Managing Editor Inc. (MEI) today announced that it helped Publishers Weekly replace its publishing system with new technology and services. MEI installed the vjoon K4™ Cross-Media Publishing Platform, the preeminent design and editorial management solution integrating Adobe^® InDesign^® and InCopy^®. The company also revamped the magazine’s production process and implemented an improved, streamlined workflow.

Publishers Weekly, the “international news magazine of book publishing and bookselling,” is now using vjoon K4 to produce its flagship periodical and a supplemental newsletter, with plans to roll out production for several other newsletters. MEI is the exclusive distributor of vjoon K4 in the Americas.

Publishers Weekly started reconsidering its production tools when PWxyz LLC purchased the magazine from Reed Business International in 2010. At the time, PWxyz was using a hand-me-down system to manage design and editorial. The group’s creative team soon realized that any investment in its editorial workflow would be better served by adopting a cutting-edge system, rather than upgrading the existing tools.

Publishers Weekly purchased vjoon K4 and, along with implementing the software, worked closely with MEI to configure an efficient new workflow for its onsite editorial staff. Each week, Publishers Weekly receives hundreds of book review submissions from outside contributors. These articles are compiled into a single InCopy manuscript, which is checked into K4 so the art director can lay it out in InDesign and the editorial director, managing director and other executives can review and track it.

One feature that has been particularly useful for Publishers Weekly is K4’s ability to keep production transparent and collaborative.

“Our art director particularly enjoys how the system indicates who is working on which layouts and at what level the layouts are being moved forward,” said Editorial Director Michael Coffey.

Publishers Weekly also uses K4 Web Portal™ and K4 Web Editor ICML™ for Web-based access to InCopy articles and other content; K4 File Manager™ for bringing files of other types into the K4 database; and axaio’s MadeToPrint for automating the output of finished InDesign pages.

And along with managing its print publications, Publishers Weekly is using vjoon K4 to feed content to its website. The installation also includes K4 XML Exporter™, which extracts articles from the system as XML and sends them to the group’s Web content management system to be posted online. Previously, this process involved a great deal of tedious, labor-intensive copying and pasting.

“K4 saves our digital development director a full day every week, plus eliminates the manual work of transferring print data to the Web and our syndicates,” Coffey said. “A day a week is a big deal.”

According to Coffey, his team is looking forward to expanding its vjoon K4 system and taking advantage of even more automation and efficiency.

“We are counting on this K4 platform to be a good staging ground for future initiatives,” he said.

For more than 140 years, Publishers Weekly has provided trade news for publishers, librarians, booksellers and others involved in the book publishing business. Its book-review section has become an especially valuable and respected resource over the past several decades. The magazine publishes 51 issues a year, along with several regular newsletters targeting specific markets.

“Publishers Weekly has implemented the ideal solution for managing a large amount of incoming content and cross-media output,” said Linda Bruce, vice president of enterprise sales at MEI. “vjoon K4 provides the magazine’s editors and designers with the sophisticated tools they need to focus on creating great issues.”