India's content services industry continues to buzz, loudly. For many multinational publishers, an average cost saving of 30% and a pool of top-notch Indian vendors are just what they need to survive the eat-or-be-eaten competition. For vendors, the latest statistics on the outsourcing business are music to their ears: a predicted 35% annual growth until 2010 and a still largely untapped $4 billion educational publishing market.
The SSTM outsourcing segment (estimated to be $1.72 billion by 2011) is maturing nicely, served by vendors with unbeatable domain expertise and production capabilities, while new niches—elhi, test and assessment, e-learning, e-book, and design services—are picking up momentum. Process-wise, even preacceptance manuscript evaluation and peer review—two sensitive areas long guarded by journal publishers with dogged determination—are being outsourced.
But nothing symbolizes growth better than acquisitions. Recent examples include the TDA Group by Cybermedia, Elm Street Publishing by Integra, Compset by Macmillan and GSS Book Services by PreMediaGlobal, all cross-border acquisitions aimed at establishing an integrated onshore/offshore operation to provide full-service capabilities ranging from composition to content distribution. The onshore unit affords clients the much needed comfort zone and local support, while the offshore centers reap the benefits of production and cost efficiencies. The union also promises immediate inorganic growth and access to a ready clientele, mostly for high-end project management services. (The buying is not just one way, by Indian firms; the acquisition of Chennai-based OfficeTiger by American R.R. Donnelley and Pondicherry-based SPi by Philippines' PLDT are two instances whereby the acquirer's offshore production capacity expanded overnight.) Next on the acquisition map is Europe, with its flighty euro and huge potential market.
Investors and venture capitalists are also busy carving out their piece of the pie. Just check out American Capital Strategies' $23-million investment in Aptara, Bangalore-based Helion Venture Partners' $5.1 million in Hurix, JM Financial India Fund's $18.3 million in PreMediaGlobal, and Quatrro BPO Solution's majority stake (through Olympus Capital) in Scope. And let's not forget media conglomerate Network18's ownership of Cepha and ITC (through its Infomedia acquisition by way of a 40% stake, or $45 million, in ICICI Ventures). The investment scene does get complicated at times, but the message is not: the content services business is hot, and getting hotter.
That is not to say the industry is without problems. Creeping costs and shrinking margins are major ones. Rising wages aside, the shortfall of experienced personnel and rampant poaching have made waving bigger paychecks to attract and retain workers the modus operandi for many vendors. The rupee's dramatic appreciation—more than 15% against the greenback in the last 12 months—has increased the margin pressures significantly. Consequently, project subcontracting is becoming common as larger vendors focus on higher-value services such as content development and developmental editing while passing keyboarding, OCR/conversion and low-level composition work on to smaller vendors.
Meanwhile, multinational publishers, now experienced in offshoring to India, are shrinking their vendor pool and consolidating accounts with mostly those offering full-service capabilities. It's definitely a great time to be one of the bigger vendors. But buyers are out there, not necessarily from the top 10 publishing houses. Smaller publishers are often more comfortable dealing with like-sized vendors giving their projects highly personalized attention. So, for vendors big and small, there are always plenty of fishes of different sizes out there.
In the following pages, PW reviews 19 vendors (in alphabetical order), zeroing in on the complex and interesting projects that came their way, new technologies adopted and plans for the near future. This review—always subjective, and the result of an often hit-or-miss scheduling effort—does not endorse, recommend or promote any particular company or service. Our caveat to potential buyers is loud and clear: do your homework, obtain references, visit the facilities, etc., before sending out your first project.
Aptara
Aptara boasts a few firsts in the industry: the first to introduce a front-end SGML workflow, as well as the first to acquire American composition companies to establish an onshore/offshore service model. Says CEO Ranjit Singh, “Aptara is positioned right from the start to provide a complete publishing solution encompassing content development, processing, management and delivery. One great example of our approach is Elsevier's Encyclopedia of the Solar System. When we were commissioned to revise this publication, we deployed a global solution: our highly experienced U.S. team of development editors worked alongside our proven Indian production team and content technology experts to expedite the overall process. The new edition was published seven months earlier than would have been possible with the traditional approach of completing content development before production.”
Singh sees technology only as an enabler, not a solution in itself. And one such enabler created by Aptara is PowerXEditor (PXE), an online authoring environment that allows book and journal clients to write and submit material online, as well as providing an end-to-end XML workflow. Publishers can access the XML files to track progress and make changes or automate time-consuming functions. Aptara's 12 PowerSuite tools allow publishers to make changes online, thus significantly cutting production time.
“Our primary focus now is to raise our copyediting skills in India for the professional and higher education markets. k—12 composition is another focus area, and we are a leader in this market, with 80% of our work handled offshore or through onshore project management with offshore production.” Over the last 12 months, Singh has set up a new sales and marketing office in Australia and divested its Whitmont litigation unit. “We are renewing our focus in the fields of publishing, e-learning and content management,” says Singh, who is very excited about the growth opportunities in publishing. “Forrester Research has estimated that the e-book market alone will reach $7.8 billion within five years. We see this time of technological revolution as an opportunity to expand our 20 years of industry-leading content solutions and client service.”
