Paul, what is your job. I am the editor. What is that mean . That means i edit that weekly section that the New York Times put out every sunday and they have since 1896. Comedy people work on the New York Times report . Depends on if im underestimating or inflating the number, about 16 people. What do they dos . We have editors who call preview editors of the section. They are the people who have to go through the hundreds of books we have every week and decide which art worthy of review and try to come up with people who they think would be good at reviewing them. What is your job at the New York Times . Im an editor which means i go through books nonfiction categories and assign for review. Comedy books do you look at a we . Went to look at this, im moving onto september books, i am am going through stacks of these books right now. These are just books coming out in august . These are books not assigned yet for august. Im going to go through and see if theres anything i missed. What are these books behind your . These are books with september, october, november. I have shortlists which are category closeups and we assign three or four books with a particular category. These are books that im interested in and taking home. Much to the chagrin of my husband. Of all these books that are on your desk, what are the chances that one is going to get a review . I dont know what our percentages, i think a long time ago is 1 of books get aside. We have a small space. It is tough. Okay lets pick up this one. What is the sheet that you have on each of these books . That we like to look at the sheet here . The sheet is a little information, an update to the publishers. Every time we skip a book you have to write up a reason. A couple of sentence that its incredibly where the book but i just assign something similar or this is rehashing arguments that we have seen. Some sort of justification. So recently and the new york book review there is a book review by linda robinson, it was an iraq war veteran story. So many of those books have come out, how how do you choose just one . Its a voice, perspective, its a subjective thing, its an imperfect art. If its a subject that has been explored youre looking for someone who has some kind of unique twist, some kind of different argument. Outage did you get into this business . I loved criticism. I did in program and fiction writing. I like to review, i loved reading critics, i started at Publishers Weekly which is a trade magazine which turns out reviews. I went over to mpr and have longer reviews. Then i got the good luck to be here. Do we ever see her byline of the New York Times book review . Yes, every now and then i write. Right now im working on a review about a photographer which is going into an art issue how long have you been here . I have been here three years. Thank you for your time. One of the few sections of the paper that have our own dedicated copy desk. They are integrated into the book review as a whole was so they backed check the section. Fact checking is a huge part of what we do at the book review. You can disagree with a book review but you cant distrust it. Also good for us to avoid grammatical errors being it is a grammatical error. What is your job heres . I am staff editor. We call it copy editor. What does that mean . Once the book arrives at our desk we are mainly in charge, we are the last line of defense so to speak. We are waiting for content, we are also a fact checking. We are also writing headlines, check captions, credits and so forth. We are the last production sequence for the reviews go to press. So once i have been written at that point, your job is to fact check them . Write the titles . Fact checking is that the unwritten part of the job. Others work on a nightly cycle. As more of a quick read for content and you are working on deadline nightly. Here with a weekly production cycle we are taking time with each piece. Were reading them thoroughly, multiple times. Reading both for style and content. It all goes into the mix. So if something is in error, people look to you . Yes. So this is what i just pulled up on a recent new york system. I did work on this. The review was was written by John Williams which is one of our own. I was the copy editor on this review. Did you come up with the title . As youre Holding Summer reading issue youll see special type e these headlines were shorter, punchier, no explanatory subheader or deck as we call them. Yes, these were quite fun to write. Were thinking with an idea of what grabs readers quickly and georgia peach i came up with five or six for this one. We had the meeting last week and georgia peach was a winner. So you are editing John Williams, Senior Editor here at the New York Times . Was that difficult . John is a fantastic writer. I wish ever review was this easy to edit. What kind kind of work did you do . Because john is such a fantastic writer, in this case i was looking at the facts of the peace. The history, theres a lot of information about his personality, his on the field issues, his off the field the skirmishes. A lot of it was researching. At the end of the day, i think i suggested one or two minor tweaks, minor factual adjustments in the piece. For the most part this was when you get a piece that is not such a pleasure to edit . What you do . Thats when you earn your keep. You take nothing for granted. At a certain point you realize you take nothing for granted. You are checking every last line. Usually youre putting in more time, you are