Westchester Publishing Services

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Travels with Tyler: Stationers’ Hall, Children’s Conference, A New Office, & More!

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by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer 

Late last month, I headed back across the Atlantic to visit with our growing customer base in the United Kingdom, as well as spend some time with Tim Davies, the Managing Director of our UK subsidiary. After spending another week visiting customers and attending conferences with him, I continue to be amazed at the depth of understanding of the strategic challenges facing publishers that Tim brings to even the most basic of engagements regarding editorial and composition services. Westchester, along with our clients are exceptionally fortunate to have Tim on board.

Lionel Bender speaking at The Bookseller Children's ConferenceOur first event of the week together was The Bookseller’s Children’s Conference, held at County Hall in South London in the shadow of the London Eye. We had meetings scheduled with a number of customers and prospective partners, and were elated with the amount of booth traffic from publishers who had never spoken with us before, wanting to learn more about how Westchester helps their peers. The opening session providing an overview of the industry stats (the state of juvenile publishing remains strong!) was reassuring and encouraging. Of particular interest to us in the sessions that followed were the comparisons between the US and UK markets provided by Hanna Otero (Lonely Planet Kids) and educational publishing luminary Lionel Bender. The Lonely Planet perspective largely dealt with how to package content for different markets, whereas the educational session dealt more with the trends in US supplemental educational publishing that could be considered within the British market. The former is of keen interest to Westchester as we do handle global editions for publishers, and the outcomes shared in the educational session bore some attention at our stand during the conference. Educational publishers came to take meetings and discuss the work being done by our stateside “K-12” division, which provides content development, editorial, and design services to US and UK publishers. The Bookseller continues to put together phenomenal conferences for the industry, and we look forward to seeing their staff again at FutureBook in November.

Tyler Carey and Tim Davies at the Westchester Publishing Services UK launch partyIn addition to being in town for the Children’s Conference and the monthly BookMachine meeting, Tim and I also had the opportunity to formally celebrate the opening of our UK office in Stratford-upon-Avon. Gathering with some customers, partners, and a few bottles of prosecco, we toasted this milestone in expanding our presence in the UK, and got to continue the week’s trend of meeting with publishers to better understand their particular take on the publishing landscape.

While I was in England, I also attended two events with the Stationers’ Company, the UK-based publishing guild that I joined last year. The Stationers’ Company plays an active role in the UK publishing industry, The plane tree at Stationer's Hall, Londondrawing members from all portions of publishing and media, from the paper industry to printers, writers, editors, publishers, typesetters, newspaper journalists, and more. The Sunday after I arrived, the historic Stationers’ Hall was opened to the public for tours as part of  Open House London. I volunteered to help, providing background about the hall to visitors who wanted to see the architecture or learn more about the Stationers’ as a livery company. The hall itself, built after the great fire, sits upon the prior hall used by the guild, where Shakespeare’s folio had been registered for copyright. While I knew enough of the history and trivia to welcome people into the hall for the Open House, my fellow publishing colleagues gave me even more interesting background about the building, including the fact that the King James Bible had initially been debated in committee in the original hall on that location.  The plane tree in the courtyard is also noted for having been planted on the ashes of burnt, pirated books, accounting for how it is one of the oldest and largest plane trees in London.

Tyler Carey at the 2018 London Bridge Sheep DriveI tacked on a few vacation days to this tripTyler Carey marching the flock of sheep across London Bridge to take in a West Ham soccer game, and for the last Stationers’ event of my trip. As shared in a blog post earlier this year, a privilege under guild membership is the annual marching of the sheep across London Bridge. A centuries-old tradition, guild members marching a flock of sheep into London is symbolic of the privilege of doing business within the city. I joined my fellow Stationers’ – and the members of other livery companies – to gather together and walk across the bridge with our sheep, documented by Guildhall in their records for eternity. Not a baaaaa-d way to end a trip to London. (Sheep-ish apologies)

Are you based in the UK and interested in learning more about how Westchester can help you with your editorial and production needs?  Contact us to arrange a discussion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, FutureBook, or at a meeting in between these next two conferences for the Westchester UK team.

