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Trade Associations and Publishing Programs

blog

March 20, 2023

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

headshot of Tyler CareyWestchester Publishing Services has decades of history helping different types of publishers and content providers, including trade publishers, children’s publishers, K-12 EdTech platforms, think tanks, legal publishers, industry trade publishers, and many other types of organizations that create and distribute content.

Whether the project is a manuscript for an illustrated board book for children, assessment items for an online learning platform, or a policy paper intended for presentation on Capitol Hill, Westchester has specialists who can help edit, design, and layout the content for the right audience.

Specialized Publication Programs

Trade Associations often have rather different kinds of publications programs from typical publishers. While some industry-driven organizations have book or journal publishing programs focused on topics relevant to their domain area, many have varied publications from professional development content to white papers to conference proceedings to blog posts, each requiring different levels of support, expertise, and workflow customizations.

Here are examples of recent projects trade associations partnered with Westchester Publishing Services on:

• Helping a trade association modify content from their conferences and annual meetings into WebPDFs and ePubs. This content was then made available on their website for free download by members and for purchase by non-members.
• Working with a trade association that provides content to medical professionals in a very specific field to create children’s publications to be used by their industry when working with young patients to help them understand and navigate a specific medical condition.
• Partnering with a bar association to better package updates to state statutes into book publications that allow attorneys to quickly understand changes to the laws in their area of practice, as well as access direct links to Fastcase citations in their digital editions.
• Supporting a medical association with editorial and production resources to help them present the best quality professional development and continuing ed materials to be shared with doctors in their specific discipline.
• Helping an educational industry organization edit and typeset new editions of their backlist titles, updating industry standards and information without writing wholly new manuscripts.
• Ongoing editing for industry journals in topic areas including medicine, mathematics, and social sciences.
• Editing and typesetting titles on subjects including management, business technology, and corporate finance for a prominent organization that tracks trends in these areas.
• Creating abstracts, executive summaries, and even tweets that an organization can share as abbreviated versions of their larger studies and white papers, letting industry executives skim the highlights before diving into 200+ page analytical studies.

Different Content, Different Distribution Channels

If you work for a trade association, chances are good that you have historically handled your publications and content in ways that differ from your peer associations. Oftentimes, a trade association’s content grows organically as new distribution channels or newer media for online ingestion of content become available. Westchester’s expertise supporting different types of content and distribution methods for academic, trade, and policy groups, is easily applied to the needs of trade association partners to identify cost-effective solutions that will allow your association to efficiently and affordably build new content and expand your publication program.

The team at US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services would be happy to explore how we can help you edit, design, and present your content, as well as share our expertise about how other organizations have navigated similar challenges using industry partners, new channels for distribution, and more. Contact us to talk about the content you currently manage, how you’re looking to engage with your association or industry, and solutions we can provide to help you achieve your goals.

Filed Under: blog, Featured, Services Tagged With: abstracts, conference proceedings, editorial services, executive summaries, production services, professional development content, publication program, trade associations, white papers, workflow, workflow customization

January 23, 2023

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

It has been longer than I would have liked since I last shared a post-conference blog post. I am glad that NYC’s Digital Book World (DBW), held January 16-18 at the Sheraton on Seventh Avenue, afforded me the opportunity to reconnect in person with many of Westchester’s partners and those of our clients who were able to make the trip to New York for the meeting.

As noted by Lorraine Shanley in her coverage of DBW in MPI’s Publishing Trends newsletter, the attendance was a bit upside down with far more vendor and industry types than publishers, it appeared. That said, the panels presented provided more than a little food for thought on topics ranging from the role of AI in publishing, to how to market books effectively online in the current landscape, to where we’re all headed as an industry.

Screenshot from keynote speechIt was on that latter topic that Margot Atwell, the executive director and publisher of The Feminist Press, provided an insightful session. She revisited a presentation she had shared at London Book Fair in 2019, in which she had identified a number of trend lines in the industry – including equity, consolidation, and the financial health of the industry – and updated her analysis and predictions for 2023. Whether you were representing a vendor, a large publisher, or a start up, her insights on how to foster equity, continue to adapt to a distributed workplace, and navigate the financial and societal challenges in our industry resonated.

