Westchester Publishing Services

Excellence Delivered

2022 Year in Review

AUP

compiled by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

While the publishing industry continues to contend with various challenges in the marketplace, it also has a deep foundation of resiliency and collaboration to draw upon that provides us with the ability to adapt and thrive. Here are some ways we partnered with our industry colleagues throughout 2022 to help them identify and implement effective solutions:

Sharing Industry Knowledge

PW article about Impacts on Accessibility and Sustainability webinar.In 2022, we continued our successful partnership with Publishers Weekly, hosting two highly attended and informative webinars. In the spring, panelists Michael Jacobs, Lorraine Shanley, Jessica Ryan and Jim Fetherston discussed how each of their respective areas of the publishing industry were “Driving Business Forward”, and in the fall, Bill Kasdorf, Kristen McLean, and Rachel Martin provided steps publishing businesses could easily implement to have positive “Impacts on Accessibility and Sustainability”.

Also in the fall, consultant Jay Diskey was a panelist for the Westchester Education Services webinar, “2023 K-12 Education Funding and Policy Outlook”. The hour-long session was geared towards helping businesses developing materials for the K-12 education market better understand the various legislative and funding initiatives at both the federal and state level, and how these will impact the market during the next year.

 

A Fresh Look (and more great info!) for the Westchester Education Services website

WES homepageThis fall we improved the functionality and features on the Westchester Education Services website to provide you with a better user experience. With a mega-menu to help you quickly get to the specific subject areas you’re interested in, along with expanded content throughout including downloadable case studies, it’s packed with helpful information. Check it out and make sure to subscribe to our blog and our mailing list so you’re always up to date on what we’re doing.

 

Westchester UK and International Grows

world globeOur colleagues in the UK expanded their ranks to continue serving the growing client base Westchester works with beyond the North American market. Joining the education team throughout the year were Thomas Storr, Emma Hudson, and Adam Wilkinson. In June, Rebecca Durose-Croft was promoted to the position of Managing Director, Education. In the fall, she took some time to discuss what led her into a career in education publishing in this blog post.

 

Within the River Editorial team (a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK), Grace Peterson has recently joined as project manager, to provide support for their increased full-service client roster.

 

Promotions within our US editorial and production teams

woman climbing penciled stairsAs our client base inside the United States has continued to experience stellar growth, several of our US-based editorial and production staff received well-deserved promotions during the year. Some of the long-time employees who are bringing their vast experience into new roles are Terry Colosimo, Scott Keeney, Wendy Muto, Celeste Bilyard, Amanda Montes de Oca, Melody Negron and Erin Davis. Congratulations and continued success!

 

Westchester Education Services Expands its Staff

colorful group of peopleIt was also an exciting spring and summer of growth for the Westchester Education Services team as they welcomed several new people. Content Directors, Jennifer Cole and Laura Cunningham, Senior Editor, Tara Hlavinka, and Director of Client Solutions, Kevin Schroeder all arrived at Westchester in the spring, as shared in this press release. Later in the year to continue supporting client growth, we welcomed Christina DeYoung as Director of Client Solutions, Jada Bradley as Senior Editor, Culturally Responsive Education, Sheyla Lucas as Editorial Project Manager, and Jordan Orfitelli as Project Manager.

 

Scholarly and Academically Speaking

Table with dark blue tablecloth and WPS logoIn June, Hugh Shiebler, Director of Client Solutions was busy on the conference circuit, representing Westchester Publishing Services for the Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference, in Chicago. Later in the month, he joined Bill Foley, in Washington, DC, for the in-person return of the Association of University Presses Conference. Both enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with fellow publishing industry colleagues, to discuss workflow solutions to help publishers. Hugh also conducted an information session for AUP attendees about accessibility, which you can view and download here.

Westchester UK Spring Events

Westchester UK teamMembers of the Westchester Education UK & International, and Westchester Publishing Services UK teams participated in several publishing industry events during the spring, including sponsoring the Independent Publishers Guild Awards in April, the star-studded British Book Awards (known by its nickname, the Nibbies) in May, both of which were held in-person. Rounding things out in June was the hybrid Independent Publishers Guild Spring Conference. You can read more about it in these blog posts.

