He glided into the base in thailand and as soon as the wheels touched down on the runway, the engine stopped because he was out of fuel. It is just one of these incredible stories of aviation skills in heroism and why is that valor . He was doing that because of the loss of his friend to try to help his friends on the ground. So it was a combination of worry free, commitment, love, all of those that make up the real definition of the word dowler. And then, i am sorry to tell you, a few weeks later, leo was shot down and i ended up in the same cell with him many years later when the vietnamese photos altogether. On a recent trip to new york city, but tv tour the headquarters of publisher Simon Schuster. While their convoy profiled several principal players responsible for a books publication from acquisition to editing, publicity and sales to be also discussed the history of Simon Schuster now in its 90th year and the Current Health and future of the Publishing Industry. Who were Simon Schuster . Well, they were max schuster and simon and they were two gentlemen who are friends with one another and way back in 1824 they decided to start a Publishing House on the road. They have been working in Publishing Houses but felt they could begin one themselves so they did. They set out one day. They rented a space and put up a sign the fed Simon Schuster publishers. Would they recognize what you do today . Guest i actually think they totally would. Some of what is really interesting when you weed through the history is to relate how many things go in circles. What is old becomes new again. Just as an example, the reason they would recognize what we do today mainly is because the job of the publisher hasnt changed at all, which is to find great work depending what kind of work it is and then find an audience for and convince the audience to buy it. So weve been a conduit between artist and the consumer and that hasnt changed at all. A lot of the ways they did it back then or now becoming popular again. For instance, they used to run an advertisement in newspapers ever recall the inner sanctum and they were very chatty and it would talk about why that book was great and if you look at any of those ads come of it are incredibly similar to what is going on on line today, where it is no longer just corporate advertisement, but more personality in it. More of the publisher speaking to the consumer in reaching out to the consumer. That is just one small example. In addition, when they started the first book, one of there and said to them, she was in the hospital and said we need a crossword puzzle book. Crossroads were fairly new then. There have never been a collection so they did a little book, pay for salon and sold it in outoftheway success rate. The second but they published that became a bestseller with the history of philosophy, a collection of essays of classes that the teacher of theirs had taught. That book stayed a bestseller for two years. Between the pure merchandise in the work of high intellectual capacity, that range is the same range as Simon Schuster publishing today. Host as president and ceo, what is your job . Guest my job is to make it possible for everyone else to do their jobs and do them well. You know, i often consider my job is to ask the people on the line giving the work the question they havent thought of themselves so they are confident in decisions they make in what they are doing. So i get involved a little bit and a lot of things. Any book theres a high advance, i am involved in the acquisition. But i sort of look over what everyone is doing and offer suggestions. But im really there is a sounding board to make sure the things the company provides, the publishers help them do their jobs better and help them find those audiences and communicate to them. I manage all the editors. The publicity, marketing, foreign rights and oversee the birthing of the books into the world. Host youve got some editorial duties but also business duties . Just go absolutely. The idea is to publish each of these authors are successfully if they can publish. They want their books to be read by the vast multitude, so our job is to make a books known. Host you say you publish about 100 books a year, Simon Schuster . Guest we are the Flagship Division and were publishing about 130 this year. It is a kaleidoscopic range of authors. Weve got literary novels like kerry who spent a major new writer named matthew thomas. Without political leaders. Jimmy carter, Hillary Clinton, james webb, john mccain. We have got notable personalities like rob lowe and diane from furstenberg and then weve got a lot of really terrific general nonfiction. Biographies of everybody from sally ride and john wayne to literary memoirs. A wonderful writer named brenda that comes out makeup of weeks of attract a lot of attention. Host so why are there different imprint at Simon Schuster . Somebody goes into a bookstore or online, or online, they will see an impact, but they also might see some others on my Simon Schuster, correct . Guest type. The idea is you have to have people passionate about the book in advocating the book. Publishing houses are broken down into smaller groups. Within each Publishing House that can be numerous divisions and they are all putting Energy Behind the product that they are the most excited about. Host what are the big bucks for Simon Schuster this year . Hillary clintons new book. What has been your role in giving back to the bookstores . Guest Hillary Clinton has been a shiny schuster author for 18 years now. I guess you could shake shes been the mightiness first lady and secretary for years and our ceo acquired Hillary Clinton spoke, her first book many years ago. That is it takes a village. Were publishing hard choices on june 10. It is her fourth book with us. I was editor, so is involved from the beginning of its acquisition in overseeing all aspects, working closely with all the people at the company. Host as the editor, is there a lot of a lot of emails back and forth between you and the author . Is that how its done . Guest every case is different. In this case i try to give just as much attention to secretary clinton spoke as i had to all the other authors who publish. I should mention the same breath we are also publishing james webb, a terrific United States senator and his book is out right now. I dont want to favor one author over another. Host at what point do you as a publisher get involved in acquiring a book i guest oftentimes the editors come to me and say they want to sign a koffler appeared to have justifications for doing so. If an editor wants to sign the book and other people here are equally enthusiastic about it, we usually make an offer you host what is an advanced . Guest and advance is the amount of money and author receives in advance of actually publishing a book. So it is like the often gets paid what the author is living on while writing the book. Host and that is paid by Simon Schuster the Publishing Company . Guest yes, Simon Schuster paid the money up front. Host then recoup say . Guest . Of course is the route, is in it. Hope to recoup it. Only a small percentage of the books turn out to be profitable and that is true in most businesses