Who’s minding your journals at your current vendor? Do they play a proactive role to ensure editorial and production requirements are being handled as efficiently as possible? Westchester Publishing Services has provided high-touch, high-quality support of journals for over a decade, and is more of a partner than a vendor to our clients. How?
Meet Celeste Bilyard. Celeste, like several members of our management team, is a veteran from Greenwood Publishing. Celeste began her career in publishing as an apprentice to the production manager, where she learned the ropes on book production, reprints, copyright, engaged with printers and vendors, and much more. In between Greenwood and Westchester, Celeste added extra skills to repertoire, including freelance design, coding, and customer service. All of these skills helped her to understand a client’s products and processes to help resolve bottlenecks and challenges. “Clients expect us to be knowledgeable in these areas and to use that knowledge throughout production to deliver a quality product in a timely manner. They depend on us, trust us,” she says.
At Westchester, Celeste rapidly became one of the leaders within our then developing journals program. Her approach to different journal cycles and shorter run times made her a very valuable asset to our clients as we worked collaboratively to address expanding needs, including open access, continuous publishing, onshore and offshore editing, and more. “Clients enjoy the copyediting choices and are extremely satisfied.” she noted.
Celeste relishes the fast-natured pace of the journal department. “Each day is exciting. Every staff member brings different strengths to the department. Some are very technical, some excel at file analysis, some at troubleshooting, resolutions, scheduling tight turnaround times, understanding of coding, and older systems knowledge. This allows us to pair a project to team members who will best suit the journal’s needs, and information is shared to make the team stronger. We help each other in maintaining a well-rounded department.”
Due to this versatility, each client – and for some clients, each journal – has unique workflows. Clients are not expected to select a set workflow for their journal production; rather, Celeste, Terry, and other members of our team collaborate with new clients, working closely and tirelessly to discuss expectations and create custom procedures and profiles in our Client Portal.
This free consulting that is applied to each project and partnership is valuable for both us and our clients. Wouldn’t you like to know more about how we can help you? Contact us.
