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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

Why do policy groups partner with US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services on their books and white papers?  We provide a wider breadth of offerings than most individual editorial and design freelancers – or even competing vendors – are capable of.

One of the trickier aspects of any policy or analysis publication can be data visualization.  Get it right and your book or paper really stands out, delivering meaningful content visually and with impact. Get it wrong and you’ve got a mess on your hands that looks like a PowerPoint done by a high school student.

To really get data visualization right in the first place is often quite expensive – and something that requires having the right resource available to start work as soon as your publication is set to go to design, and in turn publication.  Many policy publications are time sensitive, making this approach a risky gamble from scheduling and cost perspectives. This is where Westchester can help.

We are a US employee-owned company with US-based designers, offshore typesetters that span 3 shifts, and hundreds of staff and freelancers ready to go at a moment’s notice.  If you have a publication that is time sensitive but also requires high impact visuals, we are your most affordable and reliable option.  In many instances, the policy publications we work on are embargoed or at the very least fall under copyright, so it would be improper of us to share examples of our work.  This past year, though, we worked on an open access title with Brookings Institution Press – the CEQ Handbook – which, as it is open access, is available to be viewed online.  This link brings you to the CEQ Institute’s page, where you can view sections of the publication online at no cost.  For publishers that handle economics content, or any other type of content that needs to be presented with high-quality data viz, it’s worth flipping through the PDF to see the great work that Brookings and its author, Nora Lustig, did on the title.  We were pleased to be selected by Brookings to provide the editorial and production services that resulted in the final printer and online files.

I also encourage you to visit our services page to learn about the complete array of high-quality, reliable pre-press services we provide for policy groups, think tanks, and foundations. Rely on Westchester – we have the expertise your projects require, whenever you need it.

 

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

As announced last summer, Westchester Publishing Services partnered with Dropbox to use its Dropbox API as part of the architecture of our Client Portal. Since then, we’ve been hard at work to bring you even more enhancements, resulting in the release of Version 2018.C.03, late last year.

To start off the new year, I thought I’d take a few minutes to give you a relatively concise tour of all the great features the Client Portal has to help you streamline management on your Westchester projects.  Want to learn more about how you can use the Client Portal to easily submit editorial and production projects to Westchester, track the assets and status of your project at each pass, customize dashboards and reports, email your rep at Westchester, and more?

If you’ve got about 9 minutes, you can learn more about the core editorial and production features as well as our newest enhancements to the Client Portal.

After you’ve toured the Client Portal, contact Westchester to learn how you can use it to help you trim costs and condense schedules on your publications projects.

compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

I’m not quite sure how a year has elapsed since I put together the 2017 compilation of books that employees of Westchester Publishing Services read and wanted to recommend to others, but lo and behold, here we are. My colleagues have chosen a selection of titles as interesting and unique as each of them are, and you’ll likely find at least one book you should gift to yourself or to a fellow bibliophile who is special to you. Following these recommendations, are links to some other Best of Lists from this past year with book selections perfect for every age group and book category.

Make your gift go even further by purchasing any of these titles from your local independent bookseller. Simply click on the cover to locate a bookstore near you (or where the person you’re gifting it to is located). Happy holidays, and seasons readings!

These Truths: A History of the United States – by Jill Lepore

Publisher: W.W. Norton (a Westchester client publisher)

Why I recommend this book:  My wife is kind enough to give me a book every year for my birthday, from the local bookstore on Small Business Saturday. At a recent dinner party, we were discussing books we’d liked with two history professors – one teaches with my wife at Lewis University, her husband teaches at Loyola University in Chicago. My wife and her colleague both mentioned Lepore’s recent book on the history of Wonder Woman and this new book. I look forward to devouring this and challenging my beliefs on American history, and my wife is looking forward to reading it as well.

Selected by: Curt Alliaume, Project Manager, Westchester K-12 Publishing Services

The Witch Elm – by Tana French

Publisher: Viking

Why I recommend this book: Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series has been so enjoyable for me that when this standalone novel was released, I knew I would like it too. The book is about a young man recovering from injuries sustained when burglars broke into his apartment and beat him up badly, who then goes to live with and care for his dying uncle at his family’s ancestral home—and then a human skull is discovered hidden in a tree in the back garden. The writing is incredible, and it’s fascinating to see French’s knowledge of interrogation techniques from the point of view of the person being interviewed.

Selected by: Kimberly Giambattisto, Senior Production Editor

Never Use Futura – by Douglas Thomas

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Why I recommend this book: A book about a typeface is probably not for everyone, but if you enjoyed the documentary Helvetica, you’ll appreciate this ironically titled look at arguably the twentieth century’s most influential sans serif. Baked into the story of Futura are implications for the potential value of artistic compromise and the politics of appropriation. This is a quick read, a bit more engaging in its historical research than some of its later interpretations and case studies, but filled with interesting nuggets throughout.

Selected by: Scott Keeney, Production Manager – Composition and Digital Production

Inventing Edward Lear – by Sara Lodge

Publisher: Harvard University Press (a Westchester client publisher)

Why I recommend this book: I have always been a fan of Edward Lear and his nonsense rhymes, but he is even more interesting than I knew. A wonderful bio explores his writing, milieu, music, psychology, and influence. His drawings often incorporated his face (sometimes more of him, his rotund form worked well for many creatures) in his image of a bug, a snail, etcetera. I read here that Lear’s body of work may be viewed as an emotional autobiography, something of himself in every character. I am now going to read everything by Lear that I can get my hands on.