wrestling with the piece. You know what you have gone, every fact you double check. You have made sure that every claim can be verified. You youre taking nothing for granted. Very often, its a giveandtake with the reviewer. Our reviewers are experts in these fields. When youre going back to a reviewer and say this may be an accurate or it may need to be revised, you have to provide your own information. It up with your own facts to convince your writers. And to convince editors that your information is right and theres is wrong. Most of the time reviewers are grateful for the service and grateful to be fact check so closely. Communication is always open and they are all very cordial. How did you get here . I arrived at the times 15 years ago. I was a Business Assistant or a copy boy. Many of them spent in the book review. In 2007i changed track and became a copy editor. I was was on the sports death, national desk, finally in 2010 i was back to the book review. Are you a reader . Yes. I have been reading, because of the work i will read anything. It broadens my own horizons. Before coming here i didnt read much of historical fiction, now its one of my favorites. Science fiction is one of my favorites. Most of the things i read are on the recommendation of our own reviewers. So we have our copy desk, editors, art director, production editor, clerks, and because this is an online publication we have a producer. Are you removed from the New York Times and general . No, we are vested. When the daily newspaper was a different operation from the weekend edition. We are like the appendix of the weekend edition. In that sense where our own private island. Were integrated into the sections of the paper. For many readers of the New York Times they do not think about, the oldfashioned print cycle. They dont think of us as being they dont think of cooking being a wednesday section anymore. Or or styles as it being a sunday section. They are all the sections are online every moment of the day. In that sense we are integrated into the newspaper as a whole. People get their New York Times book review in their sunday paper . Yes. How long ago was that prepare . We published ten days ahead. There is a print edition so todays tuesday, we close on wednesday, thursday we thursday we will have a physical copy of that paper. People who subscribe to the New York Times book review will potentially have their print edition that day depending on how fast the post comes. We are the one section of the New York Times that you can subscribe to independently from the rest of the paper. You can be a New York Times book review subscriber and not get the rest of the newspaper. Those people get it early. Comedy people subscribe to that . I dont know the current number, lots of people, more should do it. How long have you worked here at the New York Times question. For four years. Doing what . I started a parttime is a Childrens Book editor. Then i push my way. I i was a parttime for the first year, i started editing features which meant the back page of the book review which was an essay. I started by the book which is a weekly profile , interview with an with an author and public figure about what they are reading. I did that for another year and then became editor in 2013. In a recent addition by the book, you have David Mccullough. How do you choose the questions . Originally thought that i would be very strict about it and asked the same question, i realize that with the idiotic idea. Quickly with the help of my former boss, because if you have david who is the first person who did a by the book, you are not going to ask him what is the funniest book you ever read or who are the greatest comic writers are what memoirs you like. You have to tailor it to the author. So that the column that i still personally at it. I write the questions myself. One of the questions you asked David Mccullough was who are his favorite president ial biographers . Yes, how could you not ask that of David Mccullough. David mccullough puts out a book every couple of years, is it an automatic review in the New York Times . There there are some authors who are pretty automatic. Maybe we dont think, for example the greatest thriller is the best but we know that our readers are going to want to know that. It is worthy of review, not necessarily because of the quality, and im not speaking of David Mccullough here, i think everything he writes is terrific. We know that it will be of interest in the review may not be positive. It is worthy of attention. Have you ever had an issue were all the reviews were negative for all the reviews are positive . Did you have to switch it around . The reviews come in on a regular basis, then we schedule there huge number of places that are reviewing books from bloggers to people who are doing microbe reviews on twitter. I think there are very few places that are doing it in the way we are doing it. What book reviews to personally read . I read reviews all over the place. In the new yorker, the atlantic, harper, a number of weeklies a month a month lease, i read a lot online. I may not read the full print edition of all the publications but i very frequently read reviews here and there. Is it easy to become new york centric . No. I feel at the New York Times were thinking so globally. If anything, its all the many reasons of this country, theres a lot of regional that is very great. Were thinking internationally at this point. We do not read a that are out in the u. S. I really have all i am books on