Westchester Publishing Services

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The Year of Working Remotely: How Westchester Supports our Clients

Work from home

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

As we reach the anniversary of the beginning of the Pandemic “Lockdown” back in March 2020, two Washington Post articles caught my attention. One about the hindsight that can now be applied to the tragic impact of the COVID-19 virus on the world, which was far greater than any of us could have anticipated, and another about how conferences and events are trying to adapt to restart in-person industry meetings this year as hope around vaccines and recovery begins to take hold.  It was exactly a year ago that Westchester temporarily closed its Danbury location, hoping to have staff return expediently once it was safe.  A year on, nearly all of us are continuing to work from home, with only select staff going into the office as needed to tend to billing and postal needs.  As vaccine distribution improves, we look forward to more formally reopening our operations in Danbury and Dayton in the States, Stratford upon Avon in the UK, and Noida and Chennai in India.

The pandemic quickly impacted all of us and the ways we engaged with our clients to support them evolved rapidly.  We realized that our history and expertise working distributed, globally, could help many of our clients who were newer to navigating the distributed or “work-from-home” model. Our marketing team quickly brought together clients and industry figures for a webinar to talk through their approaches to the challenges that hit us all immediately. On our website, we set up a Work from Home resources page, curating articles and other useful information to help people adapt to this new way of working.

Many of our clients were experiencing similar challenges within their operations, prompting us to create video content to address those issues, including:

You can find all of these and more video content on the Westchester YouTube channel.

We’re all continuing to consider what’s next for the publishing industry. On April 6th, Westchester will again partner with Publishers Weekly for the industry thought leader webinar, “Publishing Now ’21: Looking Forward”, featuring insights from Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks, Cathy Felgar from Princeton University Press, Lorraine Shanley of MPI, and Tom Chalmers of Legend Times.  I invite you and your colleagues to join us for this free webinar, and engage with these publishing experts on questions about all aspects of the industry and supply chain that are affecting you.

Westchester remains committed to helping the Publishing Industry with its changing editorial and production needs, and continues to pivot and address individual workflow needs for our clients, to help each client in their areas of greatest need. Stay connected with us through our webinars, video content, and our recently launched Westchester Words podcast, featuring short, impactful conversations on topics specific to the publishing industry. Contact Us to discuss your challenges, and how Westchester can help you.

As 2020 comes to a close, and we all look forward to the news of a pandemic vaccine with hope and relief, the team at Westchester Publishing Services is grateful for the health and spirit of our staff and customers.

Though few of us could have foreseen how publishing would be transformed, almost none would be surprised at the resiliency the industry showed by adapting, sharing best practices, and identifying solutions to meet the needs of our customers.

As many trade shows and conferences were cancelled or went virtual, Westchester understood the importance of staying connected with the publishing community, at least digitally. Below, we look back on 2020 to see how Westchester and our customers adapted to all the changes this year brought.

In early March, Westchester made the decision to transition the majority of our employees to a Work from Home model. On March 19, we hosted a session with panelists from various areas of publishing to share how their companies and staff were adjusting, and providing actionable ideas to help the transition process go more smoothly. Additionally, we cultivated this resources page for our new reality.

In July, we teamed up with Publishers Weekly to present a panel discussion about the state of the industry, along with the challenges and opportunities for companies in the publishing supply chain to consider during the crucial second half of the year. In addition to the webinar, PW produced a summary article, and we made multiple resources from the webinar available to access on our website.

In September, Tyler M. Carey, Westchester’s Chief Revenue Officer, participated in a BISG panel discussion led by Brian O’Leary about how publishers can identify inefficiencies in publishing workflows and solutions they can implement to improve effectiveness (requires free registration).

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Westchester released several case studies this year, sharing the solutions we provide for publishers to streamline their workflow and perform tasks that they may not have previously considered engaging a services firm to handle. You can download the convenient checklist shown here to help you identify ways we are able to improve your workflow.
We were also featured in the Publishers Weekly Digital in India issue about how our expanded production capacity and robust Client Portal (provided at no cost to clients) helped clients efficiently manage their editorial and composition jobs throughout the year.

