No one can deny that Adobe’s InDesign page layout application has taken the design and publishing industries by storm. From solo freelancers to multi-billion dollar publishing conglomerates, InDesign is advancing its way across the front lines of publishing, leaving purple butterflies on screen after screen. But, only on designers screens. Most writers and editors are still using Microsoft Word to write copy that designers later place into InDesign layouts. There’s another purple butterfly silently flitting around the publishing world.

What most people—including most InDesign experts—don’t know is that Adobe also makes a word processor that intertwines copy and layout more intimately than Word could ever aspire to.

Current with each new release of InDesign since version 1.0 in 1999 is a new release of a humble little application that brings true editorial-production collaboration into the modern publishing workflow. Although Adobe kept its lips sealed about this application for the first four years of its life, a few within Adobe are beginning to whisper the gospel of InCopy.

One such whisperer is Chad Siegel.

Quark VS InDesign.com How long have you been a Senior Product Manager for InDesign and InCopy at Adobe?

Chad Siegel Five years.

QvI Before Adobe, what did you do?

CS Before Adobe I worked as a graphic designer at a start-up company founded by former Aldus employees who worked on PageMaker—one of whom was the former Product Manager. I designed for print, Web and also interactive interfaces for CD-ROMs. Before that I studied Painting and Printmaking in college.

QvI How have those experiences helped you prepare for overseeing the development and direction of applications that have become integral to the modern publishing workflow?

CS Working at a small start-up required a willingness to perform a variety of functions that extended beyond the traditional role of a graphic designer—often times including writing and editing copy. So I certainly have a first-hand understanding of the problems of collaborative editorial and design workflows. Combined with customer feedback, this real-world experience helps inform questions we ask and decisions we make, ensuring our direction is rooted in the nuanced experience of our customers who produce materials for a variety of media types.

QvI Before we get into the hard questions, let’s have a little fun. I’ll assume you enjoy using InCopy. Stepping outside your role as product manager, speaking strictly as a user, why do you like InCopy? When using InCopy CS2, what strikes you as the coolest feature? Why?

CS Writers and editors are just as passionate about the quality of their content as designers are about the format and design used to express it. Because publishing is collaborative, it’s important that each constituent—whether that be editorial, design, or production—has an opportunity to fully participate in the overall process. Most publishers work with mixed editorial and layout tools—for example, Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign—which means that writers work without the benefit of seeing how their content fits within the context and formatting of the final page. This results in inefficient back-and-forth reviews and in some cases puts designers in the awkward position of having to make editorial decisions to meet deadlines. So the integrity of a writer’s intent suffers as a result. Because of the shared text engine and graphics model with InDesign, InCopy users can accurately see how their content will appear within the context of the final page, thereby empowering them to make the necessary edits. This tighter incorporation of writers and editors into publishing workflows is what I like best.

This is why the multiple views in InCopy—Story, Galley and Layout—are my favorite. They are windows that help editorial contributors—such as myself—participate more fully in the publishing workflow.

QvI Now that we know why you use InCopy, let’s discuss who else should use it, and why. Who needs InCopy today?

CS Any writer or editor who collaborates closely with designers to get design and copy to work together—and who perhaps is tired of the endless rounds of review and correction—can benefit from InCopy.
The concept of real-time editorial and design collaboration is familiar to customers in newspapers and magazines. While those working in other publishing workflows aren’t as well acquainted with it. As interest in InCopy has grown, so has our understanding of its applicability to workflows outside newspaper and magazine operations—sometimes in ways we didn’t originally expect. For example, we’ve recently seen book publishers adopt InCopy as a means of improving the collaboration between external subject matter experts (i.e. authors) and internal writers (i.e. editors). Traditionally their processes are more serial and linear than newspapers. By incorporating InCopy into their workflow they’ve been able to reduce their overall production time, often considerably.

QvI Why is InCopy an important tool?

CS InCopy is an important application because it helps those creating, contributing and editing content participate more fully in publishing workflows, letting them retain control of editorial content up until the last seconds before a publication goes to production.

QvI How does InCopy compare against its competition? What are the advantages to using InCopy CS2 over Microsoft Word?

CS The biggest difference between InCopy and other editorial tools is that InCopy let’s you see the page design as you write and edit the copy to fit. With Microsoft Word and other editorial toolsets, writers essentially write blind. They throw their content over the transom for designers to work with.

