Westchester Publishing Services

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Westchester Happenings – Spring 2021

Services

compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

2021 has been extremely productive for all of us here at Westchester, as the number of publishers we work with and the variety of project requirements we support for them continues to grow. Below are several of the highlights from the past few months:

Another successful publishing industry webinar with Publishers Weekly

Westchester and PW Publishing Now 21 panelistsApril began strongly, with our most highly attended webinar to date, hosted in partnership with Publishers Weekly. Jim Milliot, PW’s Editorial Director was the moderator for a wide-ranging discussion with four publishing industry thought leaders. The more than 500 attendees heard firsthand about how the panelists’ companies and their employees adapted to the multiple challenges 2020 created, including the supply chain issues we are all contending with in the industry, as well as what we might expect as we navigate through this year. We’ll be announcing details about our next event with PW soon, so stay tuned!

Westchester Education Services Webinars

Westchester Education Services State of K-12 Education 2021 webinarIn May and June, Westchester Education Services hosted two informative webinars that were each moderated by Kevin J. Gray, President and Chief Content Officer. “The State of K-12 Education in 2021”, focused on the impacts of the last year-plus on education at the school district level and what would be required to support successful outcomes for students as they prepare for the upcoming school year.

Westchester Education Services Emerging Trends in K-12 Education webinarThe “Emerging Trends in K-12 Education” webinar showcased three areas of learning that have experienced significant interest over the last year as there is increased understanding about how social-emotional learning, culturally responsive education, and career and technical education are all important facets of meeting students where they are in their education journey and supporting their learning goals.

Westchester Education Services CTE worksheet sampleWestchester Education Services expands into CTE

Speaking of Career and Technical Education, this past spring Westchester Education Services appointed Debbie Allen as Content Director for Career and Technical Education. Debbie leads a team of subject matter experts who draw upon their extensive experience in teaching CTE to create effective supplemental materials to serve students and teachers in several career pathways. To the right is one of the career exploration worksheets we developed to introduce students to the different types of jobs that are available in various career clusters.

Stationers Shortlist 2021It truly is an honor to be nominated

This May, we received the thrilling news that Westchester Education Services was shortlisted by The Stationers’ Company in the service development category for our Culturally Responsive Education Rubric Review process. We felt like winners to receive recognition from our industry peers in the UK’s livery company that has represented the needs and interests of publishing and media professionals for more than six centuries. Learn more about all the shortlisted entries and watch the awards ceremony.

Westchester Words podcast logoWestchester Words’ first season springs forth

The Westchester Words podcast debuted in March and really hit its stride this spring, when yours truly had the pleasure of speaking with more than a dozen professionals in education, ed tech, and publishing about a variety of subjects that are impacting these industries. You can find all of the episodes on your favorite streaming platform or at our websites, where we have posted additional content that some of our guests have been kind enough to share.

The final episodes of the first season are being released in the coming weeks. We’re planning our second season of episodes, so if there’s a topic you want to hear more about, get in touch.

print to digital imageEnsuring Content Compliance on Digital Platforms

If your preferred reading mode is digital, you probably know that Amazon sunset the ability to load or update mobi files for new or previously published content on their platform last month. In early May, Scott Keeney, Westchester’s Senior Composition and Digital Production Manager, wrote this informative blog post explaining how this also impacted reflowable ePubs and outlined how Westchester is well-prepared to support publishers with ePub3 files that meet the updated platform requirements.

Summer Reading 2021

Summer reading imageWhile some kids get chills up their spine when told they will have to read several books during the summer break and turn in book reports on the first day of school, I wasn’t one of them and I suspect many of you weren’t, either. Now that we’re all adults and can skip doing book reports, each May I ask my colleagues to tell me what books they plan to read during the quieter days of summer and they always impress me with their title selections. See what they picked for this summer’s reading pile, and let us know what’s on your list.

Looking Ahead imageLooking Ahead

We are thinking about the time when we’ll be able to safely gather in an in-person setting. Until then, stay connected with us by following our LinkedIn pages, subscribing to our YouTube channel, and looking for our email messages in your inbox, filled with information about the services and knowledge-packed webinars we offer to help you understand and respond to the developments that are shaping the publishing industry.

Westchester proudly supports more than 300 publishers in all sectors of the publishing industry with their editorial, production, design, and content development requirements. Read and download our case studies about the efficient and cost-effective solutions we have provided your peer publishers, and talk with us about our customizable workflows that output printer and POD-ready content files in the formats you need for your customers.

Wishing you an enjoyable, relaxing second half of the summer.

digital reader contentThe past year and a half has presented its fair share of challenges for publishers, including how to repurpose existing content into the formats that your readers want to access it in.