The Aptara management team now includes ex-Blackwell John Strange (overseeing its Publishing Advisory Group) and Lisa McLaughlin (director of journal publishing services). Singh notes, “Their appointments attest to our history of strong alliance with the STM/journal market and our desire to continually strengthen our position in this segment.”
Cepha
Innovative hiring practices play a significant role in strengthening and extending Cepha's capabilities. Its executives hail from diverse industries, ranging from electronics manufacturing (“valuable for our just-in-time lean manufacturing effort”) to printing (“helpful in improving print-ready files and related solutions”), and have undergone training by domain specialists.
The varied experience comes in handy when dealing with rich-media projects such as a 20-year literature collection that arrived as Excel spreadsheets. “For this CD-ROM project, we developed a program to convert the content into XML and then hyperlinked the 19,000-plus references to PubMed Central's database using Java-XML,” says operations director Hymanand Angara. “These references were also linked back to the chapters on the CD-ROM. Additionally, we incorporated advanced search capabilities including image and partial semantic searches, at speeds equivalent to or even exceeding Google's.” Another project involved concept visualization, storyboarding, instructional design and 2D/3D animation in Flash-XML, JavaScript and HTML. “Since introducing scientific concepts was part of the syllabi for this e-learning project, simplicity in instructional design and presentation was crucial. To further aid learning, we included video and audio demo clips along with assessments and multiple-choice questions.”
Meanwhile, one journal customer has instituted a new article management procedure for the receipt and collation of author corrections, as well as preparation of final content for online publication. “Additional decision is needed on our side, such as determining the styles used in author corrections, and this is a direct result of the trust that we have built with our clients. This new procedure elevates our status to a proactive partner as opposed to just a supplier,” says Angara, whose team also manages a journal requiring 48-hour turnaround. “Our XML-first workflow allows us to deliver such time-critical jobs with high quality.”
Complex project management is aplenty at 350-strong Cepha. One 1,586-page textbook on epilepsy surgery containing 595 figures and 16 pages of color plates, managed from start to finish, was done within four months, 250-plus authors notwithstanding. “The project's highlight was the three-level index that we compiled within one week using automated custom-built scripts,” says development manager Gopinath Narayanan. Another, a 2,500-page, five-volume title on the United Nations, was completed within 21 days. “It contains over 200 tables and forms, all requiring careful composition, and we compiled the index from files of various formats in seven workdays.”
Cybermedia
In the last 16 months, Cybermedia has been busy extending its reach in the content space, including a stake in Illinois-based Publication Services and the acquisition of California-based TDA Group, which specializes in marketing communications and custom publishing for Silicon Valley technology companies. “These add two U.S. locations to the two in India, and these operations will come under a newly formed holding company Content Matrix,” says president Hoshie Ghaswalla. “We have also expanded our production capacity with a brand new Noida facility that has a 240-seat capacity per shift. Most of our composition, typesetting and conversion work will be relocated there, while higher-end content and interactive projects will remain in Gurgaon.”
The new state-of-the-art facility is exactly what Ghaswalla will need to take on more full-service projects such as the recently concluded 2,500-page, five-volume Encyclopaedia of India. “We undertook content creation, including updating old versions, editing, proofreading, indexing, image research and enhancement, design and print-ready material preparation. Our eight-member content team worked on this Encyclopaedia Britannica project alongside a four-member production and design team. We are currently developing a fully searchable CD-ROM version in Flash CS3 that requires XML conversion, content tagging and database creation. Overall, the challenge for this project, both print and digital versions, was to create content that matched the renowned Britannica style and quality.”
Another complex project, this time for a Singapore-based educational and reference books publisher, involved a five-volume set on travel, a six-volume set on world cultures, four educational titles and 13 reference books on different countries. There were more than 6,500 pages in total. “We had to adhere to the original authors' styles when adapting the material to meet new market requirements. Most of these titles are also design intensive, and we had to create new art or template designs that matched the overall look and feel of the publisher's product range,” notes Ghaswalla, who has just launched a newer version of the company's online DigiMag, a digitization solution that essentially replicates the look and feel of a print product while providing the benefits of rich-media content. “It provides fast content delivery to readers at much lower costs than conventional printing and distribution methods.”
diacriTech
At diacriTech, v-p A.R.M. Gopinath remembers well an urgent 25,000-page NIMAS project. “While the one-month deadline was tough enough, the bigger issue was the large number of mathematical equations and images. Fortunately, we have been doing NIMAS-compliant formats long and often enough to have built many automated tools that enabled us to meet both challenges.” Another project on heart diseases presented a different type of challenge, with sketches, photographs and color-coded images that needed redrawing. “This is where our staff's medical background comes into play. And aided by extensive research, we were able to produce all 325 illustrations to the author's satisfaction. The project was concluded within four months.”