Aligned with another one of Westchester’s core principles was the panel on accessibility hosted by Bill Kasdorf, who was a panelist on our September 2022 webinar about accessibility and sustainability. Joining Bill were Michael Johnson from Benetech, Madeleine Rothberg from WGBH, and Richard Orme from the DAISY Consortium. As a Benetech GCA-certified partner, Westchester is keen to help amplify the messaging around not just the needs for accessibility but also the best practices that publishers can adapt into their workflows. Each panelist shared a headline and several discussion points with one another to help further discussion about the needs for publishers to accelerate their adaptation to support readers requiring accessible content. As the coverage of Day 1 of the conference in Publishers Weekly emphasized, Michael Johnson laid out numerous examples of the prevalence within the population of individuals who need or use adaptive technology to consume content. With an estimated 20% of the world’s population having a need, this isn’t a nice to have, it’s a necessity for ensuring as many readers can consume your content as possible.

Bill Kasdorf put perhaps the finest point on the subject by pointing out that due to the European Accessibility Act, if you plan on selling any ePub content in Europe by 2025, that content has to be created accessible or converted to accessibity standards – including backlist content – or it will be illegal to sell within the EU. But, to the point of everyone on the panel, that doesn’t necessarily mean a gigantic investment of resources or a total revision to how you create content. Micromoves internally and with partners can help pick away at the pile quickly and affordably. One key topic that seems to frustrate many publishers is that of alt text. While there are commonly accepted practices, the ‘right’ alt text is not codified the way that say metadata rules might be. As Michael Johnson pointed out, the same image could have different tags depending on its use. An image of the Eiffel Tower in a cookbook about crepes may be ornamental – not relevant to how to make a crepe – so it could just be labeled as “Ornamental” in its alt text entry. In a book about Paris, perhaps a few brief sentences describing the image of the Eiffel Tower would be appropriate. In an engineering book, the Eiffel Tower image might be being used to augment some content about the tensile strength of steel so a different, brief entry would be called for. But in none of these instances is a thoroughly written, revised, and breathtaking narrative called for – alt text entries are there to tell a reader what is in the image, not replace the content that is already in the text that the image is intended to augment. And to Madeleine Rothberg’s point, there is a metadata field called “Accessibility Summary” in each file that allows you to make notations re: pieces that are works in progress, absent, etc., understanding that there will be exceptions and things that may need further attention after initial creation or conversion. We’re all learning new things regarding accessibility – even those of us who are deeply involved in accessibility – and this field serves as a placeholder to indicate where we think something may need to be revisited.

To help us all navigate the world of accessibility, and better plan for the looming EU deadline referenced above, a number of resources were shared by the panel that Bill Kasdorf consolidated here. I highly encourage you to review these resources and share them with any of your team involved in working with authors, editing content, and producing digital files.

Other excellent sessions included Ingram’s presentation about its Ingram iD platform, which allows for direct-to-consumer marketing, sessions from Scribd and Spotify about different revenue models for content distribution, and sessions from AI firms showing how audiobooks and more can benefit from AI.

Westchester’s Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Deb Taylor, attended DBW as well, and provided this commentary about ChatGPT coming out of a session hosted by another vendor in our space.

Deb shares:

DBW’s sessions were typically not company/product commercials, although like most conferences, a few did lean that way. When the Trends in Content Creation Using AI and Smart Technology session by PageMajik started, I think most expected it to be a carefully disguised commercial about their services. It turned out to be a micro master class in how to think about AI and, in this case, the “controversial” open source AI, GPT3 (or ChatGPT). Keep in mind, PageMajik wasn’t the only one discussing AI and how it has many places in publishing – we learned about interesting uses of AI in audiobook production workflows, and in the use of synthetic voice, too.