Westchester Education Conferences

WES 2022 BETT UK boothOur Westchester Education Services colleagues were busy attending several industry conferences in-person, including BETT UK in late winter, ASU-GSV in the spring, and several events in late fall, including sponsoring the EdWeek Market Brief Summit in November (Christina DeYoung shares 3 Key Takeaways), as well as attending the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) regional conference, and the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), which you can read about in this overview from Kevin Schroeder. You can read more about our 2023 conference plans later in this message.

 

Have you heard Westchester Words?

Westchester Words podcast logoOur podcast episodes are an efficient (15 minutes on average) way to learn about various topics that matter to the publishing, education and ed tech sectors on both sides of the Atlantic. You can find the Westchester Words and Westchester Words UK podcasts on your favorite streaming platform as well as on our websites, where we provide additional content related to the episodes along with downloadable transcripts. New episodes will be premiering in January, so now is the perfect time to get caught up!

 

What are we reading at Westchester?

man and woman browsing in bookstoreThe staff of Westchester are fortunate to be involved in working on thousands of book projects every year and on the other side of it, we enjoy doing our fair share of reading the finished product! See our Summer 2022 selections along with our recently published blog post Books We Want to Read or Gift Holiday 2022, to find out what books we’ve been reading this year.

 

Where Will Westchester be in 2023?

We are excited to have preparations underway for several industry conferences in the New Year, some of which we plan to attend in-person, including:

 

  • Digital Book World (January 16)
  • Future of Education Technology Conference (January 23)
  • BETT Show (March 29)
You can learn more about our event plans in this blog post, with more opportunities to connect online or in-person being added as the year moves forward.

 

Speaking of connecting online, we will continue to host informative webinars, starting with the Westchester Education Services session, “Best Practices for Engaging with a Vendor Partner Network” taking place on Thursday, January 19.

 

Let us know what conference and industry events are on your radar in the year ahead. We look forward to meeting with you at some point in 2023!
Employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services is honored to support more than 500 publishers globally, providing a wide variety of editorial, production, and digital conversion services, to help them prepare their publications for the print and digital formats their customers most desire. We look forward to continuing to serve publishers across all segments of the industry in 2023 with their frontlist releases, updates to backlist content, adapting materials for print on demand platforms, and conversion of assets into ePubs to help them get them content to market more efficiently and cost-effectively. As a Benetech Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) Vendor, we have the expertise you can rely on to produce materials that are in accordance with accessible ePub accessibility standards.
Let us know how we can help you optimize your workflow in the year ahead, using the full array of customizable services we have to help you reduce or eliminate the project bottlenecks you don’t have time to deal with.

With best wishes for a happy holiday season and a healthy, prosperous New Year.

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

virtual conferenceUniversity Presses have been key partners of Westchester Publishing Services for decades, and were a primary impetus for us to launch our Domestic Full Service operation in Danbury, Connecticut, our India Direct Full Service operation in Noida, India, and our UK operation in Stratford upon Avon.  From Cambridge, Massachusetts to London, England to the campuses of small state universities and large research, land grant private universities, Westchester works with each partner to identify the right editorial and production options to support our partners with books and journals ranging from simple monographs to complex, 4-color textbooks.

Usually, this time of year, I’d be just wrapping up my Spring travels to England for the London Book Fair and ALPSP’s biennial UP Redux conferences, where the university presses we support gather globally to discuss the state of the industry, efforts to improving diversity at presses and within the voices represented in their lists, considerations for printing and distribution, and more.

With the pandemic impacting travel and business, many of our partner organizations are innovating and re-purposing content that had been intended for presentation at conferences as virtual meetings or webinars.  Last week, ALPSP debuted the first in a series of free webinars to substitute for the canceled UP Redux conference, with the first session focused on Open Access, titled “Monographs, open access and public policy: UKRI OA consultation 2020.”  Speakers included: Sarah Faulder (Chief Executive, Publishers’ Licensing Services), Richard Fisher (Vice Chair, Yale University Press), and Helen Snaith (Senior Policy Advisor, Research England).  A recording of the session is provided here, and key topics included the current state of the UK open access policy, trends around open access at university presses and in scholarly publishing, and the general state of affairs for university presses at this time.  I highly recommend checking out the above recording and the pending Q&A info that will be posted at the same link soon.  Upcoming webinars will cover balancing a press’ mission and money, as well as more topics on open access following the UK’s review period of its open access policies.

AUP also wisely chose to move its annual conference to a virtual model.  Keep your eyes on this page for news about the format of the virtual event to be held in June.  We’ll miss the chance to visit our friends and colleagues in person in Seattle, but are confident the program will be as engaging as the typical AUP annual conference.