that are creative. So we dance the money and sometimes it comes back and sometimes it doesnt. Host overall, how would you describe the help of the Publishing Industry . Guest the state of the union is strong. Were publishing successfully and publishers are doing well right now. Because people feed and they always have and i am confident that they will. There obviously are changes going on in the industry, major changes in terms of the apotheosis of Digital Publishing , but it still seems to be a case that people want to hear a story and they are willing to pay for it. As long as there are good writers who can tell those stories and a dramatic way, publishers will be fine. Host are described in amazons helpful to Simon Schuster business . Guest right now they are. The challenge is to continue to find ways to attract attention to the book. Im actually more concerned about the fact there is so much videoondemand everywhere. That is i think a serious form of competition for us. I hope people will want to continue to read when they can absorb information and entertainment in so many graphical face. Host you see video as a competition . Guest sure, if you want an airplane or train coming you will see people with tablets and mightve been just be as easily watching netflix says they are reading a novel. But its always been the case thereve been mass forms of entertainment that have been a challenge to publishing. Publishing has always been a fairly verified form of communication and i think that is still the case today. The question is whether we can make books known and have them be discovered as effectively as we have in the past when bookstores are a diminished presence in the culture among people may not necessarily be as aware as new book says in the past. The other thing that is changed actually as when so much is available instantly, very little seems to be rare or special anymore. It is to be when somebody wrote a new novel it was an event or when somebody released a new album, it was a major occasion. Now everything is instantly available. It definitely makes it harder to get people excited about things there that could then is of course books are much easier to get now. Distribution is omnipresent. So if every disadvantage there is an advantage. Host what is the normal timeframe of working on a book . You hear about it, two publication date attack in publication date are attacking sixmonth, two years and that includes the writing of it . Guest well, my opinion, which i can probably be challenged on his it is hard to write a great book in one year. Getting you can read a really good book in a year. If you write with a recurring character it can be done because you know the contours of the characters and settings. I think it takes about 18 months to write a book that has an authority to and really, really an outstanding book and take much longer. It can take many years. We published a book recently which is the tax which is about what nutritional science and that book was about 10 years in the works. Were publishing other books. We are publishing rick perlsteins new book about america in the 1970s, the bridge and not one was about five years in the works. Host was a scheduled for five years . Guest absolutely. I signed up several years ago. Host was printing easier than i was 10 and 20 years ago . Guest thats another thing. It is also true we can make works available on demand. One of my former colleagues from random house Jason Epstein started a company where they are actually ondemand printers and some of these independent booksellers. So if you want to get a book, you can get it within hours if you want. Publishers like Simon Schuster, big publishers are able to make paperbacks available on demand relatively easily and you can have them in a couple of days. Host what percentage of books are physical books today is supposed to be books . Do you know . Guest thats a really good question. I can so youre right now in terms of the percentage of books that we sell, it can be 50 ebooks, 50 physical books are the same title. So the book is available in both formats. Nonfiction still skews more towards the printed physical book, where we still sell part of a 70 of those books sold are the actual printed book. In terms of the number of books available only in a format, that information actually is it known very widely because amazon has a lot of that information hasnt made it public. So i dont really know how many ebooks they publish and there are also other publishers that only two ebooks and i dont know what their figures are. Host how important is the International Market . Guest it is growing and that is an interesting area of opportunity for us because what is happening is people over the world read in english. So they can buy her books digitally in english and we dont have to distribute them physically. There is a real opportunity for growth there especially in places like china and india where a lot of people feed in english. Host can you give us one example of a suggestion you have made to an author as that authors editor, nonfiction or fiction. Guest well, probably pretty obvious one of the things you tell them its not to worry about having every detail in there. I realize something fairly simple and fairly profound. Ive been publishing 25 years now and i dont think in 25 years anyone has ever complained to me about a book being too short. So sometimes telling a story to sync with the best thing the writer can do. Host who owns Simon Schuster . How Many Companies do have . When you have so many interests . Guest we are owned by cbs. We are the only publishing part of that corporation and we do a lot of work with them, both supporting of their Television Productions and then click back, but in addition, we do a lot with their local stations and Radio Television stations in advertising and getting word of authors out there. Theres an awful lot of Work Together we do with them. We have seven adult imprints. Actually more than that, but some are within imprints. I dont know if the total is. And we have seven childrens imprints, too. The reason you have so many imprints is because when an imprint is within Simon Schuster, is a group that has its own publisher, owned the City Department and its own Editorial Department and its own marketing effort that. Publishing is a very intensive business. You have to actually read the book. You have to define what the book is in order to define the audience you want to find for it. Youd then have to come everything about it, design, jacket, list of the plan, whether the author will go out or wont do well, what kind of Online Marketing you can do, all of those questions need to be answered by contributor people. We only have so many hours in a day. They can only publish so many books in the year. Do you have multiple imprints number one because different publishers have different strengths. So the avenue from a personality of their own that is identifiable. The scribner imprint has a different kind of publishing that Simon Schuster. Gallery, are more commercial imprint. You know, those are the adult ones and in childrens we have ones that focus on young adults, picture books. They have the personality of the publisher. That means