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Rebus
One for the Books
New York-based Rebus publishes a full line of consumer health
newsletters and books on subjects ranging from nutrition to
preventative health care, marketed under their own imprint and in
partnerships with top direct-mail publishers like Time-Warner and
Reader's Digest. "Much of our business growth in recent years has
come from the development and marketing on consumer medical
reference books, which we market as 'encyclopedias' and
'handbooks.'" explains Carney Mimms, Rebus's Computer Systems
Manager. "Several years ago we realized that our existing methods
of production of these books were inefficient and labor-intensive,
especially at the productions stages. These methods also made it
difficult for us to redesign and repurpose the material in these
books for other customers and other purposes. We therefore
determined that we would produce our next book, a guide to
prescription and over-the-counter drugs, entirely from a FileMaker
Pro database and use custom AppleScripts to produce the final Quark
XPress pages."
To create this system, Rebus turned to developer John Thorsen, of
TecSoft Inc. Working from Rebus's specifications, John assembled an
automated system that allowed Rebus to put together the entire
770-page book on time and on budget with just a handful of editors
and a single Quark production person working on the project. From
that initial success a decade ago FileMaker application became a
fixture in Rebus's production process. "Following our first
successful use of FileMaker Pro for print production, we have
expanded our use of FileMaker Pro to a wide range of publishing
uses, including our line of healthy recipe cookbooks," Carney
notes. "We also use Filemaker Pro databases to support our internal
editorial website, and used it extensively during our participation
in an alternative medicine web startup."
While its primary function is as a compositional tool, Rebus uses
FileMaker Pro to create simple workflow tracking databases,
allowing editorial staff to document each stage of the production
process. "This replaces the hodgepodge of Excel spreadsheets that
used to be used for this purpose," Carney explains. "Since most of
our editorial projects involve the extensive use of outside
editorial freelancers and reviewers -- among them consulting
physicians -- the workflow databases also track freelance workflows
and sometimes payments to freelancers and consultants as
well."
Flexibility is the key to the system's success -- improving
everyday productivity on a wide range of Rebus projects. A total of
fifty FileMaker databases make up the system, with the number of
individual records varying according to each project. "Because
Rebus works on a wide variety of publications with small editorial
teams, liberal use of freelance, and short completion deadlines,"
Carney elaborates, "we have found the easy setup and implementation
of FileMaker databases and custom Applescripts to be an ideal
approach to the daunting task of organizing and automating our
print and web production."
Careful research, with careful production under the watchful eye
of FileMaker Pro!
Contact information
Contact Info for Customer:Carney Mimms
Computer Systems Specialist
Rebus Inc.
212-651-8540
carney@rebus.com
http://www.rebus.com
John Thorsen
Developer
TecSoft Inc.
631-267-0700
john@tecsoft.com
http://www.tecsoft.com
Filemaker Contact:
Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com
- Publishing handy health and medical references without an enormous commitment of time and labor -- it all comes together for Rebus Inc. through the power and flexibility of a custom FileMaker Pro application.
- Creative Markets
- Healthcare/Medical Services
- Information Technology
- Printing/Publishing
- Small Business