public, books that are huge and you can come over here. I would say no. What about self published books . Have you reviewed self published books . We get them and we do not review them. We review about 1 of the books that come out in print from a publisher every year. So 99 of those books are being discarded. At some point you have to say, okay we, okay we are just going to look at these books. Otherwise, we would be here, it would it would be 24 hours that we be here reading. One of the things that we find a book to be is the publishing world is often liberal, white, male, dominated. Have you found that in your business as well . Its not here at the New York Times book review. When it comes to books . I dont think so actually. The Publishing Industry is dominated by women if anything. In terms of the number of editors were there and people who are promoting them and selling them. Publishing is really female dominated. In terms of the book, i would say no. In terms of the attention given to those books, i was a sometimes yes. We try not to do that here, we tried to bear in mind the books that are interested in our readers are multifaceted. I dont think about in terms of so many distinctions you could choose. Some people think of it in terms of gender, we try to keep an eye on gender but thats just one of the factors. Id say ethnicity and country of origin we pay a lot of attention to. We try to get people across the spectrum. I have to look at my cheat sheet on the wall, just off the top of my head, we had others review a book and we do try to get a number of different political perspectives. Bill oreilly, american sniper, all best sellers. When it comes to political books or maybe point of view books, what you do . We like to review them away think they are worthy of review. Theres two easy ways to do a book review, wanted to get someone was going to agree with that person 100 and that is very boring in terms of the review because theyre just going to say yes this person is right. Or you get someone who is on the opposite side of the political spectrum and then they just make one of the book and author and take it down. Thats a set up. Neither are interesting, theyre both predictable. What we try to do with political books is get someone who we think will honestly and in an interesting way to engage with subject matter. As opposed to just doing the takedown. In your time as editor, what changes have you make . Well, there have been very changes on the page. As far as introducing new features in the book review, by the book was something i worked on. Taking over, we change the back page so the back page used to be an essay. That has changed a number of times over the course of the book review existent. Right before i was on board it was an essay. We changed it to something called book and where we have a rotating group of 15 columnists. Theyre matched each week and they answer some questions in the literary world of books and publishing. They dont know who their match with before they take it on. I think in the internet age we do not want to just get one opinion, we want to hear a multiplicity of voices. Thats why online forms are so popular. People want different perspectives. I thought this was a way to get two very different strong voices, distinctive writers answering one question. Even if they both have the same answer, even if we asked them if the baileys price for women helps or hinders women writers, even if they both say its a terrible thing but they say for Different Reasons and say it in different ways, and the columns are short enough that you want to read both and get both of those views. We added a column at the front of the book called open book. Before we had something that was like a letter from the editor. I wanted to introduce a feature in the book review there was more news oriented. A little more faster moving. That is what open book is. We have added more essays, a critics take which is a critical essay and authors note which is a personal essay. This week we have an packer talking about what its like to be between books when youre in novelist. Who came up with that idea . That was her idea. She pitched that and she had a book about the spring. Seem like a fun topic that no one had written. Sometimes we commission the essay sometimes writers come to us. Sometimes will approach an artist or critic that we like. We are planning an issue on new orleans, and we approach a number of writers about. Any New York Times book review outside the firewall . I dont think we have a firewall . You me to pay well . I dont think so actually. I think there are ways to get around that pay wall, but the book review operates the same way. To hear from readers . Yes all of the time. Happy, angry, disappointed, critical, upset, annoyed. Mostly happy and delighted. Have you ever reviewed a book because readers said you have to look at this book . No. By the time we got to that book, by the time readers complained about it im at the book was out which is late for us. Right now were at the last week of may and we are looking at august and september books right now. It takes us a while to assess the books, figure out if it should be review, contact reviewers, have them hopefully agree to do so. Again, we closed ten days before the book review comes out. That is quite a lead time. We have to be far ahead of thing. To ever see a book and say im going to review this one. I have not yet. When i was a Childrens Book editor i did it a lot. Think my predecessors reviewed books while