Book: A Futurist's Manifesto

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Tools of the Digital Workflow (Brian O'Leary)

Brian O’Leary is a publishing consultant and principal of Magellan Media Partners, an Adjunct Professor of Publishing at NYU, and has had held senior positions in the publishing industry, including Production Manager at Time Inc. and Associate Publisher at Hammond Inc. You can find Brian on Twitter at: @brianoleary.

The nature, history, and business goals of publishers vary widely, making it impossible to identify a single set of tools as “preferred.”  Even the most limited decisions (buy this software, use these vendors) depend on a publisher’s existing information technology, its appetite for change, corporate approaches to purchasing, and longer-term goals with respect to output and scalability.

Still, some decision points are common to all publishers. All will need to specify one or more word-processing software packages that editors and potentially authors will be expected to use.  Most, if not all, will specify a software package to handle design, although increased use of style sheets could shift certain types of publishers away from the use of intermediate design steps that involve third-party software.  That said, a given publisher may not need to use all the tools that are available, just the ones that make sense in helping to manage its authoring, repository, and distribution operations.

As content migrates to a much more robust digital environment, publishers will also need to make decisions about related services ...