In the translation segment, v-p Mahesh Balakrishnan has seen steady growth over the years, involving mostly college and research-level STM projects. “We recognize the tremendous opportunity in this largely untapped segment. In fact, we have been handling German-language content since day one, back in 1997. But India faces a severe shortage of translators with subject expertise. Fortunately, we have a pool of experts offering high-quality services at affordable rates.” Besides recruiting in-house French- and German-speaking project managers and technical staff, diacriTech also runs training programs conducted by a German instructor with a publishing background. Spanish and French are other languages that are being worked on.
The company's STM expertise has also led to the development of a context-sensitive referencing tool by its 25-member software team. “This tool picks up words on mouse over and displays information about them. It has full Unicode support and can provide information in multiple languages at the same time,” says Gopinath, pointing out that the referencing tool works on both Windows and Macintosh platforms. “We have used this tool widely in dictionaries, translations, MRWs [major reference works] and even our editorial work.”
Right now, both Gopinath and Balakrishnan are busy with their new 350-seat facility in Madurai, more than 400 kilometers south of Chennai. The city is home to some of India's oldest institutions and many famous colleges—one reason diacriTech is heading there. “Proximity to skilled manpower is crucial. This facility, our third, will also serve as a disaster/recovery management center offering the full range of services to publishers,” adds Balakrishnan.
DSM Soft
Multilingual typesetting is DSM Soft's forte. “We have overhauled our workflow for speedier turnaround, and this is demonstrated by a 5,500-page complex engineering project which our seven-person team completed within five workdays. Each of the pages in this project contained about three to four engineering illustrations labeled in different European languages, and two to three side tables in 6-point text,” says managing director Ramesh Ananthakrishnan. “We have done versions in Danish, Norwegian, French, Russian, Greek, Hungarian and some 10 other languages. During the course of this project, we were shortlisted as the client's prime vendor.”
With typesetting now highly commoditized, he is focused on changing DSM's work processes and services in order to compete better. The company has begun offering a three-day turnaround, from design sample to first proof, for STM projects of around 600 typeset pages. “We recently completed ahead of schedule one elhi project with both student and teacher editions. Complex full-color layout with tons of annotations aside, the edited manuscript arrived without any indications of the positions of the various images and boxes. Our production staff had to figure them out and get the composition right the first time, as we only had four weeks to turn the 2,500-page manuscript into print-ready files. The client later told us that we outdid another vendor in speed and quality.”
DSM Soft also provides post-composition services to publishers, for deriving electronic content in any format and medium from its typeset output (or from other vendors', for that matter). “In this regard, we provide more than just typesetting, and we are looking into new media and other avenues of extending our services and products,” adds Ananthakrishnan, who is expecting revenues from European and U.S. markets to double this year. “We started earlier in Europe and thus have a much better standing there than other vendors. Our mixed sources have paid off, especially in insulating us from the weaker dollar. However, the U.S. is a much larger market, and we are working on increasing our business there. A full-time sales and marketing person based in Boston has been appointed, and we are looking into establishing onshore service teams in both markets.”
IBH Process Solutions
“Change is the only constant in today's dynamic world,” says president and COO Nizam Ahmed. “It is no different at IBH. With quality and data security of content becoming increasingly crucial, we have obtained our ISO 9000:2001 certification and are moving toward Six Sigma and ISMS (Information Security Management System) standards. These measures are important especially when we are expanding our e-publishing, content development and financial services.” IBH sales personnel now operate out of New York and Chicago, supported by a Chennai-based delivery center. Ahmed has also added legal and transaction management services to the company's portfolio.
Product-wise, Braille conversion—much needed but rarely offered—remains one of IBH's niche services. Says Ahmed, “One of the most challenging aspects of this particular service is the conversion of data to Braille, which used to be a time-consuming and costly transcription task. But new technologies have provided better support and tools, enabling text, graphics and mathematics to be converted faster and more easily. The most crucial step in Braille conversion is the comparison of the digitized output against the input file to ensure accuracy and no loss of data. Avoiding hard paragraph returns is important, and creating special tags to hold the images, graphs, tables, etc., in place is a must. We also need an in-house team that is well-versed in Braille script to check the final output, and they have to keep updated on advances in Braille technology.”
Demand for creative services such as for children's educational books is on the rise at IBH. “Designing an educational text that makes learning a joy is often a challenge; designing one for children is an even tougher proposition. Throw in elementary mathematics and self-explanatory illustrations, and it was one of the toughest projects our creative team has ever worked on,” recalls Ahmed, whose team of visualizers and graphic artists had to stretch their expertise to the limit to craft books with an equal focus on text and imagery that would engage children.
Going up, too, are digitization projects. Ahmed highlights a job where “we digitized about 100,000 pages of journals for a university library in 48 days flat. We even shipped the hard copies back within the turnaround time stipulated.” The feat earned much praise from the client.
