Cspan where history unfolds daily. 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies it is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. [inaudible] authors would take it as a books that no new york publisher would publish them and they would come out as best sellers. One of which my favor of that was trend is real divorce editorial privilege about senator kennedy and how he drowned that girl and its the truth about leo devore got one of the cousins to talk to him and he was kicked off that he was coming out at the river and could you say you were driving so years later leo to more guesses on the record and no new york publisher would publish it but they publish it 27 weeks of the new york popular sellers list and more recently there was a patriotic book of our fathers that was not flexible mothers and parties of the new york publishers turned down but [inaudible]. Great things are going now and this hysteria im not sure if youre still reading the signs but its every day about somehow trump they think russia was behind his election on a Facebook Page and if you visited america in 2016 you would notice that outside of the major cities you couldnt drive a mile without seeing a 6foot tall trumpet sign but im sure that little Facebook Page. [laughter] it was more hysterical and ive lived through the mccarthy era and the nixon era and ive written about them and i think this is worse than even that. They do get control of the internet we could be right rat back to [inaudible] being the right source. Stay on their mailing list and remember there is a reason [inaudible] is the most dangerous man in america. Heres to [inaudible]. [cheering and applause] regular publishing recently celebrated their 70th anniversary. Book tv visited their offices in washington dc to talk with many of the people responsible for bringing their books to publication. Margie ross, what do they publish . Guest be published bestselling books but probably we publish books for conservative readers and we publish books on Current Events and politics and culture but we also do a lot more than just political books now and we publish history books and fiction and kids books and we have a new line called regnery state readers. Host you publish books for conservative audience. Guest that has always been the case from the very beginning. Henry regnery who started the company 70 years ago this year was dedicated to publishing books for conservative readers and at the time and for a long time he was one of the only, if not only, but publisher was friendly to conservative authors and conservative ideas. He started off publishing from the Central Books of the modern conservative movement and the very early years of Regnery Publishing we published William Buckley god and man at yale and special kirks the conservative mind and we published witness by Whittaker Chambers and all of those books are still in print today and we still sell them today. Host does that Say Something about the Publishing Industry that those books werent being published necessarily. Guest it definitely does. Henry regnery recognize that and saw an opportunity in the marketplace and back then he did what we still do today which is we publish books because we publish conservative books because their great business but we also publish them because they are part of our mission. Host margie ross, who are some of the authors you published in some of the contemporary others . Guest we publish a lot of the leading lights in the conservative movement. They include dinesh desousa, trent eight, at klein, and a whole host of others. Host if you put in trade book out does it sell automatically because her name is on it . Guest it certainly helped that her name is on it but if you i cant tell you that any book is a guaranteed success. Anymore i think that is a book the Book Business has changed over the past 15 or 20 years and a lot more of the business has gone online, of course and people are buying online and so you lose the opportunity to visualize those books and publicize those books physically and you lose the sense of discovery that people have bad for generations going into a bookstore and finding a book that they didnt know existed finding an author that they didnt know about before and that has been a big change in our industry and its put, frankly, more pressure on publishers to come up with interesting and creative ways to help people know that a book exists when there isnt a celebrity author attached to it. Host how do you market a book over the last ten or 15 years . Guest regnery has become the leader in using earned media to sell books. And by that i mean we think that organically from the very beginning of a book life about how that book is going to become part of the news cycle is how the theme of the book and the topics and issues in the book will be connected with what is happening in the news so we have a crystal ball and we look and seriously, we try to anticipate what the big concerns will be within our marketplace and what will be driving the news for our market and how our books in our authors can be relevant to that. We use earned media, whether tv or conservative talk radio or certainly online Media Outlets to really drive the conversation and to try to make our books and authors for that conversation. Host doesnt matter which party is in power for sales . Guest that is a great question. For a very long time we said what is bad for america is good for regnery and by that we meant when liberals were in power that might not be good for the future of the country is great for selling conservative books. Certainly, when the Opposition Party is in power conservatives become very engaged and very concerned about the future of america and thats a terrific landscape for selling conservative books. Weve also found over the past certainly the past couple of years that there is so much debate and disagreement and concern across the Political Landscape with what is happening in washington that conservative books are selling very well even with a republican in the white house and i think that is because people are genuinely concerned about the direction of the country and they are concerned about the divisiveness within the country and they are looking for an explanation for what is going on and what direction were going and how the country for conservatives can return to some of the Bedrock Foundation principles that conservatives think are important to keep this country on the right track. We spoke with Harry Crocker who is