that that publisher acquired that book because he or she had a vision of how to publish it. So the main thing about publishing is it really is a handson business. It is often said the assets of a Publishing House walk out the door at night because other than your author contracts, thats all you have. The intelligence is to the process of finding an audience for an oscar. Host how do you acquire a book . I defined a book . Guest there are a million ways to do it. One, which is not often talked about is you really come up with an idea and you try to find the perfect writer, whose passion for the ati matches yours. That is one way you can make about copying. Another way is to make sure to talk to agents as much as possible to see what kind of topics they are enthusiastic about and then you raise your hand and hope they will send you a good proposal. Sometimes people do they authors you adore and you plant ideas with them and you hope over time they come up with a project they want to spend five, 10 years with and make a great book. Host have you ever read a newspaper article or Magazine Article and said that could be a book . Guest yes. I read a book. I read an article x years ago about how very shortly in the early 21st century, more households in america will be supported by women and that is a giant flop a giant change. And it made me want to explore with the implications of that might be for men and women for marriage is, for raising children, for love, for courtship and i got a great book out of it. Host what was the book . Guest it was the richer sites. It was written by a terrific Washington Post reporter called liza monday now at the new America Foundation in washington. It landed on the cover of Time Magazine and it generated a huge conversation about how do we need to adjust our lives to this economic new reality and is this good for men and women . I think we were in the camp of yes. Anything that makes couple of stronger and live up to their potential as a good thing. Host one of the authors or pair of authors that you worked with were nancy gibbs and Michael Duffy on the president s club, a book that tv coverage, our q a program covered it as well. But with the process working on the president s club with nancy gibbs and Michael Duffy . Guest i wish i could say i came up with that idea because its such a bill he can idea. Nancy and michael had been working on that for quite some time. The idea came to them after they had written a very great book on billy graham and they realized the degree to which the president s talk to the expresident s and how much that club helped shape the presidency itself and thats what gave them the idea to explore the president s club in a thorough way. It was a very modern idea of understanding the president because we obviously had to get to the 20th century for there to be enough longevity and practical reasons for this to be comfortable. But what they found was presidencies were actually made stronger, sometimes challenged by people inside the club. What was interesting about it is we had over a dozen characters, all of whom had relationships with each other, going towards the past in the future. The big challenge in editing this book was how to structure it. If you look at how the book is built, you know, we have an introduction to certain key partnerships all along the way because it helps the reader keep track of who the characters are and helps them move along chronologically while honoring history and the relationship as they actually happening. Host nancy gibbs, Michael Duffy, they write the president s club. What was your role . What part did you plan not book . Guest my will is essentially to help structure the book and give it an architecture that makes it so accessible to the readers, so easy to absorb that they forget there are all these multiple errors on stage at once and they can see it and not feel overwhelmed by a. My role was to cut something that im a big believer in. I think if you are bored as an editor, theres a good chance your readers will be, too. My goal was to make sure that some of the inside knowledge they had was made completely transparent to the readers so that a new where things came from and how you knew things. Fn chile, when you have authors as talented as nancy and michael, you get up in the morning and get to work. Host what is your editing process . What did you do when you first got the manuscript . Guest eightteam infections. It came in sections. The first thing you do is read the author. You cant do add a menu or in an office. You have to really lock yourself somewhere else and completely immerse yourself in the book and be calm there would be times when i would leave the book and go out and get dinner and still be living in the middle of the Nixon Administration and want to run back and get right into it. That is what you want. You want the ability to sink into the story as much as possible so you can see all of its beauty and occasionally make it be more beautiful. Host do you take a red pen to a . A pencil . Guest i take a pencil. It comes from my days as a newspaper magazine reporter and editor. It allows me to move back and forth easily. It allows me to sort of give it back to them said they feel they can look at those notes and absorb them as they went on their own terms. Host another author youve worked with and are working with our audience would know it is karl rove. Did you choose you . Did you choose him . How is that relationship . Guest essentially had to audition for it. I got a call from a publisher. He asked me to go down to washington. It was the first book that i was asked to add it. I have been a journalist for 30 years and he had read up on me and wife stories i have heard. We had politics in common. I had actually covered him as an editor for many decades. Basically my argument is you should hire me because this is my first job and i cant screw it up and it works. Host is it different working with a personality like that again it is working maybe with nancy gibbs and Michael Duffy who maybe arent as well known . Guest no, i think every writer has to put themselves on the page. So the process is the process by definition that makes writers feel bolder about. And i think the job of the editor is to essentially protect them, but also makes them feel comfortable with what they are saying. One of the first conversations i had with carl is no, you can start the book at age 30. You have to start the book with a lot of the pain of your childhood, including your mothers suicide, your father leaving the home, you find out later that your father wasnt the father, you learning to meet your real father. All of those issues have to be on the page as difficult as they are because they are part of what and if this is a biography of money to include back. Oftentimes when you get stopped by readers, that they bring up the childhood stuff because they had experiences like his bat is one way you make a personality who seems to be on stage more accessible to people. Host priscilla painton, because of your background is a turn was coming she worked on a lot of nonfiction political books . Guest yes, i do. I work only on nonfiction and some of the books really are more not so much