So while ChatGPT has been banned on some school networks due to fear of plagiarism, this session reminded us that this is just technology – clever technology, mind you – but still just technology, and we, as humans can make a choice in terms of how to use and deploy it.
“We can be lazy, or we can be productive. The choice is ours.” And yes, we should be mindful that clever technology like GPT, does need some guardrails so it can be harnessed with positive productivity, not laziness or malintent.

For those who are wondering how ChatGPT can be purposeful in the publishing industry, here are a few thoughts:

1. One potential use case is for content generation, where the model can be trained on a specific topic or writing style, and then used to generate new articles, blog posts, or other written content. Additionally, ChatGPT can be used for editing and proofreading by identifying grammar and style errors in existing text. It can also be used for summarizing long articles or books, creating headlines and summaries for news articles, and even writing personalized responses to readers’ questions or comments. Overall, ChatGPT offers a powerful tool for automating and enhancing various aspects of the publishing process.

2. Another area in the workflow that often requires much back and forth with authors and copyediting teams is the reviewing, checking, and correcting of references and citations. ChatGPT can help with reference citation checking in manuscripts by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify and extract citations from the text. Once the citations have been identified, the model can then compare them to a database of references to ensure that they are accurate and properly formatted. Additionally, ChatGPT can also be trained on specific citation styles, such as MLA or APA, to ensure that the manuscript adheres to the appropriate guidelines. It can also be used to check for missing references or duplicate citations in the manuscript. Overall, ChatGPT can provide a powerful tool for automating the reference citation checking process, which can help to save time and improve the accuracy of the final manuscript.

I’ll leave you with this final disclosure: Both the paragraph on use cases and reference citations were written by ChatGPT, in seconds. Would that be categorized as lazy? No. I believe it was incredibly efficient, however, the best use may be more in the middle. Let ChatGPT be the tool to help you formulate your idea but perhaps not be used verbatim. After all, it’s just technology, and it’s using what it has access to. You still need to validate the information. Try it out for yourself here. And then make sure to ask what its limitations and challenges are.

In general, these new aspects of technology are exciting and ones that we should not be fearful of, but figure out how to use to improve and advance our industry as a whole.

While there was a bit of humor artfully weaved into Book.io’s session, Digital Ownership, NFTs and Revenue Streams for Publishers, there were some interesting things to think about as it relates to the personalized marketing opportunities and the new potential revenue stream that blockchain could offer. eBooks, as we know, are meant to be licenses to the individual to “view, use and display” without any permissions to sell, rent or distribute otherwise. Digital books on the blockchain change that paradigm, and also enable the publisher to experience an ongoing revenue stream from books sold here. Per Book.io, it will increase the intellectual property value of the content. There is also the opportunity for the publisher to direct market the owner since there is more visibility in the digital ownership – think here about gating content with permissions, and even price points to owners vs non-owners. There are efficiencies (multiple languages), interesting design opportunities (different cover designs), unique targeted marketing ideas, and more here. As with all new technology, let’s not dismiss or fear it, but rather let’s get to know and harness it to continue to advance our industry.

—————————————————————————————————————-

Further coverage of DBW 2023 is available in this post from Publishing Perspectives that provides thorough coverage of keynote speaker Karine Pansa’s presentation about her mandate and expectations for her term heading the International Publishers Association, as well as this article from Publishers Weekly highlighting information for publishing start ups.

As always, US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services is keen to learn more about which portions of your book production workflow you are navigating, in the hope that we can help. Over 500 publishers rely on Westchester for services ranging from manuscript preparation to editorial services to quality, on-time printer file production and accessibility remediation. Contact us today to talk about your publications and how we can help.

