Westchester Publishing Services

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Westchester Wrap-up – Spring 2018

The BookSeller

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

Maybe it sped by due to how busy we are here at Westchester, but spring has bloomed into summer. Join me for a quick rewind of some of the key events that occurred during the months of April, May, and June at Westchester Publishing Services:

London Book Fair 2018, and Guildhall

Several members of our management team were in attendance at the 47th Annual London Book Fair in April. The Book Fair provided us with the opportunity to affirm our business growth in the UK, formally launching Westchester Publishing Services UK, with Managing Director, Tim Davies. It was a productive event for us, and our preparations are already underway to return next March.

While in London, our Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey was bestowed the prestigious honor of the Freedom of the City of London by the Stationers’ Guild. A unique benefit granted by this recognition is that he can now legally drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. If you don’t believe me, you can read more about it in this blog post.

An alphabet soup of conferences

In addition to London Book Fair, Westchester staff attended several conferences and trade shows this spring throughout the U.S., including NCTM(National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), CSE (Council of Science Editors), SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing), BEA (BookExpo),  SIIA(Software and Information Industry Association), AUP (Association of University Presses), and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We catch our breath in July and August but as you’ll see from our Conferences page, the pace picks up again in September with Publishers Weekly StarWatch, IPG Autumn Conference, and The Bookseller Children’s Conference.

Publishers Weekly Whitepaper, and Dropbox Partnership

Westchester sponsored production on a whitepaper that was published and distributed by Publishers Weekly in April, with in-depth analysis about how publishers of various sizes and types are able to effectively scale their programs through the use of prepress vendors. Following on this successful venture, Dropbox shared news last month about the work they do with companies in the media and entertainment vertical, including publishers and vendors. We also had an informative Q&A session with George Baier IV, from Dropbox, which provided a useful perspective on this topic.

Westchester continues to grow

By providing quality products and services to our valued clients, our business has grown and flourished over the past several years. To further ensure accounts continue to receive the high level of support we pride ourselves on, we recently welcomed Keri Goldberg to our sales and marketing team in the role of Business Development Manager. Current and prospective clients alike will find Keri’s background in publishing to be helpful as they consider prepress solutions for their particular needs. Westchester is also looking for editorial and production talent as various areas of the company expand, visit our Careers page for more information.

Westchester K-12 Summit

Our K-12 Services team held their annual summit at their Dayton, Ohio headquarters to strategize on how to build on the successes of the past year to achieve continued forward momentum. Having the entire team – who are located throughout the country – come together in one location was beneficial for all involved. It gave our staff an opportunity to discuss the student books, teacher’s guides, assessments, leveled readers, and other projects that the teams have been working on. It also allowed them to explore the expanded capacity and additional service offerings they are now able to provide clients as a result of hiring additional staff earlier in the year.

Summer Reading

Reading isn’t a seasonal pastime, but it seems especially enjoyable to read the latest bestseller or a book from the stack on your nightstand during the somewhat more carefree days of summer. My colleagues and I shared a few of the books we plan to read this summer, along with recommended reading lists in this recent blog post, in case you’re searching for ideas. Happy reading, and enjoy the rest of your summer!

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By Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

Westchester returned to the UK a few weeks ago for meetings with customers, partners, and potential customers, this time with three tentpole events across our trip.

Friend and colleague Lorraine Shanley of Market Partners International was granted her Freedom of the City of London on 30 November, and I was fortunate enough to attend as one of her witnesses at London’s famous Guildhall. The ceremony, which essentially grants honorary citizenship to the City of London to members of guilds and dignitaries, was administered by Laura Miller, a Deputy Clerk of the Chamberlain’s Court City of London. In addition to her role at Guildhall, Miller is also a member of London’s publishing and communications guild, the Stationers’ Company. (More on them in a bit!)  Here’s a photo of Laura Miller, Lorraine Shanley, and the Beedle / Clerk of the Chamberlain’s Court from the ceremony.

On 01 December, I represented Westchester at The Bookseller’s annual FutureBook conference, where we sponsored and exhibited. The conference itself was phenomenal, covering many aspects of innovation and technology in communications and publishing, with tracks for audiobooks, educational content, and the trade industry. The session that stood out the most for me was the ‘What can we learn from the video on demand business?’ panel, which included Molly Barton from Serial Box, Jeff Norton from Awesome Media & Entertainment, and speakers from Yodomo, The Artists Partnership, and Mammoth Screen. I found Serial Box’s model for distribution of serialized titles to be very compelling, and Norton’s comments about how not just younger generations – but our society in general – are once again rapidly embracing digital ingestion of content to be thought-provoking.

The attendees at FutureBook confirmed much of what I’ve been hearing on my last few trips to the UK on behalf of Westchester, as well as in sales meetings I had in the days leading up to FutureBook. There is a keen interest in Westchester’s expanding US employee-owned operation in Connecticut, and the work that we do to support publishers from both our world headquarters in the US, as well as our offices in India. Some UK publishers have readily embraced the Domestic Full Service model used by Harvard University Press and others, through which US Production Editors, and US or UK-based copyeditors, take a developed manuscript and bring it through to final printer and ebook files with our composition operation in Chennai, India. Additionally, other publishers in the UK have expressed an interest in liaising directly with our editorial office in Noida, India, or solely with our composition operation in Chennai, India – as Bloomsbury currently does.

Louise Cameron, who is Bloomsbury’s Group Production Director very generously shared this testimonial with me, regarding the work we’ve done for Bloomsbury over the years:

“Bloomsbury has been using Westchester Publishing Services for Trade typesetting for over a decade – not just because the service is excellent but also because the company has been willing to invest and flex to support Bloomsbury’s evolving XML-based workflows.”