political as they are works of journalism. A book on afghanistan, a book on veterans, a book on the brackets at the industry that have now become an oligarchy. A lot of books that, you know, involve journalist spending many moments of their lives taking into some of the issues we face and trying to make them, you know, readable. Something that someone would want to pay in hard cover 25 for and spend a lot of time with. Host how big is Simon Schuster . Guest Simon Schuster has approximately 800 Million Euros last year i think it was 809 million. Host how many books does not equal . Guest 2000 new books each year worldwide. If you say the average book might be 10, you say you have about 8 billion books that we shipped and sold to somebody. Host what are the largest retailers you work with today . Guest right now barnes noble is still the largest bookstore chain in the country and followed i books a million and they are primarily based in the south mnp themed books and music among which is the missile. I also work with all the independent booksellers across the country and they are doing fabulously well. Host what about the costco and walmart and sams club . Guest im sorry, i work with traditional booksellers, traditional retail booksellers. The others fall under another group. Host so what is your relationship . Do they say we want x number of copies or do you say hey, this is going to be a big book. How does that work . Guest we always go when with a list of our suggested reading nr sails wraps are fabulous and the fact that they know the booksellers in the accounts and are great actuating their lives for the customers. So we gave them early and they read and excitement builds and they send us quote may just start rolling for mayor. So that is what we that is how we get them excited about it. Host with the advent of digital reading or the advent of big rocks, costco, walmart, et cetera, the significance of the independent bookstore and traditional bookstores less than it used to be . Guest for the past two to three years, the independent bookseller has really made it a point to address the community that the Community Outreach by the American Express every holiday, shop local, the shop local movement. They have really basically taught their customer, if you dont support us, we are not going to be here anymore. They are so creative in getting their customers into their bookstore in the way they merchandise than the fact he read everything. When they recommend a book to you, they know what they are talking about and they have been doing very, very well as a channel year over year because of that. They are really focusing on the community. Host does the size of a retailer can barnes noble affect marketing of the book . Guest absolutely. Absolutely they have over 680 locations. They have their website which has millions of customers, so they absolutely can affect the marketing of about. Host how did you get in this business . Guest i started right out of college. I started at random house and worked in the Sales Department and just kept growing for mayor. But always in sales and with the retail side of business. Host does Walter Isakson or Hillary Clinton coming to they automatically get orders . Guest yes, absolutely. Host what kind of Marketing Strategy goes into selling their book . Guest well, with Walter Isakson, he is his own best supporter and champion because he is such a great storyteller. Whenever we can, we have him speak with our customers. He has come into the office to speak with are the noble booksellers for a and he definitely can really help us. He is our best weapon in selling his books. Host how do you sell a firsttime author to a bookseller . Guest it is always a read. We try to read it early and champion it and give it to the bookseller early. The package plays a big part. The bookseller looks at it and the package will jump off the shelf and they really think their customer will respond to it. That also plays a big part as well as marketing and what kind of reviews we have lined up for it and if the author is too worried. That helps as well. Host by percentage of revenues from sms is digital . Guest it is approximately it depends approximate 20 to 30 . But on individual titles that can be as high as 70 or as low as 20 or 15 . Those figures, which are only supported by the press dont really give a true picture of the way certain genres and certain types of writing clearly have been significantly into the Digital World and others have not. Host what are the seven centers . Guest commercial fiction is largely digital. Now the majority of sales of almost any commercial property. But it can also be literary novel. Fiction in general is more digital. You read a review, see how is like to read that. You dont have to go anywhere. You dont have to do anything. Just push a button. So we have found commercial and also memoir. I think it is because the more often we click fiction and that it is linear. Start at the beginning and go to the end. Not a lot of referring back. The ones that are least digital, other than childrens books and cookbooks are serious nonfiction and i think it is because i have read articles actually about how when you read, you remember some name. Its on the bottom of the lefthand page or in the top. You cant do that digitally. So the whole referring back and forth that happens with serious nonfiction is much more difficult to do digitally. Anything near, is a linear breed seems to have the highest digital sales. Host i am Vice President of design and Digital Content development. Redesign adult books and other products for all of Simon Schusters boat. Host what do you mean in terriers. Guest just the insides. Host do you pick the font and the pictures . Guest we choose the font. We work with are from the authors and sometimes create art for the authors. We do the layout. Theres a little more involved than one with you. I started here working on the on digital and recently took over the print interior work is so that is all news to me. There is a lot more involved than you would think. Host what . Why does it matter what the font is . Guest readability, how heavy the font is affect how well you can read it. It conveys the mood of the book a lot more than you might have thought. You switch it out. You have the new designers and working on digital. They seem so picky. It seems like they are saying this tiny little thing. Not on that day, but on the b. And you look at it and say that doesnt look any different to me. When i get on my ipod i change the font anyway. And then of course he read it in print and it does make quite a difference. Host can you translate a hardcover book writing to digital . Or do a lot of changes have been . Guest sure, you can. You can do a onetoone design transition. But the way we work and Simon Schuster is not necessarily to make an ebook as a byproduct of a print book. It is to think about product simultaneously. From the very beginning from the manuscript stage rethink of how that is going to work in digital and print formats. Host give us an example of a print book in ebook and how they are different. Guest sure. Say you are making both as we do make osama tediously for all of our publications. Your products for a