Westchester Publishing Services

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Work from Home (WfH) webinar

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by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

We are all learning to adapt to a new, temporary normal during the COVID-19 Pandemic.  In publishing, specific issues arise for publishers that are not used to working in a distributed Work from Home (WfH) environment.  And even for those publishers that built their operations as WfH from the bottom up, the general disruptions of COVID-19 like having the kids home from school for an extended period are making this less of a typical WfH experience.

On Thursday, March 19th, Westchester Publishing Services gathered a panel of our partners in the industry to share about what they’re seeing in their markets, methods for successfully adapting to working from home, and more.  Speakers and Panelists included:

  • Nicole Tomassi, Westchester Publishing Services, Marketing & Conference Manager
  • Michael Jensen, Westchester Publishing Services, Director of Technology
  • Terry Colosimo, Westchester Publishing Services, Director of Operations
  • Kevin J. Gray, Westchester Education Services, President & Chief Content Officer
  • Cev Bryerman, Publishers Weekly – Publisher and Executive Vice President
  • Cathy Felgar, Princeton University Press – Publishing Operations Director
  • Rich Portelance, CareerPath Mobile – Founder and CEO
  • Andy Wilson, Dropbox – Global Director, Media Technology

Over the course of the webinar, we covered practical measures like how to handle tasks that were rote in the office but now need new solutions remotely, technology solutions for file sharing and communications, and the empathy needed when working and managing remotely in our current environment to adapt to different challenges than we might normally encounter in the office or WfH.

Key considerations covered in depth in the below links include the following practices and ideas:

  • Take Inventory of your associates at home computer equipment – don’t assume all have appropriate equipment – PC, printer, etc.
    • Quite likely they do not have all the software they need to work from home, so consider IT support that will be needed
    • Follow up with your associates as their needs may change as they become settled into their new routine
  • Take Inventory of your associates’ internet connectivity from home – be sure to consider impact on bandwidth of school age children doing classes from home
  • How do your associates connect to the company’s email system from home?
    • Get your associates’ phones set up with company email access
  • Be sure to collect cell phone numbers for all associates –  and circulate the list
    • Confirm with each that they receive text messages – for urgent communications
  • Centralize Documentation like the above phone numbers and processes —critical information should be centralized in a common location. Consider Dropbox Paper so comments can be made as procedures may change
  • Consider how associates will access documents on company servers/systems which they must print at home
    • Small size documents can be transferred via company email from the server to the local machine
    • Large documents (i.e. <3mb) can be transferred via file sharing services such as DropBox
  • Consider how your associates will mark-up and communicate edits/comments to manuscripts/documents
  • Schedule regular (perhaps daily, but at least every other day) team conference calls – video conferencing if possible – so your associates stay and feel connected
    • Remember this is physical distancing not social distancing. Use video conferences for social interactions like lunch together with your team. Those watercooler interactions you’re used to in the office are on hiatus, and video can help fill that void.
  • Show Understanding and Be Flexible – Empathize – many of your associates are doing this, work from home, for the first time – and this is a foreign experience – they need time to adjust
  • Good News – the publishing business can continue and be successful without everyone being in one physical office location – a period of adjustment, yes – but will quite likely lead to real and permanent changes in how we do business, and cost savings

Here are the links for: the Webinar recording, the Presentation in PDF format, and a PDF of Questions & Answers from the webinar.

We have also compiled this list of articles and videos with helpful information about working remotely. Please use the Contact Us form to reach out with any feedback, needs we can help with, or ideas for working from home during these times. Westchester Publishing Services will provide further webinars in the coming weeks and months, and welcomes your input.  

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.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

The calendar is winding down to the final days of the year, the decade, and Westchester’s 50th anniversary in business. It has been a really exciting year on many fronts, so join me to revisit some of the special moments during these past twelve months:

WESTCHESTER TURNED 50!

There was definitely a golden glow here at Westchester because, throughout the year, we were celebrating the significant achievement of being in business for half a century. The anniversary celebrations began with our appearance on the cover of Publishers Weekly’s February 18th issue, a profile article in the March 4th issue that helped us build a strong momentum heading into the London Book Fair, along with an article about our UK expansion in the Publishers Weekly Show Daily on March 12. We also hosted a stand party to toast our milestone anniversary with our friends and colleagues in the publishing community, where a wonderful time was had by all in attendance.