they were this job. I have not done it yet. One of the things i try to do the book review is i feel like my point of view is infused in the book review and people dont miscellany my direct take. What makes a great book review. Its a good piece of writing. Im not going to delude myself into thinking that everyone who reads the book reviews are going to go out and read the book. For many people it so they dont have to read the book. Its easier to talk about what make the bad review the what makes a bad review. Theres a lot of things that a bad review does or does not do. I will say one of my pet peeves is to get to the end of the book review and say, did they like it . If i cant tell if its a good book or not that something is wrong with that review. I cant stand to read a book review that the book report. I dont like pot spoilers. I dont like disinterested, and sought be in very stately about it. You should get the material and tell that they took interest in it. Bestseller list . We have moved from fiction fiction bestsellers to all sorts , why . I think people read in so many different ways. Theres so many books published, if you just a fiction nonfiction, youd miss out on the other books out there. A lot of the books that sell in the real world are cookbooks. They are how to books and inspirational books. Childrens book probably outsell all of the other categories. Within Childrens Books you want to distinguish between ya, young adult books which turns out a lot of grownups are reading. In middle grade books. If you have you have an a girl child you do not want to look at a bestseller of childrens novels and not know that a lot of them are actually for 14 yearolds. His last want your a girl to read. We introduced a lot of specialized bestseller list in the book review over the last few years to account for a number of changes from the industry as well. Look at format, ebooks, audiobooks, books that fell across platforms. How is an ebook phenomenon affected your world . Not a lot honestly. I think there is a fear or excitement, depending on your perspective that ebooks would overtake traditional carbon based books, as their call. I dont think that has happened. The growth took off and then started to taper and stabilize. A lot of people who read ebooks are hybrid readers. They might take their kindle on an an airplane or my is their tablet reader for romance novels or erotica they dont want anyone to see what they are reading. Or books that read in huge amounts very quickly. Or a book that is really too heavy to carry. Then other books they want the print edition of. They want want to pages, take notes, put it on display, have on their bookshelves. What it has done is expand the opportunities for the ways in which people read. I dont think its fundamentally altered reading. How to your request mark. I read in print. I am oldschool. 100 in print. I love the book as a physical object. I collect collect them, im constantly building new bookshelves in my house. I cherish them as objects. I sometimes find multiple copies of the same book because i wake the book art or the way they are printed. I want the the u. K. Edition and the u. S. Edition. I am print all the way. I am on screen all day and into the night, doing other kinds of reading. So for me, the book has its special place in print. Wasnt there an essay by about his book. Yes, he wrote about inheriting. He is a columnist for the style section and he wrote about inheriting his mothers library or not inheriting it and the importance of that. That resonated with me because i books that have been handed down to me. When my father died i chose what books i wanted to keep. I know they are my dads books. Thats meaningful. Who his father what is bob . Bob is my book of books. I do think of him as having a personality. It is very plain, great journal, copy stand at this point, where i have written down every book i have read since i was 17. Where does it live, is it a a diary, several tire. No comments one book. People are often disappointed i write very small. I record the author, the title and he is on my desk at home. Like the one cherished object that if my house were to go up in flames i would want to get it first. Although if you say have a copy of it but i do have a 2015 thing and scanned it, so i do have a pdf have a pdf of it down the cloud. It is 2015, how many books on that list . Its not about the numbers, its about the content. I dont know the number actually. I didnt didnt keep track of the numbers when i started. I think it took enough people asking that question to think oh wait, should know how many have read. Numbering it has its downsides because i can do things like quantify how many books i have read each year and then notice if i start to fall off for my batting average. So youre not going to tell us . Im not going to give it away. No. Its my diary. I will write about bob though. I have written about him. You have another book coming out. Im writing about my life with bob. How did you get started . I have the most roundabout way to the book review. I dont take notes. Anyone anyone who is trying to get into a book reviewing, i think the easiest way is to say that i was always a reader. So that is the primary qualification. To be interested in books, so in that way i was well prepared take us on that roundabout. After i was a history commentator in college, i i thought i wanted to go into academia, i was discouraged from doing so by one of my professors who assured me that i would never get a job. Not