simple novel will be very much the same as an ebook is the same thing, same font. Of course when you read on your system and is going to change depending where you read it. As you know, because i am sure you read all of your books in ee, you will see one thing i can tell and another im not an ibook. Or example, when you open your book, it opens to a publisher setting or whatever settings worry. If you set it to arial size 10, this is what it will look like when you open it. If you open the same boat, itll open to publisher settings. Whatever margins we chose, whatever spacing which shows, if we chose that, those are some of the differences. Host to the covers change . You keep the same cover . Guest we keep the same cover unless it is a price or anything else you might not want to put on. Host is your background in publishing or in design . Guest it is in publishing. Specifically digital books. Host how did you get started doing that . Guest good question. I focus on computer a to literary study during my masters and why you an academic way of saying ebook. We were studying how different pieces of language interact with each other instead of just using the human subject at analysis, you also get a computer aided literary analysis and that is subject, looking outward usage across a body of work. Whether or not various whole corpus or american corpus. To do that study, we needed to make ebooks effectively. So we tagged our books we had typed up or pulled from the online and who knew that you would ever be useful in the real world, but at some point Simon Schuster was looking for people who knew how to code xml. They hired me as a temporary employee and eventually worked out. There werent a lot of people who knew how to make ebooks at the time. Host how was the sophistication of developing ebooks changed over the last 10 years . Guest 10 years ago there were a lot of weirdos and star trek fans reading ebooks. Now people like you read ebooks. So instead of just making something that works for a person who is simply happy to have it on their Electronic Device to make something that suits expectations much greater and much higher, that are defined, that allow people to feel like they got a product they paid for. Even for the most basic books, things like including fonts, adjusting, margins, that is all pretty new to ebooks, ebook reading for fans and still some are more capable than others. Host weve been talking to several people today at Simon Schuster and one of the themes we have had is about hard choices. Hillary clintons book. Have you had input on my book and if so, how is the marketing, the development of that book different from your digital side then it is from the physical side . Guest sure. So, when we acquired that book, Jonathan Karp knocks down here announced if there was any thing we could do for the ebook specifically and we brainstorm some ideas and talked about when the right time to act on those ideas might be. We have been thinking about also as a Digital Product from the very beginning. Is the marketing particularly different, that is something youd have to buy for marketing and sales team. We take just as much care without one of many others. Host can you add more pictures or contacts . Guest we do too many books. Add more photos, photos and line that is made in insert because for print that makes sense financially. We add color, even if they may be in blackandwhite in print. We add extra material, often a Reading Group guide for sneak peak at the next book. Host once a book is finished, how quickly can i be published digitally . Guest once the book is finished what you mean by finished . Poster when the author finishes adding it here when the manuscript is done. Guest the manuscript is done. That is not necessarily as stage we think the manuscript being done. Just like with any print book, we defined above. If we do ebook only, no print counterpart, we are going to design it, copy at it lately with the prank, go through query stages of the author, just like if we were printing it because we care about at the same as if it were printed. And then we can publish it quickly because theyre not worried about printing time or if we make a mistake, resetting pages. So we are looking at a day. If we had a finished manuscript aside, we could publish in a day. We had one such instance very early on in the time of people caring about ebooks and when i say that, i mean since 2007. Jennifer had a book she wanted out so quick. It was a halloween story we published that i think about 48 hours by the time i got a finished manuscript from her. Host samantha cohen, do you see more and more books being published only digitally . Guest yeah, if you look at the numbers, that has been a larger portion, ebook only. It isnt easy and and nice way to task book. Were going to do a lot more Science Fiction in that area. Many books and i printed later. So you get to test the market with the ebook, lower barrier to entry. Host carolyn reidy, how did you get started in this business . Guest i came to new york. Actually wanted to be a College Professor but i got married and came to new york because my husband is going to columbia and i was a good typist and at a friend who worked in publishing and so i said i would try that until i go back to teaching. Instead i fell in love with it and stayed in it. Really the reason i got a job in publishing to begin with was because i could type 90 words a minute. Host where did you grow up . Guest solo spring maryland, via a set of washington d. C. I went to Middlebury College and after middlebury went to Indiana University for my advanced degrees. Host are you an anomaly that you are not from new york and the new york publishing world and begin your career here . Guest there are a number of people who were born and raised in new york who are in the business now that i think about it. But i think theres probably an equal number of people if not more that came from other places. People are largely attracted to publish them because they themselves have a love of books in a new they werent a writer. My experience is not unusual that i got into the business and then i just fell in love with it. Part of the reason is even a lowlevel beginning job, you have been given a responsibility that has an effect on how books sell. I started out in sabra and i would sell an excerpt after publication out of a book and feel i actually had an effect on how the others spoke sold and how many people knew about it. So because it is a people intensive business, theres much more work they can possibly done by everybody working day and night. I am the executive director for Simon Schuster book read. Host what does that mean . Guest i oversee art directed and assigned the Simon Schuster imprint in many different imprint at Simon Schuster, scribner, touchstone, a tree, gallery, all different art directors for those. I fully do you Simon Schuster. Host you do the covers of books . Guest yes. Host what goes into the cover of a book . Guest the first thing when we hear about this project, usually from the editor, we find out what the book is about. There is a manuscript or sometimes there isnt. Sometimes its a little bit to read and you get a flavor of what the voice of