mented across three Wiley-Blackwell
locations in two countries, for the use of value chain, including LibreDigital,
more than 1,000 staff, and customized
to Wiley’s existing workflows. “They
were looking for a fast publishing solu-
tion that would reduce their time to
Aptara-PWad2 4/1/2011 3:35 PM Page 1
market from 75 days to 15 days, intro-
duce an XML-first work-
flow, and incorporate
online proofing capabili-
ties. With PXE, Wiley-
Blackwell’s turnaround
time was reduced by more
than 75% for six of their
medical, pharmaceutical
and physics journals, from
over nine weeks to 15
days, helping them to get
critical peer-reviewed sci-
entific and medical find-
ings online well in
advance of the print editions,” adds
Ganesan, whose company continues to
partner with other key players in the
Inkling, ScrollMotion, and MarkLogic,
to further expedite the content manage-
ment and distribution process for
Aptara customers.
PXE, he says, allows publishers “to use
as much or as little of the end-to-end
publishing platform as they need within
their existing workflows. There is no
need to disrupt long-standing produc-
tion processes to implement a new tech-
nology.”
He adds, “There are too many options
in the e-book market right now. But
once the format and medium conun-
drum is sorted out, barriers to growth
will be lowered and the cost of market
access reduced. Moreover, content that is
unencumbered by formatting gives pub-
lishers the flexibility and freedom to
always be prepared for whatever device
that comes next, regardless of its make
or model. And this is one challenge that
Aptara is uniquely poised to help pub-
lishers solve. PXE is giving publishers
their own multichannel digital work-
flows and the right foundation for prof-
iting from print, online, and e-book
revenues.”  n

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 Content Services in India 2011
Proving themselves across segments
and domains
Projects Showcase
By Teri Tan
No project, it seems, is too complex or daunting for Indian
vendors. PW randomly selects some notable projects to show-
case these vendors’ capabilities and domain expertise.
Cenveo
For one publisher, the team developed
programs to convert files in various for-
mats (QuarkXPress, InDesign, and PDF)
to end-XML. Converting 2,000 to 3,000
articles daily, the entire journal backlist
was completed in 10 weeks. It took
another two weeks to tweak the content
to fit new requirements, and the files
were then uploaded onto the publisher’s
content management system for online
publication. The team is now working on
the client’s backlist of books.
Datamatics
Providing end-to-end back-office publish-
ing services for a leading legal publisher
requires the team to turn around input files
within 14 hours or risk being penalized by
the printing company for the publisher.
Daily volume may go from 400 pages to
1,500 pages (submitted by two to seven
reporters), and deliverables include print-
ready PDFs, Web-ready documents, and
media-ready files. An XML-based work-
flow is provided, and all reports (with
enhanced search capabilities) are stored in
the publisher’s repository for reuse.
diacriTech
A medical series with more than 4,500
pages and 12,500 images required the
team to use an online workflow to enable
simultaneous collaboration with and
among various contributors. The titles
were hosted on diacriTech’s server to
allow authors to make changes, and coau-
thors to collaborate and share notes, in
20 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y ■ A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 1
real time. Some contributors were ini-
tially reluctant to try the paperless
approach, but they were later convinced
by the efficient end-to-end and faster
XML workflow.
DiTech
With only 25 days to convert 240 full-
color design-intensive titles (approxi-
mately 40,000 pages) to XML and ePub
formats, the team had to first produce a
sample for approval for each of four cat-
egories of titles. All images had to be
processed in a variety of sizes following
the client’s specifications. The team
developed proprietary XML and e-book
tools to enhance productivity, and cre-
ated a CSS style sheet to check the qual-
ity of finished files.
Integra
The premier cosmetology textbook from
Milady landed in Integra’s New York
office, requiring full-service project
management that included copyediting,
design, photo research, image purchase,
and production of the core text as well as
nearly 2,000 pages of supplementary
material. The team also provided devel-
opment services for portions of Hough-
ton Mifflin Harcourt’s bestselling Sci-
ence Fusion program, including student
editions, flip charts, and teacher editions.
Lapiz
A 70,000-page legacy conversion project
for a client’s asset management system
was the highlight last year. Additionally,
there were 45,000 pages for MathML
conversion. Tight deadline and frequent
DTD updates were among the top chal-
lenges. Highly customized and auto-
mated solutions were developed to meet
the short turnaround time, quality
requirements, and productivity level.
Planman
Technologies
A collaboration with Danish company
xml-tekst resulted in the IDA Reader, a
user-friendly software application for the
dyslexic and visually impaired users. A
multiformat reader, it reads aloud text
from a variety of file formats including
DAISY (2.0 and 3.0), HTML, RTF, and
XML. Launched last month at the CSUN
Conference on Technology and Persons
with Disabilities in San Diego, Calif., it
also has additional features such as book-
marking, highlighting, text search, and
a library for dyslexics. Best of all, the
software does file encryption at multiple
levels to prevent piracy.
Repro India
For a publisher that has more than half
of its catalogue out of print (around 700
titles), the team suggested digitizing the
titles to put them back on sale. A pilot
project consisting of 10 titles was carried
out. Titles were converted on an XML
workflow, and deliverables included
print-ready PDFs and ePub files. From
there, the titles were archived and then
distributed through Repro’s Digital
Storefront, allowing customers to buy
and print on demand.
Thomson Digital
The team was given three days to turn
around 7,700 pages of a Spanish reprint
program. Input files arrived in batches
of 600 to 700 pages, and the task
involved incorporating corrections
marked on tear sheets and relinking
images from the client’s FTP folder.
Version control was managed effec-
tively through the use of Thomson
Digital’s proprietary FMS (File Man-
agement System), and only the team
leader had access to the FTP to avoid
work duplication and confusion.  n
www.planmantechnologies.com

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Content Development and full Educational Editorial Services
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Graphic Design for Textbooks, Supplemental Materials, and Multimedia
Composition and Production Services
Illustration, Technical Art, and Animation
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