responsible for acquiring books. How do you acquire a book and how do you acquire an author . Guest the traditional way is waiting for agents to come up with proposals but a lot of what we do here is try to project what will be in the news. The best book for some of the best books we do our books that i think or where we think [inaudible]. This author on this topic that will be dynamite and so we try to make those marriages happen so will cut them an idea and put the two together. And that has been our go to strategy. Not waiting on the agent but going out and being actively pursuing others. Host ann coulter on immigration, is that one you all put together . Guest i think she came to us that. There are those that we take to the author and the author makes it their own. So i will call someone up and say what you think about ask and they will say what about subject x minus two and well talk it through and eventually it works out but any ideas at regnery become the others i dish and a drink idea. I can only help her make his case the best we can. Host someone whos published several times is edward klein. Have conversation with mr. Klein how does it go . Guest ed is an interesting case. Ed is a reporter so what we can do is say can you find this out and try to see if we can get the sources to go. It out for information that is newsworthy. But a lot of this like hes a trail on this and should i pursue this and so its a giveandtake that. Host when you acquire a book how long between the initial conversation until that book is on the bookshelf . Guest that varies a lot. I will say one thing that is sets us apart from other publishers is because they are very short incubation times and intent on the reporting is being done but when youre doing a reporters book you cant sit on the story for too long so we could be signing a book in a matter of lets go back and the book on the shelf your shipping the books on trucks and takes four weeks to get coasttocoast and you got the books and essentially your shot two months already when you go to the book so we have had anyone from turning a book out in a week matter of days to more leisure and traditional publishing schedules. From conception to on the shelves matter of months and in rare cases weeks. Host have you started acquiring books for the fall of 2018 . Guest oh yeah, sure. The trade much papers is to have long lead times. They dont like what we call drop ins and the things we do a lot of because there are things you dont know about in the nos of filby news september 2018. We can guess it will have better guess in april so those who drop in you have to have a hot topic or hot author because the parties sold their shelf space bar had a time so they much prefer books on six months and they want to have a good handle of what will be coming to the store so we press the issue a lot we are a foreign in the side of square schedules. Host Harry Crocker, one of the National Conversation us that is going on about Sexual Assault. Is that something you keep an eye on and think we have this author et cetera . Guest that is interesting because they are topics that are important and they get lots of news but there is not the same topics that sell books. In a case like this if you did a book on Harvey Weinstein you could probably sell a lot of those but thats not necessarily our sort of book. Our books are newsy but there also they tend to be more political and tend to be more based on what is happening in washington but Sexual Assault is really not one of our big politics. Host capitol hill, tax reform, another guest thats another good topic where no one cares about reading a book on tax reform but even serious books and if you do a book about why we should have to pay a flat tax you can do an instant cheap paperback get those out to people but our bread and butter are hardcover big 495 plus price point and theres not a big market for that. What will drive book sales for us is if were at a restaurant and youre telling me about a book to be published because there are some good stories and it that youre bursting to tell me and everybody else. That is what works for us. Hot button, political issues that you want to read about it no more about in the book is presented well enough that you want to go talk to friends about it. Not many people have conversations about tax policy over dinner one a little esoteric but George Gilder has britain about virtual poignant and you can learn a lot about. Guest hes also an author and hes an interesting case. Hes not we call him a Paradigm Center books and these are books that you actually do enjoy you enjoy them on a different level in a different way because they help you understand the world. George gilder is a great example of that. Another one . Stein was much more entertaining and witty and will snap you like a comic but his books are big pink books to and very serious at the same time. Those are rewarding books to do because its one thing to have a book we can have nice stories to tell and scandalous stories and those are great but its great to publish that alters your perception of what actually happening helps you see it more precisely, i should say. You start pizza together and think oh, now i get it now understand and that is why the country is going this way or people are behaving this way. Those are important books that last one marty ross, have you published an explanation of donald trump . We published a number of books that relate in many different ways to donald trump including publishing a book by donald trump itself. We pushed the book back in 2011 called time to get tough which was by donald trump so that was fun and important book and it was a book that allowed him to talk about his vision for america and what was going wrong in the country when he flirted with the idea of running in the last president ial cycle and decided ultimately not to run so we published books by donald trump and we published books about donald trump and during the 2016 election published a important book by phyllis [inaudible], her last book called the conservative case for trump and that played a role in helping him get elected by explaining to people who might have been wondering is he a real conservative and explains from someone who has to say that he is and heres the reason why its a point for us to vote for him. Throughout 2017 weve been publishing books that talk about different aspects of the Trump Administration and what not only what he stands for but also all the forces arrayed against him including one of