 

by Terry Colosimo, Director of Operations

Before joining Westchester, I was a Production Manager at an academic publisher working with both printing and composition vendors. Though quality and cost were of importance, the vendor’s level of customer service weighed heavy in my decision-making process, and sometimes projects were awarded to a vendor due to the level of care that the customer service representative (CSR) would bring to it. Even though I have not purchased services for quite some time, I still have contact with some of the very first CSRs I was introduced to.

Once I started working here, my responsibilities transitioned from seeking out vendors to ensuring that Westchester’s reputation for quality and service was maintained. Fortunately, this has been an easy task to carry out, in that the representatives we have on our team exhibit the same traits which I sought out when I was on the publisher’s side of the desk.

Ask yourself whether your current editorial or production vendor embodies these qualities:

Responsiveness—responding to a customer in a timely manner would seem to be obvious, but I think we have all experienced that uneasiness that comes while waiting for a response. Many times your representative may not have all the information they need to answer your question, but this should not stop a representative from sending out a quick acknowledgment to let you know that they are looking into your query or working on your request. Once that acknowledgment is made, they should then get back to you in a timely and thorough manner.

Experience—a customer service team should have extensive knowledge in all areas of publishing services. Their combined experience comes from grasping the nuances of client’s production workflow. An experienced CSR knows what to ask if you are uncertain about the particulars of a job. What may be a new product or workflow for you may be familiar to your CSR and they should be able to help navigate the process with you. Not each customer is the same, but what a CSR learns from each customer helps build a knowledge base for each one on the team to use.

Flexibility—because not every client is going to follow the same model and not every one of your own projects is going to be the same, good customer service requires being flexible. You should get reassurance, and not resistance from your CSR that they can handle a time-sensitive or high profile project. Systems should be adaptable enough so that a unique project does not negatively affect the rest of your projects or schedules.

Ownership—you should feel like your CSR fully owns your account and acts on your behalf. A CSR’s responsibility is to make sure that everyone in the organization understands your SOPs; sees that any changes get implemented within each department and cross-trains others so that there is seamless service if they are away. Based on their knowledge and the relationship they have built with you, they should be able to work with you and offer suggestions if needed. Ownership also means acknowledging when mistakes are made and working on getting those resolved to your satisfaction.

Proactive—if a problem does occur, your CSR should be able to determine its cause and how to get it resolved as quickly as possible. They should work with production to determine ways to avoid such situations from happening in the future and give you a sense of confidence that an issue has been thoroughly addressed. And given their experience on your account, they should understand your needs well enough to resolve as much as they can internally before raising a query with you.

These five traits are what I believe set a vendor apart, and propel them into becoming a trusted partner to a publisher.  At Westchester, these are far more than a list of desirable qualities – they are key components guiding the approach we take with every project each of our valued clients provides us.

I hope my thoughts about customer service were helpful and informative for you. In my next post, I will share my thoughts with you on the subject of client visits.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager 

The 4th Annual Publishers Weekly Star Watch event took place in New York City on September 12, 2018. Co-hosted by Publishers Weekly and Frankfurt Buchmesse – producers of the Frankfurt Book Fair, it shines a spotlight on the contributions and innovations of people making an exceptional impact in the US or Canadian book publishing industry.

This year the nominating committee received nearly 300 individual submissions that were carefully considered and narrowed down to a field of 40 individuals receiving PW Star Watch Honoree status. We were thrilled to learn our colleague, Westchester K-12 Publishing Services Managing Director, Kevin J. Gray, was one of the finalists. The achievements and qualities Kevin displays that were integral to his selection were profiled in the September 3, 2018 edition of Publishers Weekly.

I recently had the opportunity to ask Kevin about the significance of this recognition for him, and he shared these thoughts:

“It’s incredibly exciting to be nominated as a Publishers Weekly Star Watch top honoree. This recognition from Publishers Weekly is an affirmation of the dedicated focus on excellence that the managers and staff of Westchester Publishing Services K-12 demonstrate daily. Our success would not be possible without their contributions. I’m grateful to be part of a company that understands the needs of a changing market and that empowers its leaders to grow the business in directions that anticipate and respond to the needs of publishers and educators.”