In addition to providing an editing environment that accurately represents the context of the overall InDesign publication, InCopy also includes the LiveEdit workflow plug-ins which provide a lightweight parallel editorial workflow solution. These plug-ins let designers break up their InDesign documents into assignments so multiple writers and editors can work on them simultaneously—all without fear of overwriting one another’s work.

These two benefits—the ability to accurately visualize content within the page design as well as working in parallel with designers—provide tremendous advantages to customers using InDesign as their layout application and is unique to InCopy.

QvI How is InCopy doing in the marketplace? What kind of adoption rates have you noted in major global markets like the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Australia, and Japan? How much of those are retail versions of InCopy and how much solutions from SIs?

CS I can’t share specific sales data, however I can share some of the general trends we’re seeing.
InCopy is included as the editorial component of high-end publishing workflow systems provided by numerous third-party system integrators (SIs). It is also available directly from Adobe for smaller editorial workgroups who don’t have such stringent needs for workflow management systems. With the CS2 release of InCopy, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in adoption and usage alongside InDesign. At the SI level, we’re seeing widespread adoption in large magazines and newspapers worldwide. At the small team level, we’re seeing healthy adoption, not only in small newspapers and magazines, but even within publishing workflows that we didn’t originally anticipate, such as book publishing, advertising, and in-house corporate design.

QvI Any surprises in who and where InCopy has been adopted?

CS We initially expected large newspapers and magazines to adopt it simply because of their traditional familiarity with the benefits of parallel editorial workflow. The demand evolved to encompass smaller publications who have similar needs but publish less frequently. It seems customers intuitively understand InCopy’s value proposition when they see it and demand has now grown to include a number of different workflows and publication types, such as book, corporate information, and government publishing. These latter workflows are ones we certainly didn’t anticipate originally with version 1.0, but the application and its integration continues to evolve and so we’re certainly interested in hearing from current and potential customers and responding to their needs.

QvI Through version 2 (the current release, CS2, is version 4) InCopy was only available from Adobe’s system integrator (SI) partners, and then usually only as part of full-blown publishing workflow systems. Only the last two versions, CS and CS2, have been available for purchase as standalone products from Adobe. What was the reasoning behind keeping the first two versions locked behind SIs?

CS The frequency of daily and weekly publications puts an enormous pressure on the collaborative relationship between editorial and design. For example, daily newspapers could not produce their product if they had to work in a linear process consisting of sequential steps. In order to meet their tight deadlines, both editorial and design have to work in parallel. So we originally designed InCopy to be the editorial front end of SI publishing systems that enabled parallel collaborative workflow. So our initial focus was on developing a product to meet their needs.

Around version 2.0 customers in smaller workgroups began asking for something similar. They have similar time constraints and a need to streamline their editorial workflow by increasing the efficiency of their collaboration, yet they don’t have similar budgets or IT support or fixed notions of workflow. We have a well established history of responding to our customers’ needs and so with CS, we began selling InCopy directly from Adobe with a lightweight, file-system based collaboration system called the Bridge plug-ins. In CS2 we changed the name to the LiveEdit Workflow plug-ins as it is more descriptive of InCopy’s value proposition. We now synthesize feedback from editorial customers working in a variety of workflows and are enhancing InCopy’s feature set to appeal to a broad range of customers and uses.

QvI Adobe has shouted from the rooftops about InDesign since version 1—indeed, even long before its release, Adobe co-founder and former chairman, John Warnock, passionately touted InDesign as the evolution of page layout. If that’s true (you’ll get no argument from me), if, over the last seven years, InDesign has become so important to publishing layout, wouldn’t InDesign’s editorial companion be considered just as important, just as evolutionary? InDesign is on the lips (if not desktops) of every publishing industry professional, from production to editorial, but only a scant few have heard of InCopy—and most of them from Quark VS InDesign.com and the half-handful of self-appointed InCopy evangelists like me. Why doesn’t the market hear about InCopy from its creator? Why the silence? Isn’t Adobe passionate about InCopy?