her most recent books a book by ed klein called all out war, the plot to destroy donald trump. Host what you consider to be the best seller. Guest i consider a bestseller to be a book that hits the Publishers Weekly bestseller list and that is a National Bestseller list based on book span data and it captures the books that are selling the most copies in every given week across the country. Host how many units . Guest well, others asked me that all the time and it is a moving target and its all relative. At any given week you can get onto that list with as few as few or thousand books in a busy season such as the lead up to the Holiday Season and it can take 15000 copies to get on the list so it depends on the competition in a given week and publishers certainly take that into account when we plan out when we wrote release them sometimes you think the people youre better off releasing a book in april when there are fewer books vying for those top spots on the bestseller list. Host and some of the covers looking at your pics of some state National Bestseller and some say New York Times bestseller and why the difference . Guest you may know that we made a big decision here at regnery earlier this year to stop using the New York Times bestseller moniker as a promotion vehicle and as a way to track best seller success and we did that because we were seeing that the New York Times bestseller list recently did not reflect what really was selling the best in the country and whether that is a liberal bias or simply in outdated means of tracking sales we felt repeatedly we saw that the book there was selling the most copies in a given week Cross Country werent ending up on the top of the New York Times list and frankly, that was especially true when those books for conservative books. Whether it was a regnery book published by someone else on time and again conservative books would outsell liberal books or books from authors would outsell those books when we looked at the Nielsen Bookscan data and yet they would all somehow mysteriously lower on the New York Times bestseller list and we decided that was not reflective of going on and so we made the announcement in a big change that we were going to use Publishers Weekly bestseller list going forward. Host had you brought this attention to the New York Times prior . Guest we had on a number of occasions not just this year but this years and their response has been and has always been we have a proprietary formula and system for calculating this list so basically its a secret how they do it and thats a hard thing to argue with and its certainly not a transparent way of calculating data or reporting on data and its not effective anymore one was a good promotional tool to put out on the book . To yes, quickly, it was because i think most people the average reader who is not following this controversy day to day didnt know but the best New York Times bestseller list was no longer in sync with the actual bestselling book in the country and people inside the industry have frankly complained about it for a long time and have known that this is an issue and certainly conservatives have talk about this for years and feel like they had been treated unfairly but the average reader would be at and see the New York Times best seller and that meant National Bestseller so that is really the reason to use that for so many years. Certainly, plenty of our books have gotten onto the New York Times bestseller and plenty have been number one on the new york best seller list so to a certain degree of trepidation that we made that decision to say no, despite the fact that that is currently a powerful Marketing Tool in some cases we just did not feel that we could, in good conscience, use that anymore he didnt believe is reflective to what was really going on one marty ross, back to time to get tough. 2011, whose idea was it . Guest it was a combination of watching donald trump start to speak at conservative vents and to speak more politically and we had the idea and he had the idea at the same time and we heard that he was thinking about a book and weve been talking about him doing a book so he approached him and said we should talk about this. I said we went up to his office in new york city and we made our case for why we thought we would be a good partner. He agreed and hes pretty entrepreneurial and we struck a deal and started right away. It was a traffic project and i enjoyed working with him and he was one of the hardest working authors ive ever worked with. He would not turn down one thing that we asked him to do in order to promote the book. And the funny thing was fast forward four years and he announces he will run. He said you know, we havent released the book in paperback. Before i did that i went back into the book off the shelf and looked at it to make sure there wasnt anything in there that didnt quite align with what he was campaigning on and what he was saying. There was nothing in the book that was inconsistent which i was impressed with. We contacted his office and said wed like to do this in paperback and within three days we had a response back, yes, wed like to do it in here are the things we like to update and lets go. And we did. Host talk dealmaking with . Guest it was fun dealmaking with him actually. I thought we struck a really good deal. Host will not hear any more about that will be . [applause] guest thats about it. Host whats the difference between hardback and paperback . Guest that such an interesting teaching dynamic as well. As people have gone to ebooks and as ebooks have become more and more popular the role of the paperback has changed a little bit and people who used to say well, a weight of this book comes out in paperback now dont wait anymore but can download it on their ipad or kindle and read an ebook. When we decide to release a book we almost always do it in a hardcover as a statement of the gravitas of the book. The seriousness of the subject matter. There is also a part of the decision that resides with our analysis to leadership is because there are some topics for selfhelp selfimprovement and even some Business Books that are certainly some later topics pertaining to that probably the readership is more used to reading those books in paperback and so we do release some of our books as original trade paperbacks but by and large our Current Events and political books we release first as hardcover books and i think our experience is that the media treats those books were seriously as well and want to