the author is. Friend that we have a discussion with the editor, the publisher and the author to see if they have any preconceived notions of what they are looking for. Its always good to hear that up front. Even if they dont, maybe get a chance of their aesthetics and you can do some research at the bookstores, competition, with the books are going to be facing in that bookshelf space. Host well, i want to start with this one. This is former senator james fled. His new book i heard my country calling. How did this develop . How did this cover developed . Guest well, this one is actually pretty straightforward. It is a story of his and his fathers ears in war and he had these photographs. And so, we knew we wanted to kind of give it a little olestra did look, a nostalgic feel, so is marrying the two together so that they were cohesive. Host what went into your madisons gift . Five partnerships that built america. This is a new book, right . Guest way. This is a new book. It is not a sin, so kind of calls for having his photo on it. And because of the subtitle, the five partnerships, you kind of need to explain but does that mean and who are those five people . In this case affect how we have five beautiful portraits of the five people that mattered. Host one of the other books he worked on was the bully pulpit. We all know what this cover looks like. Heres the cover of the book and not as the finished product. But what was this . Guest you know, when we first learned about the book and do exploration as to the photographs out there, there were great photographs of the two of them together. So we thought that was a great opportunity to design something with. When we started to look at it, it didnt have the big book that we wanted, the epic feel. And you see the night typography has that feel of the historical feel. But then we started to think maybe it just needed to let classic. So we tried some different bonds, tried adding a little color. So that is how we ended out. Host does doris kerguelen have any on the cover . [inaudible] guest absolutely. Both do. Obviously an author who has worked on their baby. So they are going to go out on the roads selling the book. You want them to be happy. When they are, it is wonderful. They are very appreciative. It is a little giveandtake. Doris did want her name on the top. She wanted it on the bottom. So she wanted to see a little bit more of the face is. So we played with out a little bit. Host do color schemes, in and out of fashion as well . Guest yeah, sure, sure. Sometimes even fashion itself, baja color of their families can effect what is on the book cover. A cat, definitely. Obviously i think fred is always a sure shot. It is always been on that green come and not necessarily unless your book about golf and money, finance the. So i think blue sells really well. Host john mccain, senator kane has a new book coming out. Heres the cover you are currently working on. Guest right. That is actually work in progress because we are reworking a couple of the retailers have told us that they would like to see a more classic historical photographic treatment. So we do get feedback like that from places like arent the noble and sams and costco when they feel that their market, that something isnt quite to their market. Host so you respond to that as well . Guest absolutely. We respond to it and sometimes we dont change it and sometimes we do. Its really the publishers decision to make that kind of a decision. Postcode jackie seattle, is there recover, and our work you are extremely proud of peggy really worked hard on . Guest well, this steve jobs book is one then i really thought was striking. There worked closely actually with the author on the hardcover. Which has an older photographs. That was definitely a classic photo. We are very fortunate when we might see paperback that i guess mr. Jobs likes that because it was the exact same pose done 30 years before. So we started a marketing opportunity to give the book a fresh look, to maybe you can have people who bought the hardcover want to have a collectors item of the paperback. Host why black and white and gray . Guest you know, it all has to do with photographs. That is really it is not a conscious decision. It is just when you have a fantastic photo, you let that shine. Host jimmy carter, call to action is his most recent book. Guest guess, very serious. This book came about quickly and womens rights and then waking very straightforward, nothing embellished. It is a hard subject matter. The bluecollar instead to sauce in the town. Host has there ever been a time when a book is going to print and for whatever reason the cover has to be changed . Guest oh yeah. I am running a blank on that now. That happens. Usually it is not quite so right at the point that its going to the printer. And it could be, like i said, feedback. Feedback from the retailers order there is another cover out that has the exact same photographs or very similar, you know, that we didnt realize that we need to change. Host Simon Schuster is a company has been innovative. Simon schuster created the concept of returns. Bookstores and they could ship them back and i would never pay for them. That was an institution. That was done during the depression because the idea of bookstores couldnt afford to take in stock and assumed they were going to sell it. So we naturally transformed the industry. There have been things like that they Simon Schuster has been the forefront at all a long history. One of the most major things that ever did was 75 years ago a creative pocket books which was the first u. S. Massmarket publisher. They started the 10 books. They charge 25 cents apiece and created a whole industry. I really ruled the country for decades. But the inventor digital, mass market has been decreasing. For years, when i started the business, we used to sell 10 mass markets for everyone hardcover book. We used to sell it or attend. The market was huge. The hard publishers book got wise. But if they doing and they started copying them. But nevertheless, massmarket is still the way to reach now tied with digital, but its the way really to be able to put a lot of great books in the hands of people for a very inexpensive price. Host what is an effective Media Campaign . Where do you go . Guest depends on what the book is and it depends on what the potential for a bookcase. It is what i like to think of as campaigns like Hillary Clinton, which began with National Media and breakout from there. A few big hits generate a number of things that create themselves. Then there is bottomup. The majority of the books we publish our bottom, which is to begin with a groundswell of your attention. Interviews if we are lucky enough on booktv. From there, things will expand and create opportunities on National Media and we might not have had at the gate once we reshape certain threshold of bias and enthusiasm. We cant predict, though we can create. Host are print reviews, New York Times, Washington Post . Guest they are, although i think sure many of those who speak to you in publishing say they dont have the same impact that they once did. While we still rely on our friends at the time, wall street journal, we now find a congestion