by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer
Usually, these “Travels with Tyler” blog posts on the Westchester Publishing Services and Westchester Education Services websites are post-conference or post-road-trip recaps of topics that are coming up in my offsite discussions with customers, partners, and industry figures. For the past several years, I’ve been fortunate enough to attend London Book Fair and share a bit about the events, topics, and key needs that our clients and partners were sharing at one of the world’s most active publishing events in past blog posts.
This year, as you’ve likely seen, The London Book Fair was canceled. (Links: Publishers Weekly, The Bookseller, Publishing Perspectives, The Guardian) This is unfortunate on a lot of levels, due to the amount of rights work that is transacted at the Fair each year as well as the networking and business traded in other aspects of our industry.
For Westchester, the London Book Fair has been a key piece of our marketing strategy from year to year allowing us to engage with publishers about our content development, editorial, and production capabilities on a larger scale than the rest of the year, and also to meet and work with partners like Dropbox on initiatives together. It’s also served as a venue for us to mark milestones like the launch of Westchester Education Services in 2017 (originally Westchester K-12) and our 50th anniversary, last year.
With the absence of the London Book Fair, this year, and with the increasing concern companies have about the risks of the Coronavirus for their employees and their families, we are seeing our clients begin to engage using different channels to substitute for travel, for the time being. Many of the London Book Fair meetings in our calendars have been replaced with scheduled calls or Zoom video conferences, already.
Use the Contact Us button below to schedule a brief call with Westchester’s experts on educational, academic, trade, think tank, and professional content. While some of this year’s conferences or companies’ travel plans may be impacted in the short term, we want to talk with you and meet – or virtually meet – to discuss your 2020 publications and how we can best help. Our management and staff – spread across three continents – are committed to helping all publishers have the best possible experience creating and producing their content.