With a spring in my step from the above feedback, and positive decisions from three publishers I met with on this and a previous trip to proceed with working with Westchester, I continued on to my final – and most inspiring – of the industry events which brought me to London for this trip.

The Stationers’ Company is a more than 600-year-old London Guild that helps advance the publishing, media, and communications industries. It is perhaps best known as the organization that tracked copyright on British literary works as far back as Shakespeare’s folios and continued to do so in one form or another until 2000. You can learn more about their work here. There are not many Americans who are selected to be members of the Stationers’ Company; Lorraine Shanley, referenced above, is one of my fellow US residents who has been invited over the years. Very graciously, Oliver Gadsby (CEO, Rowman & Littlefield International) and Tej Sood (Managing Director, Anthem Press) sponsored me for membership, and on 05 December I was accepted in as a Freeman, or member, of the Company. It was truly an honor to join the ranks of publishing and media luminaries who have been members over the centuries, and to attend my Freeman ceremony at Stationers’ Hall, which is located in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  My wife came across the pond to join me for the ceremony (and yes, waiting for her at Heathrow Airport was like the opening scene of Love Actually), and it was a great memory that we will share for years to come.  Our marketing manager decided my ceremony was worthy of a press release, and below is a picture from the ceremony. I am looking forward to participating in many other Stationers’ events and supporting this amazing organization which does so much to help our industry.

Westchester is proud of the growth we are continuing to experience within the UK publishing industry. We already have a number of trips planned for our Staff in the next few months, including:

If you are interested in meeting with us at the above shows – or speaking by phone or Skype in the interim – please Contact Us to arrange a conversation about your publishing program and the many ways that we can help you.

This is my final blog post of 2017, so I will close by wishing you the happiest of holidays, and to be on the look-out for more Travels with Tyler posts in the coming year.

Westchester was proud to sponsor The Bookseller’s Children’s Conference which took place at the Barbican Centre in London, on 26 September. CEO Dennis Pistone and I attended and staffed our stand at the conference, which attracted over 350 children’s publishing figures.

The state of the publishing industry itself was a major focus of the opening sessions. Staff from The Bookseller shared stats about the growth of juvenile trade and picture books as compared to the industry as a whole, pointing to the overall health of children’s publishing — and its role as a revenue generator for publishers that release titles in different genres and markets. Much time was spent on the disproportionate percentage of sales that the J.K. Rowlings and David Walliamses of the world generate within this space, influencing numbers in the UK.  Publishing staff from DK, Chicken House, Hachette, Carlton Publishing, Penguin Random House, Lantana Publishing, Little Tiger Group, and other publishers and vendors shared their insights on aspects of the industry from marketing to digital to reaching young readers, and more. More details about the speakers and their backgrounds can be found here.

From a professional standpoint, the sessions on the industry were very helpful for me.  Personally, as a reader and bookstore aficionado, I was fascinated with the presentations by booksellers including Tamara Macfarlane from Tales on Moon Lane, Phil Henderson from supermarket chain ASDA, and Daphne Lao Tonge from book box Illumicrate. Each talked about different approaches for selling books into the children’s markets, from author events to displays to monthly delivery boxes. Many of these speakers also reinforced the need for engaging with children via literacy programs and charities to help ensure educational opportunities for those who may be disadvantaged.

Dennis and I had a busy schedule while in the UK, where we had the opportunity to meet with a long list of publishers who serve many different markets, and talk with them about their needs. Our offerings that include US-based, UK-based, and India-based employee and freelance resources for tasks like pre-edits, project management, copyediting, design, composition, and digital services resonated strongly, with some publishers taking steps to move different types of projects to us. We know many of our clients and prospects in the UK prefer to work directly with our or other vendor’s India-based operations, however we were pleasantly surprised to see the high level of interest expressed in the work we do from the States for project management, customer service, copyediting, design, composition page checks, proofreading, and more.

Westchester will be back in the UK for the FutureBook Conference held on 1 December at 155 Bishopsgate, London.  The conference program is now live, and speakers are continually being added. With a roster which includes people from the worlds of traditional publishing, audiobooks, and EdTech firms among others, it promises to be a very informative day.

I hope you’ll be able to join us at FutureBook to hear the insights of panelists on the future of our industry and technology, as well as meet us at our stand. Not able to attend? No problem, you can Contact Us to schedule a meeting in the days before or after the conference.  We look forward to exploring ways we can help you trim your costs, condense your schedules, and ensure the quality of your print and digital publications.

 

Westchester Publishing Services Sponsoring The Bookseller Conferences

By Guest Blogger – Tyler M. Carey

Westchester Publishing Services continues to grow its presence in the U.K. market, and has a tremendous amount of interest from U.K.-based publishers at this time. I believe one of the reasons why is because we have been attending more industry trade shows and conferences relevant to the U.K. trade and scholarly markets, including London Book Fair in March. The energetic atmosphere along with the positive reception we received while we were there confirmed our belief that we need to be at more conferences and trade shows in the U.K.

I’m excited to announce Westchester Publishing Services is teaming up with The Bookseller – London’s venerable publication for the publishing industry – for two important conferences during the second half of 2017. We are proud to be a sponsor of both The Bookseller Children’s Conference, taking place 26 September, as well as the FutureBook digital publishing conference, being held on 1 December.

The opportunity to be a significant part of these two conferences was one we simply couldn’t pass up.   We are looking forward to meeting many dynamic publishing professionals at both of these conferences, learning more about the editorial and production challenges publishers are encountering, and helping them to identify beneficial solutions.

If you are planning to attend either of these shows, or would be interested in meeting with members of the Westchester team in England during the dates surrounding these shows, we would love to meet with you! Please contact me to schedule an appointment, at: tyler.carey@westchesterpubsvcs.com or call me at: +1 203 658 6581.