because i would not be qualified but because there were no jobs. So i moved to thailand which is not the obvious answer to that. This was in the early 90s, i wanted to do something that would be very different from what i thought i wanted to do, which if it wasnt going to be academia it was going to be publishing. I wanted to see if theres Something Else out there that might interest me. So i bought a oneway ticket to thailand and i lived there for one year. I read a lot and i studied, i taught, when i came home it was not to live in new york but be prepared to move to hong kong at the time. While i was at my Alumni Office looking for alum to contact in hong kong, a job opening came in from scholastic and i thought well if i were going to live in new york at work in publishing that is what i would want to do. I took that job. I worked in publishing in new york, after all. I worked in childrens publishing, then at time inc. , i lived in london and i started writing about books and art for the economists. I came back to new york, worked in television, in news. Then i left that job to write my first book. When i left that job was writing full time, for the first time ever, i realize this is what i wanted to do. I never wanted to go back to a day job doing Something Else. I worked briefly at a magazine called american demographics. After that, i stayed home and i wrote books, and i wrote on a freelance basis. What was your first book and how did you choose the topic . It was on matrimony and it came out in 2002. The topic was chosen for me. I had what i called a very brief marriage. After i got divorced, divorced, i noticed many other people did and my trend alert went off. I started doing research about it and i took what i i have been doing during my day job which was a Trend Analysis mostly for cnn and applied it to my life. I didnt write about my own marriage but wrote about what i was seen happen to people my age around the country. How did you get from their . It was at the time is writing for time magazine. They had us stx issue. I was a sex issue. By the time i got to choose my topic everything was chosen, someone was doing something on snm, something on infidelity, so how about pornography. So i wrote that story on monogamy but it cannot be printed in time magazine. Theres a lot more to be said. And i realize the story ran in 2003 and it was an important topic. It so it deserved a full statement. So did provide sell well . I dont know if it sold well but it was very interesting maybe it did sell well. They got a lot of attention, not all of it positive. I mention my nasty review earlier. I think it was two to my own horn for a little bit, ahead of its time a little bit. That book came out in 2005, what i seen at the time was that the impact especially with the internet on pornography has changed the way that people consume pornography and a change the access to pornography. The change the way in which people were using it. So to do the research for that book i was primarily interviewed men who use pornography. Some a lot, some not so much. To talk about what their use was like, if it affected their attitudes, if it affected their sex lives . The reaction to it was very interesting. I thought people would come to and say, finally someone has approach this journalistically not with a political agenda, theyre just laying out the research and who knew . Or they got us moments in the spotlight. Instead, to my chagrin, people reacted along political lines. People on the left to i thought would say finally, heres a smart, interesting feminists with nonideological approach to photography. Instead many of them said it was an attack on free speech or it was a woman taken away our pornography. I say on the right i got a much stronger reception. I think many conservatives are open to seeing this from a criticals perspective. Wasnt from a moral perspective on the right . Some of it was, but i think conservatives were more open to seeing the psychological impact. Is very interesting, i heard from conservatives and i went to congress and testified on the effects, they were were really interested in the way that it affect men sex lives of family relationships. Frankly, i dont think those as issues i think there issues that affect people across the political spectrum. Id have to say my experience that conservatives are more open to hearing that. Just to continue, your book journey starter marriage, fortified, parenting. Not so obvious, but it was obvious to me in terms of what was going on in my life when i wrote that book, i had two children in the second child i had in the middle of writing that book. This is before my third child was born. What i observed in my real life was that parenting had become industrialize. It had become a thing. Is to be in the New York Times we never use the word parenting. We would use childrearing. It is very parent centric way of looking at this thing we do, raising children. I wanted to write about that and also investigate some of the ways in which companies were taking advantage of parental society. This was the the area of baby einstein, before it was six bows as a scam. As a parent up there so many ways i was told that if i only spent money ons, y, z, and time doing all this other stuff, ill be, i be able to raise the perfect child. Of course, i did. Now so i wrote the book about that. Where were you born and raised, who are your parents . I was born in new york on long island. My parents were divorced when i was a young age, i my weekends in the