make sure that we get the attention of the media with our new releases. Host what percentage of revenues come from ebooks . Guest about 5 . It has plateaued and thats been the case throughout the industry. I talked to other publishers all the time about their ebooks business and we have all seen a very growth curve over the past eight years which has pretty much leveled out in the past couple of years. Some categories see much higher percentage of ebook sales and fiction is probably close to present an ebook versus print but overall for the industry and for our program as well about 24 . Host how many books a year he published . Guest b are growing and we have planned ebooks and the new titles for 2018. Thats an increase of about 10 over the 17 and an increase of about 20 over 2016. Most of that for all of that growth is outside of our Current Events political category. We are growing our history line and were growing our baseline and were growing our fiction line but are sort of for political conservative Current Events book is staying about the same and that will be somewhere around five titles next year. Host so you have 50 books in the plans for 2018 and when do you start working on those books that will be in bookstores in the 18 . Guest we started working on some of those books earlier this year and we also are well known for crashing in titles in rushing books to press because of our focus on contents. And breaking news. We are negotiating right now books that we may not sign until the end of the year or even early 2018 but we release and 18. We are able to get books very quickly to market since they need to be rushed to market place and sometimes theres a breaking news story or a new trend or a new issue that becomes important that we want to be a part of. Leah at brushing those books and still making them successful. Host if you decided today to put a book out on sexualharassment topic how quickly and what would be the process . Guest it all depends on who is writing it and how quickly they can write it. We love to collaborate with our authors to help them write things quickly that is didnt which obviously, if you have a breaking issue like this can be important so we can we can get a book turnaround we had books that have been signed, delivered within 30 days, and in the bookstores two months later. Host what happens in those two months . Guest it happens. We need to edit, layout, design, print, ship, market, sell and get those books out on the shelves. That is possible if you have a good track record for doing that well and if you have good relationships with your partner but your Retail Partners and we do. If you have a brand that is known for Current Events in quick moving books. Host where are they printed it . Guest lake view printed in chicago and they are a wonderful partner with them for many years and they also believe in the kinds books are doing so that is fun but they are very good at getting books promptly and getting really good quality books and they work for a lot of other publishers, as well. Being centrally located helps to present you cannot only get books to our warehouse but in some cases if i have a really fastmoving book they might ship those books directly from our printer to the store untrained bookstore. Host marty ross, is there big warehouse with thousands and thousands of regnery books . Guest hundreds of thousands of regnery books, yes. Theres one in jackson, tennessee right now that holds all of our books and we partner with ingram as our distributor and the handle all of the warehousing, shipping and fulfillment of all our books throughout the country. We sell our books at all the places people think of buying books. Barnes and nobles, of course, and amazon in books a million and also costco and walmart and target and sams club and Airport Stores and programmers and places that people like to buy books. Host because of the types of books you publish has anyone ever said no, we will not put up with a sore . Guest yes, they have to. I think that by and large all of the accounts i just named all the big National Retailers are very savvy about surveying a life market and they know and understand that there are people from both sides of the aisle shop in their stores shop online and they want to make sure they are serving those people. I think it makes it more true in the independent source where those stores are curated to serve maybe a local market and a very specific customer based that that store knows particularly well and they are deftly some of those stores that dont serve the conservative marketplace and dont want to have conservatives in their stores looking at some of the titles and some of the designs on the covers of the project find you what goes into that . Some have authors name in big letters and images and pictures. Guest we have a lot of fun designing and coming up with titles and designing jackets. Theres a very important part of publishers job is to help another come up with the title and come up with the right jacket. Theres a great art to that that can help enormously in the book success. Some of the things we about what we come up with and help brainstorm on titles is making sure our titles are not only unique and distinctive but also that our titles can be a phrase or a word that becomes part of the conversation about the books. For instance, when we came up with ed klein came up with the title all out war we knew that was not only a headline grabbing title but also a phrase that describes what author believes is happening and also what our audience is happening. A lot of people that believe there is an all out war being waged against this president and against this administration with the desire to take him down both politically and personally and its not just the sort of People Partisan bottle but its a totally unprecedented but certainly larger scale that is probably best described as all out war and when we think about our Media Campaign with our author we like to about ways that the title of the book could become part of that media discussion and that, i think, can make a powerful title because its more effective than just saying in my book, x, y, z and as you read in my book out war but to talk about the allout war that is going on and have that become a phrase that resonates with our market. Thats one of the ways to think about coming up with powerful title. As for jackets sometimes we do we call a facebook which is we know we have a sub the author want their face on the cover of the book. That works