CS The notion of InCopy has evolved from being about specialized high-end workflows—where they have an inherent understanding of the value proposition —to having broader market appeal. We do market InCopy in many of the same ways as InDesign, but certainly not with the same emphasis. One of the things we learned early on about InDesign is that, in order to be successful, applications must fit within a broader ecosystem of publishing, so we continue investing in the publishing industry as a whole. For example, we work to ensure there is a broad community of developers who can build custom solutions around InDesign and InCopy, we help create networks of certified trainers, and continue helping educate and train print service providers to ensure they can accept and troubleshoot our files. InCopy is no different in this regard. In many ways, best practices in editorial workflow is still a nascent concept. So instead of pressing customers with marketing messages we’ve been primarily focused on building other infrastructure around InCopy, such as training. For example, we’re pleased to report that both Lynda.com and Total Training now have video training for InCopy. Adam Pratt and Mike Richman recently published a book about InCopy and the LiveEdit workflow called the Adobe InCopyCS2 Book. In addition to these training materials we’re also in the process of developing an ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) exam to help build a stable of qualified trainers upon which customers may rely. Once this training is in place then the foundation is there to provide more messaging and marketing around InCopy.

QvI Excellent! Let me know when the InCopy ACE exam is ready; I’ll be the first to get certified. I’m already pretty busy with InCopy consulting, training, and editorial and production workflow integration.

Those who do use or know about InCopy have a feature wish-list long enough to fill the frontpage. For example: InDesign and InCopy’s LiveEdit workflow enables assigning content to specific individuals for editing in InCopy. However, such assignments are etheric and impotent. Anyone with InCopy or InDesign can edit content assigned to anyone else without restriction. The retail applications do not include a means of limiting content access to its assigned owner. How are such concerns addressed for the would-be InCopy customer?

CS We view customer suggestions and feedback as vital to ensuring our success. That feedback ensures the enhancements we’re making are relevant, so we continuously gather customer feedback through a variety of methods during all stages of our development cycle. The best way to bring feature requests to our attention is to submit a feature enhancement [1] via Adobe.com. Though it may seem impersonal, please be assured that we take the feedback very seriously and go through all of them at least once every month.

The retail versions of InCopy do include a lightweight, file-system based collaboration technology that provides check-in/check-out functionality. Similar to checking out a book from the local library, this ensures that only a single user can have content checked out for their exclusive use at a given time. Malicious users or those who are on tight deadlines and need to take back control of a story are able to do so but I would hardly characterize that as not limiting content access to an assigned user. The reason we allow users to take back control of a story is because customers requested this ability for extreme circumstances. We consistently heard this option was a requirement in small workgroups. For example, in the event someone forgot to check-in their content before leaving for the day or if they were out sick, would you want such an event to stop a publication group from meeting their deadline? Of course not. So that’s why the ability to override the lock files is there. We also took great pains to design the system so that content is never lost. So even if someone else steals the story’s lock out from underneath another user, we always give you the ability to save a copy which can be re-introduced later if necessary.

Looking at your question more broadly, it’s important to understand how the size of a workgroup changes the dynamics of collaboration and workflow. Generally speaking, smaller workgroups are better able to enforce their workflow through their culture and process, but as the size of a workgroup increases so does the complexity involved in coordinating their efforts. Because of this, larger workgroups look beyond their culture towards technology as a means of administering their workflow. Our SI partners provide a variety of editorial workflow solutions that scale to meet the needs of medium and larger workgroups. The key differentiator between what we provide to small workgroups with the retail version and what our SI partners provide with their systems are customizable workflow and process restrictions. For example, all partner solutions require users to have a fixed notion of workflow which their systems can be customized to enforce. Features such as the automatic routing of stories as well as more complex notification schemes are standard approaches they provide. Collaboration in smaller workgroups is more organic and less complex and so the retail version of InCopy is well suited to meet their needs. If customers would like tools to help enforce their workflow process more stringently then there are a variety of partner solutions from which to choose. A great resource for helping customers assess which solution is right for them—either InCopy retail, a developer workflow solution, or an integrated workflow system—is available [2] on Adobe.com. If a partner solution is desirable then a full listing of third-party editorial worfklow solutions can be found there as well.

QvI What is the formula, criteria, or thought process that determines whether InCopy will include a feature out of the box or leave it up to SIs to address?

QvI What is the formula, criteria, or thought process that determines whether InCopy will include a feature out of the box or leave it up to SIs to address?