Filed Under: Conferences, News, Services Tagged With: accessibility, accessible ePubs, AI, artificial intelligence, audiobooks, blockchain, ChatGPT, conferences, content distribution, Digital Book World, editorial services, epub, EU Accessibility Act 2025, Events, intellectual property, International Publishers Association, IP, IPA, metadata, NLP, production services, publishers, workflow

December 29, 2022

compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

While the publishing industry continues to contend with various challenges in the marketplace, it also has a deep foundation of resiliency and collaboration to draw upon that provides us with the ability to adapt and thrive. Here are some ways we partnered with our industry colleagues throughout 2022 to help them identify and implement effective solutions:

Sharing Industry Knowledge

PW article about Impacts on Accessibility and Sustainability webinar.In 2022, we continued our successful partnership with Publishers Weekly, hosting two highly attended and informative webinars. In the spring, panelists Michael Jacobs, Lorraine Shanley, Jessica Ryan and Jim Fetherston discussed how each of their respective areas of the publishing industry were “Driving Business Forward”, and in the fall, Bill Kasdorf, Kristen McLean, and Rachel Martin provided steps publishing businesses could easily implement to have positive “Impacts on Accessibility and Sustainability”.

Also in the fall, consultant Jay Diskey was a panelist for the Westchester Education Services webinar, “2023 K-12 Education Funding and Policy Outlook”. The hour-long session was geared towards helping businesses developing materials for the K-12 education market better understand the various legislative and funding initiatives at both the federal and state level, and how these will impact the market during the next year.

 

A Fresh Look (and more great info!) for the Westchester Education Services website

WES homepageThis fall we improved the functionality and features on the Westchester Education Services website to provide you with a better user experience. With a mega-menu to help you quickly get to the specific subject areas you’re interested in, along with expanded content throughout including downloadable case studies, it’s packed with helpful information. Check it out and make sure to subscribe to our blog and our mailing list so you’re always up to date on what we’re doing.

 

Westchester UK and International Grows

world globeOur colleagues in the UK expanded their ranks to continue serving the growing client base Westchester works with beyond the North American market. Joining the education team throughout the year were Thomas Storr, Emma Hudson, and Adam Wilkinson. In June, Rebecca Durose-Croft was promoted to the position of Managing Director, Education. In the fall, she took some time to discuss what led her into a career in education publishing in this blog post.

 

Within the River Editorial team (a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK), Grace Peterson has recently joined as project manager, to provide support for their increased full-service client roster.

 

Promotions within our US editorial and production teams

woman climbing penciled stairsAs our client base inside the United States has continued to experience stellar growth, several of our US-based editorial and production staff received well-deserved promotions during the year. Some of the long-time employees who are bringing their vast experience into new roles are Terry Colosimo, Scott Keeney, Wendy Muto, Celeste Bilyard, Amanda Montes de Oca, Melody Negron and Erin Davis. Congratulations and continued success!

 

Westchester Education Services Expands its Staff

colorful group of peopleIt was also an exciting spring and summer of growth for the Westchester Education Services team as they welcomed several new people. Content Directors, Jennifer Cole and Laura Cunningham, Senior Editor, Tara Hlavinka, and Director of Client Solutions, Kevin Schroeder all arrived at Westchester in the spring, as shared in this press release. Later in the year to continue supporting client growth, we welcomed Christina DeYoung as Director of Client Solutions, Jada Bradley as Senior Editor, Culturally Responsive Education, Sheyla Lucas as Editorial Project Manager, and Jordan Orfitelli as Project Manager.

 

Scholarly and Academically Speaking

Table with dark blue tablecloth and WPS logoIn June, Hugh Shiebler, Director of Client Solutions was busy on the conference circuit, representing Westchester Publishing Services for the Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference, in Chicago. Later in the month, he joined Bill Foley, in Washington, DC, for the in-person return of the Association of University Presses Conference. Both enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with fellow publishing industry colleagues, to discuss workflow solutions to help publishers. Hugh also conducted an information session for AUP attendees about accessibility, which you can view and download here.

Westchester UK Spring Events

Westchester UK teamMembers of the Westchester Education UK & International, and Westchester Publishing Services UK teams participated in several publishing industry events during the spring, including sponsoring the Independent Publishers Guild Awards in April, the star-studded British Book Awards (known by its nickname, the Nibbies) in May, both of which were held in-person. Rounding things out in June was the hybrid Independent Publishers Guild Spring Conference. You can read more about it in these blog posts.

