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Publishing today involves far more than producing a printed book. Publishers need content that works across print and digital formats, supports accessibility and moves efficiently through increasingly complex production workflows.
In this blog, we’ll explore how Easypress' in-house production tools, Atomik eStylist (AeS) and Atomik ePublisher (AeP), help our clients overcome these challenges and streamline the journey from manuscript to finished book.
Preparing a manuscript for production is often one of the most time-consuming stages of publishing. Inconsistencies introduced early in the process can affect everything from typesetting to eBook production and accessibility.
Atomik eStylist (AeS) was designed to solve this problem by helping publishers create consistently structured manuscripts from the outset. To understand how it works, it’s first worth exploring the role Word styles play in modern publishing workflows.
A Word style is a predefined set of formatting instructions that can be applied consistently throughout a document. Instead of formatting every heading or chapter title individually, styles allow the same formatting to be applied throughout the manuscript.
At first glance, styles might seem like a simple formatting tool. In reality, they provide the structure that underpins an efficient publishing workflow. They define the hierarchy of a manuscript, making global formatting changes easier while providing the semantic information needed for typesetting, eBook production and accessibility.
Without them formatting can be lost during conversion, while screen readers struggle to interpret the document correctly. This makes publications more difficult to access and use for people with visual impairments and other accessibility needs.
Editorial teams may spend hours working through a manuscript, identifying headings, extracts, tables, lists, footnotes and other elements before applying the appropriate Word styles. While macros can help, the process remains repetitive and there is always the risk of inconsistencies creeping in.
Atomik eStylist (AeS) was developed to remove much of the manual effort involved in manuscript styling, saving huge amounts of time early in the production process.
AeS is a rules-driven assisted styling desktop application that analyses the structure of a manuscript and suggests styles automatically based on visual paragraph clues within the document e.g. indentation, alignment, character formatting (bold, italic, underline). Rather than working through hundreds of pages by hand, editorial teams can process an entire manuscript in minutes.
AeS automatically identifies key document elements, including chapters, headings, body text, tables, images, poetry, extracts, lists, footnotes and endnotes, before suggesting appropriate styles.
It can then suggest appropriate styles, allowing users to review and apply them quickly. Similar paragraphs are grouped together, helping users style large sections of content consistently without having to work through the manuscript line by line.
In addition, AeS performs a range of clean-up tasks, such as removing unnecessary formatting, normalising spacing and preparing content for downstream production workflows.
Finally, AeS allows users to add alternative text (alt-text) to images during manuscript preparation, ensuring accessibility information is captured early and carried through the publishing workflow.
By mapping the design hierarchy of a book, AeS creates a consistently styled manuscript that is ready for the next stages of production. In many publishing workflows, this means preparing content for Atomik ePublisher (AeP), where it can be transformed into accessible print and digital publications.
Creating a well-structured manuscript is only part of the publishing journey. Once the content has been prepared, publishers still need to manage edits, create print-ready files, generate eBooks and keep track of multiple versions of the same project.
As a publication moves through production, it is not unusual for editors, designers, proofreaders and production staff to work on the same title. Without a centralised workflow, files can quickly become difficult to manage.
Traditionally, these assets might be stored across multiple folders, shared drives and email chains. As projects grow, maintaining consistency and version control can become increasingly challenging.
Different team members may be working on different versions, corrections may need to be repeated across multiple formats, and valuable time can be spent tracking down the latest file rather than producing the book itself.
This is the challenge that Atomik ePublisher (AeP) was designed to solve.
Atomik ePublisher (AeP) is a browser-based publishing platform that helps publishers move efficiently from manuscript to finished publication.
Once a manuscript has been prepared, Word files can be uploaded individually or in bulk. AeP's Ingest Wizard then converts the content into Adobe InDesign files, ready for production.
From there, the Autoset Wizard can automatically typeset pages. Widows and orphans can be removed, short pages corrected and page extents managed automatically, significantly reducing the amount of manual intervention required.
When production is complete, AeP brings together all the components of a publication to create a print-ready PDF. The platform can also generate reflowable and fixed-layout eBooks, helping publishers produce multiple formats from the same source content.
Publishing projects rarely involve a single person. Editors, designers, proofreaders and production staff often need to work on the same title at different stages of production.
Files can be edited directly within AeP's online editor or downloaded for local editing before being uploaded again, giving production teams flexibility in how they work.
At the same time, AeP’s file management tools allow teams to track changes, compare versions and revert to earlier files when necessary. Files can also be checked in and out, helping to ensure everyone is working from the correct version of a project.
Accessibility is becoming an increasingly important consideration within publishing, particularly as digital reading continues to grow.
AeP helps publishers create eBooks that are easier to navigate and use for all readers. Accessibility metadata is embedded automatically, language changes can be identified correctly, and important structural elements such as headings, figures, quotations and lists are tagged correctly in a way that can be understood by assistive technologies.
Navigation is also improved through linked tables of contents, page navigation and interactive footnotes and endnotes, helping readers move through content more easily.
AeP includes tools to help identify eBook production and supports accessibility checking as part of the workflow.
While Atomik eStylist (AeS) creates structured content, Atomik ePublisher (AeP) allows you to turn that structured content into files ready for publication. Together, the two platforms allow publishers move efficiently from manuscript to print-ready PDF and ebook.
By combining styling, typesetting and conversion software within a connected ecosystem, AeS and AeP reduce many of the repetitive tasks traditionally associated with publishing. The result is a smoother workflow, greater consistency between formats, and more time for publishers to focus on the quality of the content itself.
Easypress has been a global provider of bespoke publishing services, such as design and typesetting, copyediting and proofreading, as well as publishing software and guidance for over 20 years.
If you’d like production services or software advice and support, please contact us via our website or through sales@easypress.com
Alternatively, you can schedule an online meeting for a time to suit you via our Calendly page.
Try our print and digital publishing platform for free today.
Contact us and we will provide the best solution to suit your digital publishing needs.
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