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Travels with Tyler – London Book Fair 2017

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“Composition is not a commodity; it’s something that matters, both to the author and the reader.”

I have just returned from the London Book Fair, where I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet with Westchester Publishing Services’ current and prospective publishing partners to learn more about their editorial and production needs, and share the ways Westchester can help simplify their processes.

According to veteran attendees, the London Book Fair this year seemed more active than usual. Publishers Weekly did a thorough job covering many of the hot topics being discussed at the conference, with articles covering subjects as diverse as publishing in times of political uncertainty, to growth in the industry. In addition, The Bookseller considered the impact of the Fair’s return to the Olympia London for the first time in over a decade.

Having a prime location next to the LBF Faculty sessions on scholarly publishing ensured the Westchester stand received a steady stream of traffic, including from prospects who may have heard from Westchester in the past, and were now able to meet with us in person. We enjoyed talking to everyone who visited our booth, whether they had a scheduled appointment or happened to drop by. We socialized online as well, posting regularly to Twitter, encouraging #LBF17 attendees to stop by and meet our new mascot, Wes T. Chester. (See photo, below.) Don’t fret if you weren’t in London though, Wes is a jet-setter and will attend BEA in New York City at the end of May!

I visit the U.K whenever I can, for work and some cultural travel as well. When I pass through Heathrow to fly home, if I have a few pounds left in my pockets I make it a point to stop by W.H. Smith’s and invest in a paperback or two to enjoy on my flight. Westchester typesets books for publishers in both the U.S. and U.K., but growing up in the States I always enjoy the slightly different tactile feel and format of a British book. One of the books I happened to pick up on this trip was one I’ve read many times, but given away all my copies of over the years – The Fellowship of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was fortuitous I chose this title, as the 2004 HarperCollins U.K. paperback edition contains an opening essay by Douglas A. Anderson about the evolution of Tolkien’s work from edition to edition. Anderson writes a compelling account about the history of events which occurred, from Tolkien’s manuscript initially being mishandled by its initial typesetter, to the variations that sprang up from U.S. and U.K. versions of the book over the years, with words being changed, entire sections being dropped, and other typesetting errors which naturally irritated Tolkien. In between writing his subsequent works, Tolkien spent a great deal of time annotating pages in existing editions for his publishers to incorporate into reprints. Reading of Tolkien’s struggles with this title after talking with publishers all week at the London Book Fair about the quality of Westchester’s work, brought into sharp focus something I’ve been saying for years:

“Composition is not a commodity; it’s something that matters, both to the author and the reader.”

I’m proud of the work that Westchester does to help Macmillan, W.W. Norton, Bloomsbury, ABC-CLIO, Springer Publishing, Harvard University Press, and dozens of other publishers present their content in a high quality and accurate way to their readers. Call me today at 203-658-6581, or email me at tyler.carey@westchesterpubsvcs.com to learn how Westchester Publishing Services can help improve your publications program.

Learn more about Westchester Publishing Services here.

Tim Cross, Westchester Publishing Services’ Business Development Manager, is the host of Society for Scholarly Publishing’s (SSP) 2017 webinar program. The first webinar in the six session schedule “Hiring the Next Generation of Publishing Professionals”, takes place Tuesday, March 14, at 11 am EST.

Moderated by Jessica Loayza, Web Publications Coordinator from the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the webinar is geared toward early career professionals interested in identifying the skills that will serve them in their growing careers, and the managers who look to support the professional development of their young employees.

Speakers on the panel are Meredith Adinolfi (Director of Production, Cell Press), Jeff Lewandowski (Senior Publisher, IOP Publishing), and John Rodzvilla (Graduate Program Director, Masters program in Publishing and Writing, Emerson College). As hiring managers and publishing program directors, they will discuss how they make hiring decisions, encourage and influence early career professionals, and how to make more diverse and inclusive hires.

You can learn more about SSP’s webinar program here.

To learn more about the editorial and composition services Westchester Publishing Services provides to the academic and scholarly publishing community, click here, or Contact Us.

By Guest Blogger Nicole Tomassi

…From the faraway town of Danbury, Connecticut, Westchester Publishing Services will attend London Book Fair, taking place March 14-16 across the pond at the Olympia Exhibition Centre.

The London Book Fair has been around nearly as long as Westchester Publishing Services, arriving on the scene when we were still in short pants.  Similar to Westchester’s trajectory, London Book Fair has grown each year in size and importance, attracting the interest of publishers large and small across the globe.  We are excited to have the ability to meet with publishers who come from around the world to attend so we can showcase the editorial and composition services we provide to accommodate their publication programs.