when you have an author who is very beloved or wellknown to the audience and the job of a jacket is to get in a prospective buyer to reach out and grab the book and want to be drawn to that book in some cases its because they are drawn to the picture of someone they kn know. In other cases, its because they are drawn to what we tried to convey as the Emotional Message of the book. We want our book jackets to convey in every way in the title in the design and in the image, in the colors, in the font, and the layout the Emotional Message of the book whether that is fear or anger or whether that is hope whether that is reassurance or whether that is outrage. Primarily my responsibility is to create, receive and designed the covers for our books. We have five imprints starting off with the political and Current Events and faith in print, the history of brent and we recently got to fiction imprints in the last year and a half, i think now and not creature got another one but we do the childrens imprints is another one. Basically all the highprofile covers i do i also have a great team of designers who help me out and we have a couple pieces appear. Then more direct and watch over the interiors to make sure the topography is consistent with the covers. Host why would a Sebastian Gorka get a cover like that while George Gilder will get one like that . Guest well, i think they are vastly different and thats a good question. I dont think George Gilder is currently as visual as Sebastian Gorka is. Hes chief strategist for trump and hes basically in this photograph right here giving one of his famous speeches to the cia. We think that you paid him on the cover in one of his domain is hes basically explaining why we fight and everyone is familiar with google so this was one of the Many Solutions for google. Had google up and down and we had another cross visual of that but now we are thinking about this is the economy so heres another which is all about the big point in our thinking maybe the google upside down replaced by that point in the blockage in economy and these are two versions of that one. Host has that would been decided yet . Guest no. In fact, thats the tough thing about this fall. These are all still to be fleshed out in some of these are completely going to be published like this one for karen and Marlon Brando thats pretty much done with that a Childrens Book about the bunny rabbit. Guest device residence for you. The Vice President s bunny rabbit. Correct. This was all margie. This is all marty ross, the publisher. This was her baby and it was quite a surprise and try to fix price when she informed us that she landed karen tends. It was great. Alyssa, myself and margie went to the Vice President s house and met with them and it assigning of the bunny on the contract and it was quite exciting. Host is that one of karen tenses illustrations on the front . Guest , and this is one of the situations where it helps to be the art director on this because these are two illustrations and the original illustration is very much saturated and this was a total separate illustration but we wanted to give a sense of place where is this and this is the Vice President s house. I took her scan of her original house which is going to be inside and screened back and to the subject Marlon Brando, the bunny, in front. I really like that. Very good illustrator. Very surprising good illustrat illustrator. Host so when you put Newt Gingrich or kenny or Sebastian Gorka photo on the front of the book what are you saying . Host hundred. Guest that they are well known and a celebrity. Basically we have a lot of facebook and this is a facebook and payment famous pr guru and sebastian obviously you could consider this to be a facebook because everyone knows these gentlemen. This is not really basic because is not the author but this is about the pope and was a lost shepherd about how it was misleading the Catholic Church so we often do facebook when they are highprofile others. When he was one of your history titled the ten biggest civil war plunders and what is that beautiful illustration and the type that is also relatively unique, isnt it . Guest its not unique to the. And thats what makes it appealing. One of the things and i think this is about my process i literally turned to the internet upside down looking for images and source material and i will go back to the civil war and google civil war font and look those up and say what did they use during the civil war to use as topography. This was a beautiful painting and goes around the entire back cover from the civil war and with all the millions and millions of photographs and images and paintings out there this one really satisfies what all the destruction of mistakes and everything with the men falling down and its beautiful. Beautiful cover one another like Steven Koontz who is bigger than the title, an author like nancy houstons name is smaller than the title guest steven has a strong filing of fiction writers. You see this across all fiction books. They read the book because the author is. Nancy houston is not so wellknown so the subject matter for the audience, the christian audience, is more important. I dont know if i have any others but its pretty selfexplanatory. Even limbaugh, anyone note David Limbaugh . Even though they are equally in size we read top to bottom left to right and so will see him first but especially hes on the shelf. Host David Limbaugh has a say in how the cover looks . Do he says he loves everything we do. Im not kidding. He absolutely loves it. Host does ann coulter have a say in anything you do . Guest the very first book i did for her and thats a very good question. Ive only been here for years and i will admit i didnt even know who ann coulter was three years ago. My very first book one of them was ann coulter book and i had just myself looking back and doing research why do all of her books look like sex in the city meets politics yes, she is attractive, very thin, nice body, you know, and i dont want sex in the city but i wanted to be about and under ann coulter brain. So it broke away from her mold was just her face and the look on her face basically follows you everywhere. The ice and she said it was the best book ever. Best cover everywhere. I was happy that. Host john, we went into a bookstore could we get out your covers. Guest no because every single cover of mine is unique to the tone of the other in the contextual elements inside. Everything. Everyone says they are so different and yes, you look