Westchester Education Conferences

WES 2022 BETT UK boothOur Westchester Education Services colleagues were busy attending several industry conferences in-person, including BETT UK in late winter, ASU-GSV in the spring, and several events in late fall, including sponsoring the EdWeek Market Brief Summit in November (Christina DeYoung shares 3 Key Takeaways), as well as attending the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) regional conference, and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), which you can read about in this overview from Kevin Schroeder. You can read more about our 2023 conference plans later in this message.

 

Have you heard Westchester Words?

Westchester Words podcast logoOur podcast episodes are an efficient (15 minutes on average) way to learn about various topics that matter to the publishing, education and ed tech sectors on both sides of the Atlantic. You can find the Westchester Words and Westchester Words UK podcasts on your favorite streaming platform as well as on our websites, where we provide additional content related to the episodes along with downloadable transcripts. New episodes will be premiering in January, so now is the perfect time to get caught up!

 

What are we reading at Westchester?

man and woman browsing in bookstoreThe staff of Westchester are fortunate to be involved in working on thousands of book projects every year and on the other side of it, we enjoy doing our fair share of reading the finished product! See our Summer 2022 selections along with our recently published blog post Books We Want to Read or Gift Holiday 2022, to find out what books we’ve been reading this year.

 

Where Will Westchester be in 2023?

We are excited to have preparations underway for several industry conferences in the New Year, some of which we plan to attend in-person, including:

 

  • Digital Book World (January 16)
  • Future of Education Technology Conference (January 23)
  • BETT Show (March 29)
You can learn more about our event plans in this blog post, with more opportunities to connect online or in-person being added as the year moves forward.

 

Speaking of connecting online, we will continue to host informative webinars, starting with the Westchester Education Services session, “Best Practices for Engaging with a Vendor Partner Network” taking place on Thursday, January 19.

 

Let us know what conference and industry events are on your radar in the year ahead. We look forward to meeting with you at some point in 2023!

Employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services is honored to support more than 500 publishers globally, providing a wide variety of editorial, production, and digital conversion services, to help them prepare their publications for the print and digital formats their customers most desire. We look forward to continuing to serve publishers across all segments of the industry in 2023 with their frontlist releases, updates to backlist content, adapting materials for print on demand platforms, and conversion of assets into ePubs to help them get them content to market more efficiently and cost-effectively. As a Benetech Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) Vendor, we have the expertise you can rely on to produce materials that are in accordance with accessible ePub accessibility standards.
Let us know how we can help you optimize your workflow in the year ahead, using the full array of customizable services we have to help you reduce or eliminate the project bottlenecks you don’t have time to deal with.

With best wishes for a happy holiday season and a healthy, prosperous New Year.


Filed Under: Conferences, News, Services, Westchester UK News Tagged With: ASU/GSV, AUP, Benetech GCA vendor, BETT UK, books, digital conversion, education funding, education policy, EdWeek Market Brief Summit, information sharing, NCSS, NCTE, NCTM, podcasts, reading, SSP, webinars, Westchester Words, working together

December 12, 2022

compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

Seasons Readings!

Five years ago was the first time that I compiled these semi-annual posts which are only possible due to my colleagues, who have always been generous about sharing the titles that are on their reading lists and the reasons why the books were chosen. The selections are always interesting, inspired, and range across a wide variety of genres, making the act of assembling these posts so much fun for me and hopefully, enjoyable for you, the reader. Some of the books below are titles that were published by valued Westchester clients, while others come with the added gift of an independent bookstore that’s located near to where our contributors are. If any of the titles below catch your interest, click on the cover to locate an independent bookstore near you who will be happy to ship you a copy of your next read(s).

Story of the Cell coverThe Song of the Cell
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Publisher: Scribners

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book:
This author has a gift for telling great (nonfiction) stories about medicine, patients, and doctors. I read his earlier book, The Emperor of All Maladies (about cancer) and was just so impressed with his ability to make complicated science interesting and even personable. I continue to recommend that book to anyone who is interested in medicine.  I can’t wait to see what he writes about this tiny, basic human building block. Even his book titles are compelling and poetic.

