Gilbane and Aptara have a new report out this week called “Blueprint for Book Publishing Transformation”. It’s big and thorough (and free), and covers lots of important ground. The focus, naturally, is on XML:

We need to emphasize that the present day for book publishers should involve XML formats as early in the publishing process as possible. We are convinced that e-book formats will evolve and change and that new ones will emerge. XML stands today as the one standard format that will enable publishers to best create, manage, and curate content over time.

Most publishers agree. But implementing an XML-based workflow means climbing a steep learning curve, which involves a serious investment in staff training time and workflow teething problems, even if you’ve used cheap open-source solutions for the technical infrastructure.

One of our clients, for whom we’ve created epub files, asked me recently, “Are our epubs in XML?”. As a non-technical person it’s important to ask this question and to understand the answer. The short answer is Yes, which is great news: creating epubs is a first, easy step towards an XML workflow. It’s a kind of cheap future-proofing.

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