Debate, most of the important work has already been done. It is informative to watch, but it is not necessarily the real business being done. Its actually not rational for most voters to spend a lot of time informing themselves about politics. Because most voters have complicated lives. Informing yourself about politics it takes a lot of time for very little reward. I find it rewarding to study politics because i find it fascinating. But the probability of one voter casting the pivotal vote in an election is pretty much less than the probability of getting struck by lightning. So, its not really rational to invest a lot of time learning about politics unless you enjoy learning about politics for its own sake. Because it is not rational for individual voters to do that, you wind up with a lot of voters who are relatively poorly informed. The problem is the if the electorate as a whole is poorly informed, then you wind up with the possibility of bad decisions been made where income and its deserved to be fired or rehired and those who deserve to be raised hired or fired. Competitive elections dont do what you think they do. If a competitive election is an election in which we are uncertain about the outcome because it is governed by some sort of random process. Then it election with the income it on the ballot is flipping the coin about whether not to fire someone. Which is a bad idea. The other main idea i want people to take away from it is that elections are not like markets. I think its really unhealthy and misleading to draw analogies between elections and markets because they work very differently. For more formation about tvs recent visit to cleveland and the many other destinations under city store, go to cspan. Org city store. Who was a William Norton . Hes the founder of our firm, ww norton and company. Interesting man who came out of ohio to new york city. Probably as important as he were to the history my firm is that he married a fascinating woman mary norton. In the two of them together founded the firm. Mrs. Norton was always very much a part of the operation even though he realized that she was never a paid employee because this was the 19 twenties. The firm was founded in 1923. Began publishing mostly trade books, the original book an academic slant on because mr. And mrs. Norton like to go down to the peoples institute which is a Adult Education branch of the cooper union in new york city. One can imagine mrs. Norton talking that mr. Norton sleeve saying, someone should publish these lectures. So we originally found that he kept his day job at the import export industry but began to publish these from the peoples institute. Their first founded at the peoples Institute Press operated under that name for three years. Mr. Norton taught the public shame big time. Three years later 1926 the firm six the firm was reincorporated as debbie w norton and company. He quit his job in the import export industry and became a fourtime publisher. How long was he active question. He was with the firm for 19 years, 19 years from 1926, he 26, he died unfortunately rather suddenly in 1945. After which the firm began an evolution through the generosity of mrs. Norton who is incredibly proud of the Publishing House that she and her husband had started. By the mid19 50s and eventually formally in the 1950s the Ownership Structure switched from mrs. Norton to the senior managers of the firm in the very quickly we created the Stock Ownership plan that we have today which has essentially anybody who has been in art for three years or more is eligible to buy stock. As i walk the hallways of norton i am looking at all of our stockholders. The lyons by employees. Something to be very proud of. So not a Public Company . Were privately held company and employee owned. Are you one of the big five publishers in your . We are not one of the big five publishers. Were somewhere sort of just outside, but with 93 years in the business now we have the balance to do the kind of publishing that big publishers do and that i would argue that with a focus that we have Firm Employee ownership, weve had just a little more interest in making the books. Who are some of the authors who publish . I myself have a strange collection for public policy. I was a textbook editor in the field of economics and had the great misfortune with joseph who had become a major norton author and go on to win a nobel prize in economics, also while i was working later became the New York Times columnist paul later become a nobel prize winner. And the number of others that pretty big name economists. But i sort of like getting that policy viewpoint out there. Its something that Walter Norton believed in that their brilliant people on College Campuses, if you can go and find the interesting ones and the ones who can write well and convey their ideas to the public at large, thats what we want to be doing as a Publishing House. To house. To some extent i still represent that. That is going strongly. You join ww norton and 76, became president 94. What kind of work did you do in the 18 years prior . I started something that would call travel. What it means what it translate to is that i was a Sales Representative on the University Campuses for norton. I did that for three and half years, always, i wanted to be an editor. There is never a question in my mind that that was why i entered the Publishing Business and what i wanted to do. Eventually. I was persuaded that going out on College Campuses i would learn more about why and how it