Congratulations to Kevin and the entire Westchester K-12 team on earning this achievement!

All of us at Westchester Publishing Services are very excited to share this press release with full details about the launch of our UK office in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. With the opening of the office, Tim Davies, who initially joined on earlier this year as our Interim  Managing Director of Westchester Publishing  Services UK, has now taken on the role of Managing Director for the UK operation.

Westchester is proud of the work we have done for UK publishers for more than a decade, providing editorial and production support for Bloomsbury, UCL  Press, and many others. This next logical step of opening an office, which will provide a base to our UK division and resources, is part of Westchester’s intention to continue growing our footprint and presence in the UK  market and beyond, supporting UK  and European publishers for the long term.

Please contact us to learn more about Westchester’s UK operations and capabilities.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

Maybe it sped by due to how busy we are here at Westchester, but spring has bloomed into summer. Join me for a quick rewind of some of the key events that occurred during the months of April, May, and June at Westchester Publishing Services:

London Book Fair 2018, and Guildhall

Several members of our management team were in attendance at the 47th Annual London Book Fair in April. The Book Fair provided us with the opportunity to affirm our business growth in the UK, formally launching Westchester Publishing Services UK, with Managing Director, Tim Davies. It was a productive event for us, and our preparations are already underway to return next March.

While in London, our Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey was bestowed the prestigious honor of the Freedom of the City of London by the Stationers’ Guild. A unique benefit granted by this recognition is that he can now legally drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. If you don’t believe me, you can read more about it in this blog post.

An alphabet soup of conferences

In addition to London Book Fair, Westchester staff attended several conferences and trade shows this spring throughout the U.S., including NCTM(National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), CSE (Council of Science Editors), SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing), BEA (BookExpo),  SIIA(Software and Information Industry Association), AUP (Association of University Presses), and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We catch our breath in July and August but as you’ll see from our Conferences page, the pace picks up again in September with Publishers Weekly StarWatch, IPG Autumn Conference, and The Bookseller Children’s Conference.

Publishers Weekly Whitepaper, and Dropbox Partnership

Westchester sponsored production on a whitepaper that was published and distributed by Publishers Weekly in April, with in-depth analysis about how publishers of various sizes and types are able to effectively scale their programs through the use of prepress vendors. Following on this successful venture, Dropbox shared news last month about the work they do with companies in the media and entertainment vertical, including publishers and vendors. We also had an informative Q&A session with George Baier IV, from Dropbox, which provided a useful perspective on this topic.

Westchester continues to grow

By providing quality products and services to our valued clients, our business has grown and flourished over the past several years. To further ensure accounts continue to receive the high level of support we pride ourselves on, we recently welcomed Keri Goldberg to our sales and marketing team in the role of Business Development Manager. Current and prospective clients alike will find Keri’s background in publishing to be helpful as they consider prepress solutions for their particular needs. Westchester is also looking for editorial and production talent as various areas of the company expand, visit our Careers page for more information.

Westchester K-12 Summit

Our K-12 Services team held their annual summit at their Dayton, Ohio headquarters to strategize on how to build on the successes of the past year to achieve continued forward momentum. Having the entire team – who are located throughout the country – come together in one location was beneficial for all involved. It gave our staff an opportunity to discuss the student books, teacher’s guides, assessments, leveled readers, and other projects that the teams have been working on. It also allowed them to explore the expanded capacity and additional service offerings they are now able to provide clients as a result of hiring additional staff earlier in the year.

Summer Reading

Reading isn’t a seasonal pastime, but it seems especially enjoyable to read the latest bestseller or a book from the stack on your nightstand during the somewhat more carefree days of summer. My colleagues and I shared a few of the books we plan to read this summer, along with recommended reading lists in this recent blog post, in case you’re searching for ideas. Happy reading, and enjoy the rest of your summer!

Keep up with the latest happenings at Westchester!

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