Sherry Gerstein headshotSelected by: Sherry Gerstein, Production Editor


A Little Life coverA Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Picador UK

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: Recommended many times by friends and family, it had been on my ‘must read’ list for years but I’d always been a little daunted by its length (around 800 pages). I finally started it on day #1 of my summer holiday in Italy and finished it on the plane coming back. It’s utterly compelling; often grim, unsettling, and painful to read, yet still managing to celebrate the unconditional love and loyalty of true friendship.

Tim Davies headshotSelected by: Tim Davies, CEO, Westchester Group UK


It Starts With us coverIt Starts With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: After seeing the punning headlines and the high sales figures in the literary press (‘It Starts With Us hoovers up sales for another week’) I want to see what all the fuss is about! I’ve ordered this and It Ends With Us (this book came first) from Waterstones, using my birthday book token from Westchester UK!

Selected by: Julie Willis, Editorial & Pre-press Director, River Editorial


The Passenger coverThe Passenger
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publisher: Knopf

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: McCarthy has been on my “must read” author list for years.  This brand-new work of his – the first in a two-volume project – seemed like the perfect place to finally start.

 

Hugh ShieblerSelected by: Hugh Shiebler, Director, Client Solutions, Westchester Publishing Services

My Bookstore: Watchung Booksellers, Montclair, NJ


Diagheliv's coverDiaghilev’s Empire
Author: Rupert Christiansen
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: As a long-time NYC ballet fan and season ticket holder, I love any history about the ballet, and this author details the birth of the Ballet Russes and the sphere of legendary artists who were involved. Eager to get my hands on it!

 

Deb TaylorSelected by: Deb Taylor, Vice President, Business Development & Marketing


Liberation Day coverLiberation Day: Stories
Author: George Saunders
Publisher: Random House

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: Saunders is an absolute genius, and his entirely unique brand of dark comedy makes me laugh out loud every time. My favorite book is Lincoln at the Bardo, but his very first book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) nearly took off the top of my head. I will read absolutely anything he writes—usually more than once—and I’m looking forward to his latest collection.

Christina DeYoung headshotSelected by: Christina DeYoung, Director, Client Solutions, Westchester Education Services

My Bookstore: Mockingbird Bookshop, Bath, Maine


Persian Blood coverPersian Blood
Author: M.G. Haynes
Publisher: Createspace/Amazon
Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: This is the first of three historical fiction books, the others being the first two in a series entitled Q. Fulvius: Debt of Dishonor and Q. Fulvius: A Pirate’s Life that I would like to read. As an added bonus, they are written by my cousin.

Selected by: Kevin Schroeder, Director, Client Solutions, Westchester Education Services


Note: In a first for the blog, this book was selected by more than one person in our group

Cloud Cuckoo Land coverCloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Scribner

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: I have been dying for this to come out in paperback all year, so it is at the top of my wish list for Christmas. Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winner All the Light We Cannot See is one of my all-time favorite books, and this one sounds like it has the same blend of compelling, intertwined yet distant characters and evocative locations that made his earlier book so engaging. Also I’m a sucker for a hefty, century-spanning epic. Can’t wait!

Ashley Moore headshotSelected by Ashley Moore, Copyeditor, Westchester Publishing Services

My bookstore: Pegasus Book Exchange, Seattle, WA

 

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: This novel was a finalist in this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an annual event held to commemorate the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian war. It’s one of many amazing books on the list, and I am hoping to work through several more of them this year.

Selected by: Kevin J. Gray, President & Chief Content Officer, Westchester Education Services

 


My Government cover

My Government Means to Kill Me
Author: Rasheed Newson
Publisher: Flatiron Books (A Westchester client)

Why I want to read this book: As someone who came out as queer later in life, I feel it’s my responsibility to gather a fuller understanding of those who paved the way toward equal rights so that I may honor and continue their LGBTQIA+ activism. This fictional memoir follows Trey, a gay, Black man in 1980s New York City. While facing poverty, prejudice, and the AIDS epidemic, he grows to be active in the Civil Rights movement, community organizing, and the fight for gay rights. It’s an accurate portrait of a time in American history that has been largely forgotten.