works and why they didnt, i would also see a need to see people who maybe one day become authors for me as an editor. I became an editor in the College Department about 1980. That all went very well. We built a textbook with economics that im very proud of. Norton does not have big walls between its Textbook Division and its trade book division. So long the way i began to publish improvements to the tray, i began to publish other interests so i got known in the trade department, 1994 as the transition time for norton. Thenpresident was beginning to want to phase out looking ahead to his retirement. It was my honor and privilege that i was selected to run the company. You when you hire an editor what you look for . We look for interesting people who represent so i should separate Trading College. Your probably more interested on the trade but trade editors you want the right kind of sensibility. One interesting people. Youre looking for an editor sense of taste and its going to be quirky and interesting but also match very well on the case of readers in the united states. So thats what were looking for. Were always, its rare that we have one of those spots open but when we do we are really looking for someone to add Something Interesting or who has interesting part of the list that is been vacated by somebody. The College Textbook world has changed. It has changed enormously. We still believe that it starts with the book and it starts with getting the books right, it starts with helping really good revisions, we are super proud of the authors and we have a very distinguished list of authors on the college side. We are super proud of that. That is still a mainstay of what were doing with the textbook. What what youre learning to is very important. Over the last eight ten years the advances in Educational Technology, the ability to do it with students online is very important to the adoption. So in order to play in that space you better also be good with your Educational Technology in a very proud of what were doing in that field as well. Digital revolution, how how has that affected your business . I feel is that the most interesting stuff with all due respect to our trade department and whats going on, the really interesting thing thats happening in that technology area, the revolution on the trade side, ebooks are at the heart of what we do. Is not a technological problem how to deliver a file so you can be an ebook so the problems arent that interesting it the importance is clear. You also have with the online revolution the marketing possibilities tapping in and being able to go out to social media and become a part of the various communities that are out there. A a huge part of what were trying to do is train publishers and help readers discover books. We are constantly looking for opportunities, either leverage a book review just to go straight to the Online Community that have certain interest that match up well. Comedy interests and norton . I could probably list them and then will count as we go along. The main one is the norton imprint, publishing books on the trade side. College textbooks i would consider to be a separate imprint although were very proud of the fact that thats also norton and theres a lot that goes on that cross between Trading College in both directions. The live right imprint is one that we revised about five years ago, think we had a conversation with the director of that imprint, that is going to grow up and is growing up to be sort of a major second front in our trade ever. Weve been having good years over the last eight or ten years looking for opportunities to grow. I sort of believe ive seen 125 titles per year is about the maximum that any imprint can do. Thats what weve been publishing on the norton imprint for as long as ive been thinking about it. So how do you expand trade . We have a wonderful interest in print that we acquired for many reasons a number of years ago. Why dont we revive that and suddenly thats another 20 books a a year that we can do. It has its own publicity. It has its own marketing group. It can have its own identity and can very nicely add 20 or 30 bucks a year to what were doing. We have the countrymen press imprint which is the lifestyles imprint. So i guess im now counting a fourth and then now alas piece and healthy living, travel books, all kinds of things that are very different publishing then what we do with the trade imprints and yet very interesting. Then we have a professional imprint and that is of all those so many different righties of publishing, the professional books are what that group is trying to do is published books in psychotherapy. And for practicing cycle therapists owed somewhat technical books we can sell straight to the people were doing counseling and coaching. That may be to branch out into a bit of educational. That is the whole thing. Not that long ago what are some of the books that nora has coming out this your . Were really exciting. We have one that is right around the corner which is mary roaches, brunch. She missed her calling and im so happy that she did because she could be a standup comic if she werent such a wonderful book author. She loves interesting but offbeat types of science. This one is going to be about the science of the military. This is not post Traumatic Stress disorder it is how to get soldiers out there in the field with the food that they need, with the hydration they need, how do you deal with the kinds of issues that may come up anyway. It is a very unique, just