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.

George Baier IV is Media Industry Principal at Dropbox, responsible for communicating the company’s unique perspective on how Dropbox can transform work and IT infrastructure for customers in the media vertical. George works closely with customers to deliver product features and solutions that meet specific media customer needs.

Westchester:  George, Westchester is excited about our partnership with Dropbox which has resulted in several positive developments including upgrades to our internal technology, and further enhancements on our Client Portal. Can you share with readers a little about your background in publishing, and how that led to your current role with Dropbox?

George: I’ve worked in the publishing and media industry for over a decade, across different leadership roles involving technology, content, and design. Prior to Dropbox, I served as a VP in IT at Macmillan, where I helped deploy tools that the organization’s teams and employees still use today. One of those tools was Dropbox, which consolidated the applications people organically brought to work, and gave teams the freedom to collaborate under a common platform. Seeing employees get excited about technology like Dropbox ultimately led me to the role I currently hold — Media Industry Principal — in which I help even more media customers deploy tools to help them do their best work. 

Westchester: What makes you so passionate about publishing in particular, and how does that inform the work Dropbox is doing with companies in the media sector?

George: Trade publishing continues to evolve but its business model still operates on the creation of content, and the consumption of that content by readers that are willing to pay for it. Unlike other forms of media, the straightforwardness of the relationship between publishers and audiences is something I’ve always found appealing. In this spirit, Dropbox helps creators move their process forward, and is designed for any author to use as a means to enable creativity at scale. It’s also part of the reason we continue integrating with tools that are industry-standard within publishing while seeing increased adoption overall.

Westchester: What is the potential Dropbox sees in the media space – specifically in publishing, during the next couple of years?

George: Teams and users in the publishing, media, and entertainment space created and saved more than a billion files in Dropbox last year. Every day those teams — especially in publishing — are under pressure to create more content in less time. As a result, there’s a growing need to manage complex projects at scale, as content often becomes trapped in silos and spread across teams, tools, and devices. We see an opportunity for Dropbox to continue serving as a home for content and the collaboration around it. 

In parallel, we see an opportunity to support authors through a platform that unifies documents, rich media, and the exchange of ideas. Those with talent and creativity should be enabled to tell stories with less friction, wherever and whenever inspiration may strike. I observed firsthand at Macmillan how unique tools like Dropbox can be additive to an author’s creative toolkit, which ultimately led me to Dropbox itself — I wanted closer involvement in helping other organizations benefit from our platform.

Westchester: We came to Dropbox with several situations we needed to resolve – including upgrading our own internal infrastructure, working with our operations teams around the globe, version control, handling large files, and the development of our Client Portal.  Walk us through the approach Dropbox took to evaluate our requirements and propose specific solutions.

George: We worked closely with several stakeholders at Westchester to offer guidance on a Team Folder system that met their needs and matched their investment in our product’s deployment, while ensuring no data loss occurred throughout the migration and deployment process. In general, our approach was to make a transition to Dropbox as seamless as possible, helping them maximize the full benefit of our platform to support large volumes of content and launch their Client Portal. This also involved listening to input from production, editorial staff, and ensuring we could follow through on the capabilities promised as part of our deployment. Interestingly, as we continued working together, we uncovered even more ways that Dropbox could support Westchester, whether it be handling large files, version control capabilities, or expanded Dropbox previews of file types like ePub. 

Westchester: Are the challenges that we brought to Dropbox consistent with what you see from other media firms? What other types of issues do you and your team help resolve for companies in the media industry?

George: Westchester is a great example of organizational vision and execution facilitating the full promise of Dropbox, from start to finish across migration and deployment phases — adoption, integration, workflow enablement and, ultimately, transformation. We weren’t surprised how quickly Westchester did it, given the strong leadership and cross-functional partnership, but it became clear that Dropbox was additive to Westchester’s holistic philosophy to technology, content management, and infrastructure migration. Our goal is help replicate the success of Westchester’s IT maturity model for other customers that want to mature their business through the capabilities of our collaboration platform. 

Westchester: Many publishers have their own in-house architecture or use other file transfer and archival systems. How does Dropbox differ in its ability to support the ways publishers handle projects with multiple stakeholders, versions, and large files?

George: Over the past few years, we’ve evolved from a place to store your files to a place where collaboration gets easier. We’ve released several new products and features like Paper, Smart Sync, Showcase, and Team Folders that have made it incredibly easy for publishers to adopt our platform, specific to projects involving multiple stakeholders, versions, and large files. These build upon our core product capabilities including best-in-class file sync/share, previews, and unlimited file size uploads. 

More specific to file transfer and archival systems, we see patterns of work that still rely on inefficient methods of content transfer — FTP, email, file attachments — across businesses today. The products and features I’ve mentioned, especially Showcase, can help modernize those legacy tools, the use of which can result in lost time and focus away from the content itself. In addition, Dropbox also integrates natively in digital asset management (DAM) tools like Widen, nicely complementing archival systems of record that store IP. This integration facilitates our larger platform strategy, in which Dropbox can work with tools and systems customers have already purchased, as opposed to creating another ‘walled garden’. 

Westchester: We’re excited about the new release of our Client Portal, because it uses the Dropbox API integrated with the DBX platform to provide clients with a secure, cloud-based file management, and communications hub for their projects (see video). How do you see our ability to extend the use of the Dropbox platform to clients as a change in the way publishers of all sizes are able to interact with their vendors?

George: The Client Portal is an impressive example of leveraging the power of DBX Platform to customize specific publishing workflows for both internal and external audiences. As more and more content is produced, it often goes through key stages of creation, feedback, and distribution — which can, unfortunately, lead to lost time searching for the latest versions, or “work about work” if not properly managed. Ultimately, we think our APIs can serve as the connective tissue for collaborative work among Dropbox, publishers, and vendors, facilitating a unified home for work across the entire content lifecycle.

Westchester: Tell us more about the new features that Dropbox has rolled out recently that would be of interest to our clients and publishing partners.  Are there additional developments on the horizon that you’re able to share with us?

George: Recently, Dropbox announced expanded partnerships with Canva, Final Draft, Frame.io, Getty Images, Shift.io, Marvel, and Widen to bridge content silos, in support of teams that continue creating content at an exponential rate. These integrations complement core Dropbox product capabilities like best-in-class file sync/share, no-download shared links to protect IP, expanded preview capabilities like EPUB, ZIP, RAR, and enhanced previews of PPT and PDF. Especially as rich media and visual assets become ingrained in traditional and digital publishing, we’re focused on giving authors and teams more flexibility to bring Dropbox closer to the tools they already use. In the future, we’ll be looking for more ways to expand our relationship with those seven partners, and other publishing-optimized tools like Scrivener, that integrate with our collaboration platform meaningfully.

Westchester: For publishers interested in exploring the solutions Dropbox can offer for their own particular challenges, what’s the best way to reach you?

George: You can always connect with me on LinkedIn (George Baier IV), or check out our Flow Together eBook if you’d like to learn more as well.  

Westchester: George, thank you for taking the time to share your insights about publishing and technology. For clients and prospective partners interested in learning more about our Client Portal, and our editorial and production services, please Contact Us.