Other organizations have been putting together compelling virtual meetings, including recent sessions from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, Copyright Clearance Center about how publishers and content organizations are looking beyond the current crisis to new opportunities around their content, Digital Book World’s “DBW.fm” session tomorrow about the “three-headed monster” of audiobooks, podcasts, and voice assistants, and other industry groups’ state of the union types of sessions about how the pandemic is impacting segments of our industry from printing to distribution and more.

Westchester will also soon be launching a new video about our Client Portal – and how it can help you manage your Westchester projects while you work from home.  We also have webinars planned for the next two months about the topics our clients are raising not just about our services but about the industry in general.  Stay tuned!

What virtual meetings have you found useful?  How are you considering the impact of the pandemic on the university press space?  Contact us to talk about trends you’re seeing, and any thoughts you have on how our industry is evolving.  My colleagues and I look forward to hearing from you.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

The calendar is winding down to the final days of the year, the decade, and Westchester’s 50th anniversary in business. It has been a really exciting year on many fronts, so join me to revisit some of the special moments during these past twelve months:

WESTCHESTER TURNED 50!

There was definitely a golden glow here at Westchester because, throughout the year, we were celebrating the significant achievement of being in business for half a century. The anniversary celebrations began with our appearance on the cover of Publishers Weekly’s February 18th issue, a profile article in the March 4th issue that helped us build a strong momentum heading into the London Book Fair, along with an article about our UK expansion in the Publishers Weekly Show Daily on March 12. We also hosted a stand party to toast our milestone anniversary with our friends and colleagues in the publishing community, where a wonderful time was had by all in attendance.

WESTCHESTER UK PROFILED IN THE BOOKSELLER

We have counted several UK-based publishers as loyal clients across the years, and realized we could do a better job of serving them and other UK and European-based publishers by having a more physical presence within the market. The Bookseller took note of our successful expansion efforts in this article (may require log-in to view) that was published in May, shortly before the British Book Awards.

NEW AGREEMENT SIGNED WITH MACMILLAN

In March, we signed a new agreement with Macmillan to continue the productive relationship our companies have enjoyed for more than a quarter-century. While Macmillan is no longer based in the iconic Flatiron building, we will always have fond memories of visiting the staff at their famous headquarters. Shortly before relocating to their new downtown digs this past summer, CEO John Sargent penned this article for Publishers Weekly about what it was like to work in this unique building.

 

UNFAMILIAR WINS AWARD

Great things were happening in our K-12 division as well in 2019. In the first quarter, the hi-lo graphic novel reader Unfamiliar, which was conceived, written, designed, and produced by our talented team received the Silver Hermes Creative Award from the Dayton, Ohio chapter of the American Advertising Federation. This video takes you behind the scenes to learn how the project went from concept to publication.

CLIENT PORTAL RECEIVES ACCOLADES

Unfamiliar was not the only award-winning initiative for Westchester this year. Our Client Portal, the secure, user-friendly, functional project management platform publishers want to incorporate into their pre-press production workflow was also receiving its fair share of positive attention. In May, The Stationers Company, the London-based guild for the media and publishing industry, shortlisted the Client Portal for their Innovation Excellence Awards, and in October, we presented about our Client Portal at the Rutgers Design Thinking program board meeting. In November, our partnership with  Dropbox – who worked with us to enhance the Client Portal’s capabilities – was recognized with a first-place win at the Bookbuilders of Boston NEPCo (New England Publishing Collaboration) Awards.

The video below, which was produced in partnership with Dropbox explains how we were able to incorporate the functionality our clients required into a beautifully designed platform that is easy for publishers to use.

CONFERENCES AND CLIENT MEETINGS

In addition to London Book Fair mentioned above, in 2019, members of the Westchester staff were busy criss-crossing North America and Europe meeting with clients and prospective partners at numerous trade shows and events, engaging in productive discussions with our think tank, university press, and legal clients. Westchester attended events as varied as SXSW EDU, ASU/GSV, the International Studies Association, British Book Awards, Association of University Presses, Frankfurt Book Fair, and FutureBook.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Last spring, the Westchester K-12 team started a program, where each month, one staff member funds a public school project that is trying to secure donations through the DonorsChoose website. Each selection is truly personal, and they have funded classrooms from New York, to California, and cities in between.