coming out is sure to be a bestseller area mary roach has many fans out there you should run out copy of this book. What were doing here at the conference is looking ahead to the fall. As we do i guess moving towards the fall were doing an instant book in july that will be about the zika virus. Donald mcneil who is the lead reporter for the New York Times its going to be a short book that will produce instantly. We happen to think this is going to be a book of interest. A nice story about the fact that these days you can do a book that fast. Well publish it as an ebook and as a paper book at the same time. It will be mosquito season. We expect to get a lot from that book in july. Moving on, into the fall, alan taylor, twotime Pulitzer Prize winner, now at the university of virginia, one of our top academic historians. Writing in the colonial period and he has a book called American Revolutions. He wants to tell the story of the American Revolution which is nice and tidy and all the books and the uprising against the british. Thats the key thread. He has a lot of other interesting stories going on at the same time. They eventually. They eventually olga pulled together by Thomas Jefferson and others in a nice story that we have. But he alan is back with another one of his very close colonial era. What else try want to tell you about . Richard mueller, hes at the university of california, berkeley. Rich mueller has written a number of successful books for trade the new one is going to be called now, its the physics of time, of how to blow my mind kind of things got a history of this is only one true way to understand time and it is to understand the presence. You have to read the book, something i actually love. We have a book called blood at the boot by patrick phillips. This is really unnecessary story about a county in georgia, in the 1920s basically racial and it can only be described as racial around the black community out of the county. Patrick phillips was from this particular county goes back home, didnt understand that this was the town he grew up in, now lives up north. Comedy marsha and i do. That list work. How do you acquire those books . Donald mcneils book we acquired about eight weeks ago and will publish at about eight weeks from now. So when you need to, when when you want to move really fast, with a typical book we dont advise that, the typical gestation for a book is about ten months. So we we can physically manufacture that book more quickly so that gives us time to prepare the market for that book so we are ready to get Good Intention for that book when it comes out. So that is ten months what it turned into a copy editor and when we do a proper launch on a book. You are also asking about the process. Sometimes it can be quick with a novel so are probably looking at a with nonfiction some writers write pretty quickly. Whether they have writers block. We talked with mary on the guild today at the convention. She talked about book contracts. The spring much the same as it was. The one thing that is been added as a stipulation to the ebook. It has been standard for a good long time, were trying to recognize the movements ahead. What is your role with the literary agent . Literary agents are, that is our main source for writing style. I personally dread the fact that i know how to go on to and find the very best people. The boy literary agents solve a very stressful problem in terms of scouting for talent. Being able to max i talent were at a Cocktail Party and someone knows that im on publishing, i call that needle in haystack like the chances that an author, random authors going to have a book that is right and even more that book is gonna be right for me are so close whether its a literary agent to, or literary agent interested in the book then the literary is only going to take the book on because that literary agent can think of editors in the business,. There is a very important match for the role in the literary agent. Then of course every good literary agent. Is there a book that you passed on and regret. I dont know about talking about the ones who got away, the fact that if i had my life to do over gam i probably wouldve made that decision differently. Theres example on that side. The serendipity i look at two books. To this day, you or are anybody should read before you start your portfolio. We have sold millions of copies of this book so bring the old man is kept in a got in our thrush pile. So that is one that is serendipity. I would also talk about the serendipity column, we were one of three publishers were approached to publish the 9 11 report when that came on 2004. All secret, all behind the scenes, what, what they decided to employ the power of a commercial in order to be sure that the American Public had a chance to read this very important document. This earned up to you that we list of publishers that. [inaudible] it was serendipity, it was a huge moment for the firm, it was it was an enormous risk for the firm and financially but were so proud of the role that we played in publishing that. In the end it did work out okay. We have been talking with greg who is chairman and president of w ww norton. This is book tv. Book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. I am reading a book by president jimmy carter, his autobiography. His autobiography. Its called a full life. I had the wish to attend his sunday school very recently where he taught sunday school. When i was in the congregation it was amazing. After that i went to the school