WESTCHESTER UK PROFILED IN THE BOOKSELLER

We have counted several UK-based publishers as loyal clients across the years, and realized we could do a better job of serving them and other UK and European-based publishers by having a more physical presence within the market. The Bookseller took note of our successful expansion efforts in this article (may require log-in to view) that was published in May, shortly before the British Book Awards.

NEW AGREEMENT SIGNED WITH MACMILLAN

In March, we signed a new agreement with Macmillan to continue the productive relationship our companies have enjoyed for more than a quarter-century. While Macmillan is no longer based in the iconic Flatiron building, we will always have fond memories of visiting the staff at their famous headquarters. Shortly before relocating to their new downtown digs this past summer, CEO John Sargent penned this article for Publishers Weekly about what it was like to work in this unique building.

 

UNFAMILIAR WINS AWARD

Great things were happening in our K-12 division as well in 2019. In the first quarter, the hi-lo graphic novel reader Unfamiliar, which was conceived, written, designed, and produced by our talented team received the Silver Hermes Creative Award from the Dayton, Ohio chapter of the American Advertising Federation. This video takes you behind the scenes to learn how the project went from concept to publication.

CLIENT PORTAL RECEIVES ACCOLADES

Unfamiliar was not the only award-winning initiative for Westchester this year. Our Client Portal, the secure, user-friendly, functional project management platform publishers want to incorporate into their pre-press production workflow was also receiving its fair share of positive attention. In May, The Stationers Company, the London-based guild for the media and publishing industry, shortlisted the Client Portal for their Innovation Excellence Awards, and in October, we presented about our Client Portal at the Rutgers Design Thinking program board meeting. In November, our partnership with  Dropbox – who worked with us to enhance the Client Portal’s capabilities – was recognized with a first-place win at the Bookbuilders of Boston NEPCo (New England Publishing Collaboration) Awards.

The video below, which was produced in partnership with Dropbox explains how we were able to incorporate the functionality our clients required into a beautifully designed platform that is easy for publishers to use.

CONFERENCES AND CLIENT MEETINGS

In addition to London Book Fair mentioned above, in 2019, members of the Westchester staff were busy criss-crossing North America and Europe meeting with clients and prospective partners at numerous trade shows and events, engaging in productive discussions with our think tank, university press, and legal clients. Westchester attended events as varied as SXSW EDU, ASU/GSV, the International Studies Association, British Book Awards, Association of University Presses, Frankfurt Book Fair, and FutureBook.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Last spring, the Westchester K-12 team started a program, where each month, one staff member funds a public school project that is trying to secure donations through the DonorsChoose website. Each selection is truly personal, and they have funded classrooms from New York, to California, and cities in between.

YEAR IN REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WESTCHESTER K-12 TEAM

Recently, I asked members of the Westchester K-12 team to share some insights with me about a project or event that they were involved with during this year that was particularly meaningful for them. You can read their thoughtful responses in this blog post.

TIME FOR 2020 VISION

As we get ready to welcome both a new year and decade, we’re looking forward to several exciting events. In January, Westchester K-12’s Walter Henderson, Jr., begins his two-year term on the ETIN (Education Technology Industry Network) Board of Directors, and he will also be representing Westchester K-12 at the BETT Show in London.

We also have plans to exhibit or sponsor at several conferences, including London Book Fair, and the ASUGSV Summit. Visit our Conferences and Events page to learn where we will be and if you’re planning to attend one or more of these shows, be sure to make an appointment to meet us to discuss how we can be your trusted partner in publishing.

We look forward to seeing you in 2020, and talking about the many effective solutions we have to help you with your content development, editorial, and production needs. From everyone here at Westchester Publishing Services, best wishes for a happy holiday season and a wonderful start to the 20s!

Always be up to date with everything that’s happening at Westchester by following us on our LinkedIn pages for Westchester Publishing and Westchester K-12, watching Westchester on YouTube, and subscribing to our blogs for the latest information about us. We would love to hear from you, too! Drop us an email at any time with your questions or to discuss your publication requirements.

 

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

National Archives, Washington, DCIt seems for the last several years that visits to our partners’ operations in New England and the Beltway tend to land in October.  Perhaps that’s because it’s this time of year when our clients have taken a post-Summer breath and are ready to begin talking about the editorial and production phases of their list for the upcoming year.  Or perhaps it’s because Key Accounts Manager Bill Foley and I like to try to get these visits in before the inevitable winter weather begins snarling up flight itineraries, road trips, and the like.  Either way, it has been a productive few weeks meeting with our academic, legal, university press, policy group, and trade partners from Boston to New York to DC.  What follows are some key topics that were hit upon during these trips – some of which may apply to you more than others, but all of which raise the recurring topic in these blog pages of tailoring specific solutions to each partner’s needs.

