Westchester Publishing Services

Excellence Delivered

Publishing Ecosystem

digital solutions

headshot of Tyler Careyby Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

The team at US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services are enormously fortunate to work with the hundreds of publishers and content providers around the globe that we support. While we’re always eager to help problem solve our clients’ content, editorial, production, and digital project challenges, we realize that we don’t exist in a bubble. Our portion of the publication life cycle is a crucial piece to ensuring quality in publications and digital content – but plenty of other organizations play key roles beyond us and the publishers we serve. Westchester’s meetings during January and February reinforced this, as our paths crossed with a number of our key partners and organizations that provide further support to our clients.

January saw me meeting with the head of the City of London’s Stationers’ Company during his visit out to meet with North American members in New York City. Tony Mash is a rarity in the world of British livery companies, as he is a dual US/UK citizen, providing leadership to what is essentially an extension of London’s guild system. The Stationers’ Company plays a key role as a leading organization for the content and media industries, hosting frequent in-person and virtual events to let thought leaders in areas of our industries as varied as journalists, pen manufacturers, publishers, and intellectual property attorneys explore topics that affect our industries through an interdisciplinary lens. The North American members will be hosting an upcoming webinar about the transatlantic IP implications of the use of AI within the publishing industry. Additional details and registration information can be found using this link.

To Tony’s credit, by leveraging his US and UK perspectives, he has helped grow the North American contingent of the Company to a few dozen active participants from all areas of publishing and media. More about the Stationers’ Company and how to join can be found on their site.

Six people seated around a circular table topped with menus, plates, silverware, and drinks.
Stationers and colleagues: Roger Rosen, Brian O’Leary, Tyler M. Carey, Michael Healy, Lorraine Shanley, and Tony Mash.

During the above get together, I also had a chance to visit with the Book Industry Study Group’s Executive Director, Brian O’Leary. Brian was excited to discuss this year’s BISG Annual Meeting, being held on April 12th in New York. This event routinely presents excellent panels and discussions around the industry’s pressing issues. Perhaps even more rewarding is the opportunity to meet and network with a wide array of publishing professionals who work in many areas of our industry, allowing us to meet vendors, publishers, and partners with which we might not typically interact on a regular basis. I highly recommend checking out the day’s agenda and signing up.

The late Winter also saw visits Deb Taylor (Westchester’s COO) and I made to our partners at Ingram and Dropbox. Ingram graciously hosted us for a meeting about our ongoing work together to support their publishers and authors with ePub conversion services and other capabilities. As part of our trip out to LaVergne, TN, we had an opportunity to tour Ingram’s Print on Demand facility, seeing the continually improving capabilities available to help publishers and self-published authors take a book from digital files – like the ones we create for our clients – at one end of their facility to shipping printed books off to consumers at the other end of the facility in lightning fast time. LightningSource has earned its moniker, for sure.

Our colleagues at Dropbox hosted me and Deb for an afternoon to talk about Westchester’s use of Dropbox’s API as part of our Client Portal, which makes publishers’ lives super easy by allowing them to transmit files to Westchester, and then track their projects at each stage. Westchester further uses Dropbox Paper for documenting our clients’ style guides and requirements, DocSend for marketing, Dropbox Sign for client contracts, and many more pieces of the Dropbox ecosystem. During our visit, we got to sit in for interviews and discussions that were filmed for an upcoming project. Stay tuned for this short digital film, this Spring.

bearded man wearing glasses, burgundy floral shirt and blue blazer with handkerchief in the breast pocket. Behind him are a film crew preparing to do a video shoot.

Other partners and organizations with shared interests in the publishing industry came up in many more discussions with our clients during the late winter.

  • One legal publisher was seeking out a partner to help with content development on an anniversary publication, so we were able to connect them with the talented Linda Secondari at Studiolo Secondari to explore her team’s writing and photo capabilities, to help them realize their vision for a 4-color tribute book that differs from their typical legal publications.
  • In discussions with another publisher about BISAC codes and THEMA codes, we were able to point them to our friends at the Book Industry Study Group, which provides guidance and tools to support this kind of mapping.
  • Another partner of ours was looking for a speaker on accessibility to help educate their clients about the European Accessibility Act, so we were able to connect them with the leadership at Benetech to arrange a webinar on this topic.
  • And another publisher was looking to repurpose books from their backlist, seeking to scan them, extract text, and chunk that text into a content management system for digital research. Through our own capabilities and those of our scanning partner, we were able to help them scope and execute on this plan.

Westchester is one individual provider within the overall publishing ecosystem, but due to the hundreds of publishers we work with and our shared industry networks, we’re able to help connect our clients with other trusted partners that can help solve problems that overlap or are adjacent to the work that we do.

Contact Us to talk about your publishing challenges, vision, and plans. Westchester is happy to explore our core competencies in content development, editorial, production, and digital. But, if your needs require something outside of our capabilities, we will be quick to say so and recommend a partner who could help. Solving problems and building relationships within the publishing community is what we do best. Reach out today and let us know what problems we can solve for you.

