The Digital Scriptorium

THE DIGITAL SCRIPTORIUM Agile Methodologies and the Small Trade Publisher by Kathleen Claire Lund Fraser B.A., University of British Columbia, 2009 PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PUBLISHING in the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publication Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology by © Kathleen Fraser 2011 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Fall 2011 All rights reserved. However, in accordance with the Copyright Act of Canada, this work may be reproduced, without authorization, under the conditions for Fair Dealing. Therefore, limited reproduction of this work for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting is likely to be in accordance with the law, particularly if cited appropriately. APPROVAL NAME: Kathleen Fraser DEGREE: Master of Publishing TITLE OF PROJECT: The Digital Scriptorium: Agile Methodologies and the Small Trade Publisher SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Mary Schendlinger Senior Supervisor Senior Lecturer, Publishing Program Rowland Lorimer, Ph.D Supervisor Professor and Director, Publishing Program Susan Safyan Industry Supervisor Associate Editor Arsenal Pulp Press Vancouver, British Columbia DATE APPROVED: ii Declaration of Partial Copyright Licence The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the “Institutional Repository” link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission. Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. While licensing SFU to permit the above uses, the author retains copyright in the thesis, project or extended essays, including the right to change the work for subsequent purposes, including editing and publishing the work in whole or in part, and licensing other parties, as the author may desire. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. Simon Fraser University Library Burnaby, BC, Canada Last revision: Spring 09 Abstract This report provides the technological, historical and theoretical context of an agile publishing workflow—that is, a workflow that adapts to a changing environment through iterative development. Given the current publishing climate, including the increasing pressure to produce print and digital formats simultaneously and the limited resources of small publishers, this report posits that such a workflow has become necessary. Building on ongoing research, it describes the structure of an accessible (low-cost and easily learned), web-first, agile workflow and the process of integrating it into the production processes of a small publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press. The report concludes with a look at the system’s successes and shortcomings, and the trajectory of the industry with the influences of proliferating formats and lengthening sales curves. In particular, it examines the changing role of the editor in the age of the short run and the integrity of the text given the flexibility and transpar- ency afforded by digital approaches. KEYWORDS: book publishing; independent publishing; agile publishing; digital publishing; ebooks; production models; editorial models iii Acknowledgments I am grateful to my parents, Kelly and Dave, and my sister, Heather, who have been a constant source of support and inspiration. I am grateful also to my extended family and especially to Pam. Many thanks to the team at Arsenal Pulp Press during my internship there, Brian Lam, Robert Ballantyne, Shyla Seller, Janice Beley, and my supervisor, Susan Safyan, whose patience, generosity, and editorial wisdom are boundless. Thanks, too, to the faculty of the SFU MPub program, including Tom Woll, Roberto Dosil, John Maxwell (whose counsel throughout this process was indis- pensable), and my supervisors, Mary Schendlinger and Rowland Lorimer. I am indebted to the remarkable 2009–2010 MPub cohort, and I am honoured to number in their ranks. And thanks to the many friends without whose support I would be lost, including Michael Bround, Cynara Geissler, and especially Tracy Hurren. iv Contents Approval ii Abstract iii Acknowledgments iv Contents v Abbreviations vi Introduction 1 1. The Print-first Workflow 3 2. A New Framework 8 3. Web-first at Arsenal Pulp Press 15 4. Successes and failures of the project 25 5. Agile editing 27 Conclusion 33 Appendix 36 References 48 v Abbreviations APP: Arsenal Pulp Press CSS: Cascading style sheets dtp: Desktop publishing Epub: Electronic publication ews: Editorial workflow system icml: InCopy markup language idml: InDesign markup language idpf: International Digital Publishing Forum RTF: Rich text format tcp/ip: Transmission control protocol/internet protocol tei: Text encoding initiative W3C: World Wide Web Consortium WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get xhtml: Extensible hypertext markup language xml: Extensible markup language vi Introduction Publishing has always been a business of adaptation. From the scriptorium to Gutenberg’s printing press, from the industrialized printing process to Dent’s paper- backs, publishers in every century have been faced with paradigm shifts. But at the same time, publishing is also a business of tradition (Steinberg 1996). Books serve many purposes, among them the preservation of knowledge and lore. Some books, and the information contained therein, have survived centuries. Publishers must now, as they always have, balance the instinct for preservation with the necessity for change. Faced with the digital revolution, publishers must now find a way to integrate the tools and demands of the web into a set of practices rooted in the scriptorium, and honed with hundreds of years of technological advances. This report documents a small press’s struggle to combine adaptability and integrity, in keeping with the long-running tradition of publishing. In February 2010, six Master of Publishing students at Simon Fraser University (Vanessa Chan, Cari Ferguson, Cynara Geissler, Ann-Marie Metten, Suzette Smith, and Kathleen Fraser) set out to create a prototype of a web-first publishing workflow. Their stated goal was “to publish a book-length collection of essays in electronic and print-on-demand formats” (V. Chan et al. 2010, 3). By the project’s end, they had “experimented with new technologies and explored the various ambigui- ties and unknowns that relate to them, ultimately documenting a state-of-the-art publishing project that serves to inform other publishers about the best practices for the production and marketing of single-source projects.” The Book of MPub, as the text was called, was edited, designed, and released in four formats (print-on- demand, PDF, EPUB, and blog) in under ten weeks using technologies that are widely available to publishers. Ultimately, this project was a success on its own terms, but all those involved were technologically inclined students working in a low-risk aca- demic environment. It remained to be seen whether the methodologies developed were applicable for existing trade publishers. 1 In the summer of 2010, the author served as the editorial intern at Arsenal Pulp Press with a primary focus on setting up a preliminary web-first workflow, training key staff in its use, and producing one digitally native book using the processes outlined by the Book of MPub team. This report is a record of that experience and a description of the Arsenal Pulp Press web-first editorial workflow system. Section 1, on the print-first workflow, provides a brief history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century technology in publishing and introduces the status quo at Arsenal Pulp. It describes the incompatibility between a workflow that prioritizes print formats and the seamless production of digital formats, in the context of a similar workflow at Caitlin Press, another small publisher beginning the transition to new media. The second section describes a new framework that prioritizes conversions rather than formats—that is, it posits that each conversion should take advantage of the content’s initial state, in contrast to existing workflows that operate on a traditional format hierarchy regardless of complexity. Section 2 also provides definitions of key concepts including agile methodologies and extensible markup languages. The process of introducing such a workflow at Arsenal Pulp is detailed in Section 3. It begins with the process of setting up an online editorial environment and the experience of editing in such an environment. The process of producing several final output formats follows. Section 4 provides an overview of the project’s successes and failures. In Section 5, the author speculates on the future of editing, given the inability of the web-first workflow to replicate the word processor-based editing environment. This section includes a discussion of the fluid text and a brief overview of the digital publishing models used by Wikipedia and OR Books.

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