Innodata Isogen
Helping publishers take advantage of emerging market opportunities is the way Innodata Isogen operates. Says Jan Palmen, senior v-p of publishing practice, “Public acceptance of e-books is growing and so, too, is the interest of publishers. We are now working with several media, publishing and information services companies to digitize and convert their publications into flexible XML-based repositories.” Palmen recently formed an e-book development team to convert titles for the manufacturer of an e-book reading device. Its major e-book conversion project involving Simon & Schuster's frontlist is ongoing.
Venturing further into the KPO space by combining domain expertise with advanced tools is also an ongoing initiative at Innodata Isogen. Presently, the company has about 1,500 subject matter experts, offering capabilities that few companies are able to match. “We are helping a publisher develop a machine-aided indexing solution that uses lemmatization—a process that determines the most crucial terms in a sentence that reflect the meaning and context of the sentence—and semantically driven natural language analysis to deliver precision as well as recall at 95% accuracy. This system also extracts terms and ranks them by the probability of accuracy when matched against a thesaurus using simple string matching.” Palmen explains that this automation will enable millions of additional terms to be added to the publisher's database, which will then be refined by his KPO experts.
Palmen continues to see significant growth in research and analysis, a new area launched last year, along with its traditional offerings of editorial and authoring services. As for conversion/digitization services, its partnership with the British Library is, as he puts it, “alive and well. We are currently converting journals for a large British publisher and handling several projects from smaller publishers as well.”
But one of Innodata Isogen's most exciting new projects may well be subscriptions management, said to be one of the most complex functions in journal publishing. “Our relationship with Swets started with basic conversion services, but it has since expanded to include subscription fulfillment,” says Bob Kidd, v-p of professional publishing practice. “This is fairly challenging work requiring knowledge across a range of topics, besides following up and answering customer queries. In addition, we have updated Swets's table of contents, which will help librarians and subscribers find the issues they want faster and more easily.” Thus far, Swets has benefited from a 25% decrease in subscription fulfillment cycle time and about 20% improvement in search quality.
Integra
Integra's acquisition of Chicago-based Elm Street Publishing Services last November marked a new stage in its climb up the project management value chain. “Besides capitalizing on Elm Street's expertise in complex higher education projects and its collaboration with high-profile authors, this acquisition also fits the integrated onshore/offshore service model that we have been seeking,” says CEO and founder Sriram Subramanya. Both its Pondicherry and Chicago offices have since experienced a significant rise in project management jobs from existing clients. “Complex project management services will continue to be handled by our 30-strong Chicago team, and we will increase our staff strength accordingly to meet demand.” Meanwhile, Subramanya is actively seeking acquisitions in the school segment. “We have started doing simple typesetting work for North American publishers and aim to expand our k—12 services.”
Project management is, not surprisingly, one of Integra's strongest services, and Subramanya has abundant examples to highlight. “There was this 4,000-page computer book that came with a five-day deadline to produce the first proofs. But the greatest challenge came from the design-intensive workflow involving numerous screenshots.” At the same time, Integra has started offering new services to clients, such as editorial/content development, accuracy checking, medical illustrations and creative services. Plans are also afoot for venturing into new publishing verticals such as newspapers, directories, magazines, etc.
Subramanya has just launched new DAM (digital asset management) solutions. “This new version caters to the specific requirements of a customer, but it is applicable to anyone needing such service. As we speak, additional functionalities are being planned to make it even more robust.” As it is, existing features include capabilities for file attachment during online query generation, advanced search for locating any title or file, as well as detailed status reports on archived, retrieved and reprinted titles. “This version allows embedding of metadata in images, search based on these metadata and viewing of all archived files using WebDAV.”
But work does not revolve around projects, workflow and products only. COO Anu Sriram is busy engaging with the staff and promoting customer care. The two main company founding principles—“Our customers are the reason for our existence” and “We care for our people”—enunciate its stance with clients and staff alike.
ITC
Pica-perfect composition? Dissimilar yet similar illustrations? Explains operations director Waseem Andrabi, “Most of our assessment projects have multiple-choice answer sheets that are to be machine-scanned to yield the score. As such, the position of each answer bubble must be pica-perfect or the scanner would fail to register the student's answer and give an inaccurate evaluation. Precision aside, assessment projects also require special tagging and different work processes. Yet, like other elhi products, shorter turnaround time is commonly demanded, as are more varied and specific deliverables.” His team has just completed a project with 6,500 pages and nearly 1,500 illustrations. The illustrations, he says, “were tricky because each must appear similar to the next so that none would stand out and influence the student's answer!”
This segment's rapid growth has seen his 70-strong assessment project team working around the clock in several shifts. One item on Andrabi's to-do list is to extend their assessment services to content creation and other higher-value, knowledge-based offerings. He recently checked one item, ISO 9001:2000, off the list. “This certification, in addition to ISO 27001:2005 on information security management, reflects our concern with protecting clients' assets during and after the production process.”
