Westchester Publishing Services

Excellence Delivered

Westchester 2018 Year in Review

Client Portal

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!

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.

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.

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.

by Michael Jon Jensen – Director of Technology

Michael Jon Jensen, and the software development team at Westchester’s Chennai office

I recently returned from my third visit to our offices in Chennai, India. The first trip seven months ago was an adventure and a revelation; the second, three months ago, was a return for strategic development. This most recent trip was a reunion with colleagues who I now consider friends, to refine our mutual long-term plans.

My first ever trip to India, in late April of 2017 — was a cultural whirlwind. The intersection between an ancient civilization, the impacts of a few hundred years of colonization, and 21st-century modernity means that Chennai lives all of them simultaneously. Their day-to-day traffic manifests that complex intersection: handcarts, bikecarts, scooters, motorcycles, three-wheelers, autos, small trucks, panel vans, and big trucks interweave constantly, usually gracefully (if terrifyingly hair-raisingly), blithely ignoring lane markings and traffic signs. I tried to put my foot through the floor so often that my right calf ached at the end of the first few commutes.

During that first visit to our Chennai offices, I discovered a depth of skill and capability that I’d only halfway understood. I found a desirable Indian workplace comprised of good jobs which were well-staffed, and a production workflow focused on quality-control at every stage, across the board.

I shouldn’t say I was “surprised” by anything I saw in our Chennai offices on that first trip. Before joining Westchester Publishing Services, I’d done due diligence by talking with a lot of publishers I knew to confirm their reputation before signing on, and to be sure that their Indian staff were well treated. I heard nothing but support.

What I saw on that first trip exceeded my expectations, and delighted me. I also reveled in the reality that at the Chennai offices we have our own software development team, who were already deeply knowledgeable about data transformations, typesetting nuances, as well as XML, EPUB, and textual presentations. These are things I’ve done and loved my whole career, and I realized that we could insource a lot of development, building internal strength, and creating some amazing tools together to serve our clients’ needs, and to expand what’s possible behind the scenes.

My job just got more exciting at that point.

My second trip, in August of 2017, was a solid week of engagement, bookended each day by that brief, routine commute in Chennai’s hair-raising traffic. That time, I complimented myself on only freaking out about the traffic once or twice per commute, such as when a family of five on a motorcycle swerved successfully around the three people on a scooter who were swerving around a slow-moving bicycle cart.

During that second visit, Elan and Christober (Development Chief and Head Architect, respectively) and I strategized out the next 18-24 months. From immediate priorities to stretch goals, we laid out what might be achieved given our existing strengths and client needs, and given our capabilities. Such fun, imagining what we could build. What kinds of hires would we want to make to achieve specific goals? What steps should we take now, to enable certain kinds of analysis a year from now?

Regarding this most recent third trip, begun when the January winter storm began?  Apart from my luggage finally arriving the day of my departure from India (a story for another day), it was sheer delight.  I was returning to meet with friends, people I had worked with to devise some radical improvements of already-streamlined production services, and to re-envision data infrastructure. Only geeks can get excited talking about the user interfaces for our backend workflows, which will also feed data to our client-facing Portal. And we were trans-Atlantic geeks, to be sure.

We’re already working out how to design a “scholarly EPUB” format optimally suited for scholars; refine image and textual analysis tools to flag possible problems like rivers, or stacks, or a disproportionate degree of “feathering”; identify the richest 25% of the document’s content; auto-categorize publications, via multiple frameworks (Amazon, BISAC, LC, etc.); identify most-related titles within a publisher’s WPS ouvre; and on and on.

Of course, we work on this stuff together daily from across the ocean, via Skype, phone, and email. But there’s nothing like being in the same room with really smart developers, brainstorming ways to enhance the quality, the beauty, the processes, and the value of the work we produce.

Best of all, during this visit’s daily commute, I didn’t slam on my “virtual brake” at all. I can’t say I was calm, but clearly, some part of me had become acculturated to Chennai’s traffic.

On my next visit to Chennai, we’ll hammer out the strategic structural necessities, and the required scripted processes to enable our next leap forward.

I can’t wait for that next trip!

– Michael