Until we are able to safely return to in-person events, Westchester looks forward to connecting with you virtually through webinars and other content forms. We’re a convenient phone call or Zoom session away to help you address your workflow challenges. Get in touch with us, and let us know how we can become your trusted partner in publishing in the year ahead.

 

Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

Join Westchester Publishing Services and Publishers Weekly for a webinar on Wednesday, July 8, about the changing modes of work, book production, printing, and distribution. Publishing Now: Day to Day Challenges & Solutions, moderated by Jim Milliot, Editor in Chief of Publishers Weekly, will explore the impact on editorial, production, and manufacturing workflows and options, with the following panelists:

  • Cathy Felgar, Publishing Operations Director, Princeton University Press. Cathy has operations, editorial production, manufacturing, and systems implementation experience in various positions with Macmillan, Columbia University Press, HarperCollins, and Cambridge University Press.
  • Brian O’Leary, Executive Director, Book Industry Study Group. Helping to resolve problems that impact two or more parts of the publishing supply chain, BISG membership represents the entire publishing industry, from publishers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and libraries to printers, suppliers, service providers and more.
  • Marina Padakis Lowry, Senior Managing Editor, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media group. Marina has more than 20 years’ experience with culinary, lifestyle, reference, and young readers’ books, and has held positions at several publishers, including HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Oxford University Press UK, and Scholastic.
  • Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Content Acquisition, Ingram Content Group. Kelly manages publisher relations for North America, which includes Lightning Source print on demand and CoreSource digital asset management and distribution. Prior to joining Ingram, he served as Vice President of Publishing Services at Bowker, and also served 10 years as a publisher and six years in association work.

Register now to attend this engaging review of our industry’s continuing adaptation to world events.

I also invite you to look over our handy checklist page. Even if you feel you know the full extent of Westchester’s capabilities, this list of editorial and production tasks that we help your peers with may give you new ideas about ways we can help you manage some of the bottlenecks you’re trying to deal with while many of us are working from home.

Get in touch to talk with us about how we can help streamline your pre-press processes.

Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

Like so many of you reading this, in mid-March the entire staff at Westchester’s offices around the world transitioned to a work from home setup. For most of our team, this was a significant change from the office environment we’re accustomed to and for some of us, there was the added factor of guiding our children through establishing their own routine so they could continue their education remotely.

We also kept our clients informed as we were making this necessary transition, detailing the steps we were taking and to making sure the changes would have minimal to no impact on the jobs we were working on for them.

Additionally, we knew how important it is for everyone within our team to maintain the social connections we have as colleagues while we are physically dispersed.  To address this, along with the department meetings each manager conducts with their individual reports, we periodically gather together as a large group for a virtual Happy Hour. We use this time both as an opportunity to get caught up on what is happening around the company as well as have some virtual water cooler talks that help our mental well-being by sharing our experiences about what working from home is really like. Based on this article from Society for Human Resource Management, we’re on to something here!

 

 

 

 

 

Many of us have shared stories about our newest officemates during these Happy Hour gatherings. We’ve discovered some are enthusiastically jumping into their new roles, while some are lazy slackers that lay around sleeping all day. A few are even downright cattish, while others just bark out their demands. We’ve discussed appropriate remediation strategies to encourage better behavior, but these co-workers sure have a mind of their own! Thankfully, some are thrilled that we almost never leave but a few seem to be annoyed that we are around pretty much all the time. Maybe we just need to give them a little more time to understand our work habits.

 

Shifting to a way of life that is keeping us at home nearly all the time has meant different things for everyone, including spending more time with family, taking up new activities or renewing hobbies that had been forgotten due to competing demands for limited free time. Some of us are doing a really great job of maintaining our distance while communing with nature, too.

Tyler Carey Bookmask

We are also trying to help out our industry by participating in the Publishers Weekly Books Are Essential campaign and you can join in, too. Simply post a picture with a book up to your face like a facemask, then using the hashtag #Booksareessential, tag Publishers Weekly on Instagram at @pwpics, Twitter at @publisherswkly, or Facebook at @Publishers Weekly. Pictures can also be submitted to PW’s Picture of the Day portal, for potential inclusion in the magazine or newsletters. Our Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler Carey, shows us his bookmask in the picture to the left.

What are some of the ways you and your team are staying connected while you are in multiple locations? Send us a message and let us know!