This quality and security assurance is essential in view of the rapid growth of ITC's full-service management and content-oriented services. Last year, its Delhi team handled 500 full-service titles, 130 more than the previous year. “Our internal processes are set up in such a way that our project managers are able to work seamlessly with authors, publishers and any freelancers in the U.S. without time-zone disruptions,” adds Andrabi, whose team was recently put to the test by a project involving 200 contributing authors, with different levels of English language competency, from around the globe. “The 1,200-page project with 500-odd illustrations had a tight four-month turnaround time. So we put several copyeditors on it working off the same style sheet, and a dedicated project manager to supervise the process to ensure consistency and timely delivery.”
Over half of ITC's current editorial work is done by its Delhi facility, and demand for its proofreading and copyediting expertise has been climbing over the past five years. “Much of this success has to do with our initial project analysis, where we make sure our capabilities match the client's requirements,” says Andrabi. “Full service is really an evolving concept. New services keep coming up all the time, and we see ourselves getting into higher-value services.”
KGL
Sixteen months after its acquisition, KGL is capitalizing on the capital resources and broader market access afforded by parent company Cenveo. “We are focused on building higher-value services for our current market in journals and books, as well as on developing our legal and magazine segments further,” says president and COO Atul Goel, who has seen significant growth in copyediting, magazine design and journal project management services.
KGL's expertise is in composing large volumes of design-intensive books, enabled by its fully automated XML-first workflow; and this capability is demonstrated by two recent projects that were completed in record time. One was a 3,900-page textbook on pediatric care with 363 chapters and 750 images. “A 3B2/XML workflow was employed because we had to create a 3B2 version matching the customer's InDesign templates. Besides a complex design, the chapters flow continuously instead of each starting on a fresh page. It was an unusual style that required reflowing text to accommodate any new design or template changes. And we did reflow the chapters because the table of contents—ergo, the affected pages—changed twice. However, we were able to provide the galleys within five days and wrapped up the project within 18 months, much to our client's delight,” says Goel.
Another project, also using 3B2, was a 1,000-page, one-color production and operations management text with numerous equations and roughly 595 images. “Discrepancies in the input files posed one of the major challenges. That the final page count must be close to our client's estimated length was another. Then, the three indexes required—of names, companies and subjects—increased the complexity since the first two types were new to us. We had to identify the important persons in the book for the name index. Further along the line, we also had to create online versions of all the images requiring different specifications, and furnish a report on the image details.” It took KGL just seven days to provide the first proofs, and three months to wrap things up.
Turning to new services demanded, Goel ticks off image research, magazine design, cover design, art services, and advertisement management and conversion. “To meet these new demands, we continue to raise our productivity and put technology to the best use. At the same time, we keep our operating costs down by outsourcing noncore activities.”
Lapiz Digital
Getting the facts right is not just about understanding a project's requirements at Lapiz Digital; it is also part of its service. CEO Indira Rajan explains, “Checking facts, answers and data is a crucial part of the publishing process. And to help publishers with this, we have a pool of subject matter experts from various disciplines, mostly postgraduates and research students, to fact-check the contents of basal courses and ancillary products.” Not surprisingly, ancillary products form Lapiz's strongest segment, now expanded to include template and prototype design of k—12 teacher's editions and supporting materials. Her team took just five months to wrap up a 77-volume English-Spanish ancillary reading program totaling 9,000 pages for grades k—6.
Also designed to better serve educational publishers is Lapiz's new Flash-based proprietary software. “Publishers, especially those into k—12 materials, would benefit from our faster and more cost-effective XML- and Flash-based e-book production process. This technology enables full text search, highlighting options and audiovisual integration within the pages. In recent months, we have used it to create Flash-based Web pages, courseware games, course assessments, interactive learning quizzes, stories with integrated audio files and PowerPoint-based course materials. Given the rapid integration of print with new-media products, we fully expect to see more projects requiring full service, from manuscript to content conversion for multichannel delivery through print, handheld devices and the Web.”
Adds Rajan, “The developments in the publishing industry are opening new opportunities for India-based vendors. We foresee more activities that are currently carried out in the U.S. moving to India, such as writing of ancillary material and editorial support for basal courses. Going forward, creativity, design skills, as well as content and domain expertise will become increasingly important in producing educational and ancillary products, and Lapiz's proven experience will give us a competitive edge.”
Lapiz also sees an increase in trade, STM and religious publishing projects. “These are mostly straightforward composition jobs, with trade titles demanding faster turnaround time. We have dedicated teams for the various types of composition, and our workflow is configured with different software programs and tools for different activities, such as conversion, proofreading and editing,” says Rajan, who has just recruited Mary Hunter, former v-p of publishing operations at Prentice-Hall School Division, to head Lapiz's new Boston office and grow its project management capabilities.
Macmillan
Macmillan Publishing Solutions (MPS) has found the missing link in its value chain in Compset. Explains managing director Rajiv Beri, “We have a strong foundation in the STM and academic domains, and a couple of years ago we acquired the capability to serve the college market. However, the first two segments are becoming commoditized, and we were missing the high-end editorial skills and understanding related to k—12 market—skills that Compset has in abundance. This acquisition coupled with our offshore experience and stable technical infrastructure will enable both entities to leverage each other's capabilities to move up the value chain.” The recently completed Atlas of Anatomy, taking only 14 weeks from manuscript to print-ready files, showcases Compset's expertise. File preparation for this multilingual job was complex: the 2,200 illustrations had to be first labeled in black overlays for the English-language printing and then in separate layers for different languages. The illustrations were later adjusted for the instructor's online edition and, still later, repurposed to make flashcards that were sold separately from the book. Text layout also had to be adjusted for the different languages.
