Westchester is investing in AI with a focus on how it can enhance the services it provides to clients. “We are committed to several guiding principles,” says company president Deb Taylor. “Security is an obvious one. But we know it needs to be clearly stated that for any service that uses AI, we will ensure the security of our client’s IP. Then there is choice. We recognize that not every publisher can or will embrace AI and that we will meet each client where they are. The choice, therefore, will be AI, AI plus human, or no AI at all.”
Next is transparency. “For those services that may have an AI option,” Taylor says, “we will be transparent in sharing the details of the platform and model(s) that will be used.”
Westchester is not wedded to one platform or one model, she says. “We want to make sure that we thoroughly test and provide options, where applicable, that will generate the best results for our clients.”
Meanwhile, publishers are discovering trend lines across their backlists and finding ways to repurpose, and further monetize, that content. “This is perhaps due to the backlist analysis inherent in making their list accessible in compliance with EAA,” Tyler Carey, chief revenue officer, says. “We have seen clients taking steps to rerelease books in newer, premium editions, and even looking at ways to basically build a library out of their content so that they can release collected editions. This model has been used in academic publishing for years. W. W. Norton, for instance, has built a digital library of reference titles, which lets them support different use cases for that content. This can work well for publishers with lots of related content in their lists.”
Aside from AI development and new workflows to help clients with speed to market, Westchester has also better realigned its teams, including the creation of its Central Services group. “This group consists of specialists who can support any of our product lines with art, design, SME recruiting, evaluation and onboarding, as well as QA,” Taylor says. “This includes designing custom workflows and platform expertise, too. Such expertise was previously siloed throughout Westchester.”
Taylor’s team has continued to expand its partnerships and capabilities, including recently gaining its Avallain certification, which is the ELT platform adopted by a large number of education publishers. “By putting this team together,” she says, “Westchester is now better positioned to provide proven best practices for our clients across any of our product lines.”