With the increased interest in backlist titles, Amazon-compatible ePub3 files, and print-on-demand opportunities, publishers are looking at their archives on content and exploring ways to generate more revenue from their backlist. How can you make sure you’re getting the most revenue you can from your backlist titles?

Westchester can help you cost-effectively produce your existing content in the digital formats that are currently supported in the marketplace. Over the past year and a half, US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services has helped many of the 300 publishers we support to address the many ways they can produce and repurpose their content, including the following tasks:

  • OCR and Keyboarding of physical books that do not exist in a digital format in your archive, so that you can have a clean Word manuscript for typesetting
  • Working with older PDF’s, Quark files, older InDesign files, and more, to generate newer printer files – including printer files for POD needs
  • Generating accessible, Amazon-compatible ePub3 files and fixed-format ePub3 files from backlist assets
  • Creating XML, HTML5, and other digital assets for use in platforms you may be using for content distribution

Talk to us about how we can serve as a release valve, taking tasks like these off the plates of your busy staff, and helping you maximize revenue opportunities with your valuable content.

Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

ebook in front of open textbooksAmazon has announced that effective June 28, when uploading ePub content for new books or updates to previously published content on their platform, mobi files will no longer be supported.

Scott Keeney, Westchester’s Senior Composition and Digital Production Manager, outlines what Amazon’s changes mean for publishers:

In late 2020, Amazon recommended using ePub format for publishing new titles and updating previously published titles for users who loaded mobi into Kindle Previewer (KP3). Though it did not state it in that message, it was applicable to reflowable ePubs. Over the last several months, when clients have asked, Westchester has been recommending only receiving the ePub. With Amazon disapproving of sideloading to their devices as a means to preview files, the need for a mobi for review purposes had become obsolete. We do have a few clients with their own, independent need and use cases for mobi, and we continue to create and provide the mobi for them.

Amazon has accepted ePub as an input format for at least a decade, and Westchester has always built our clients’ ePubs with Amazon Kindle compliance in mind. While Amazon did allow some variance from Kindle guidelines, by 2014 Westchester’s standard ePub was entirely compliant.

To ensure quality and functionality, Westchester conducts automated validation using EPUBCheck 4.2.5 (all ePubs), and ACE by Daisy, along with using proprietary tools. We also conduct manual spot-checking of content and items including navigation and table of content links. Quality checks are conducted by reviewing in ADE (not an endorsement, ADE simply remains the most common reading system used by our clients to check ePubs). Most titles are also reviewed in Kindle Previewer 3, and titles may be checked in other reading systems as needed. Westchester also includes some content-based items that ACE can’t check for such as properly marking context breaks (aka space breaks or scene breaks) and decorative images/ornaments. We include alt text if supplied or we have internal resources who can create alt text as one of our additional services.

Westchester has continued to evolve our ePub offerings to support market needs over the years, and has been providing Amazon-compatible ePub3 files for quite some time. We also offer a variety of services to ensure your ePub and digital products are fully accessible, including alt-text writing capabilities, tagging content, XML file creation, 508 compliance, and accessible WebPDF files.

Talk with Westchester Publishing Services about how we can help ensure your new ePub content meets accessibility and platform requirements, and ways we can update your previously published content to be in compliance with current standards.

Compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

The first three months of 2021 have given us a sense of increased optimism, and we hope the same is true for you and your company. It seems as though we had a number of events to feel good about and while things may be progressing to a different normal more slowly than we want, they are moving forward.

Westchester Words

In March, we launched the Westchester Words podcast, where we conduct brief conversations about subjects that are of interest to those who work in or are passionate about education, ed tech, and publishing. Guests so far have included Cathy Felgar of Princeton University Press, Cev Bryerman of Publishers Weekly, and Brian O’Leary of Book Industry Study Group, and there are more episodes in the works. You can find Westchester Words on your favorite streaming platform; give it a listen and let us know what you think!

River Editorial acquisition

Also announced in March, our Westchester UK division completed the acquisition of River Editorial. What this means for publishers based in the UK, Europe, and other areas outside North America is that you now have a one-stop location for all of your editorial, project management, and composition service requirements for your publications. Full details are available in this release.

Westchester Education Services continues to grow

Our team of subject matter experts has increased to support the evolving needs of our clients. We have recently welcomed Amanda Robb, Senior Supervising Editor for Math, and Debbie Allen, Senior Supervising Editor for CTE. Additionally, Meg Overman was promoted to Senior Supervising Editor for SEL and Literacy, and Sam Tucker is our Senior Editor for Culturally Responsive Education. Visit our Meet the Team page to learn more about these ladies and the rest of the Westchester Education Services team and how they can help you achieve your company’s content development goals.

