blog

August 5, 2019

Thank you for thinking of us. We appreciate the outreach of so many of our clients, business partners, and friends today who inquired about the safety of our K-12 team in our Dayton office. Westchester is saddened by the senseless tragedies that took place over this weekend by our office. As many of you know, our K-12 office is located in The Oregon District in Dayton and we are incredibly thankful that our team is safe. We deeply grieve for all who are affected. Please keep our Dayton neighbors in your thoughts as we all begin to heal.

Our offices are open and we remain dedicated to your projects, and we appreciate you keeping our Dayton neighbors in your thoughts as the city begins the healing process.

For more information about the Oregon District – please visit their page here: http://www.theoregondistrict.org/

#DaytonStrong

July 26, 2019

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

We’re halfway through our 50th year in business, and Westchester Publishing Services has continued to be very productive in several areas! Here are a few of the highlights from this past spring:

The Westchester K-12 Team Welcomes Walter

Walter Henderson, Jr., Senior Supervising Editor, English Language Training In April the Westchester K-12 Product Development team grew when Walter Henderson, Jr., joined the team as Senior Supervising Editor for ELT (English Language Training). Walter has an impressive professional background as a classroom instructor both in the United States and overseas, as well as working with academic institutions and publishers to develop suitable course materials for English Language Learners (ELL). Having Walter and his extensive professional network as a part of Westchester K-12 allows us to provide educational, academic, and professional publishers with a wide range of product offerings, including bilingual and translation content to support the specific needs of English Language Learners in educational and business settings.

Westchester Publishing Services UK profiled

Coverage about Westchester’s 50th anniversary continued into the spring, with a comprehensive profile in The Bookseller (may require login to read) about our company and the factors that brought us to further expand the business into the UK market, under the guidance of Managing Director of Westchester UK, Tim Davies. More coverage about Westchester’s anniversary can be found in these articles.

K-12 Catalog

This spring the Westchester K-12 art and design team produced a comprehensive catalog that showcases the capabilities and services the Product Development team is able to provide educational and ed-tech publishers for new curriculum content or product updates. Download your complimentary copy and let us know how the Westchester K-12 team can help you.

Client Portal Nominated for Innovation Award

Stationers Company Shortlisted Innovation Excellence Awards 2019 In May, we were excited to learn that our Client Portal had been nominated for the Stationers’ Company 2019 Innovation Excellence Awards in the Customer Experience category. To receive this recognition from the Stationers’ Company – a London-based guild with a more than 600-year history of serving members of the publishing and media industries – was a particularly special acknowledgment of the work our technology team has invested into building a project management platform that serves the specific requirements of publishers. This article provides additional information about the newest features we’ve added to the Client Portal to make it even more user-friendly.

British Book Awards

Westchester was proud to be the sponsor for the Academic, Education, and Professional Publisher of the Year category at this year’s British Book Awards which took place in London on May 13. The awards program is also known as The Nibbies, and draws a veritable Who’s Who of the British publishing industry to recognize the successes of authors and publishers in the previous year. Additional information about the Books of the Year shortlists and winners is available here.

Association of University Presses

In mid-June, members of Westchester’s sales and editorial teams traveled to Detroit to attend and exhibit at the Association of University Presses annual conference. We always enjoy meeting with our clients at conferences to discuss the latest developments that are having an impact within the industry, and sharing with publishers who may not be familiar with our product offerings the many ways that Westchester’s services can help them to improve their workflows.

In the Community

In the last edition of the Westchester Wrap-up, I shared with you that the Westchester K-12 team had begun an initiative to make a positive difference one classroom at a time. Learn more about the projects that Anne Riccio and Laura Rolfe selected, and how you can help a classroom in your community.

Summer Reading

If you’re looking for a new title or two to add to your reading list, the Westchester staff have some interesting recommendations that you probably won’t find everywhere else. Check out the variety of fiction and non-fiction titles that we’re planning to read this summer, and let us know what you think!

We’ll be on the road at a few key conferences during the remainder of 2019, and planning is well underway for the trade shows Westchester will be attending and exhibiting at next year. The Conferences and Events page will continue to be updated as we confirm our commitments, so check back regularly to see where you can meet with us in person.

You can also keep up with the latest news from Westchester by following us on LinkedIn, and subscribing to our blogs (Westchester and Westchester K-12). C ontact us any time to learn how our editorial, typesetting, design, and project management services can help you reduce production time and expense in your publication program.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Best,

Nicole Tomassi
Marketing & Conference Manager

June 25, 2019

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

Westchester is continually reviewing feedback regarding our Client Portal. The Client Portal, our no-cost online system for project management, is currently in formal release v. 2019.C.05, but a small, new feature was added this weekend that may make your life a little easier if you are a client with many live projects or articles in the Client Portal at once. Meet the ability to indicate “Priority” projects in your dashboard.

How does the new “Priority” Star work? In the Header of the Dashboard you will see a new Star icon next to “Action”. The Star is next to each job you have showing on your Dashboard as well.

This star will allow you to flag a job as a priority for you only.

So, if you have a priority project that you are focusing on, click the Star next to the job and it will change to red. You can then sort on the Star in the header, and all your jobs you flagged as priorities will show at the top of your Dashboard list.

