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Travels with Tyler (and Tim!)

Tim Davies

IPG Spring Conference, and gearing up for the London Book Fair

By Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

IPG’s annual Spring Conference, held at the Crowne Plaza Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire, is an exceptionally well-organized event welcoming small-to-mid-sized publishers for an intensive two days of sessions and networking, to help address the pressures distinct to publishers of this size. The grounds of the Crowne Plaza are beautiful, looking a bit like a Downton Abbey manor house placed in the midst of a sylvan Tolkien tale.

There are truly few better places to have a conference!  A particular benefit is that it’s removed from the London trade publishing world, bringing Great Britain’s publishers to an area outside the city, thoughtfully disconnecting them from the day-to-day distractions that can pop up when you’re just a quick tube ride away from the office, or the sense of obligation to play tourist should you find yourself in London having come from a place far away.

Westchester’s Interim Director, UK – Tim Davies – and I were excited to exhibit at the conference. Tim came on board just prior to the conference, providing a great opportunity for him to meet with some of our existing clients as well as talk with other publishers in the industry about their current workflows for editorial and production on their publications. Tim has a longstanding history within the IPG and had been invited to host a very well received workshop with smaller publishers about managing growth and operations. He has also dived in to his new role at Westchester and has provided wise guidance on the resources we will continue to expand to support the particular needs of British publishers.

For Westchester overall, finally getting to attend an IPG event was very valuable. The sessions ranged from the topical (the BBC’s Amol Rajan discussing the trends of fake news and the trust in content), to the geopolitical (MP Ken Clarke providing a perspective on Brexit for the publishing industry), to specific publishing topics (workshops, presentations, GDPR and AI sessions, and a keynote by innovative designer Alan Moore). The feedback for IPG following the conference was very positive. You can read their post-conference wrap up here, which is like a mini-summary for those who missed it.

The footprint of IPG’s membership aligns quite closely with the size of clients Westchester typically supports, especially those that are in growth mode and are at the point where they need to evaluate the choice of hiring on a vendor to help support growth, or hiring on more staff and having enough work to keep them constantly busy.  Within the coming weeks, a white paper sponsored by Westchester Publishing Services will be released exploring that idea in greater detail.  Make sure you subscribe to this blog to stay up to date on that. While that paper has been in production for a while it was really valuable to revalidate that position in discussions with many publishers that are approaching that tipping point of growth.

In closing, the IPG conference also served as a great opportunity to meet with several of Great Britain’s independent publishers in advance of attending the forthcoming London Book Fair. It helped us to reaffirm the services that Westchester provides are in alignment with their requirements as we continue to expand our support for publishers in this important market.

Are you headed to LBF? You can find Westchester on Stand 6B107b.  Contact Us to arrange an appointment at the Fair, or just come by our Stand to meet some of our management team and discuss your particular publications needs.

 

Tim Davies, ALPSP UP Redux, Stationers’ Company – and more

By Tyler M. Carey – Chief Revenue Officer

Sign outside The British Library, site of the 2018 ALPSP UP Redux Conference

Westchester’s year is off to a great start, especially with the growth of our work in the UK market. As you may have seen a couple of weeks ago, we have brought on Tim Davies, formerly of The History Press and Oxford University Press, to help us grow our business in the UK.  Tim’s expertise running publishing companies, and his previous experience with American firms such as Baker & Taylor and Author Solutions has him uniquely positioned to help Westchester not just grow our client base, but also to identify any areas where we should grow. He is currently actively engaged in expanding our bench of copyeditors in Great Britain to help us stay ahead of the curve in our copyediting capacity as we grow.  And boy, are we glad Tim is doing that! At ALPSP’s UP Redux conference, there was a tremendous level of interest from the UK’s university presses about the work that Westchester does with many of their peers in the US, as well as more and more work with UK-based publishers.

Our friends at UCL Press hosted the recent ALPSP UP Redux, which was a well programmed conference for the university press and academic publishing spaces. The show had an international feel as a result of old friends from the States including Duke University Press and The MIT Press sending staff, giving the conference a set of contrasts to draw from for sessions and discussion. The US presses that came gave helpful, proven insights on where the US university press space has been and where it’s going; The MIT Press’ Amy Brand’s Keynote was particularly effective in exploring these areas. Timothy Wright (Edinburgh University Press), David Prosser (RLUK) and his panel, and Bloomsbury’s Richard Charkin also contributed quite a lot of perspective about where academic, university press, and library programmes have been headed. Andy Redman from Oxford also provided a very practical walkthrough of how a larger university press has embraced XML-first production to handle its large legal list, tying in nicely with the later panel on “buy vs. build” regarding tech platforms.

From the UK perspective, the use of Open Access as a mechanism to help grow presses rapidly was covered by UCL Press and other UK based presses, as well as JSTOR’s Frank Smith who added to the global perspective by talking about how Open Access has helped put scholarly content into the hands of scholars and consumers in emerging markets. There was some debate on this topic, but based on the successes of smaller start-up university presses in the UK – as well as those like UCL Press that have experienced growth fueled by open access – it was impossible to challenge the use of Open Access as a way to launch a program. The debate did continue though, as it pertains to the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) position that all UK monographs need to become open access in the near future. You can read more about publishers’ concerns regarding HEFCE’s stance in this article by The Bookseller.

Another highlight for me was once again visiting Stationers’ Hall for the New Members evening at The Stationers’ Company. While I’m still very much a new recruit myself, it was great to speak with other publishing professionals who are interested in joining the Company, as well as seeing old friends who have been members for years. Of special focus during the evening’s open presentation was a focus on the Stationers’ Academy and other charitable programmes run by the Company. It was inspirational to hear members speak of the mentoring work they do to help children better navigate their education and early professional development. There is truly a commitment at the Company to help others, while also ensuring that publishing continues to remain a viable path for young graduates, keeping up the Company’s more than 600 years’ worth of work growing the industry.

During the remainder of my trip to London, Tim and I took the opportunity to meet with existing partners. We also took time to plan for the upcoming IPG Spring Conference (if you haven’t registered yet, mention Westchester when you do) and the London Book Fair.  Westchester will have stands at both conferences and we’re eager to talk about all the great work we are doing with publishers in the US, and increasingly in the UK and Europe.  Please contact us to arrange a meeting to discuss your publications program and ways we can help.