StartWithXML: Making the Case for Applying XML to a Publishing Workflow

Publishers face a "Copernican change." Until recently, the book was"the sun" of a publishing solar system, and all other opportunitieswere subsidiary rights revolving as planets around it. Now, theintellectual property is the sun, and the book becomes just one of theorbiting opportunities. To be successful in the 21st centuryenvironment, publishers must produce agile content: content that canbe rendered in different forms without great additional expense. XMLprovides both a path to agility and opens opportunities for currentand future digital content revenue streams. StartWithXML is an industry-wide project to understand and spread theknowledge publishers need to move forward with XML. It's about thebusiness issues driving the "why" of XML and the technical andorganizational issues, strategies, and tactics underlying the "how" ofgetting started. This research report takes a pragmatic look at XMLworkflows, addressing questions such as: Where am I and where do I want to end up? How much benefit do I want to obtain from content reuse and repurposing? How much work do I want to do myself? How much time and money will this take? What can I do internally to increase my chances of success?