at bookshelf and see everyone is different. The only thing you could probably say is wow, they are beautifully clean, beautiful images, beautiful typography and i think thats the hallmark, if you will, of the good cover. It is appropriate for the subject matter. Host does it help to have an author go on tour to sell the book or how you incorporated it as well social media in marketing the book . Guest for many years authors, regularly went on with. Tours to promote their books and we probably for the first big publisher that pulled the plug on that and said that is just not a worthwhile thing to do and theres no leverage in that. We said an author can reach a hundred times, a thousand times, 10000 times as many people sitting in their living room in their pajamas doing talk radio as they can going out on tour and speaking to me hundred people in person. So we decided was we would focus on earned media, television, radio and print and now that is digital. And the in person events you wanted others to do for only those we could leverage by having media like cspan cover. If we knew that Media Coverage would be added to the equation for life event that it would be worth it but in most cases and in person book signing and a multi city tour was not worth the time and expense and effort. Now we have definitely redeployed these resources to not only into earned media but social media, as you mentioned. That is become a very important part of our Marketing Campaign for our books and again for many years publishers talked about social media and when ever they were asked dozens of books they would say we have no idea. Or how do you know and how do you know this is working . We have no idea what we think we need to do it. Its really only about the past, i think, 18 months that certainly we have been able to justify leaning into social media in a big way and now social media has become a very important part of our Marketing Campaign because it is now the way we feel to build wordofmouth. It is the new wordofmouth mechanism. If that is not to say that that has been true for a long time but i think we did reach a Tipping Point honestly in the past couple of years where because so many people are now in the habit of buying books and buying everything online people are comfortable getting their recommendations and discovering new books into new authors to social media and so we use that in a number of ways whether that is facebook or google ads or amazon search ad for twitter we use all of those things whether its instagram and all of the things are powerful vehicles for driving wordofmouth and driving buzz to social media. Host nicole and alyssa cordova, every book according to margie ross has its own marketing and city strategy and how do you develop that . Guest we start by read the book. Each book has a publicist assigned to it and we pull it apart and talk to editorial and look at what positioning is about this book that is going to sell and our market will hear about it in the news will talk about and it will make people click links and we put together a plan and a strategy and a lot of that is tied to what is happening in the news currently that is relevant to the topic of the book. We get on a call with the author and talk it out and hash out ideas and then usually half of it works out if were lucky and we are collaborative as a team and we bring in the author opinions as well. Host its important to click on the link i heard. Guest yes. Guest yes, a lot of what we do in the Digital Marketing side is on facebook and instagram but a lot of the people are immune to advertising that looks like advertising so a lot of our job is figuring out how to put out content about the book and get people to drive traffic to our media articles but without looking like advertising like spam so to do that we have to know what were talking about target market cares about and they are telling them this is a new book that you dont care about now but you should. We talk about what concerned about and thinking about and show them this fits into this spring. Host give us an example of a recent Marketing Campaign. Guest okay. Well, we had world war ii book the last Fighter Pilot came out the end of july which was exciting for us because the subject of the book yellen who had the last combination of over two is a fantastic person and he goes for audiences and we sent him to la i American LibraryAssociation Conference and he charmed the librarians there and we had them fly to florida and talk to him and we got footage of him telling the stories because he put together a four minute video on three steps and that on facebook and pushed it out through our core audience and we have great custom audiences for remarketing of facebook and it now has 2 million views on facebook and shared it 30000 times and we are proud of it and it drew traffic to amazon. Host how much of that spiral . Guest we only put under a thousand dollars behind we try to spend money carefully. You dont have a movie studio but were smart about how we spend it and that 700 because of the shares ended up raising a huge audience. Host alyssa, what was your role in promoting a book . Guest my team and i we work primarily on the media and the new strip inside and for us with that book what we captured was what a special treat it was to have a firsthand account, living world war ii veteran who flew such an Incredible Mission and has incredible life story since the war was over. It was targeting specific outlets that we believed would really grab onto that story which they did and we got great profile pieces. Got a huge profile for jerry yellen in the post in the fourth of july was great to lead into that. On top of the video it married together so well because it was one of those ideal situations where it felt like everywhere someone turned they were hearing about this incredible story which is made the book be quite successful. Host how closely do you to Work Together . Guest very closely. Our goal is as alyssa said, to try to have surround sound during launch where people are hearing about the book on radio and seen it on tv and then seeing it on facebook and see their friends post about it so we coordinate well and when there is a great media hit part of my job is to then take it and package it and test it out to our audiences on social and to our email list. Host so a book like that an unknown story for the most part until the book came out versus pr for Newt Gingrich which is tougher . Guest that is an interesting question. I think it