Announcing Publishing Technology Partners

May 1, 2018 – Ken Brooks, Bill Kasdorf, Thad McIlroy, Bill Rosenblatt, and Bill Trippe announce the formation of Publishing Technology Partners (pubtechpartners.com), a new consulting partnership that will offer a broad range of experience and expertise from a single source to clients in all segments of the publishing industry and to suppliers of technology solutions for publishing.

Publishing Technology Partners will provide expertise for publishers in areas such as:

—Content and Workflow: editorial, production, content management, content structure, metadata, identifiers, accessibility, and rights management; —Management and Operations: supply chain, ecommerce, business systems, acquisition integration, and digital strategy;

—Technology: IT and software development management, vendor evaluation and selection, solution architecture, standards alignment, data science, and blockchain.

Publishing Technology Partners will also offer technology vendors and service providers expertise in areas such as business plan creation, go-to-market strategy, business development, partnerships, competitive analysis, and customer engagement. In addition, it will provide investors assistance with due diligence for investments, mergers, and acquisitions related to the publishing market.

The members of Publishing Technology Partners are:

Ken Brooks is a digital transformation COO and advisor focused on helping publishers scale product development, go-to-market, and supply chain operations through the application of technology, supplier capabilities, process innovation and data science.

Bill Kasdorf is an expert in accessibility, XML/HTML/EPUB modeling, information infrastructure, editorial and production workflows, and standards alignment to future proof content and systems.

Thad McIlroy is an expert in the technology and marketing issues surrounding electronic publishing.

Bill Rosenblatt is a globally recognized authority on technologies, business strategy, and intellectual property issues related to content in the digital age, who has contributed to standards related to content identification, metadata, and rights.

Bill Trippe is a publishing technology expert focusing on workflow, print and web production, content and asset management, web content management, ecommerce, and digital rights management.

The members each have over 25 years’ experience as industry executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs. They have served on global standards committees and industry associations including BISG, IDPF, W3C, IPTC, SSP, ACM, WIPO Accessible Books Consortium, and Copyright Society of the USA. The members have written, edited, or contributed to books including The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing, The Metadata Handbook, Mobile Strategies for Digital Publishing, Stripping Covers off The Hunger Games, Electronic Publishing Strategies, Digital Rights Management: Business and Technology, and SVG for Designers; and they have chaired and spoken at industry events around the world.

“Publishing Technology Partners has assembled an unparalleled brain trust — the cream of the crop — for strategy and best practices across the publishing value chain from production and asset management to distribution and monetization,” said Bill McCoy, former GM Publishing, Adobe and Executive Director, IDPF; presently head of Publishing Activity, W3C. “I have personally worked with each of the partners over a number of years, and in addition to each of them having deep expertise, they are also operationally effective particularly at the very challenging mission of ensuring that technology aligns with and enhances the overall business.”

“BISG’s members tell us that keeping up with new technologies and relying on outdated technology and approaches are two of their greatest challenges,” said Brian O’Leary, Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group. “Publishing Technology Partners brings together the talents of several book industry veterans to address those challenges.”

The members of Publishing Technology Partners have worked with many clients, including AAP, Adobe, American Bar Association, Associated Press, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Brother, Cambridge University Press, Cengage Learning, Consumers Union, EU Publications Office, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, HP, IBM, IEEE, Kaplan, Macmillan Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, OCLC, ORCID, Pearson, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Quark, Random House, Readers Digest, Rodale, Sony, Taylor & Francis, The World Bank, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer.

Publishing Technology Partners is available immediately for inquiries at info@pubtechpartners.com, on Twitter at @PubTechPartners, and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/publishing-technology-partners/. Further information, including member biographies and example engagements, is available at pubtechpartners.com.