Objective

A major educational publisher sought to gain a competitive advantage in the use and adoption of its textbook materials by creating a custom textbook publishing application. Unlike offerings available from its competitors, this system – code-named Emissary – would feature a web-based "authoring interface" and a high-performance print rendering engine. Emissary would bring true production values to custom textbook publishing and distinguish its products from the "copy machine, course-pack offerings" of other publishers.

Approach

Content Acquisition

Source materials consist of existing textbook products converted into structured XML and high-quality graphic files. When a "new" textbook is delivered for inclusion in the Emissary library, the basic source materials are first validated and structured for consistency. Once that occurs, the content is migrated to the Emissary repository where it is held and maintained. During this acquisition process, metadata elements – author, title, keywords, content structure - are also extracted and stored for fast retrieval and subsequent administrative use.

Web-based Customization

Access to Emissary's web-based custom publishing application is provided to qualified higher education instructors. Using this application, instructors create custom textbooks from Emissary library materials by rearranging and/or restructuring an existing publication or, more frequently, by assembling materials from two or more publications. Instructors are encouraged to supply their own materials that may be incorporated, printed and bound within the custom product.

Using the web interface, instructors may search and browse the contents of the Emissary library to preview text and graphic elements prior to adding these elements to the custom book outline. Although the previews meaningfully portray the content, they cannot convey the production quality of the resulting custom publication. To redress this deficiency, the instructor may, at any point, request to view a production proof of the custom book. This proof accurately portrays all layout aspects of the final product and returns essential information needed to price the custom product.

Because of the size, complexity and expense associated with most textbooks, it is essential that proof generation be performed quickly but accurately. Speed is needed to insure the instructor stays on task until the final product is defined. Accuracy is essential to avoid product returns – and hence scrapping - of instructor-specific custom publications. To meet the proofing demands, a small cluster of machines running Advent's 3B2 engine is used to create the production quality proofs.

Ordering a Custom Publication

Once a custom publication has been defined, proofed and accepted by the instructor, additional processes are undertaken to incorporate sale of the custom textbook within the well-established boundaries of existing bookstore order processing. First, the custom textbook is assigned a unique ISBN, and the necessary transactions to define the new book to the publisher's product master, inventory, sales, royalty, ledger and other administrative systems are created. The production-ready postscript files created by 3B2 are placed in a secure directory for automated delivery to the designated printer. And finally, the instructor is sent an email containing the official title and ISBN assigned to the custom book. The bookstore places an order in response to a directive from the instructor; it is only when an actual bookstore order is received that the production-ready postscript files are forwarded to the designated printer for production.

Technical Environment

The Emissary system is built around two core technology components: Oracle DBMS and 3B2. These two products form the technology upon and around which the custom application is built. Custom components including content validation, content structuring, B2B web-site, web previews, workflow management and legacy systems integration are built using standard Java and XML toolsets. The system is currently deployed across several servers, including both Sun/Solaris and Intel/Windows NT servers.