Revolutionizing eBook Publishing: Introducing the eBook Automation Publishing System (EAPS)

What This Case Study Explores:

This case study delves into the development of a new system aimed at automating the eBook publication process, referred to here as the eBook Automation Publishing System (EAPS). EAPS is engineered to streamline the preparation of eBooks for customer sales in the production environment by proficiently handling and validating extensive data from various publishers. Furthermore, this system is built to be flexible, catering to the needs of other clients with similar requirements.

Background of the Study:

EAPS is integrated within the eBook publishing ecosystem to facilitate the validation and processing of PDFs, ensuring they meet the required formats for publication across eBook databases and web production environments. This integration was necessitated by several challenges:

• The pre-existing manual eBook PDF delivery system struggled to efficiently manage data from numerous publishers.
• Processes for maintaining publishers' datasets were diverse and inconsistent.
• The varied eBook processing and delivery requirements of clients.
• Continuous conversations with Quality Assurance (QA) and engineering teams to overcome these obstacles.

Why Undertake This Case Study?

Problem Statement: The industry was facing a significant challenge: the need for an efficient mechanism to help clients manage large publisher datasets, reduce manual labor, and establish a streamlined eBook delivery system. Clients demanded an automation system that could handle the entire eBook processing workflow, including PDF validation, processing, metadata extraction, managing large datasets, schema conversion, data auditing, and the digital distribution of eBooks. Without such a comprehensive system, the process remained labor-intensive and overly reliant on multiple vendors for eBook distribution.

This study was initiated to discover whether there was a market solution or the potential for an in-house system that could offer:

• A seamless end-to-end eBook publishing workflow.
• Effective management of datasets across various publishers.
• PDF validation, data extraction, and auditing capabilities.
• A simplified eBook delivery model with minimal manual involvement.

Approach Taken:

To enhance the eBook publishing model for a potential client and make use of our in-house Content Delivery Lifecycle (CDL) tools, we undertook a detailed analysis process:

• Comprehensive Analysis of CDL Tools: We thoroughly evaluated three key CDL tools—those for PDF validation, metadata extraction, and schema conversion—to understand the functionalities they offered.
• Assessment of Benefits and Limitations: We reviewed the advantages and limitations of the current CDL automation tools available on the market.
• Collaborative Brainstorming: The CDL core team, along with our tool experts and R&D team, engaged in iterative discussions to deeply understand the operational capabilities of these tools.
• Conclusion and Decision Making: Our findings led us to decide against creating a new tool. Instead, we opted to customize our existing tool, now named EAPS (eBook Automation Publishing System), to meet the client's needs effectively.

EAPS Explained:

EAPS, or eBook Automation Publishing System, is designed as a comprehensive solution to address our prospective client's eBook publishing demands. The system is structured into several modules (envisioned to include eight) to facilitate automated processing. These modules include:

• PDF Validation: Ensures PDFs from publishers are free from issues like corruption, password protection, and compatibility errors.
• TOC (Table of Contents) Extraction: Extracts articles and related metadata from PDFs to create individual TOCs.
• Reference Extraction: Analyzes author references to calculate royalty points based on article metrics.
• Data Auditing: Verifies all articles and metadata are present in the database and searchable.
• Inventory Processing: Manages articles in a shared location, organized by publisher, volume, and publication year.
• Schema Conversion: Converts metadata from PDFs/XML files into a schema XML for integration with the client's system.
• Ingestion: Supports the server ingestion process for web delivery of eBooks in QA and production environments.
• Reporting: Provides detailed reports on EAPS processing tasks, current activity statuses, and summaries of completed tasks.