Publishing SIG NEWSLETTER June 2000

June 2000 ACE Pub SIG Newsletter

• USACC Registration & Business Meeting
• C&A Entries, Comments
• Award of Excellence
• Survey results
• Vice Chair-elect
• New members

Reminder: The deadline for the USACC early registration discount is Thursday, June 15!

We are scheduled for our annual Publishing SIG Business meeting from 11:00 to 12:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 23. Now is the time to send suggestions about topics that need to be covered. This will likely be our only opportunity to meet as a SIG in D.C.

C&A Entries, Comments

Letters for C&A awards have been sent out, and while they are still fresh, please send along any comments that you have about this year's process so we can discuss it at the D.C. business meeting and begin work on improvements for next year. The number of entries was on track with last year, and we had a good first-year showing in the new class for electronic publication. Following are the numbers, with the previous year in brackets:

The total entries for the publishing category was 134. [last year: 127]
The class breakdown:
19 (direct mail): 14 [19]
20 (newsletters): 17 [21]
21a (one- to three-color periodical): 6 [3]
21b (four-color periodical): 9 [10]
22a (one- to three-color popular pub.): 11 [13]
22b (four-color popular pub.): 27 [22]
23 (technical publication): 10 [10]
24a (one- to three-color special report): 7 [8]
24b (four-color special report): 21 [14]
25 (editing): 7 [7]
26 (electronic publication): 5 [n/a]

Award of Excellence

Thanks to all of those who submitted nominations for the Publishing SIG Award of Excellence this year. The winner will be announced at the D.C. meeting.

Survey results

There have been a number of surveys recently. The first was from Deb Weitzel regarding e-commerce activity. She has agreed to share those results with the SIG. They can be found on the Publishing SIG web page at: ctr.uvm.edu/acepubsig/survey.htm.

Debby Weitzel has submitted two other items. First are the results of a related IT survey done by Donna Seaver from UC Davis on credit card use for publication sales and course registration. The participants were asked: "Has anyone used the Internet as a method for people to order publications or register for courses by submitting their credit card information? If so: What do you consider to be the benefits and drawbacks? Were users inclined to use it more than fax or mail? What security measures were used? Any other thoughts/issues/concerns?

Responses included:

• I use a shopping cart on a non-secure server and credit card information at the end is on a separate secure server. All customers are happy with it unless there are technical problems on our end. We usually follow up each Web order with a phone call to confirm order and try to sell more.
• I have been checking into this for IDEA, which is an Extension cost center for developing information, based at Iowa State University. I have found that there are several 3rd party Internet companies that handle credit card security for vendors, which relieves the vendor from being responsible for all the security issues associated with online credit card transactions. These are companies that provide encryption, and check the authorization and expiration dates. I'm not sure how the contract arrangements are handled and am still investigating.
• We take credit card information via the web for both publications and course fees. The prime benefit is more image than function. Administrators and various stakeholders like to know that we are progressive. Also, we do get orders and registrations from our clientele, so we at least have a few that want to have this service. The primary drawback is that it might take a more resources to offer the service than would be justified by the limited fees currently collected on the web, but we expect this to grow. As of now we still collect more fees by phone, fax and mail. We especially take a lot of credit card orders by phone for publications. We use a secure server to take the information, which basically sends an email to the various programs. Because the email is internal to our system, we also consider it secure. I had some concerns about the email part of this process, but my IT advisors assured me we were secure. Keep it simple for starters. For example, at first I thought it was important to have the system interact directly with our publications database to check inventory etc., but instead our distribution staff manually re-enters the information. This allows us to serve the few users we have with minimal effort and without the high cost of more sophisticated e-commerce systems. If we're out of inventory we contact the client, but I don't think this has happened yet.

Advantages:

• Jobs can be conceived, created and completed on schedule, and on budget
• Getting estimates from printers frees designers and editors from that task
• Keeping track of paperwork, i.e., estimates, job tickets,
• Someone to note when dyluxes come in, and go back
• Making sure pieces are mailable, checking regulations and design specs
• Making sure final delivery is on time and to the right person
• Better customer relations
• An "extra set of eyes"
• Allows designers to be JUST designers and editors to JUST edit
• It eliminates the tremendous amount of time it takes the current staff to track their jobs.
• Having a coordinated effort from beginning to end
• Having one person who knows where every job is in the que
• It eliminates having pieces of jobs floating all over the place
• One person to follow up with clients to make sure we met their expectations, i.e., quality was as expected, quantity was correct, delivery was on time
• Keeps clients from going straight to their "favorite" designer/editor and putting their jobs in front of jobs already in the system
• Designer's work was enhanced by 30% (more time to design)
• Tracking jobs on a database, from creation to distribution
• One person as the initial contact for clients
• One person is accountable for project workflow
• Makes the whole department more organized, more productive, and more professional

• A lot of time spent in human relations
• Too many meetings
• One person has too much control
• The buck stops with the Production Coordinator, no one else to blame

Vice Chair-elect

We are pleased to announce that Judy Rude, Writer/Editor at USDA/CSREES/CDTE, and our D.C. Regional Representative, has agreed to be our Vice Chair-elect. She replaces Debby Weitzel, who agreed to move up a year to Vice Chair when Melanie Spencer announced her retirement early this year. Thanks, Judy. We will be looking for someone to become the next Vice Chair-elect at the business meeting in D.C. Let me know if you are interested in participating.

New members

Please welcome the following new members to the Publishing SIG:

Leslie Dorworth
Purdue University (Calumet)
Department of Biology
dorworth@calumet.purdue.edu

Daniel A. Campbell
Deputy Director, Public Affairs
USDA Rural Development
dan.campbell@usda.gov

Oleg Stiopca
University Lecturer
State Agricultural University of Moldova
stiopca@hotmail.com

Frank J. Koontz
Educational Media Editor
Purdue University
fkoontz@purdue.edu

Tim Stalker
University of Nebraska
tstalker2@unl.edu

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