by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer
I had the great fortune to participate virtually on a panel at PubWest 2022 with Rachel Noorda (Director of Book Publishing, Portland State University) and Suzanne Norman (Publishing Program, Simon Fraser University) entitled “Getting your Book into Readers’ Hands”. One of the Intensives at this year’s PubWest conference, we met with a small group of publishers to discuss the industry trends affecting book availability, supply chain, purchasing practices, equity in content, inclusive marketing, and the challenges publishers and readers have getting access to content. Rachel Noorda deserves applause for the effort she invested in hosting and facilitating this panel in-person at the conference while Suzanne and I joined in via Zoom.
The overview Rachel and Suzanne provided on the above topics helped the attendees understand the impacts of global factors on launching new titles, keeping books in print, considerations for Print on Demand, and also how to consider accessibility in your books. As we discussed with the attendees, over 20% of the world’s population has a print disability, and some numbers suggest at least 5-10% of the population has dyslexia. Best practices with fonts, colors, and alt text were covered during our session, and we showed how to crack open an ebook you’ve released and check it using Ace by DAISY and Thorium.
Westchester will be covering supply chain concerns in our next webinar that we’re co-hosting with Publishers Weekly, Publishing Now ’22: Driving Business Forward, on Tuesday, March 22. I hope you can join us for that! My colleagues and I at Westchester would also welcome the chance to speak with you about your thoughts around accessibility and your content. If you want to spend some time reviewing an ebook or two from your list to talk about best practices, the team at Westchester would be happy to have a brief Zoom. Contact us to schedule some time to talk about your editorial, production, and digital needs.