  • Alternate workflows for different product types – This came up during meetings with legal publishers and policy groups in DC and the Beltway, university press clients up and down the coast, and other publishers throughout the Northeast corridor. Over the years, Westchester has become associated with handling specific imprints or product lines for some of our clients, but it’s become apparent to them that we are able to help in other ways.  For some legal publishers, for instance, we may be more associated with helping them on their treatises, where for others we’re their go-to resource for statutory titles. Likewise, some policy groups think of us as ‘book people’, while others send us all of their working papers to edit on tight turnarounds. This is why we believe in having periodic reviews with our clients, so we can share ways we are helping your peers, which can often lead to resolving a similar challenge you’re having with books or other publications not currently assigned to Westchester. Talk with your Westchester rep about the areas where you’re experiencing challenges with books or other types of publications not currently assigned to Westchester, and let’s see if we can provide you with an affordable alternative to managing an army of freelance resources to get your publications to press.
  • Changing modes of trade publishing – Interestingly, after decades (five of them to be precise) of being the go-to vendor for trade publishers on their typesetting needs, we increasingly find ourselves being called upon to help copyedit and project manage trade titles as well. Certainly, our editorial operation, which has been around for over 20 years, has handled many key trade titles for clients over the years, but that has usually been during peak windows when trade publishers needed help on overflow titles.  More and more, though, we find trade publishers are giving serious consideration to outsourcing project management, copyediting, and production for entire imprints, to better free up their in-house staff to work on key or embargoed titles or avoid the time sink of managing a pool of freelance copyeditors with specific subject matter expertise. During the course of these early Autumn visits, several trade houses made moves to start outsourcing specific imprints to Westchester for editorial and production packaging.  We’re proud of the teams we have built over the years to support this need and are happy to talk with you about editing your fiction or trade titles, if that is a growing need.
  • Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and University of Pennsylvania’s book launch for Design with Nature Now.Quality matters – Lastly, one of the highlights of our October road trips was visiting the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and University of Pennsylvania’s book launch for the revised version of Design with Nature, called Design with Nature Now. Editor Frederick ‘Fritz’ Steiner and contributors led presentations at Cambridge’s Lincoln Institute of Land Policy about key projects covered in the book, as well as just the undertaking of revising an industry-standard title to address changing needs in landscape architecture to better address needs around climate change, new approaches to landscape architecture, and more.  The highlight of the evening for Westchester was the kudos and thanks the editors gave to Westchester’s own Susan Baker for her and Production Editor Deborah Grahame-Smith’s efforts working with Lincoln’s and Penn’s teams of writers, editors, and designers on editing and typesetting the book. The emphasis by our client on quality – and the thanks to our staff for their efforts to ensure a sustainable, durable new edition of an academic classic – were greatly appreciated and representative of why we do what we do.

I look forward to any thoughts the above may prompt for you about the publications you currently send to Westchester, or areas where we could help you that we currently do not.  Please reach out to me or your account rep to discuss your changing needs for support on your books, papers, and other publications, so that Westchester can help to prescribe possible solutions to help you continue to keep your publications on schedule and below budget.

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

I saw this post in my Google News feed a week or so ago, and put it aside to consider.  CNBC reported on the UK’s Booksellers’ Association’s latest study, cementing the trend we’ve talked about before at Westchester – that the gap between print and ebook sales for most publishers continues to widen following the peak and collapse of ebook sales several years ago.  Those numbers aren’t anything any of my colleagues and customers in most markets are arguing with, but the Booksellers’ Association’s analysis went several layers deeper than the usual headlines reported as soundbites on 24-hour news networks.

In publishing, we’ve talked about how ‘sticky’ print books can be for kids, versus in the Fire or iPad world where kids are likely to move on to apps or interactives rather than read a one-to-one digital adaptation of a print book.  When given a print book, many educators and publishers have noticed that kids are more likely to prefer it over the digital edition.  At the same time, in the classroom children are engaging with and benefiting from the work of EdTech companies that are developing apps and platforms to help with adaptive learning and added support for students who learn in different ways.

The Booksellers’ Association study goes layers deeper than the usual trade vs. cookbook vs. children’s book argument that most analysis seems to focus on.  It’s well worth the brief read, talking about the buying habits and reading habits of millennials and more, providing some surprising results.