YEAR IN REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WESTCHESTER K-12 TEAM

Recently, I asked members of the Westchester K-12 team to share some insights with me about a project or event that they were involved with during this year that was particularly meaningful for them. You can read their thoughtful responses in this blog post.

TIME FOR 2020 VISION

As we get ready to welcome both a new year and decade, we’re looking forward to several exciting events. In January, Westchester K-12’s Walter Henderson, Jr., begins his two-year term on the ETIN (Education Technology Industry Network) Board of Directors, and he will also be representing Westchester K-12 at the BETT Show in London.

We also have plans to exhibit or sponsor at several conferences, including London Book Fair, and the ASUGSV Summit. Visit our Conferences and Events page to learn where we will be and if you’re planning to attend one or more of these shows, be sure to make an appointment to meet us to discuss how we can be your trusted partner in publishing.

We look forward to seeing you in 2020, and talking about the many effective solutions we have to help you with your content development, editorial, and production needs. From everyone here at Westchester Publishing Services, best wishes for a happy holiday season and a wonderful start to the 20s!

Always be up to date with everything that’s happening at Westchester by following us on our LinkedIn pages for Westchester Publishing and Westchester K-12, watching Westchester on YouTube, and subscribing to our blogs for the latest information about us. We would love to hear from you, too! Drop us an email at any time with your questions or to discuss your publication requirements.

 

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

We’re halfway through our 50th year in business, and Westchester Publishing Services has continued to be very productive in several areas! Here are a few of the highlights from this past spring:

The Westchester K-12 Team Welcomes Walter

Walter Henderson, Jr., Senior Supervising Editor, English Language Training In April the Westchester K-12 Product Development team grew when Walter Henderson, Jr., joined the team as Senior Supervising Editor for ELT (English Language Training). Walter has an impressive professional background as a classroom instructor both in the United States and overseas, as well as working with academic institutions and publishers to develop suitable course materials for English Language Learners (ELL). Having Walter and his extensive professional network as a part of Westchester K-12 allows us to provide educational, academic, and professional publishers with a wide range of product offerings, including bilingual and translation content to support the specific needs of English Language Learners in educational and business settings.

 

Westchester Publishing Services UK profiled

Coverage about Westchester’s 50th anniversary continued into the spring, with a comprehensive profile in The Bookseller (may require login to read) about our company and the factors that brought us to further expand the business into the UK market, under the guidance of Managing Director of Westchester UK, Tim Davies. More coverage about Westchester’s anniversary can be found in these articles.

K-12 Catalog

Westchester K-12 Publishing Services Catalog 2019This spring the Westchester K-12 art and design team produced a comprehensive catalog that showcases the capabilities and services the Product Development team is able to provide educational and ed-tech publishers for new curriculum content or product updates. Download your complimentary copy and let us know how the Westchester K-12 team can help you.

Client Portal Nominated for Innovation Award

Stationers Company Shortlisted Innovation Excellence Awards 2019In May, we were excited to learn that our Client Portal had been nominated for the Stationers’ Company 2019 Innovation Excellence Awards in the Customer Experience category. To receive this recognition from the Stationers’ Company – a London-based guild with a more than 600-year history of serving members of the publishing and media industries – was a particularly special acknowledgment of the work our technology team has invested into building a project management platform that serves the specific requirements of publishers. This article provides additional information about the newest features we’ve added to the Client Portal to make it even more user-friendly.

British Book Awards

Westchester was proud to be the sponsor for the Academic, Education, and Professional Publisher of the Year category at this year’s British Book Awards which took place in London on May 13.  The awards program is also known as The Nibbies, and draws a veritable Who’s Who of the British publishing industry to recognize the successes of authors and publishers in the previous year.  Additional information about the Books of the Year shortlists and winners is available here.

Association of University Presses

Tom Hartmann and Susan Baker at the 2019 AUP Conference, DetroitIn mid-June, members of Westchester’s sales and editorial teams traveled to Detroit to attend and exhibit at the Association of University Presses annual conference. We always enjoy meeting with our clients at conferences to discuss the latest developments that are having an impact within the industry, and sharing with publishers who may not be familiar with our product offerings the many ways that Westchester’s services can help them to improve their workflows.

In the Community

In the last edition of the Westchester Wrap-up, I shared with you that the Westchester K-12 team had begun an initiative to make a positive difference one classroom at a time. Learn more about the projects that Anne Riccio and Laura Rolfe selected, and how you can help a classroom in your community.