Tara Hlavinka headshot

Selected by: Tara Hlavinka, Senior Editor, Math, Westchester Education Services

My Bookstore: Rudolph Girls Books, Westminster, MD


Illuminations coverIlluminations: Stories
Author: Alan Moore
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (a Westchester client)

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: As I read comics in the 80s and 90s, Alan Moore was the literary superstar of a medium that was often written off as superheroes and kids’ stuff. His work has been inconsistent over the years in both graphic novels and more traditional prose, but as an author and a creator he’s always been a figure to attract attention and interest in his next projects with the risks he’s taken and experiments he’s tried. This is the first collection of Alan Moore’s short stories published in his career, and having seen how he’s used individual chapters of his prose and visual work to tell meaningful, compelling tales in a brief space, I’m excited to read this and see what magic he can spin in these tales.

Selected by: Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer, Westchester Publishing Services


Mirror in the Sky coverMirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks
Author: Simon Morrison
Publisher: University of California Press (a Westchester client)

Why I want(ed) to gift/read this book: I have always enjoyed the music crafted by Stevie Nicks, first in Fleetwood Mac, then as a solo artist. Her career has been devoted to her musical muse, bringing her to the pinnacle of her profession, becoming the first of only three women (so far) to be inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m looking forward to reading the previously untold stories of the formative years of this trailblazing artist who has recorded with a who’s who of musicians and inspired the next generations of women singer-songwriters to follow in her high-heeled steps.

Nicole TomassiSelected by: Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager, Westchester Publishing Services


For additional inspiration, the links below have information about hundreds of new titles across fiction and non-fiction, helping you to find the perfect book(s) for every reader on your list.

National Public Radio: Books We Love 2022

Time Magazine: The 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

Publishers Weekly: Best Books 2022

I hope the holiday season brings you all the books on your wish list and time to read them. Wishing you all the best in the year ahead, including more wonderful books to look forward to reading!

Filed Under: blog, Featured Tagged With: Alan Moore, Anthony Doerr, Colleen Hoover, Cormac McCarthy, George Saunders, Hanya Yanagihara, M.G. Haynes, Rasheed Newson, Rupert Christiansen, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Simon Morrison

December 12, 2022

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

headshot of Tyler CareyAs 2022 comes to a close, and many of us are in the midst of more holiday travel than we’ve done in years, it occurs to me that 2023 may be a year more like the pre-pandemic business years than we have seen in a while. Attendance was up at Frankfurt this past year, our clients are increasingly having in-person meetings with our teams, and as I’m finalizing my 2023 budget for my sales team we have more conferences planned than in any year since 2019.

Where are you going to be in 2023? Is there a chance you’ll be at any of the following conferences? If so, please Contact Us to let us know.

Where Westchester’s going to be:
  • Home and our Offices – Zoom whenever you like!
  • Digital Book World (DBW), January 16-18, 2023
  • Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC), January 23-26,2023
  • BETT UK, March 29-31, 2023
  • ASU/GSV, April 17-19, 2023
  • London Book Fair, April 18-20, 2023
  • Society for Scholarly Publishing, May 31- June 2, 2023
  • American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), August 5-8, 2023
  • Frankfurt, October 19-23, 2023

The Westchester team would love to see you and learn more about what your publishing program looks like these days – and explore any ways our editorial and production teams could help.  To be clear, many of our staff continue to work from home, and we know meeting up in person isn’t possible for everyone. Let’s meet up soon, however is best for you, whether in a conference room or on a Zoom!

Filed Under: Conferences, Featured Tagged With: ASU/GSV, BETT, conferences, DBW, Digital Book World, FETC, Frankfurt Book Fair, Future of Education Technology Conference, London Book Fair, Society for Scholarly Publishing, SSP, Zoom

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