of reviews, sort of have been at one time for books really to penetrate. One review generally wont make the impact it did as recently as five, 10 years ago. Our goal lakefield business rule of three. Now it is more like nine. Host why use a quick swasey changed . Guest i think people are distracted. People spend a lot of time online. People dont read as longer as carefully as they once did. So what is important that we have many reviews and maybe at the end of the campaign, what drives them batty to purchase a book is the fact they are turning around. Everywhere they look they see something about this book here they dont go if its good or bad, but they know people are talking about it. That is a goal to make sure other people are talking about the books for publishing. Host is three minutes with robert sell a book . Guest of course it does. Three minutes of public radio will help sell the book. Three minutes of any book. It is three minutes we treasure. Host now not all authors are as coveted for interviews as Hillary Clinton would be. How do you promote . Guest it depends on what the book is and where our focus is. We have a feel for who we think are reader for reach book made easy. Sometimes different leadership for input, multiple readerships for a book. We might begin with a campaign. We might target certain radio is the book covers a certain part of the country where we think theyre a special interest. It is difficult to talk in the abstract because for reach book we try to build a specific campaign and unique a campaign. There are certain things fundamental. Every book we publish will be sent to the New York Times for consideration, for instance. Every book we publish will be sent to trade publications like Publishers Weekly for early weekly for earlier views the booksellers are aware only my post early quotes on amazon. Com and cnn. Com and other online heart nurse. Those are everything you publish. Our other departments here focus on Customer Relations on amazon and things like that. We do, um, place great weight on online media. There are certain kinds of online media who function for us very much like any print publication would. Slate, for instance. We would treat just as we would the Washington Post or the New York Times. But then there are blogs, and there are other people, and we have different people in house who focus on different kinds of online voices. But they matter. And they matter because theyre part of social networks, they can go viral, they can reach people who arent necessarily looking at the kinds of publications we might be distracted by. So as the head of the department, my focus tends to be on the bigger publications and news organizations. But that shouldnt be at the expense of other outlets who are less visible but have the potential to be no less impactful. The outlets that you can go to getting fewer and fewer . It seems sometimes like its more and more. And that can be overwhelming. And so, you know, i know i tend to focus on few, few and well. And i think thats a better strategy than more and poorly for any book. But, you know, we have a very big group here, and we can divide up respondents so that were responsibilities so that were covering all our tracks. You know, again, there might be 100 people reading a blog ive never heard of, but they might be 100 book buyers. And that can be more impactful than a bad review in a major publication. How is social media part of your campaign to sell a book . Its an enormous part of it. And, again, thats something that other departments here focus on more than we do. But the social media aspect, certainly, Simon Schuster has a robust social media program, but i think when you talk about social media and books, we tend to think of it in terms of the authors social Media Presence and what he or she can do to connect with readers. Its not merely about our media voice as much as it is now almost equally important direct to consumer relationship. And often thats more effective, more effectively managed by an author than it is by us. And if i tell you as the publisher you should buy something, you might be skeptical. But if you have some feeling that you have a personal relationship with an author, that might mean something more than my outreach. Author tours sell books . Depends on the author. I think theres no reward for anyone in sending an author to a bookstore where five or ten people will come. As much as those five or ten people, any author might value that time together. The expense might outweigh the rewards. That said, there are writers who we do travel where we think its most effective, and that would generally have to do with whether we think we can get local media, whether the author has been audienced in the area that we can count on to show up, all sorts of concerns. Its not which i guess the implication of your question is sort of common to travel as an author just as it was a few years ago. Cary goldstein, whats your background in publishing . My background is i started as an intern at fsg in the winter of 1996. Er if around strauss and why . Because there was an opportunity, and it was a house where a friend of mine had done an internship, and it was a house that i didnt know very much about. Turns out was publishing a number of the poets i had just been studying in school. So i was in the right place at the right time. I accepted an internship, and a position opened up in sales that i took just because it was there. And about three weeks later a job opened up in publicity, and i said, you know, i think id like that. Can i move . And it was soon enough that they let me. So i was at fsg for about four years before moving to b and n. Com for two wanter and noble barnes noble. Com. For two years on the editorial side running a poetry, fiction and lit section. From there to the academy of american poets, worked on the campaign for a year and found my way back toker if around strauss and giroux in 2002, the winter of 2002 and stayed until 2006 at which time i left to join Jonathan Karp, current president and publisher of Simon Schuster, to launch an imprint called twelve where i was the associate publisher, and i came to s and s last june. And now similar to what i did with john at twelve, im wearing two hats, publicity and editorial. Who are some of the authors that youve womaned with that our audience worked with that our audience might know . Christopher hitchens, i was lucky enough to be involved with ted kennedys memoir, a number of fictional writers, but those come to mind. And then, of course, the s and s list is just, i think when youre talking about nonfiction, there are few publishers that can boast a list like ours. Theres walter isaacson, bob woodward, david mccullough, the list of nonfiction writers is kind of mind blowing. Do authors like doing publicity . Some more than others. Some are better at it than others. Some come to play, some come for work. We figure out what somebodys needs are and adjust. And its obviously the most fun for us when someone comes to play and has a bit of creativity and humor about it, and then we can really have fun. Somebody once asked me how you promote a man, how you do publicity for a man like christopher hitchens, and i said you get