ePublishing as an industry in India is in its nascent stage. It started with data conversion services to publishers which lies at the lower end of the value chain and had since then moved up to offer complete pre-press services to global publishers such as Oxford University Press, Elsevier, Pearson Education among others. A Value Notes Report on “Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical – 2009” expects the industry to grow at a CAGR of 35%, to be worth US $1.2 billion by 2012. There are both strengths and weaknesses attached to this expected growth story.
Outsourcing ePublishing: Advantage India
The obvious strengths are India’s skilled, young English speaking workforce and its ability to churn out cost effective high quality output would make it an ideal offshoring destination. The Country has successively secured the top position in “Global Services Location Index 2009” as an offshoring destination. With proliferation of the use of computers, mobile phones, the internet and 3D in ePublishing, internet marketing has emerged as a cost effective tool to tap a larger prospect base and hence companies are using ePublishing as an effective platform for direct marketing.
Apart from this, the world’s print publishing industry including newspapers and magazines is witnessing a cut down on supplier networks, reduction in printed advertisement expenditures and hence revenue. This will eventually result in testing the cost effective digital ePublishing channel and to outsource a chunk of the work.
Outsourcing ePublishing to India: Weaknesses
On the other hand, the domestic ePublishing industry is fragmented necessitating consolidation and there is a crunch of quality digital content, trained manpower, attrition, price pressures, erratic work orders and excessive dependence on a few clients. They have so far tried to operate as a “and also” ePublishing company alongside the print medium. The focus of the ePublishing industry has been on the STM (Scientific, Technical and Medical) segment, which needs to widen and embrace comprehensively managed projects.
True to a developing industry, there will be too many pushes from too many directions in the initiation stages, making it difficult to initially understand how the industry is shaping up. Nevertheless, global offshore ePublishing is dominated by India. The industry has evolved in terms of technology, service depth, maturity and developed capability.