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

In the summer months, the pace typically slows down, allowing an opportunity to relax and enjoy the longer, warmer days summertime offers up. While all of us at Westchester made sure to take some time to spend with friends and family, we were still working hard to make sure all of our publishers’ projects were moving along through the pre-press stages. Here’s a quick wrap-up of what we did this past summer:

Collaborative partnership

Dropbox is one of the members of Westchester’s Partner Network, and their Dropbox Business suite of products helps us to remain connected internally as well as with our freelance resources and client publishers to flow project assets to each other within a secure framework. Check out this video that Dropbox produced over the summer that shows how Dropbox applications help support Westchester’s development initiatives, including our Client Portal.

Westchester profiled in Publishers Weekly

In early August, Westchester Publishing Services was featured in the Publishers Weekly annual Digital Solutions in India issue. In the article, Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey, explains how the company is prepared for continued growth during the next decade, and reflects on the significant milestone of 50 years of serving publishers’ pre-press requirements, along with reaching the fifth anniversary of being a 100% employee-owned company.

Meet Dilip Chacko

Shortly before the Digital Solutions in India article was published, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Dilip Chacko, Founder and Managing Director of our wholly-owned composition facility in Chennai, India. It was an extremely informative discussion encompassing Dilip’s career, his guiding principles, and how his focus on providing high quality applies to client projects as well as the employees who work on them.

Client Portal Update

In the spring edition of the Westchester Wrap-up, we shared how the Client Portal had been shortlisted for the Stationers’ Company Innovation in Excellence Award. Not content to rest on our laurels (or nominations), we are continually adding capabilities to the Client Portal to better serve the requirements our clients have. Last month, we conducted a webinar demonstrating several of the helpful features that make publisher workflows more efficient throughout the pre-press production process.

UK conferences

While July and August are quieter months from a working standpoint, the pace tends to move faster with September’s arrival. Tim Davies, Managing Director of Westchester Publishing Services UK, was particularly busy last month meeting with publishing industry professionals at the ALPSP (The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Conference, and the IPG (Independent Publishers Guild) Autumn Conference. Prior to those conferences, Tim shared some helpful insights for independent publishers in this IPG podcast.

Next Generation Science Standards

If you haven’t been in the classroom for a decade or more, you might be surprised at how much more proficient students are required to be when it comes to understanding scientific concepts. Our STEM Content Director, Dave Bailis, explains how a more effective science curriculum is being implemented around the country to help prepare students for a world that is more reliant on science and technology than in previous generations.

In the Community

Earlier this year, our Westchester K-12 division implemented a program where each month one member of the team selects a project to fund from the thousands that are submitted to DonorsChoose.org by public school teachers. These projects are often for schools where the majority of students are from low-income communities that aren’t able to access much-needed classroom resources through traditional funding avenues. During the summer, STEM Content Director, Dave Bailis, and Director of Creative Services, Mark DaGrossa, each had the opportunity to fulfill a teacher request that was meaningful to them.

Meet with us this fall (and beyond)!

We’re attending and exhibiting at several conferences during the next few months, including Frankfurt Book Fair next week, FutureBook in London this November, and the SIIA Education Business Forum taking place this December in New York City. If you will be attending any of these events, let’s catch up! Make an appointment to connect with us, and be sure to visit our Conferences and Events page where we will be regularly adding information about the conferences Westchester will be attending or exhibiting at in 2020.

You don’t need to wait for a conference to speak with our knowledgeable staff about how our fifty years of experience in providing editorial, composition, and design services can help you produce quality publications while condensing schedules and trimming pre-press expenses. Contact us today to learn how Westchester’s consultative approach can benefit your projects.

 

Annual supplement focuses on digital solutions for publishers

Westchester recently had the opportunity to participate once again in Publishers Weekly’s Digital Solutions in India annual supplement.  This annual issue helps the publishing industry understand the options available for editorial, composition, and digital services – often from vendors based in India.

As the only U.S. employee-owned company in the market focused exclusively on editorial and production services, Westchester is proud of the work we do in both North America and India. Publishers Weekly’s Digital Solutions in India annual supplement covered many aspects of our business, including leading with our perspectives on recent changes in the print and digital space, writing about new units and offerings at Westchester including our Client Portal , highlighting some of our recent, complex projects , and featuring us in their digital marketplace section.

Westchester’s year of expansion

Westchester has undergone significant growth since our appearance in last year’s Digital Solutions supplement, including expansions in our Scholarly publishing, Domestic Full Service,  and India Direct Full Service businesses, the acquisition of Kinetic Publishing Services,  our move into K-12 publishing services, and the launch of our Client Portal.  Contact Us to learn more about our offerings, and explore the various ways we can help you affordably scale your publications program.