Author Solutions taps Force.com to build industry-changing publishing applications in the cloud

Challenge

• Author Solutions, the world leader in the fastest growing segment of publishing wanted to create high-quality books more quickly and at a much lower cost.
• The company, which helps customers publish trade-quality books, wanted to automate the publishing production workflow for authors and other publishers.
• Author Solutions required a common platform on which to integrate disparate back- and front-office systems to speed processes and increase visibility into business metrics.
• The company’s goal was to be the industry leader in customer satisfaction and build an innovative system it can resell to other publishers that want to achieve similar results.

Solution

• With help from salesforce.com partner Appirio, Author Solutions created a customized application on Force.com in less than 6 months for its iUniverse self-publishing brand.
• The application automates the entire workflow from editorial and cover design to marketing and distribution.
• Integrations with existing on-premise systems and third-party services create a complete solution with built-in publishing rules, production workflow, file management, e-commerce, and relationship management.
• Using Force.com code and Force.com pages, Author Solutions easily adds features and services to the application.
• The company migrated more than 40,000 International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) and approximately 2,000 in-flight projects to the new operating environment. Sales, marketing production, publishing services, and author support now all run in the cloud.

Results

• Author Solutions now has a radically improved process for producing high-quality books at greatly reduced costs.
• Force.com’s pre-built services and flexibility allowed Author Solutions to build a cloud-based solution that delivers more functionality in less time and at a fraction of the cost of a custom-built .NET system.
• The cloud-computing model eliminates the need for new hardware and maintenance costs. Open interfaces also allow for easier integration among different internal systems and third-party services.
• Author Solutions plans to migrate two other leading self-publishing brands—AuthorHouse and Wordclay—onto Force.com.