Digital Newsbook Publishing Project
The RJI has produced Digital Newspapers for eight members of the RJI Digital Publishing Alliance, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. The example above was produced for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Download example (1.2 MB PDF).
The principle purpose of the Digital Newsbook Publishing Project is to produce and test market a new revenue-generating digital product for publishers that RJI calls “Digital Newsbooks.”
Digital Newsbooks are substantive, visually rich e-books on timely, newsworthy topics. Their content consists primarily of journalistic investigative and explanatory reports including photos and graphics that were originally published in newspapers or magazines.
The Digital Newsbooks produced at RJI require no special software for viewing other than a simple PDF viewer. They are especially designed for downloading quickly and reading comfortably on e-readers and most other mobile display devices including tablet PCs and notebook computers.
The Digital Newsbook Publishing Project has three components:
- Digital Newsbook Production Services: To expedite production and assure high quality, RJI will initially produce Digital Newsbooks in a timely, professional manner for DPA members at its facilities in Columbia, Missouri.
- Digital Newsbook Marketing and Sales: RJI will work with DPA members and online companies to create and manage pilot Web sites on which Digital Newsbooks can be marketed and sold.
- Digital Newsbook Research: RJI will aggregate and analyze data gathered from the pilot Web sites on which Digital Newsbooks are marketed and sold as well as from focus groups and other sources.
RJI Digital Newsbook Production Services
Digital Newsbooks are produced at RJI using Adobe Creative Suite publication design software in combination with a set of JavaScript automation tools developed at RJI. The RJI production team strives to maintain high quality and to preserve each publisher’s branded presentation styles within the RJI Digital Newsbook format.
The production team will produce up to six Digital Newsbooks for DPA members at RJI through December 31, 2009, at no cost beyond the publishers’ annual DPA membership dues.
Items required from participating publishers:
- A signed agreement letter
- Complete text files in Microsoft Word, RTF or HTML (text can be captured at RJI from the Web)
- Complete page files in unsecured PDF or Adobe InDesign. These files provide RJI designers with each publisher’s layout and design styles. Photos and graphics usually can be extracted from the original PDF page files. If they cannot be extracted, the publisher needs to provide photos and graphics as EPS files.
- All custom fonts used for headlines, flags and logos
- A high-quality copy of the publication’s nameplate in EPS or PDF
The RJI production team performs the following tasks after receiving the above items:
- Loads custom fonts on secure Macintosh workstations.
- Creates InDesign file with publisher’s master styles — paragraph, character, object and swatches.
- Adapts RJI’s automation tools for publisher’s layout and design styles.
NOTE: The three tasks listed above only need to be done the first time a Digital Newsbook is produced for a publisher.
- Converts all text files to unformatted Microsoft Word files.
- Extracts photos and information graphics from original PDF files.
- Converts all photos and bitmapped images to RGB.
- Re-creates all information graphics to conform to the Digital Newsbook format.
- Names and organizes content elements as required by RJI’s InDesign automation tools.
- Runs the RJI automation tool that creates the InDesign files for the cover, table of contents and all articles, and puts these files into an InDesign Book.
- Runs the RJI automation tool that places all text files in the appropriate InDesign files.
- Lays out all pages within the Digital Newsbook InDesign files.
- Creates table of contents (TOC) pages.
- Runs the RJI automation tool that inserts page numbers on all pages in the appropriate style.
- Runs the RJI automation tool that creates hyperlink destinations for the first page of each article and then creates on all pages the hyperlinks for navigating to the next and previous article.
- Runs the RJI automation tool that creates on all pages the hyperlinks for navigating to the next and previous page.
- Adds TOC hyperlinks to articles and information graphics, and external hyperlinks to Websites as required.
- Exports InDesign Book to PDF.
- Reviews all pages to catch content and design errors.
- Corrects content and design errors.
- Validates all hyperlinks and makes adjustments if required.
- Adds PDF properties and metadata.
- Tests completed Digital Newsbook on several e-readers and notebook computers. (If a problem is encountered, corrections are made and a new version is created.)
Completed Digital Newsbooks are sent via e-mail to the publishers for review and approval. (The production team will make corrections and reasonable changes requested by the publishers.)
The time required to produce a Digital Newsbook depends upon the number of articles, photos and graphics. The conversion of information graphics tends to be the most time consuming task. Once the master styles file is created and the automation tools are adapted, the turn-around time for a simple Digital Newsbook with 4-8 articles and no information graphics that require conversion can be as short as one day. Digital Newsbooks with multiple information graphics usually can be turned around in less than a week.
Ideally, Digital Newsbooks should be produced and made available for sale immediately after a series or special report has been published in print.
About RJI’s Digital Newsbook automation tools
The Digital Newsbook automation tools were developed in 2008 by Roger Fidler, RJI’s Program Director for Digital Publishing, and Amit Anil Vyawahare, an RJI graduate research assistant from the UM Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
The tools were written in the JavaScript programming language for use with Adobe InDesign pagination software. They automate all of the repetitive, non-creative production processes from setting up the InDesign files and placing text files to adding hyperlinks for navigating between articles, pages and tables of contents.
With these tools, the time required for the non-creative production processes has been reduced from about eight hours to just a few minutes. And they have completely eliminated the errors that often occurred when these processes were done manually.
The RJI tools are now being modified to automate production of other types of complex documents intended for reading and navigating on computers and e-readers.
Digital Newsbook Marketing and Sales
To evaluate the market opportunities afforded by Digital Newsbooks, RJI is partnering with two online e-book retailers for the purpose of hosting the RJI pilot Web sites where Digital Newsbooks produced at RJI can be easily accessed, purchased and downloaded.
The RJI expects to launch the pilot Web sites in January 2009. (The New York Times has been selling Digital Newsbooks produced for the Times at RJI through its online store since August 2008. The URL is: www.nytstore.com/NewsBook.aspx)
The two partners are:
- eReader Outfitters, a privately held company based in Pleasanton, California, is an online store dedicated to selling e-books, e-readers and accessories. The URL for the Web site is www.ereaderoutfitters.com.
- MBS Direct, a division of MBS Textbook Exchange based in Columbia, Missouri, provides online purchasing of textbooks and course materials for students and faculty in K-12 and higher education. The URL for the Web site is www.mbsdirect.net.
The participating DPA members, the hosting services and RJI will share revenue from the sales of Digital Newsbooks on the pilot Web sites. Publishers will incur no additional costs to have their Digital Newsbooks placed and sold on the RJI pilot Web sites.
Digital Newsbook Research
The RJI will aggregate and analyze data gathered from the RJI pilot Web sites on which Digital Newsbooks are marketed and sold as well as from focus groups and other sources. The DPA members will have first access to the RJI Digital Newsbook Research Reports at no cost to beyond their annual DPA membership dues.
Roger Fidler, RJI program director for digital publishing, is the Digital Newsbook Publishing Project’s leader and principal developer. Fidler is internationally recognized as a digital publishing pioneer and visionary. He conceived and first wrote about the idea of creating interactive newspaper editions that could be read on mobile reading devices in 1981, while he was design director for Knight-Ridder’s experimental online service called Viewtron.