The economic landscape adds further pressure due to cost-conscious consumers, downward pressure on budgets, and the need for higher efficiency. In this context, using publishing software to improve content creation workflows is a smart move for growth- and revenue-focused publishers. And not just for book, magazine and newspaper publishers. For anyone involved in publishing content at scale - including brands, agencies, retailers, and ecommerce. By centralizing content workflows in a cloud-based publishing platform, publishers transform their processes and unlock new platforms. And that means expanding their reach, readership, and revenue. From streamlining and automating manual processes to repurposing content and leveraging 24/7 global production – content creation software makes publishers more productive and profitable.
If your publishing strategy for 2024 is focused on digital transformation, content creation and publishing software should be at the top of your agenda. But what is it? And how does it help publishers prosper in a changing and challenging market?
Contents of this article:
Publishing software is any platform that helps traditional and digital content publishers to create, approve, design, publish, and distribute content at scale. In the context of this article, we're talking specifically about publishing software that provides:
It's productivity tech that streamlines the publishing process by providing a single platform for content creation, editing, approval, design, and distribution. We'll use terms like content creation software and publishing software interchangeably throughout this article - just know we're talking about the same thing.
Content creation and publishing software typically includes the following elements:
Publishing software has so much functionality that it's hard to describe. It's easier to just give you an example. Below, you can see what a simple book publishing workflow looks like before and after implementing a centralized content creation platform. But remember, it isn't just traditional publishing businesses that accelerate and improve their processes with publishing software. Any business that profits from content will benefit from a centralized content creation system.
| Stage | Before | After |
| Manuscript submission | Manual submission of Word document via email or physical copies. | Online submission portal with automated confirmation and tracking. Copy ingested into platform, ready for editing. |
| Editing and approval | Edits and queries made in Word or hard copy - with time-consuming communication between author and editor. Manual record-keeping of changes made and agreed. | Edits and queries made within the platform. Instantly visible to all involved. Real-time collaborative editing and full automatic version control/audit trail. |
| Design and layout | Files sent to designers, text manually transferred into design program, checks to ensure all copy included. | Text automatically and intelligently flowed into design template. No manual intervention required or risk of copy-and-paste errors. Designer accesses immediately within the platform. |
| Proofreading | Files sent to designers, text manually transferred into design program, checks to ensure all copy included. | Text automatically and intelligently flowed into design template. No manual intervention required or risk of copy-and-paste errors. Designer accesses immediately within the platform. |
| Final approval | Manual approval processes and record keeping. | Automated final approval workflows with digital signatures. |
| Production | Manual handover of files to production teams. | Seamless file transfer and integration with production systems. |
| Digitization | Often occurs once print files are signed off, creating delay to market. Requires technical adjustments to make content suitable for digital formats. | Digital version is created alongside the print version, with automatic optimization of images, font, etc for digital publication, adding pre-selected video and audio content. Print and digital can be published simultaneously. |
| Project management | Various communication channels, status update meetings. | Centralized communication hub, status dashboard, automatic task notifications, and updates for all collaborators. |
As you can see from just this simple example, there are time savings at every stage, and far less scope for human error. Projects move seamlessly through the workflow, and project progress is easy to monitor and manage. Imagine these efficiencies multiplied across your entire portfolio and it's clear how a centralized platform reduces cost and time-to-market, while maintaining rigorous editorial standards.
However, this is just the very basics of what publishing software can do…
We'll go into some of these in more depth below. But here's the headline news.
If you just want to optimize your existing publishing processes, a centralized publishing platform can deliver time and cost savings. However, ambitious publishers think bigger, using digitization to unlock whole new channels and revenue streams. Here's a deeper dive into the most metamorphic benefits of using a content creation and publishing platform.
| Challenge | Opportunity |
| Coordinating the various stages of content creation and publication can be a complex and time-consuming task | A centralized content creation system streamlines the whole process, accelerating content creation, editing, and distribution |
As the table above shows, a lot of time and effort is wasted unnecessarily in traditional publishing workflows. There are little things that add up – like sending proofs and queries back and forth via email – and big things that are clearly wasteful – like running print and digital teams in parallel.
A content creation platform streamlines every element of the process – from receiving and processing written content, to simultaneously getting it into design for print and digital channels. This translates into big savings (like having one editor for print and digital content, instead of two editors working exclusively on each channel). Processing content more efficiently means you get projects over the line faster, increase your capacity, and have the potential to generate more income.
Standardizing your processes also increases the flexibility of your workforce. Disparate processes across different teams make it hard to move employees where they're most needed – for example, between magazine titles when one team is feeling the pressure. By creating standard processes, you can deploy your human resources more efficiently, evening out peaks and troughs in workload, and using idle capacity.
| Challenge | Opportunity |
| Coordinating content across geographically dispersed teams, to leverage global staff, service providers, and freelancers | Cloud-based content creation workflows make global collaboration, outsourcing, and 24/7 production viable |
Publishers can't ignore the benefits of a globalized workforce. Remote work is more prevalent than ever and of course, you need to provide a way for your remote team to work seamlessly together. But you can also increase your capacity and augment your team by using freelancers to fill gaps and prevent bottlenecks – anything from sub-editing and copywriting, to graphic design and production skills. Furthermore, you can benefit from workers in different timezones to take your business from 9-to-5 to 24/7.
