Underscoring the company's objective of helping textbook publishers meet the challenges and opportunities of digital textbooks in schools, WoodWing Software has marked the new year by launching an initiative for the education sector. In this strategy, WoodWing can leverage extensive experience – its multi-channel publishing system Enterprise is already in use by major textbook publishers worldwide.

Steve Schaffran, General Manager Education at WoodWing: "The commitments in Brazil and South Korea to move all educational materials to delivery via electronic devices only are a wake-up call for education worldwide."

The Brazilian Ministry of Education recently announced that starting with submissions for 2015, all textbooks will have to be presented in digital as well as print versions. Starting in 2018, only digital textbooks will be accepted.

This announcement illustrates the accelerating global trend of offering educational literature such as textbooks in digital form for use on computers and tablets – either in tandem with printed textbooks or exclusively in digital form. South Korea has committed to bringing all educational materials to delivery via electronic devices by 2015. In some more countries, including Thailand and Malaysia, as well as several states in the U.S., the governments set similar ambitious targets for the digitization of textbooks. In other countries, such as Germany, textbook publishers are also moving to offer digital editions.

Efficient publishing of printed and interactive digital content

WoodWing´s education initiative is all about meeting the specialized needs of education publishers during this transition, enabling them to implement a multi-channel publishing workflow to efficiently publish print and interactive digital content simultaneously, using a single system. The early publishers using this system have already experienced impressive savings in both time and money.

New position of General Manager Education

As part of the initiative, WoodWing has created the new position of General Manager Education, which has been filled by Steve Schaffran, former Managing Director of WoodWing Latin America. "The next five years will be a time of rapid change in educational technology,” Schaffran said. "The commitments in Brazil and South Korea to move all educational materials to delivery via electronic devices only are a wake-up call for education worldwide." In his role as the leader of WoodWing´s education initiative, Schaffran can draw on his experience as a Lecturer in Economics at an Oxford College and research engineer at the University of California.

Broad experience in the textbook area

Hans Janssen, CEO of WoodWing Software, explained that the move is a logical outcome of complementary factors. "We know from our experience with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Grupo SM, Mitsumura Publishing and other major textbook publishers that our publishing system, Enterprise, offers a remarkable return on investment for printed textbooks," Janssen said. "This ROI is even greater when the projects involve parallel creation of print as well as digital versions."  

WoodWing Enterprise is a true multi-channel publishing system, enabling publishers to create content for various channels such as print, online and tablets. The editorial management application Content Station as part of the Enterprise system allows the efficient management of content for various channels. 

WoodWing´s Digital Publishing Tools for Adobe InDesign, part of WoodWing´s Digital Publishing Solution, enable textbook publishers to easily enhance the digital versions of their books with a high level of interactivity. 

For easy management of the growing collections of media files such as images, animations and videos, WoodWing also offers a Digital Asset Management solution, Elvis DAM, which is tightly integrated with Enterprise.