Brief description: Argus Publishers Inc. is a New York City-based publisher known for its specialization in college textbooks specifically in the Social Sciences and Business. Cases and Exercises in Marketing Management is one of their best-selling texts which is in its seventh edition now and is the fourth best-selling text in the field of Marketing as well.

Situation: Almost six months ago, all the three authors of the book have decided to prepare an 8^th edition to their text to include some changes based on reviewers comments who had used the 7^th edition. From the past 23 years, for the first seven editions, the authors worked with various editors in the United States to whom publisher had outsourced the editorial work. After revision, the manuscript was sent to the publisher for editing and then back to authors for proofread. The edited manuscript used to come with detailed instructions from the editor indicating what was needed from each author and by what date.

In present scenario, three Indian authors were contacted in order to make to edit the manuscripts. All of them were able to do so but unable to provide any explanation or instructions for the changes. Then authors then tried to contact the managing editor, Sarah Shelly, who was also unclear as to what Indian editors were asking of the authors and also mentioned that it was a corporate decision to outsource all editorial work from India for cost-saving reasons.

The problem still persists where the authors are unclear about what is needed from them and are wishing that they could go back to previous system where the text had been edited by U.S. citizens.

II. The Issues

A. All three authors received hundreds of pages of manuscript with no instructions including those written by their co-authors.

B. Sentences and paragraphs were noted with red types but no explanation.

C. Mr. Reddy, editor based in India, was replaced by two new editors who also emailed manuscripts without instructions.

D. There is no proper endorsement of the job from Reddy to new editors.

E. Managing editor was also unclear as to what the Indian editors were asking of the authors.

In summary, there was no clear communication of what to do and timeframe of tasks between the authors and the editors, whom the publisher outsourced from India, as compared to the previous set up where the publisher outsourced editorial work from US based editors.

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QUESTION: PLEASE GIVE AN IMPLEMENTATION/ACTION STRATEGY AND STEPS FOR IT, FOR THIS CASE STUDY.

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