CS Our goal is to enable Adobe partners to provide new levels of automation and efficiency in high-end editorial workflows while also addressing the needs of smaller collaborative editorial workgroups who either don’t have the need or budget for a full-blown system. Doing so ensures that customers receive the widest breadth and depth of options which can be tailored to meet their needs. As mentioned previously, the nature of collaboration is different depending on the size of a workgroup, the frequency of a publication, the underlying technology infrastructure and need for customization. Larger workgroups need database-driven workflow management systems which can be customized to meet their specific workflow. These are available from SIs and third-party development partners. So we add features to InCopy that offer the broadest benefit to editorial customers, leaving features that require the enforcement of specific workflow processes to our development partners who are better suited at customizing solutions to fit specific workflow needs.

QvI How do you justify these decisions to small-team content creators who need access control or editorial oversight but don’t need—and can’t afford—the other bells and whistles of large publishing systems like K4?

CS As previously mentioned, our goal is to empower our partners, not compete with them. A number of different editorial workflow solutions are available for InCopy and InDesign from systems integrators and partners. These scale from solutions for high volume, large publishing operations all the way down to small editorial workgroups. For example, Woodwing provides Smart Connection, Smart Connection Pro, and Smart Connection Enterprise. Each represents an incremental increase in functionality, robustness, customization and price. So there are some lower end solutions available from third-parties that go beyond what Adobe provides with InCopy directly.

QvI High-distribution, large publishing workflows like Cox’s newspapers, Hearst, Rodale Publishing, Meredith Publishing, Metroland Printing, Publishing & Distributing, and others have switched to InDesign and InCopy. Certainly, for any publishing application or system to gain hold in the market the major players must embrace it. But, what does InCopy bring to small publishing workflows? Does a sub-10,000 circulation alternative news weekly, for example, even have a place for InCopy?

CS InDesign and InCopy-based solutions range from high-end systems to light-weight options which are well-suited for smaller workgroups. As mentioned before, these smaller workgroups are more organic in their approach to collaboration and therefore don’t have such fixed notions of workflow. Frequently they don’t have robust IT support and certainly don’t have the budget for large systems. So our direct sales strategy and partnerships are meant to meet the needs of smaller workgroups as well.

QvI We know about full InCopy-based solutions from SIs like Managing Editor, but what about the little stuff? What third-party plug-ins are available to extend the functionality of InCopy? Including the $249 price of InCopy itself, what kind of InCopy solution can a small publisher build for under $1,000?

CS Obviously it depends on your workflow needs, the frequency of your publication, the size of your workgroup, your technology infrastructure (database driven vs. file-system based solution…etc.). Two editorial workflow solutions that come immediately to mind are Woodwing’s Smart Connection and Smart Connection Pro as well as MEI’s TrueEdit, but there are certainly others. I would encourage readers to investigate partner editorial workflow solutions.

QvI Let’s switch from present tense and talk about the future of InCopy. I know you can’t reveal the specifics of the product roadmap, but give us a general sense of where InCopy is heading.

CS Our understanding of editorial workflows and how different people contribute to it is evolving, and I would imagine that InCopy will evolve with it. For example, the current InDesign and InCopy workflow is predicated on contributors and creative teams working from a shared file system within the same firewall. In talking with customers, we’ve learned that with many workflows this is not possible and we’re now looking at ways of making it easier to collaborate with geographically disperse, remote content contributors to publishing workflows.

This is simply one example of how we’re likely to evolve. You can expect InCopy to make it easier to collaborate with an expanded set of contributors for a variety of media types and to introduce new methods that enable full participation of constituents within a broader set of publishing workflows.

QvI We talked about why InCopy is important, and who needs it, today. Who will need it in the future? Five years from now, summer 2011, in which industries and professions will InCopy be an integral—or at least desired—part of the daily workflow?

CS As we’ve discussed, InCopy benefits any creative team in which designers and editors need to work in parallel. Right now, creatives in magazines and newspapers understand that value proposition best. However, that perception is growing in the creative community and impacting how people are approaching editorial workflow in book and catalog publishing, advertising, and other areas. In our experience, this perception will continue to grow and to reach into areas you might not expect. We recently had someone who handles production of the budget for the President of the United States come to an InDesign User Group meeting in Washington, DC because they use InDesign for layout and are looking for ways to continually improve their processes. They’re prime candidates for reducing their “time to publish” using InCopy. And they certainly work under severe deadlines. So you’re going to start to see notions of parallel workflow and editorial collaboration appearing in new places like that. In addition, we’re always looking at ways to improve cross-media publishing processes. So I would imagine we’ll be exploring those opportunities too. Personal publishing is also a rapidly growing phenomena, so there may be possibilities there as well.

