Over the past month, I have written a series of posts on the future of textbook publishing in the digital age. In the series, I have addressed new business models, new product models, a formula for digital product profitability, and specific product opportunities. In this final installment, I want to address the need for new publisher workflows in the coming decade.
A focus on digital content that leads to greater product diversity and flexibility, will force textbook publishers to introduce a number of changes in both conceptualizing and managing their content. The most significant difference will be that, in the future, profitable textbook publishing companies will adopt a “digital-first” strategy that focuses first on the digital collection of content, separate from any print or other specific product concepts.
Successful companies will shift to common discipline-based content repositories from which new products can be tested and launched quickly and cost-effectively. Moreover, this approach will facilitate new subscription and self-publishing business models as well as allow textbook publishers to create coveted relationships with their end users, both instructors and students.
This shift will involve new ways of thinking about products and business models. The biggest challenge won’t be creating and embracing these new models, however, but rather devising workable strategies for getting from “here” to “there.”

Here — Current Publisher Product Concepts and WorkflowsThere — New Publisher Product Concepts and Workflows

Lots of individual books and projects, each tied to specific authors or author groups.
One core content repository per course area with two products (premium and generic)

Products are differentiated by author and pedagogy. Branding is around authors.
Products are differentiated by content, price, and pedagogy. Branding is around the publisher name and the discipline/course.

Focus on first editions, allowing publishers to bring in new products with no used book market and to keep their product lineups “fresh”
Focus on core content repository that emphasizes overall discipline course/strength, coherency, and flexibility

Two and three-year product cycles with limited experimentation
6-month product cycles with constant experimentation (costing almost nothing)

Sales made via campus and institutional reps. Focus on adoptions by instructors and students as secondary consumers
Sales made via Web marketing, regional reps, and inside sales associates. Equal focus on adoptions and primary sales to students

Multiple rounds of pre-release product testing (due to product costs)
Templated single round of product testing with constant information gathering after the release

Digital products mapped and created after print is fully conceived
Print mapped from digital repository and created using series of templates (library of templates)

Digital ancillaries produced in last cycles of print textbook production
Digital ancillaries produced at anytime

E-book created from print compositor files
E-book (and other products) created from common repository XML

Making this shift will necessarily mean a different kind of content management and product development strategies. Moving forward, companies will need to abandon the traditional author-driven and differentiated textbook model and adopt one of high-quality, publisher managed discipline content repositories. These will support flexible product strategies and the rise of a new self-publishing industry in education, and will also eliminate royalty arrangements that will not be consistent with authoring models in the digital age. Within the discipline content repositories, which I have referenced in my other posts, content will be mapped to retail, research, and course taxonomies. In addition, content will be stored at the most granular level possible, generally tagged to key concepts.
Also key in the shift to a digital-first strategy is revising the general product development process. Over the next decade, textbook publishers will gradually adopt processes that are familiar within software development circles and begin thinking of products as organic and constantly iterative as opposed to static and with a finite shelf or edition life.
The new product development process, with flexibility for different products, will consist of the following steps.

• Evaluate opportunities constantly — In the digital age, the window of opportunity is brief and companies must respond decisively and quickly. In a print world this is foolhardy because high development costs make product mistakes too painful. In a digital-first environment, however, new opportunities can be addressed quickly and with little risk due to the cost-effective nature of product assembly and piloting. This means that a top priority for textbook publishers in the future is to scan the six-month horizon constantly for quick-win opportunities. In the digital age the publishing game is about creating a high percentage of small wins.
• Approve projects quickly — Perhaps the biggest change in product workflow for textbook publishers will be the project approval process. Companies will need to develop new financial formulas for evaluating digital opportunities as well as provide a decision matrix for approving opportunities within weeks, giving these projects a full green light for aggressive development and active piloting within six months (or a semester) of initial approval.
• Develop initial concept and pilot – Because content is managed tightly and available in easily configured modules, creating new content-based product models is a matter of product design, template creation, and content production or population. Pilot or beta versions of products can be launched within a semester of six months of project approval. Products must be launched into pilot phase accompanies by a specific testing protocol that allows them to be evaluated accurately for market success and profitability.
• Launch live products within in 9-12 months of approval — In the digital age, products must be launched, from concept to go-live, within twelve months.
• Conduct constant quantitative evaluation post-launch — The digital product workflow allows for pre-launch user testing in the pilot phase but relies heavily on an active feedback loop with customers. In addition, new digital product models will assume continual product releases and upgrades in response to customer feedback.

The benefits from these new workflows and product models will be cost effectiveness and much higher profit margins. In addition, they will lead to greater product flexibility and, most important, much quicker response time to market fluctuations.