Could you please give some examples of “innovative new authoring tools enable content to be created in XML using interfaces indistinguishable from Microsoft Word.” I’m aware of the companies that offer such tools in a separate system, but are there single tools that one can recommend to smaller publishers who want to develop skills inhouse rather than outsource them?

Technical writers, trainers, and others have been doing it for years. A quick search of a few top XML content management consultants web sites yield client lists that include major publishing houses. Each one of the case studies documents how and why each publisher moved to XML.

It’s really time to stop whining and start doing. As someone who has worked on these projects to shift the paradigm from old-school desktop publishing to XML-enabled writing in life sciences, medical, manufacturing, retail, and high tech firms (as well as government agencies and non-profit agencies) it’s particularly ironic that publishers aren’t the first to move to XML. It’s the same “excuses” disguised as “reasons” many of my clients had: ‘We’ve always done it this way here,’ or “We’ve never done it that way here’. Both are lame and do nothing to provide a positive return on investment to shareholders.

For publicly-held publishing houses, this is a wake up call you need to pay attention to. It won’t be long before the cat is out-of-the-bag and your shareholders realize you are wasting their investment dollars by failing to optimize your processes.

XML publishing is about process optimization — which is about profit, plain and simple. Sure, there are many other benefits — especially to readers — but the main reason to make this move should be to stop wasting money and move into the 21st century. Not doing so is doing a horrible disservice to your shareholder and investors — and your employees, who cannot benefit from the extra money you’d have to give raises if you stopped spending it unwisely.

This type of content creation, management, and delivery approach is not new. For 20 years the technical documentation industry has been doing all the hard lifting … making mistakes and learning lessons, developing best practices, case studies, conference presentations, journal articles, books, research papers, guiding software vendors and creating standards. All publishers need to do is follow their lead.

As I mentioned earlier, most often they need only look down the hall in their own building for the answer.

If you are interested in learning more, read Ann Rockley’s book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy”. You’ll be guaranteed to have an a-ha moment!

http://www.managingenterprisecontent.com