In a different business area, the company's mobile publishing solutions are most exciting to watch. Its new Global Reader seamlessly integrates with different varieties of handsets and operating systems, and is currently used by O'Reilly Publishing, AuthorLink, Libreka, Last Kiss Comics, X5 Music, Pan Macmillan and many others. Says sales director Bob Kasher, “We are all excited about the emerging opportunities in this space. Our distribution network spreads over 75 mobile carriers in 160 countries worldwide, reaching a potential 2.5 billion Internet-enabled mobile phone users.”
Says executive director Rajiv K. Seth, “As the digital convergence revolution gains speed, publishers want multichannel access and distribution for their content. MPS's medium-term strategy is thus driven by the desire to offer solutions for content development, transformation, repurposing and distribution across print, online and mobile media.” Besides leveraging economies of scale and pushing to be a bigger volume player, Seth aims to work toward what he calls “economies of scope.” “We want to increase the scope of our services by moving up the value chain in book publishing services, offering fulfillment and subscription management services along with journal publishing solutions, providing competent learning management and courseware development solutions, and by other forms of complex editorial services. We want to offer both breadth and depth in all of our services.”
Newgen Imaging
Newgen has been going “cellular” since 2006. The company-wide initiative began with four-member cells, each consisting of a coder, a paginator, a proofreader and a quality-control person. Cross-training each member in a cell was a main objective of this initiative. Two-member cells have since emerged, with coder/paginator or proofreader/QC. “The next step, obviously, is to have one person handling all functions, from downloading manuscripts to uploading print-ready PDFs,” says CEO Prabhakar Ram, who has just launched a new cross-business team system. In the latest system, members will undergo 12-month training to learn to handle all types of material from text-only monographs to full-color mathematics texts.
Meanwhile, a revised version of its copyediting tool, CE Genius, is about to go “live” under a new name, Serendio. This suite automates the mechanical tasks of copyediting and will be made available online to publishers and freelance editors. Serendio, according to Ram, “goes beyond the simple pattern-matching capabilities that MS Word offers, to address language issues and sense. We will continually improve it with our partner, a local software company that has proven expertise in NLP [natural language processing] and data mining.”
Ram also set up a new business unit, Global Publishing Solutions, within Newgen to offer “black box” and interactive prepress systems to companies with high-volume publishing requirements. “The team will be led by Lawrie Stevens, previously group sales director and CTO at Advent (developers of 3B2), and Baskar Devanathan, head of our research and development team for the past two years. Given their expertise and the strong team that we have in place, this business unit has the necessary experience to create Arbortext APP-based publishing solutions for various areas of publishing. It will certainly open new market segments for us.”
Last year has been good for Newgen, despite the rupee appreciation, says Ram. “Our core business recorded good growth, especially in textbook project management, schoolbook composition and technical documentation. We also incorporated into our operations New York—based Egerton Group, a publishing support and content development company.” Outside publishing, last year also saw Newgen establishing 7thR, a receivables management BPO (business process outsourcing) for the healthcare industry.
Planman Technologies
Image digitization is big at Planman Technologies, and one recent 225,000-image project says it all. “The images came from one of the world's largest archival houses, and the varied formats proved to be the greatest challenge. There were A4 and A3 prints, 6cm x 6cm and 35mm negatives, scrapbooks, transparencies and gaslight paper,” says v-p of sales Amit Vohra. “We put together a highly specialized team of image editors and photographers to finish this project within six months.” Planman has also digitized and converted about four million pages of newspapers, manuscripts, books and journals. “The deliverables were issue- and page-level PDFs, JPEG2000 and TIFF images, and XML files (in METS and ALTO). With such projects, the biggest hurdle was the non—English-language and the consequent large file size of the pages.” One of the largest newspaper digitization vendors around, Planman plans to scale up capacity from the present four million pages per annum to 7.5 million.
Digitization aside, a project from a leading k—12 publisher showcases the company's illustration and creative capabilities. “We were contracted to develop creative art for mathematics products targeting grades 9—12. About 14,000 art pieces were commissioned: 4,000 creative and the rest technical. We assigned a team of 10 illustrators to get through 100 to 150 creative art pieces and about 1,200 technical illustrations within four to five days,” adds director Sourav Chatterjee. Another k—12 job required composition, design and creative art services for a series of grades 3—6 books. “In total, there were 1,500 art pieces in this 2,400-page project. We also had to key in text from old editions as well as restyle and compose the pages. Maintaining design fluidity was crucial, as the client's requirements—design as well as editorial—kept changing throughout the project. Eventually, we deployed a team of two designers and 14 illustrators along with 30 production staff and completed this project within 12 weeks.”