out of his way. [laughter] those are the best kinds of writers to work with. How would you describe the health of the Publishing Industry today . Actually, the Publishing Industry today is in Better Health than it has been in for some time. There was a lot of when Digital Publishing first came into our world, there was, id say there was a certain amount of fear and trepidation whats going to happen, but its actually added a lot of energy, its added new capabilities. You know, i was talking about the advertising thing, but now you actually they used to chat, dick simon and mac schuster used to chat to consumers, we can actually get them to agree to go back to them again and get they are i mails their emails, and thats a watershed change. To actually, you know, no longer always through a third party which is the retailer, but to actually be able to communicate directly and constantly with consumers who are interested in our product. So i think that the Digital Transformation has actually, you know, now that weve had enough of it to feel confident that we can respond to it and we can maintain our businesses in the face of it, i think that it has actually given a whole new energy to publishing. My role here at Simon Schuster is i oversee the marketing campaigns, and my staff works on the marketing of the books. So my role with the clinton title has been to work on the marketing side of that which has involved, you know, a web site for the book dedicated to the book, a facebook page, production of promotional videos, the release of content on the web. I mean, my role up to now has been very much the Digital Marketing role in this particular title. And its been a fun one because so many people are watching, and so many people care. So we toil away here and make a lot of videos for writers, but we dont have many that, you know, go up on the home page of aol on the day we hand it over or that yahoo picks up instantly and puts on a major page. So that parts been really fun. And thats been my role here in that, its really working on the consumer facing parts that arent her being interviewed, which our publicist would handle. Do you find some authors are more willing to make the videos and do the promotions than others . Oh, sure, absolutely. Its a different skill set than writing. Youre a solitary person who sits at their computer or with their note pad or however they write and, you know, and then suddenly youre asked to perform which is, basically, very much an external thing. So some or authors are very skilled at both, and then others arent really comfortable with it. In our role in the Marketing Group here, its the find that sort of others comfort zone where ec excel. Some are very good on twitter, some are very good on camera, some are better on facebook or instagram in terms of finding a way they can share their work with their readership and really connect with that readership. How significant or how important to your efforts in marketing are facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. Well, its been probably the biggest change in the course of my career, because when i started in publishing, most of marketing was really trade marketing. We were working with the major retailers and the small independent shops to convince them to take our book in a displayable quantity, and it was really about in the marketing side all about retail shelf space or mostly about it with some advertising things thrown in. And now with social media we can really connect the final consumer to the book were selling. And so facebooks allowed us to do that, twitters allowed us to do that in what i should say is an affordable way. Before direct to consumer marketing was really print, broadcast advertising, and that was so expensive, it was prohibitive. But social media louse us, basically i wont say free because time is worth something, the authors time, our time, but other than that resource we can get on the social network and really connect the writer to the reader. So its very exciting. Richard row work, every publisher has a back list. True. How does that come into play as far as marketing . Well, you asked earlier about digital, and one of the great things that ebooks have enabled us to do is to work with our ebook retailers and promote back list really tied into new front list publications. So a lot of what weve been doing lately involves taking an older title by a writer, putting preview material for the new book and then working with the eretailers to promote that. So, and within those ebooks we can then put direct links to preorder the new book. So thats been a great thing with ebooks. You know, with that has been the transition or the loss of some shelf space, so as bookstores have contracted, as borders closed. , and and so again its just the market evolving and changing, but back list has always been important economically and as a way for readerships to grow over time. How many projects are you currently working on . So Simon Schuster publishes 120 new titles a year and about 80 paperback conversions or the paperback reprint. So in a year were working on about 200 books in this group here. I figured it out once, every one and a half workdays we publish a book. So its quite a, its quite a lot to keep up with. In ten years is the publishing world going to look different than it does today . It will. We in an evolution right now . It will have to look different than it does today because there are so many different forces that are changing i. Changing it. The fact that what we do is help authors create the best work they can and then introduce it to the public, i believe, will still be the core of the business. But how it operates will definitely have changed. You have fewer retailers who have become increasingly powerful, you have new and different ways of reaching those consumers that you have to develop expertise in and learn what works, what doesnt work. Oldfashioned medias still the number one thing that helps books sell, but even that is changing. Fewer of them Pay Attention to books anymore, so how do we make sure books stay part of the conversation . A book is a much longer commitment than a Youtube Video or a short piece that you can read on a screen very easy. So, you know, theres competitions definitely, and so we will have to change in certain ways in order to make sure we still can take that authors work and convince people they should be reading it. Here is a look at some books that are being published this week. Norman mailers authorized biographer and archivist Michael Lennon presents selected letters of norman mailer. In her brilliant career, rachel cook writes about lives in history. In empire of cotton, sven becker provides a history of the economic importance of cotton. And in pressed for time, judy wiseman challenges the concept that modern technology has sped up everyday life. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv. Org. And now on booktv, michio kaku talks about the latest advances in brain science. He says that our understanding of the brain and Technological Advancements make it possible to now record our memories and dreams, communicate telepathically and control robots with our minds. This is about an hour, 15 minutes. [applause]