depends on what aspect youre talking about. For someone like Newt Gingrich its easy to get on the media because hes already on tv and people want to hear what he is talking about. The challenge for someone like that is to get it to be about the book and not just commentary on what is happening in the news. We work on how you put it that conversation naturally so that doesnt just look like youre talking about but actually sounds relevant to what is happening in the news. Host when you start thinking about a campaign for a book . Guest well, it depends on across our imprints. Our history books and facebooks interaction and we got a longer lead time and when the author smack soon as he signed a book thinking about how we position it and who our target market because the marketing job is to help our still seem to get retail excited about the book and thats our first that. Then when the author turned in the manuscript then we start thinking more seriously and bring them in. Maybe about six months out but that was our big political book which are written for deadlines include the latest news and run a short timeline and thats part of what critics does well and what makes us unique. We know our audience so well for able to put together a marketing plan and, i would say, have a great lunch in a couple of months. And echo something nicole mentioned for us we are looking at a promotion from the moment we received a proposal. Its such a big part of our strategy and its not only is this a good book but his is a book we can sell and is this one our market will like and the media alike and will play well on social media so that conversation in the process start from the very beginning. Our experience is even if the Mainstream Media is interesting, its not what our market watches. Exposure doesnt always equal sales. Our motto is to fish where the fish are so we work primarily with the Media Outlets is regnery profitable . Guest yes. Thats a tough thing for a front lifter company to be. Most publishing businesses rely on their back list, an books publicked previously to provide most of their revenue and most of their profits so its a little bit of a high wire act for a frontlist driven company like regnery, to grow and be successful and to be profitable. But i think we have been able to bee successful and profitable all these years because we are very, very focused on serving our market, on underring who our audience and readeres are and being careful not to try to do every different kind of book under the sun. I when started i would meet people and they say i run xyz publishing company. Say what kind of books thank you use do . It was astonishing people would say, we do a little bit of everything. Secretly wanted to say, what die you do that . Doesnt seem like Good Business model. I believe in doing what youre goodded a, and figuring out what youre good at, doing more of that, and then growing by asking, well, what would readers that we know how to reach, and that like our book what other kinds of books do they like are categories of books they read . What else can we sell them. When we have sold them on the Current Events political books we can sell them in a given year, what other moth might they have money to say i ick history, i i have children and grandchildren i would like to share books with. I believe in founding principles and i have a strong faith. Id like to buy books on that as well and thats been our recipe for growth. Host give us an idea of your revenues as a publishing company. Guest sure. Well, sales is a large publicly traded company, and so we report our results every quarter and thats actually been an interesting change for us a regnery, not only to be part of a publicly traded company but also to be to think of our business as a quarterly business, which the Book Publishing business is certainly not. Its not built to be a quarterly business. But we publish our business our business is has been growing steadily, and we are net sales for the Book Publishing business are around 15 million a year and growing. Host as president and publisher, how much of your day is spent on the business end as opposed to editorial end. Guest most of my day is spent on the business side. Now, by that i mean that broadly, because its spent not only on running the business of the company, but also thinking about the sales and marketing and promotion of our books. Its spent on thinking about acquiring new authors and signing up authors, which of course is essential to the Business Success and livelihood of our books. And so i spend a lot of time thinking about the growth and the future of regnery, and whether that means selling more copies of the books we have or signing up new project for us to do, but thats my priority. Host margie, just to good back, jerry yellin, whose video, last Fighter Pilot, two million views. Did that translate into sales . Guest yes. Its been one of our most successful books in our regnery history line since we launch the line. We start regnery history six years ago, launched our first book, and basically we did it as a reaction to our need for a back list. Regnery political has always been current books from a conservative point of view but the books dont last for more than two or three years so we wanted something that would stay on the shelves. We had done a couple of history books, oneoff history books and they were successful and seemed to mesh with what we do. There was overlap of the audience. So, now we do history books. Its not history for conservatives. Its not political history. Its straight history. We have authors from different points of view. But definitely from a proamerica perspective. We wouldnt do anything that is antiamerican. So we do a lot of military history, biography and just general history, and we do some fun books. One of our best selling book is called drinking with the saints, book britain written out of waco and he is he wrote this book called drinking with the saints, the sinners guide to a holy harp hour and takes 300 or so holy days, based on saints, gives a little history on them, has a beer pair, wine pairing and a cocktail recipe. A lot of fun. Host history of books are focused on the civil war and world war 2, correct . Thats our bread and butter. Civil war and world war ii are though most popular topics. A few world war ii books this year, were doing kind of a shift next year more civil war books. One of our most popular, is last Fighter Pilot written by jerry yellin, who is still with us, 39 years old. The last Fighter