Workflow decisions
Okay, so you’ve decided how you’re going to store and manage your ebooks. The IT staff are getting some natural light spending time with the production staff, and it’s time to make some ebooks.
Changes to editorial and design processes
Ideally, you should not have to make changes to your workflow. If you outsource your ebook conversion from print files, then that’s easy. No changes to production workflow. (You just need a distributor, and your marketing team just needs to include the digital products in their marketing plans.) … Read more
Managing in-house learning and knowledge
In a new field like digital, as staff work they will be discovering new techniques and best-practice. This must be stored and shared immediately – it’s very easy to forget, thinking you’ll remember, the many little tricks and tips you develop as you work with ebooks. … Read more
Expertise and functional authority
If your organisation is going to learn fast and be flexible and responsive to new developments, you have to give your staff functional authority over their areas of expertise. Some organisations do this better than others already. The idea is to put each member of a team in charge of something meaningful to their role. Not even the managing director should be able to interfere with their particular area of expertise and authority. (This interview with Mark Pincus describes the importance of putting people in charge of something.) … Read more
A format-agnostic workflow
Underpinning your decisions should be this principle: make more and more of your production workflow digital, and less paper-page oriented. … Read more