A cloud-based publishing platform is accessible from anywhere in the world with internet access. You can design an optimal global workforce and workflows to get your content polished, perfected, and published faster than ever.
| Challenge | Opportunity |
| Adapting print-based workflows to take advantage of the demand for digital content | Simultaneous print and digital production for effortless multichannel publishing |
There's no denying the demand for digital content. You only need to look at newspaper and magazine publishing to see the trend in black-and-white. Print subscriptions are in decline, being replaced by digital and hybrid subscriptions (often comprising web, app, and print access). We've written at length about how digital publishing offers opportunities for publishers to grow their readership, reach, and revenue.
A centralized content creation platform lets you publish effortlessly to print and digital channels. By diversifying your channel mix, you can increase your revenue streams and build a more viable subscription model. You can streamline commissioning (planning to share content across multiple platforms) and easily repurpose content from one channel or brand to another. Optimizing your production systems to seize the multichannel opportunity can seem, but doesn't have to be, overwhelming.
| Challenge | Opportunity |
| Maintaining consistent quality standards across various content pieces is challenging without a systematic approach, leading to potential errors and reputational risks | Centralized workflow management facilitates systematic quality control processes and helps identify and mitigate risks before content is published |
The online world is full of unchecked, unvetted, free content. Publishers can rise above this noise – and demonstrate the value of paying for their content – by providing quality content that readers can trust. However, quality assurance is challenging in complex, multichannel workflows.
A centralized content creation platform makes it easier to collaborate and create quality content – from online collaboration that gets your experts working together in real-time, to automatic audit trails and version controls to understand the context behind any amends.
Automation – such as automatically flowing copy into design templates – reduces the risk introduced by human interventions, such as cut-and-paste errors and omissions. Plus, integration with your Digital Asset Management system lets designers choose and re-use authorized imagery.
This all means you can create and publish content faster, confident that quality standards have been maintained (perhaps even improved).
It isn't just the publishing sector that benefits from content creation software. A centralized content platform is essential for any business that publishes a high volume of content to support its sales, marketing, and brand goals.
Traditional print-based businesses are the most likely to benefit from digital transformation. Unlike digitally native content brands – that have created fit-for-purpose processes from scratch – traditional book publishers often struggle with legacy print-based workflows. Rather than trying to amend print-based processes to fit the new multichannel landscape, book publishers need a wholesale review of how they create content – and how they monetize it.
Download our expert-informed eBook – Digital Transformation for Publishers – to understand the opportunities for print publishers in the digital landscape.
Magazine publishers often have multiple titles under their umbrella – and those titles publish content in print, online, and via apps. Having evolved from print to multimedia, magazine publishers often suffer with the same unfit legacy workflows as book publishers.
Adopting a centralized publishing platform lets magazine publishers redesign and optimize their content creation workflows for multichannel publishing – creating standardized processes that allow greater workforce flexibility, and coordinating and repurposing content across different brands.
How Hearst Magazines digitally transformed their processes to create innovative digital products
Large retail and supermarket brands juggle a lot of multichannel content creation – from content on their ecommerce sites, to in-store printed collateral like catalogs and POS materials. A centralized content creation system slashes the time it takes to create this material through automation.
For example, integrating the platform with your PIM and DAM to automatically pull product information and images into catalog templates. Or allowing photographers or suppliers to upload product images to the system, before they go through an automated quality control process.
Learn how Dutch supermarket giant Hoogvliet reclaimed control of its content creation challenges
Agencies can leverage a centralized content creation platform to deliver impactful, engaging content for clients – with less stress, risk, and confusion. A publishing workflow system provides a central hub for all staff to work on multiple projects simultaneously.
See how Medium Rare agency boosts creativity and control with a content creation platform
The digital opportunity for publishers isn't just about digitizing your existing processes. It's about unlocking new digital platforms and revenue streams. Don't limit your ambitions to just digitizing your existing processes. Work with an implementation partner/consultant to understand how others in your industry have leveraged publishing technology to unlock whole new processes and platforms.
Print isn't dead. But it's becoming more niche. Embrace the opportunities that the digital future offers publishers – from data analytics to continuously improve your offer and appeal to readers, to advertising opportunities via your owned digital platforms. Think how to reposition print as a value-add to your digital subscriptions. And consider how to digitize and repurpose your print archive to add value to your digital offer (for example, to create a strong content library when launching an app for your readers).
To be fully flexible and open to opportunity, stop thinking about specific publication channels altogether. Focus on how you can create high-quality content that is ready for use on any channel. What does that mean in practice? Well, without getting too technical, a publishing platform like WoodWing Studio can code individual content elements – think title, subtitle, introduction, body copy, et cetera – so that it can be easily formatted and published on any platform. This makes it easier and cheaper to experiment with emerging channels and see what works for your audience.