News

Conversion Boom for DCL Labs
Calvin Reid -- 10/23/00

Data Conversion Laboratories specializes in converting and repurposing data files from book and journal publishers for digital distribution. With the demand for electronic conversion growing, the company, founded in 1981 by Mark Gross, has developed a proprietary electronic markup system and an online procedure to automate and speed up the process of data conversions.

Originally specializing in prepress operations, the firm has been "reinvented" about six times, according to Gross, its president, as the publishing industry's technical demands have changed and grown. The company has 45 employees in Fresh Meadows, N.Y., about a 10-minute drive from Manhattan. Its core business is converting text data into electronic form both for online aggregators and for all e-book formats, including Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Reader and Gemstar eBooks. "It's the ongoing evolution of the book," said Gross. "Publishers are seeing that they can make money if they have alternatives to print."
DCLab.com: New text conversion
system speeds up process.
Gross reports revenue growth of about 20% a year. And the company has seen a steady growth in the business of converting journal and book text for online publishing. "We have been doing two million to three million journal pages a year," he said. But he noted that "since late last spring, we've been approached by several major publishers, each looking to convert as many as 1,000 books to e-book format. We feel a strong need to retool our conversion process to quickly deliver finished text that can be used in any of the most popular e-book formats."
Gross pointed out that five years ago, the turnaround time for text conversion was three to four weeks; "now, it's a matter of days, and we need to be able to do it in hours." To meet that goal, the company has built a new infrastructure that automates about 95% of the process of conversion. The new process begins with a Web interface for DCL customers that allows them to log on to place orders for conversions and tick off what they want done; if the text isn't already being stored digitally by DCL, they can upload the file to the DCL servers. Gross said, "We're able to cut down on human intervention and do it on the fly. We still look at everything, but nine out of 10 steps do not need anyone to check."

Gross said the company specializes in converting complex STM books with graphs and tables for digital distribution. These books, he said, "take more human intervention, but they are as automated as possible." DCL customers include such firms as McGraw-Hill, John Wiley, Harcourt, Wolters Kluwer, Lippincott and Reed Elsevier.

"We see ourselves as an application service provider," Gross said. "Most of our work is for electronic distribution. It has almost replaced our print work."