Meanwhile, its state-of-the-art media studio is focused on 3D animation (feature films, TV series, short films, docudramas and home videos), games and multimedia products. Says Chatterjee, “We offer animation services for the medical, architectural, legal, and educational segments as well as virtual reality and game design for handheld devices, computers and game consoles. This segment is growing rapidly.”
PreMediaGlobal
At PMG, one sketchy college mathematics manuscript went on to become, in the client's words, “one of the best developed and designed products seen in the last 20 years,” thanks in part to its Pre-PressPMG division's proactive approach. “Upon receipt of the manuscript, our project management team decided that extensive pre-production work was required. Since our client would be hard-pressed to find a development editor at that juncture, we quickly assembled an in-house development team to help the author rework the content. At the same time, we realized that the different phases—editing, design, art and production—had to occur simultaneously in order to meet the deadline. An InCopy/InDesign workflow allowing concurrent access by various parties was duly established, and this proved to be an astute decision. We produced the 928-page full-color book flawlessly despite the many challenges,” says director Rick Vayo, who has since deployed a similar approach in other projects requiring development work, with outstanding results.
Another complex job, this time from its GGS division, was an elhi Spanish reading program. “We had to first translate the English version into Spanish before adapting it for Spanish reading instruction within a 10-month period. There were 4,260 pages, of which 2,923 pages later went to our Chennai facility for art and production. And it was discovered there that the new Spanish copy would not fit the original page design from the client. Modifications to the spreads were quickly made, and we managed to deliver the files on time and within budget, despite extensive changes from the client,” adds Mark Shoemaker, executive v-p of GGS.
“Over the past two years, Beacon Publishing Services, PrePress Co. and, most recently, GGS have come under the PMG umbrella. We see opportunities for further growth, acquisitions and diversification in the various publishing segments,” says co-CEO Kapil Viswanathan. But first there is the upcoming new facility in state-of-the-art Chennai IT Park with capacity for 750 workers on three shifts to accommodate its growth. This new addition gives the PMG group seven facilities across the U.S. and two in India, which according to Viswanathan “affords a natural hedge against rupee-dollar movements because our costs are dollar-based.”
Q2AMedia
Illustrated children's books are Q2AMedia's forte, but this segment is no child's play. Just take a look at two of its recent projects. The first, a set of books teaching English grammar through activities and adventures to kids under six years old, features licensed characters and is accompanied by an audio CD that reinforces grammar basics. Says CEO Sudhir Singh, “Throughout this project from a large U.S. publisher, our creative team consulted with English-language experts and authors to develop a series of lively, engaging yet simple books. Kids work through the activities to find the treasure at the end of the book, hence the series title Grammar Detectives.” The second one, a comprehensive series on bugs from a reference publisher, is intended to introduce young kids to the world of creepy crawlies in a fun way, and it boasts stunning close-up photography and fascinating artwork.
Q2AMedia is highly regarded by industry watchers as one of the best full-service packagers in children's publications, for reference and education alike. Its 150-strong in-house team in Delhi is supported by offices in New York and London together with a vast network of more than 500 freelancers. Q2AMedia's own publications, about 30 series so far, have also been licensed or sold to American and European publishers. “Our focus is on k—12, and after seven years in this segment we have proven that design and art can be successfully outsourced to a global pool of talents to produce world-class books at much more competitive prices. Our full-package service is growing rapidly, with about 30 to 80 titles yearly from each of our major clients,” adds Singh, who sees increased opportunities in the educational market. It goes without saying that his strategy is to develop educational content beyond print.
Meanwhile, the company's SmartSearch image research and acquisition service is one of the most advanced and user-friendly. The Web-based review/approval management system provides captions with clients' briefs and image information to facilitate the process and ensure accuracy. “We have the largest team for this service in India, and our clients see substantial value in terms of efficiency and cost savings. To reduce administrative work for clients, we handle all copyright issues at our end, making sure all required rights are cleared, even third-party licenses.”
Scope
The unstoppable online publishing trend, says CEO R. Sivadas, has transformed abstracts and indexes into far more complex mechanisms. “Books are now searchable by chapter, keyword, table of contents and even image. It is no longer just about compiling chapter abstracts and end-of-book indexes for print products. So instead of the traditional summarized abstracts and keyword indexes, we provide informative and structured abstracts and concept-based indexes of patents, technical standards and medical/technical terms as well as indexes of nontextual objects like images, tables, graphs, and chemical structures.” And for high-volume specialized publishers, especially those in medicine and chemistry, Scope has developed a content-mining tool that provides higher abstracting and indexing precision and relevancy. Increasing multimedia content (videos, podcasts, etc.) has also prompted Scope to offer transcription and indexing of such content to enable online searchability.