Selected by: Amelia Thurston, Production

The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living – by Meik Wiking

Publisher: William Morrow

Why I recommend this book: Meik Wiking is the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. (Yes, that’s really a thing.) Being based in Copenhagen, he may be biased about why Denmark is the happiest place on earth, but over the course of this entertaining and at times thought-provoking look at the benefits of chilling out, wearing fluffy socks, drinking cocoa, and spending time with your friends and family, Wiking hits upon a number of meditative maxims about living in the moment that may benefit all of us. Especially as cocoa and fluffy socks season arrives here in the States.

Selected by: Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

The 17th Suspect – by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Why I recommend this book: This book is about a string of shootings taking place in San Francisco, with the killer randomly choosing his victim. The main character, Sergeant Lindsey must hunt down the killer while also trying to balance motherhood, wifehood, and a disease that could kill her. I chose this book because it has a strong female lead who asks help from other strong lead women to help with the case. Also with each turn of the page, the suspense grows to where you reach the end and are surprised to found out the killer’s identity. I highly recommend it.

Selected by: Kenia Gonzalez, Customer Service Representative

The Secret Lives of Color – by Kassia St. Clair

Publisher: Penguin Books

Why I recommend this book: This book caught my eye when I was browsing in my local Waterstones shop in Stratford upon Avon. It’s beautifully designed, printed and bound, with colour edging to the pages and restrained and elegant use of colour icons inside. It was a definite ‘impulse buy’ which transpired to be not only a beautiful object in itself, but also a fascinating and entertaining read, describing the history of colour, its use and meaning through the ages. It also reinforced the value of local bookshops and how high-quality production values and cleverly-curated merchandising can sell more books.

Selected by: Tim Davies, Managing Director, Westchester Publishing Services UK

The Fifth Season (Book 1 of the Broken Earth Trilogy) – by N.K. Jemisin

Publisher: Orbit

Why I recommend this book: There is a reason Jemisin won the Hugo Award three years in a row with this series (and broke a record by doing so)! In this gripping first installment, she builds a mysterious world in which Earth is a single continent that has been repeatedly ripped apart by seismic catastrophes over the past several centuries, and the telekinetics known as orogenes are the only thing keeping the human race from dying out completely. I won’t say any more because Jemisin keeps her world’s secrets close to her chest, but this is a mesmerizing book that should not be missed.

Selected by: Ashley Moore, Copyeditor

White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – by Robin DiAngelo

Publisher: Beacon Press

Why I recommend this book: In White Fragility, DiAngelo, an expert on racial and social justice issues, explores systemic racism in American society, delving into the often subconscious ways in which the dominant culture remains dominant. Her book challenges the notion of “good old days,” forces the reader to explore what it means to be white, and offers concrete ways for whites to challenge assumptions and to act as allies for equality. This book is a fascinating read recommended to me by Nilofer Ali, our K-12 Resources Manager.

Selected by: Kevin J. Gray, Managing Director, Westchester K-12 Publishing Services

Educated – by Tara Westover

Publisher: Random House

Why I recommend this book: This compelling memoir is about the author’s upbringing as the youngest of seven children raised by her paranoid, survivalist father and his wife, an herbalist and unlicensed midwife, in rural southeastern Idaho. Due to her father’s distrust of the government, his four youngest children weren’t even known to exist (no birth certificates were filed) and they never attended school. Education came from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and a children’s science book, along with physical labor in their father’s scrapyard. Tara’s journey from this unfathomable existence to graduating from Brigham Young University and Cambridge University is a testament to the strength of the human spirit when someone believes in –and helps you to recognize– your full potential.

Selected by: Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

For even more selections and reviews, check out these compilations:

New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2018 – Top titles for young children, teenagers, and adults.

National Public Radio’s Book Concierge – Practically a mini-library of more than 300 books that can be sorted by a multitude of categories.

The Scholarly Kitchen Chef’s Selection Part 1 and Part 2 – Contributors to the Society of Scholarly Publishing’s Scholarly Kitchen blog share the titles that they enjoyed reading in 2018.

5 Books I loved in 2018 – by Bill Gates

San Francisco Chronicle’s Holiday Gift Guide: Novels, Memoirs, Cookbooks, and more. Lots more.

 

Westchester has been a client of Dropbox for some time, and after conducting an in-depth analysis of the extent of their capabilities, we made the decision to partner with them at the beginning of 2018. It is important to us as a company to ensure our clients are able to use a best-in-class solution product that allows them easier ability to transmit files and track versions than they could with FTP sites, WeTransfer, or other alternatives. While Westchester has had enterprise FTP solutions via FTP and web-based FTP transfer for many years – constantly expanding those capabilities, we realized that many of our newer and legacy clients were adapting to newer transfer options.
 
In our latest version release of the Client Portal, Westchester has integrated features of the Dropbox API to save our clients valuable time when sending and receiving files, as well as tracking versions and interacting with Westchester on their projects. By adapting Dropbox features into the Client Portal, clients benefit from both the Dropbox DBX platform as well as our own project management software, to gain a clearer understanding of where each project is in the editorial or production workflow, and engage with their assets throughout the project. 
 
Learn more about our use of Dropbox in this video, and contact us to find out how using Westchester’s Client Portal can streamline your production workflow.