If you’re attending London Book Fair, we will be at Booth 7K38, so click here to make an appointment to meet with our resident Anglophile and Director of Business Development, Tyler Carey to learn more about why many of the world’s most recognized publishers have Westchester Publishing Services as their editorial and composition provider of choice. And pssst, Tyler’s a pretty decent gent so if you play your cards right, he might give you a tip on which rugby team he’s rooting for!

If you’re remaining state-side (I understand, I wasn’t able to finagle a ticket myself), be sure to follow along with us on Twitter where updates will be regularly posted throughout each day of the show.

Cheerio!

Tyler in a Pink Chevy

Last week, I returned from the U.S. Publishing Mission to Cuba.  I was invited by the organizing committee (which included staff from Publishers Weekly and Combined Book Exhibit) to participate in a panel on the state of digital publishing trends in the U.S.  Scheduled to coincide with the Havana Book Fair, the Mission included panels hosted by U.S. and U.K. publishing professionals as well as our Cuban counterparts.  The goal of the visit, which included 30 publishing professionals from the U.S., U.K., Colombia, and Ecuador, was to share our experiences in different areas of publishing, including rights, digital production, operations, and distribution. The Book Institute of Cuba organized the presence of Cuban publishing professionals who provided a counterpoint by exploring the opportunities and challenges present in their industry, which is a combination of independent publishing houses and state run publishing operations.

As the only participating editorial/composition vendor from the United States, I was able to cover the trends of declining e-pub sales and increasing print sales in the trade market, the need for digital as a product in the academic and scholarly markets, as well as the myriad options for pre-editing content, final digital assets, online distribution, and more. My counterparts in the Cuban publishing industry provided glimpses into their own digital ecosystem, including one particularly inspiring platform – Claustrofobias. Claustrofobias is a digital platform for promoting books to readers in the Cuban market using websites and social media.  What really made the platform sing for me was that they embraced the fact that many readers in Cuba may not have consistent access – or access at all – to the internet, and engineered a way around that.  When they record a YouTube video about a book, they also take the audio of that recording and broadcast it via radio so readers without internet access can still avail themselves of Claustrofobias’ content.  Genius!

Sometime later this Spring I’ll post in this blog a condensed version of the presentation I made during the Mission which you will be able to download. Until then, you can learn more about the U.S. Publishing Mission to Cuba and its attendees in this Publishers Weekly article, as well as read about the censorship challenges which affected one Cuban author exhibiting with my traveling companions in this article. 

Cuba is an amazing country, and as the historic tensions between the U.S. and Cuba thaw, I hope you too will have a chance to visit and experience the island and its wonderful citizens.  After all, there are few places on earth where in one day you can meander through an abandoned Spanish fortress filled with publishers and 1 million attendees at the Havana Book Fair, tour a library containing the writings of José Martí, and cap off the day by taking a ride in a 1957 Chevy and seeing Hemingway’s typewriter in person at his estate.  (Pictured below.)

Today, Westchester Publishing Services is excited to share with you an update about the progress of our Client Portal initiative, along with a video demonstrating some of its expanded capabilities!

If you’re not familiar with our Client Portal, it is a tool built to allow our clients the ability to track the progress of projects they have submitted to us for editorial and production services. Our primary goal is to make the Client Portal an intuitive, easy to use tool for providing you with transparency and access into your projects at each stage while your project is at Westchester. The Client Portal is cloud-based, giving you accessibility to current information whenever you need it. Best of all, the Client Portal is a complimentary, value-added amenity to the great service you rely on from the Westchester staff who work on your projects.

We worked closely with our development team to build a system that met our clients’ needs, arriving at the prototype which many Westchester clients and prospects evaluated in late 2016. The developers have incorporated the valuable feedback we received from these evaluations, and today we are pleased to show you the updated “alpha” version of the Client Portal.

With the Client Portal, you will always know exactly where a project is in process, be able to evaluate any queries or issues with assets, easily upload and download files, and have a greater level of insight into the status of your projects with authors, our staff, and your partners. Click here to see a YouTube video demonstrating some features included in the latest version of the Client Portal.

We will continue to share additional updates with you about the full version of the Portal as early adopters go live and we prepare for a wider roll-out to our client base over the next few quarters.

Want to learn more about how the Client Portal can give you better visibility of your projects? Contact us for more information!