QvI What doesn’t the InDesign-InCopy workflow do today that you’d like to see it taking on in the near future?

CS I’d like to see it facilitate more types of collaboration as well as expand support for more personal types of publishing such as contribution to blogs, wikis, etc. One of Adobe’s strengths is the broad range of technologies we have for nearly every medium—print, Web, mobile, audio, video, DVD publishing. I envision integrating with more of these technologies so we can keep up with customers’ evolving notions of editorial content. We need to make it easier to create and edit content for alternative media types.

QvI Think about the rainbow of print and digital content publishing workflows out there now and emerging daily. Now, if you would, indulge in a little fantasy and tell us your unbridled vision for the future of publishing—say, ten years out. Where does InCopy fit into that vision?

CS We’re seeing a number of market trends that promise to change the nature of editorial content as we understand it today: the explosion in digital media creation and consumption, an emphasis on personal publishing and expression, as well as a shift towards content driven, cross-media workflows.

From digital cameras, to cellular phones, to iPods, there’s been a colossal increase in the variety of ways in which consumers interact and engage with media. Not only is this increasing the ways in which consumers receive content, but also has made it much easier for people to create, share and distribute that content. With barriers to a variety of richer content types falling and new distribution channels emerging it’s quickly becoming a requirement for publishers wanting to differentiate their brand to create more engaging and personalized experiences to connect with their customers. From Postscript to PDF to Flash, Adobe has tools and technologies that will help publishers meet that challenge. It’s inefficient for publishers to build disparate and potentially redundant processes around publishing to each media type—print, Web, mobile, etc.—and so I can imagine many workflow processes will begin to consolidate. Since most publishing workflows begin with the creation, acquisition and editing of editorial content, I can see the consolidation of editorial being a key enabler for single-source, cross-media publishing. By this I mean that we’re beginning to see a broader need for content types to shift from being print or web or audio specific with re-purposing happening as an afterthought to becoming one source which can then be used for print, Web, mobile or any other future channel. InCopy’s editorial focus and support for collaborative workflow make it well positioned to evolve into an easy to use tool that enables the creation and editing of content for multiple media. This is an important role in such a future vision.

QvI Adobe is committed to a PDF-based workflow, Microsoft to an Office-based with its flavored XML Metro. Both companies know that owning the enterprise digital content creation workflow is crucial to their survival. As far as the average enterprise user knows, Microsoft Word is, and has been for the last fifteen years, the only word processor in existence. Between PDF, the PDF Print Engine, Flash-based technologies, the LiveCycle PDF forms platform, and the obvious ramping up of InDesign to replace both the aged FrameMaker as well as the PDF forms layout application LiveCycle Designer, Adobe is marching full gallop at Metro. The linchpin of Microsoft’s Metro strategy is Word. To breach the fortesss-like walls Word has erected around the enterprise, Adobe needs a robust word processor capable of answering the content publishing needs of a broad spectrum of enterprise users. InCopy is therefore the best positioned to become the sharpened point of Adobe’s PDF workflow battering ram. Is that the case? Is InCopy, with LiveEdit integration with InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, and other publishing tools, to become Adobe’s “Word Killer”?

CS InCopy and Word have slightly different objectives. InCopy is intimately tied to InDesign and creative publishing workflows, while Word is a great tool for creating business documents. They co-exist and complement each other. Where there is overlap we ensure a high-degree of compatibility between the two. We certainly have an opportunity to broaden our support for emerging workflows and media types but where the objectives of the products overlap, our goal is not to displace Word but to make it easier for customers to get content into their creative publishing workflow. In fact, both InCopy and InDesign have powerful Word import filters that help editors and designers process text by mapping formatting to the content even before it hits the InCopy or InDesign page. InCopy can also export RTF which can then be opened in Word.

QvI When will we see InCopy capable of stepping outside the editorial bullpen and onto the average enterprise desktop?

CS To be clear, our goal is not to displace Microsoft’s word processing tool. Our focus is on writers and editors whose job it is to contribute and participate in professional creative publishing workflows. First and foremost we are about improving their experience and finding ways to help streamline collaborative editorial workflow. Technically, InCopy can be used as a stand-alone word processing application but the real value is in conjunction with InDesign. So InCopy stands to benefit any enterprise that’s chosen InDesign as a key component of their operation.