Another Scope specialty is patent or intellectual property (IP) research and analysis services, ranging from basic tracking to complex competitive intelligence analysis. While this service has not been designed for the book publishing industry, publishers concerned with IP creation, commercialization and protection will find it valuable. Data normalization is yet another of Scope's strengths. Says Sivadas, “This involves data standardization across different databases so as to facilitate the implementation of procurement systems such as SAP. For instance, should you use 'International Business Machines' or 'IBM'? It is also useful in compliance matters. For example, the ruling that limits raw material purchase from a single supplier in the pharmaceutical industry means that accurate, standardized information is critical.”
Presently, Scope is developing a taxonomy, a thesaurus and an ontology for a consumer health repository. “We have developed a very comprehensive, detailed taxonomy using a hybrid approach combining automated extraction and classification of terms with further research by medical experts.”
A decision to expand its portfolio to include STM publishers has led to more project management jobs. An ongoing medical project to convert authors' manuscripts for online publication has produced some 2,000 pages with 300 illustrations from about 30 authors. “This volume is expected to increase to 10,000 pages with around 2,000 illustrations, involving 200 to 300 authors. For this project, our experienced graphic designers use advanced image processing software to enhance the quality of the images provided,” adds Sivadas.
Thomson Digital
Now that the French-language production facility in Mauritius is up and running, COO Vinay Singh is turning his focus to other language capabilities, namely Japanese and French. “Our collaboration with Dai Nippon on SSTM language-editing projects started five years ago. Right now, we are finalizing details of a 50-book project that may also include translation,” says Singh, who has been busy adding floor and work space to his current production facilities. Recently, a new floor had been leased for his 200-plus staff handling foreign-language projects while a new three-story building with a 400-seat capacity is being constructed.
Project-wise, complex publications such as a 760-page math project from a British publisher are keeping Singh's team busy and challenged. “The input was a combination of edited hard copy together with WordPerfect files and 3B2 files from the previous edition. Then there were 1,800 images ranging from charts to line and creative art, 1,000 of which had to be created and the rest color-corrected,” recalls Singh. “Our team converted the previous edition files from 3B2 and PDF to InDesign, and the WordPerfect files into Word for the 13 chapters requiring updating, before implementing the hard-copy corrections. On top of these, complex math equations for all 27 chapters had to be retyped.”
Another memorable project was a 1,320-page design-intensive cookbook series consisting of 22 titles. “It required a lot of careful work and design decision on our part. We had to make sure each recipe corresponded to the correct image and that one spread did not flow to the next. Our team also determined the best position for each image and how best to treat it: crop, enlarge, reuse as silhouette, etc. Despite the size of the job, we were able to meet the one-month turnaround time for the first proofs,” adds Singh, whose team has also used Softcare K3 and WoodWing publishing systems for some of the complex projects. “The two applications, however, are still in their infancy with clients debating internally on the pros and cons. But we are seeing more clients using these two systems—as part of the workflow in their projects, or a full implementation that harnesses the utilities and tools offered by the systems.”
Meanwhile, a new service, photo research, was recently added to its portfolio. “We offer a complete image solution, from research to rights management, by leveraging our strategic tie-ups with leading image banks. We also developed a lightbox interface for sending researched images to our clients for approval and comments. The bottom line is, we can help clients slash 30% to 40% of their image research costs.”
Vikatan
Barely 16 months since launching its publishing services, Vikatan's second production unit is already up and running in Tiruchirapalli (or Trichy, as the locals call it), 300 kilometers south of Chennai. “This facility will raise our production capacity and maintain our cost competitiveness. Chennai is definitely getting more expensive, and everybody is heading for third-tier cities. Vikatan is not idling, either. We kicked off by training 60 people in an intensive three-month program, and we intend to increase the headcount to 200 by year-end. We also plan to move further south to capitalize on the abundant resources available in the southern cities. The majority of Chennai's educated labor force, after all, migrated from the south after graduation,” says CEO A.R. Nallathambi, who has initiated a continual automation program, which saw a 15% productivity rise in every project done in the last 12 months.
Right now, Nallathambi and his team are busy with an eight-journal, full-service project from an American financial publisher. “We are contracted for copyediting and composition up to print-ready pages. In another project, this time from a New Zealand publisher, we are providing full-service project management for some 50 STM journals, including peer review, editing and typesetting, up to XML delivery for online archiving on PubMed. At the same time, we are developing an automated workflow for one of the largest publishers out there.”
One of Nallathambi's biggest projects last year was the Tamil edition of Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. “It took us two years to translate the 3,600-page three-volume collection. We also undertook copyediting, composition, indexing, etc., up to print-ready files. In this case, our varied publishing experience, afforded by our parent company's diverse print and media portfolio, has been most handy, and we welcome more of such joint publishing deals with publishers interested in the Indian book industry.”
But the most interesting (and fast expanding) area in Vikatan is its image services offered to European magazine publishers, including scanning, retouching, color correction, cropping and masking. “Our 18-member graphic team, working on both PC and Macintosh platforms, produces about 300 images per day for a variety of magazines. We plan to increase to 2,000 images by the end of this year,” adds Nallathambi, who is looking forward to the company's ISO quality certification this June.