Here are some screenshots to put more context to the above:

Click the Star next to a job and it turns red.

Sort on the Star in the header bar, and it will sort all Star jobs to the top.

This and other new features will be covered in the new User’s Manual we will be issuing in July.

Lastly, congratulations to Heidelberg UK for winning the Stationers’ Company Innovation Excellence Awards for 2019. Tim Davies, Managing Director of Westchester Publishing Services UK, represented Westchester at today’s awards ceremony, where The Client Portal was awarded a certificate for being shortlisted for the Customer Experience category. Congratulations to all our fellow nominees and to Heidelberg for the win!

Do you have suggestions for new features in the Client Portal? Call your account manager or Contact Us to share your feedback and ideas.

June 18, 2019

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

When I worked in legal publishing, staff regularly flew to India to meet with the typesetting vendor that was doing the bulk of our work, to help set up workflows, review processes, and more. And when I joined Westchester, I was told that as we launched our India Direct operation that many publishers would want to come visit our shops in Chennai and New Delhi. Those days of flying around the globe to see that an operation is there, meet some of the managers, and globe trek seem to be declining when it comes to evaluating typesetting vendors — we see more of that effort invested in flying to China and other countries to inspect print runs for our large trade vendors.

But interestingly, visits to our Danbury, Connecticut headquarters have increased in recent years. Is it just because we’re an anomaly as a US employee-owned company that owns an offshore editorial and typesetting operation — instead of the inverse structure most vendors in this space have?

No, I think it’s because of the staff we have like Terry Colosimo, Susan Baker, and Celeste Bilyard. Our US management team act as consultants for our clients, to help ensure that workflows and project plans are being created proactively and collaboratively, rather than on the fly when a big project hits.

“Sales plays a vital role in having regular check-in’s with our clients whether by phone or visiting them, however, having clients be able to speak to your operation or visit your operation is just as vital,” says Westchester’s Director of Operations, Terry Colosimo. “When I worked at Greenwood Press, my most rewarding experiences were actually visiting printing plants or paper mills. I was able to have face to face time with my customer service reps and get a full understanding of the workflow they were applying to my publications.

True, it’s not necessarily convenient for all clients to pop up I-84 to Danbury — much as it may be hard for them to visit Mona Tiwary in our New Delhi office or our managers at our Chennai, India-based typesetting operation. “But, when publishers can have a face-to-face meeting, or at least a video conference,” says Terry, “It helps you set a productive agenda that can be longer than a phone call with a ‘hard stop.’ It also allows for more casual dialogue and an exchange of ideas – which is valuable to both of us, rather than a ‘dog-and-pony-show’ PowerPoint and canned phone call. Recently, we had the EDP manager from one of our university press clients visit to discuss their program. On the agenda were changes to this university press’ XML aggregator. In discussing the new workflow, the conversation naturally veered into other topics, and we discovered that we were able to offer a solution to their issue-assembly process for journals. This type of dialogue would not necessarily happen with a locked 20-minute phone call, or a slide presentation. These visits are as much a learning experience for us as it is for our clients. By listening and asking questions, we are able to better understand their processes.”

“This type of no-cost consulting that Westchester brings to each client relationship helps all parties – sales, operations, and customer service — take part in understanding overall workflows, as well as which projects are most important, challenges, and solutions that a quick call or an order form would not allow for. “These visits and online meetings help solidify our commitment to building a true partnership with each client. And this kind of dialogue is unbelievably valuable for us, as well as our clients.”

Interested in learning more about how Westchester can work with you to consultatively establish the right workflows for your publications? Contact us to schedule a conversation.

June 4, 2019

$LaTeX composition typesetting example image$ LaTeX is one of the most powerful typesetting platforms for publishers of mathematics, economics, and other content requiring the presentation of equations. But, if you’re a publisher of that type of content, let’s just admit something else about LaTeX – it’s infuriatingly complex and can make any project bloat in schedule and cost.

Through our work in the journal and academic publishing markets over the years, we have handled hundreds of books and thousands of articles with LaTeX content. Every time a new ‘easy button’ for LaTeX appeared in the market, we too were optimistic that it would get easier to work with TeX content. But, since authors all like their own versions, plug-in’s, macros, and templates, most ‘easy buttons’ for LaTeX break the second you pour any content through them.

Sara, Kannan, Dilip from Westchester Publishing Services Instead of trying to bypass the problem, we invested. In our people. Meet US employee-owned Westchester’s offshore management team. Dilip, Sara, and Kannan scoured the industry to find the best of the best in LaTeX typesetting and consulting and hired them, and asked them to train other members of our staff. Through hiring and training over the years, Westchester has assembled an A-Team of LaTeX operators and engineers, who help The MIT Press, Princeton University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Mary Ann Liebert, and other book and journal publishers with their complex LaTeX content. We have helped Princeton and Johns Hopkins develop LaTeX templates for their authors to use, for Princeton and MIT we provide LaTeX consulting for authors, and we ensure that all of these books with critical math content are published quickly, affordably, and without issue.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you with your LaTeX publications.