Summer Reading

If you’re looking for a new title or two to add to your reading list, the Westchester staff have some interesting recommendations that you probably won’t find everywhere else. Check out the variety of fiction and non-fiction titles that we’re planning to read this summer, and let us know what you think!

We’ll be on the road at a few key conferences during the remainder of 2019, and planning is well underway for the trade shows Westchester will be attending and exhibiting at next year. The Conferences and Events page will continue to be updated as we confirm our commitments, so check back regularly to see where you can meet with us in person.

You can also keep up with the latest news from Westchester by following us on LinkedIn, and subscribing to our blogs (Westchester and Westchester K-12). Contact us any time to learn how our editorial, typesetting, design, and project management services can help you reduce production time and expense in your publication program.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Best,

Nicole Tomassi

 

 

Nicole Tomassi
Marketing & Conference Manager

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

Many year in review pieces come out in December, which means anything that happens the last few weeks of the year runs the risk of getting overlooked. That’s why I decided it might be better to wait a bit before sharing some of Westchester’s 2018 highlights with you:

Client Portal Enhancements

We continue to add capabilities to the Client Portal, our project management system that helps put more productivity and time back in the hands of our clients. Take a brief tour of the different ways the Client Portal gives you visibility to your projects while they’re with Westchester.

 

Prepress services whitepaper

Published and distributed by Publishers Weekly, Westchester sponsored this comprehensive report that provides in-depth analysis on why using the right third-party vendor to take care of editorial and composition services for your publication projects not only makes fiscal sense, but also frees up valuable resources within your company to focus on growing your business.

 

Westchester K-12 opens an office

2018 began with the opening of our K-12 division’s office in Dayton, Ohio. It’s an ideal central base for our team, given its proximity to several of our K-12 publisher clients who have offices in the Midwest region, combined with the large pool of educational publishing talent that calls the area home.

Westchester UK opens an office

After careful analysis and the strong reception we received in the market, we officially opened the doors to our Westchester UK office in Stratford upon Avon in September  – an apropos location given that it’s the birthplace of the Bard himself. Tim Davies, who was appointed as our UK Managing Director, has signed on a number of new clients who have been very pleased with the quality and the cost savings they can achieve when we provide editorial and typesetting services on their projects.

Expanded partnership with Dropbox

Our partnership with Dropbox continued to grow stronger throughout 2018. We collaborated on a case study about how we use Dropbox within our workflow processes with clients, and have integrated the Dropbox API into our Client Portal to further improve the UX, and deliver efficiencies for clients using this project management tool. We also had a discussion with George Baier to better understand how Dropbox envisions the ways media and technology will continue to intersect.

K-12 Familiarity

In the October newsletter I shared with you that our Dayton-based K-12 Publishing Services division was working on some special projects in front of the camera. One of the video projects the team focused on is about a graphic novel titled Unfamiliar. Take a look behind the scenes to see how our content and art teams created this graphic novel that addresses the themes of diversity and inclusivity in a format that students can engage with and see themselves in.

We built a new website!

The Dayton team was very busy this fall with a number of projects, including the updated and expanded Westchester K-12 website. Providing a complete overview of all the capabilities our K-12 team can execute on for educational publishers, it’s a great way to learn more about Westchester K-12. Click the image on the right to take a tour, and let us know what you think about it,

Our following grows

The number of people following us on LinkedIn nearly doubled in 2018. It’s a great way to stay in the know about what’s happening at Westchester, along with our website, blog, and other social media channels. If you’re not already connecting with us through at least one of these outlets, you should check them out so you can always be up to date!

On the road again…

The Westchester team was very busy in 2018, attending conferences on both sides of the Atlantic, including London Book Fair, Book Expo, ILA (International Literacy Association) NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Math), AUP (Association of University Publishers), IPG (Independent Publishers Guild), Frankfurt Book Fair, and many more. Be sure to visit our Conferences & Events page to see where we will be this year, and make an appointment to meet with us.

This is a very special year for Westchester Publishing Services, as 2019 marks 50 years since the company was founded. While some of the faces and much of the technology has changed over the past half-century, the one constant is the pride every employee has in delivering excellence on every job they work on for every client. We thank everyone who has been a part of this amazing journey, and are looking forward to celebrating this special milestone throughout the year!