Pilot on the last mission out of japan when the emperor surrendered and he is a dynamo. He gives talks and is wonderful. Host who is sergeant reckless . Guest sergeant reckless is a horse. She was in the korean war, and she was one of the most wellknown animal heroes of the last century, and life magazine made her one of the top heroes selfbut like the korean war, she was forgotten, we had an author come to us who had read about sergeant reckless in a book somewhere, and she did some research and couldnt find any memorial or anything about sergeant reckless or honoring sergeant wreckless so the raise over hundred thousand, built a memorial at quantico, virginia, and has then wrote the book sergeant reckless, category best seller for the New York Times and she has another shes put up another set in Camp Pendleton in southern, california. Its aint credible story. She was this horse they bought, supposed to raid at a race horse but they bought her to be their mascot but used her in warfare, and she delivered ammunition up the hill for these large rifles, and took some wounded down the will, and just got a medal of honor. An incredible story. Host you say that youre not a point of view necessarily when it comes to history, but was there a frustration with how some history was being written . Guest we were always looking for kind of a different story, the rest of the story or the untold story, and that was part of sergeant reckless, but in terms of a political perspective, we just wanted an open, proamerican story to be told. Host who is an author, a lid hidden jim you found and who is one you missed that you really wanted to get. Guest one of the authors that we published that i think is wasnt of the best thinkers and writers on the conservative scene, but when we published his first book, i dont think he was that well known, mark stein. One of my favorite authors to work with because he is full of incredibly insightful and hilariously funny, and i often say its a good thing he is funny but a lot of things he writes about is scary when you talk about the future direction of the country and the world. When we published our first book with him, which probably seven or eight years ago now, he was not a household name. He was gem for the people who read him and knew him. But he wasnt a regular on fox, and on guest host hosting for hush rim beau Rush Limbaugh has he is today. It was fun to bring somebody even more broadly available to readers. Who is something that got away . Theres several big conservative stars that have published books and we havent been able to publish all of them. Probably one that i would have loved to publish that we cant bass clarence thomas. We talked to him about his book. I would have loved to publish him and work with him, and in the end he published with someone else. Host theres been a slew of big houses with conservative titles now or withtive . No doubt. Theres actually. Guest no doubt. Theres actually really fascinating and interesting timing. Within a month of my becoming the president and publisher of regnery, seemed everybody discovered conservative book, a very weird coincidence. Random house started crown forum, penguin started sentinel. Soon thereafter Simon Schuster started threshold. They didnt exist in 2000, and five years later they were all actively competing for conservative authors and conservative books. I think its been healthy thing. Think its been good for us to have to compete with other houses and know that we have to be really on our game and prove that theres a really great come pet reason for an author to come with regnery. We have had authors who published with us, left to go to a big new york house, and came back. We have heard from a number of authors that it was fun to be published with the new york house, but they confirmed what we knew, which is that regnery is really the home for conservative authors, and that if you want a publisher who understands the conservative marketplace better than anyone else and who has an affinity for conservative author, who can partner with conservative authors because we really do forward how the marketplace thinks because were part of the markplace, theres nobody better than Regnery Publishing to do that. Tonight, on after words, former speech writer for george w. Bush and atlantic columnist, david from, with his book by trumpocracy the corruption of the american republic. Interviewed by Washington PostNonfiction Book critic, carlos lasada. Trumpocracy, from the root of democracy its book about the study of power. Thats what the sufficient fix means. This sufficient fix. This this he story of Donald Trumps power, he does it get it, retain and get away we it. Trumpocracy is the system of enabling, the system in the white house, the system between trump and congress, the system between trump and the media that enable him and create an audience. The system that involves the republican donor elite, the traditional elements of the Republican Party and above all between him and that core group of voters wind the Republican Party who enabled him to win the republican nomination and then good on to the presidency. Watch after words tonight at 9 00 p. M. On booktv. Clearly that turns off a lot of people about donald trump is that he does seem to have a certain outer bury burrow vug garrett. Its populism vulgar. Guest today happens to be the anniversary of caesars crossing the ruby con in 49bc. Caesar was a populist. Was he vulgar . No. I dont think its necessarily linked to populism, although i think that those people who wield the tomorrow opopulist as a weapon would like to have us think so. One of the fundamental objections to trump is esthetic. Its he wears the wrong kind of ties. He likes his steak well done. Puts catsup on it. Unpardonable sins. Of course theres other things that well, but i think that a large part of this aspect of the hysteria over populism or trump is a matter i said esthetic. Maybe a better word would be snobbery. You can onehalf this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Thank you, everybody, for coming out. Im the Event Coordinator another politics and prose. Thank you for coming out to the wharf location. We host around 600 events a year at this location, at our Flagship Store on connecticut avenue, and also other venues around d. C. And tonight we pleased to host ann telnaes. If you could silence your cell phone, that would be wonderful. Were thrilled to host ann telnaes, who in addition to working for our very small local paper, the washington pos i