Our UK team is growing, too

The Westchester Education Services team in the UK has also increased, to meet the expanding needs of education publishers and ed-tech companies serving the UK, EMEA and Asia Pacific markets. In January, Rebecca Durose-Croft was appointed Content Director and Curriculum Specialist, and in March, Marquita Celestine joined Westchester Education Services UK as Business Development Manager. Rebecca brings a wealth of experience from Editorial and Project Management roles at publishers including Oxford University Press, Pearson Education, Cambridge University Press, and Marshall Cavendish, while Marquita was most recently affiliated with Hodder Education and DK.

IPG International Publishing Forum

March was a very busy month for Westchester UK. In addition to the acquisition of River Editorial, we participated in the IPG (Independent Publishers Guild) inaugural International Publishing Forum, which in the absence of international fairs including London and Frankfurt, served to bring together publishers, retailers, industry experts and suppliers to participate in an international forum of meetings. We will also be exhibiting at IPG’s Virtual Spring Conference next month and look forward to connecting with you there.

 

How Westchester Helps Publishers

There are many ways that Westchester Publishing Services supports our clients’ changing editorial and production requirements. You can read here about solutions we have provided for publishers including The MIT Press, Maryland State Bar Association, and Rutgers University Press to resolve some of their editorial, design, and production challenges. Are you a Westchester client with a success story to share? Get in touch with me. Alternately, if you see a solution in these case studies that would help with a workflow issue that’s been causing you headaches, contact us to learn how we can help you.

Other ways we are staying connected

On April 6, Westchester Publishing Services and Publishers Weekly hosted the very successful Publishing Now ’21: Looking Forward webinar. The panelists discussed the changes and impacts the past year has had for their business operations, and what the current state of the industry is. Watch the video and download additional reading materials from the webinar discussion, including the summary paper that Publishers Weekly published in their April 26 edition.

Here are a few other events we will be participating in or hosting:

Book Industry Study Group Annual Meeting – April 23

British Book Awards Announcement Show – May 13

Publishers Weekly US Book Show – May 25-27

State of Education webinar – May 19

Westchester Publishing Services and Westchester Education Services are here to support publishers with all of your workflow requirements. Talk with us about how our editorial, project management, content development, and production solutions can help your business function more smoothly.

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

As we reach the anniversary of the beginning of the Pandemic “Lockdown” back in March 2020, two Washington Post articles caught my attention. One about the hindsight that can now be applied to the tragic impact of the COVID-19 virus on the world, which was far greater than any of us could have anticipated, and another about how conferences and events are trying to adapt to restart in-person industry meetings this year as hope around vaccines and recovery begins to take hold.  It was exactly a year ago that Westchester temporarily closed its Danbury location, hoping to have staff return expediently once it was safe.  A year on, nearly all of us are continuing to work from home, with only select staff going into the office as needed to tend to billing and postal needs.  As vaccine distribution improves, we look forward to more formally reopening our operations in Danbury and Dayton in the States, Stratford upon Avon in the UK, and Noida and Chennai in India.

The pandemic quickly impacted all of us and the ways we engaged with our clients to support them evolved rapidly.  We realized that our history and expertise working distributed, globally, could help many of our clients who were newer to navigating the distributed or “work-from-home” model. Our marketing team quickly brought together clients and industry figures for a webinar to talk through their approaches to the challenges that hit us all immediately. On our website, we set up a Work from Home resources page, curating articles and other useful information to help people adapt to this new way of working.

Many of our clients were experiencing similar challenges within their operations, prompting us to create video content to address those issues, including:

You can find all of these and more video content on the Westchester YouTube channel.

We’re all continuing to consider what’s next for the publishing industry. On April 6th, Westchester will again partner with Publishers Weekly for the industry thought leader webinar, “Publishing Now ’21: Looking Forward”, featuring insights from Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks, Cathy Felgar from Princeton University Press, Lorraine Shanley of MPI, and Tom Chalmers of Legend Times.  I invite you and your colleagues to join us for this free webinar, and engage with these publishing experts on questions about all aspects of the industry and supply chain that are affecting you.

Westchester remains committed to helping the Publishing Industry with its changing editorial and production needs, and continues to pivot and address individual workflow needs for our clients, to help each client in their areas of greatest need. Stay connected with us through our webinars, video content, and our recently launched Westchester Words podcast, featuring short, impactful conversations on topics specific to the publishing industry. Contact Us to discuss your challenges, and how Westchester can help you.