Commenting is closed on this post.
A nextPub opportunity
Next month’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York includes a session on Wednesday morning that I want to highlight.
At 8:30 a.m. on February 15, Dianne Kennedy, Peter Meirs and John Dougherty are presenting an update on nextPub in a session titled “Bringing Magazines to Digital Distribution Channels”.
Kennedy works at IDEAlliance, an association dedicated to identifying best practices for efficient end-to-end digital media workflows. Meirs and Dougherty oversee technology initiatives at Time Inc. and Hearst, respectively. All are working on the nextPub specification.
Although the title and session description leave the impression that nextPub is just about magazines, it is not. The specification is valuable to any publisher interested in creating content that can be seamlessly transformed for distribution across a variety of digital reading devices.
That would mean pretty much any book or periodical publisher.
Much is made of differences between book and magazine publishing. However, when it comes to workflow, metadata and cross-platform presentation, I’ve found that many more similarities than differences.
The nextPub specification offers publishers an opportunity to streamline the delivery of any content to multiple devices. I encourage you to consider attending the session. If you’re registered, you can also post questions and comments on the session’s description page.
A bit of disclosure: When I worked at Time Inc., Peter Meirs was a colleague and remains a friend. On two engagements with Hachette’s magazine division (now largely part of Hearst), John Dougherty was a client. Neither of them was involved in the creation of this post.
Posted by Peter Meirs
NextPub is primarily about platform neutral content, a fact that sometimes gets lost in conversations about the specification.
Hopefully, our session will reinforce the idea that nextPub does nothing more than provide a vocabulary for expressing a published work’s components semantically, along with its business metadata.
NextPub, unlike ePub or .folio, is not about packaging the content as a magazine, book or other media type.
Posted by bowerbird
just what we need, another spec!
-bowerbird
Posted by Peter Meirs
If you feel that way I would definitely recommend that you attend this session. nextPub is not a new spec. It’s the result of an industry-wide effort to extend an existing specification (PRISM) to meet the needs of publishers who now produce content for print, web, mobile and tablets.
Posted by bowerbird
peter said:
> If you feel that way
> I would definitely recommend
> that you attend this session.
i can say with great certainty that
i won’t be at the t.o.c. conference.
but best of luck on your presentation.
> nextPub is not a new spec.
> It’s the result of
> an industry-wide effort to
> extend an existing specification
wait, wait, i’ve got something catchy:
1. embrace.
2. extend.
3. profit!
anyway, best of luck with nextpub…
-bowerbird
Posted by Brian O'Leary
bowerbird,
Peter’s a friend (as I mention in the post). I think you guys would get along pretty well - he’s practical, down-to-earth and awfully smart. I know you won’t be at TOC, but maybe your paths will cross some time.
Posted by bowerbird
brian said:
> Peter’s a friend (as I mention
> in the post). I think you guys
> would get along pretty well
i could tell right away he is cool.
most of my posts are rorschach blots;
doesn’t take me long to smell a rat.
-bowerbird