For the eighth year running, PublishOne and SNAP Innovation teamed up for the iconic cultural event – now in its 75th year. Represented by Wilto, Ellen, Mark, and Marit, the PublishOne team was joined by SNAP Innovation’s Robert Janoska. Located in the Service Provider area, our team was in the right place to uncover the latest trends in the world of publishing tech.

AI is on the agenda

Of course, the hot topic right now is AI. Publishing – like so many industries – is facing up to the challenge of how to harness the power of AI in a productive yet ethically responsible way. This time next year, things might have changed, but at the moment, AI is top of mind for many publishing businesses. 

In respect of AI, SNAP Innovation has made great strides this year, building an AI integration framework for PublishOne. The framework runs, like PublishOne, on Microsoft Azure, and connects translation services – such as Azure AI Translator and DeepL. Of course, it’s also possible to connect other AI services to this framework.

Searching for SaaS

Perhaps partly due to current developments in AI, people at this year’s buchmesse seemed more closely tuned in to the tech available – and what it can do for their publishing business – including workflow software, XML platforms, and editorial systems. 

Compared with last year, there was a noticeable shift in the conversation. Content publishers are actively seeking Software as a Service (SaaS) as opposed to big systems that need to be installed on in-house servers. There’s a trend for cloud-based solutions that are simple to set up and scale.

In all aspects of their lives, people are getting increasingly used to simple, clean, and streamlined UI/UX. So it was gratifying to hear so many positive comments about the look and feel of the PublishOne environment. There’s clearly a shallow learning curve for non-technical users of our friendly, cloud-based, SaaS platform.

The world works in Word 

Whilst AI is throwing up a lot of uncertainties, and changing the way people do business, there’s another trend that remains almost constant amongst the publishing community.

Everyone we spoke to – from external authors to internal editors – works in Microsoft Word. In general, people have been using it for years and their business has invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. 

That’s why, for many companies, PublishOne makes so much sense. People can use their preferred authoring and editing tool from within the PublishOne environment. This gives publishers one editorial system for all their content. 

PublishOne also silently serves as an XML platform, seamlessly handling conversions back and forth between different formats and enabling content to be created once and published to multiple channels at the same time.  

Doing more with data 

Every industry is exploring ways to do more with data and analytics. The publishing world is no exception. Publishers are increasingly looking for ways to not only create, manage, and publish content more effectively, but derive better business value from the available data.

From a business perspective, apps are becoming a popular publishing channel. By putting out content via an app, publishers can gain valuable insights into how their content is consumed. At the same time, users can easily access the content they need.

On the production side of things, using PublishOne as workflow software and managing the end-to-end process gives companies a clear oversight of the publishing timeline – whether that’s a book, an article, or any other text-heavy content.  

Personalization of content

The personalization of content – making it more unique and targeted – is becoming increasingly important in general, and not just for brand and marketing purposes. With everything stored and updated in one place, it’s much easier for publishers to repurpose and repackage content for distribution through different channels. Here’s an example. 

Imagine you have a collection of online articles that you want to make available as a collection, perhaps in an e-book. PublishOne enables you to create new products from existing content. That means your articles can become a book which can be turned into training materials, such as an e-learning resource. And the best part is that you only have to make changes in one place – PublishOne – and it will update everywhere. 

Discover why SNAP Innovation delivers PublishOne solutions in the DACH region, visit their website https://www.snap.de/tools/publishone/ 

Interested in the benefits of using PublishOne to manage all your publishing content? Contact us