city. Real new yorkers will look at me and say thats a phony new yorker so i didnt grow up in long island. My mother worked in advertising, she actually entered the world as a copywriter. She was a writing model for me. My father worked construction. Do you review New York Times reporters books . We do, we dont review all of them. We review a lot of them. Also as you know the New York Times has its own book review which is what i work on and also daily reviews were have a daily critic. They cant obviously review the New York Times reporters. The daily section will get a outside reporter to review it. Have you you been pressured to review someone. No. I cant tell you that people will be annoyed if we dont, i will get looks from other staffers if we pass over their books. We review the books when we think they are worthy. In general, the New York Times is filled with great writers. A lot of the times they do merit the attention. Are New York Times readers, they know when our big reporters are and they know how the colonists and books come out. That way we try to respond. Have you ever lost a friendship over a book review . No i havent, unless someone is just so angry with me that they are not even revealing it. Maybe i have and i dont know. Theyre not telling me in case the read another book. What is the thing you dont like about your job. Nothing. This is the greatest job. With the possible exception of wind down and reading all day with nothing else to do, this is the next best thing. Are your children readers. Yes they are huge readers. I piled back there what i have to bring home. The Childrens Book editor was the pinnacle. What kind of work does your husband do. He works in finance. The shorthand we give turkey design letters and hes number. The podcasts, said something he started as well. No i didnt start that, that was understand, weekly podcast that you can listen to through the website or itunes, and all of those places speemac, a times a week to do that. Once a weeks. Are those available. Youre asking all these good technical question which i dont know the answer. I i think it is. You can download it from itunes. Okay, lets go to buy the book, what are some of the books on your nightstand. I can sheet with that question because i got this great, new bed, its a japanese platform bed and the best thing is it has a border going all around it so i compiled books all around the entire bed so i can get by answering that question. Im surrounded by books. Im surrounded by books that are in a large part about reading. About writing through your book because i am writing a book on the subject you have writers who will avoid the subject when theyre writing it and others who are drawn to it. To the latter category. Also reading peoples voice when meyer. Like who. Right now im reading shirley jackson. Franklin wrote a terrific essay for us a few weeks ago about Shirley Jacksons recently reissued domestic writing. She wrote about living with her kids and a house in vermont and two books called among the savages and raising demons. The title gives a sense of her sensibility and wit. Im enjoying those at the moment. Who some of your favorite nonfiction authors . Thats a broad question to write time and people by asking this . But they can sheet they can look at their bookshelves. So many favorites. Thats a hard question to answer off the top of my head. I think we go by categories. Biographers, David Mccullough is an amazing biographer. What you love about mccullough that brings people to him, sells well . Well all add caro to the mix. I am actually of big fan of president ial biographies. Its a storytelling. If you read in this is not one of his president ial, if you read the book on the Brooklyn Bridge, not just about the Brooklyn Bridge is about engineering at the time, but what they learned about with the called when he get the know and think about the scuba diving about how they discovered the bands comments about brooklyn politics at the time, but all of these incredible figures that played into the building, so what he does is weave this incredible tapestry, its a storytelling, is the vividness of the writing. Is there any transit nonFiction Books read Fiction Books that you have noticed over the years. I think its a blurring of those definitions really. We have seen a lot of people writing fictionalized member are taking what really ought to bed or might have been considered a memoir turning it into fiction. Or taking nonfiction and writing about it in a more personal way. When i started writing nonfiction, and even in journalism, you really saw the first person. He would always avoid the eye. I think with the internet in particular, that personal voices being infused into fiction a lot more. In fiction fiction i would also say a blurring of john rowe or you have traditional literary writers infusing aspects of genre fiction, whether its crime, the thrillers, into their writing. Would a book like boys in the boat takes off, its a little snippet of history do any books like that surprising . Im always surprised by the bestseller list. Every week we do a podcast on the bestsellers listen theres always something unexpected. I think looks like seabiscuit poison the boat, unbroken, that kind of narrative nonfiction what it does so well as take a very small story within a much broader campus and it succeeds in conveying all the thrills and ups and downs of that smallscale within that broader campus that illuminates the larger history. Those do really well with readers, i think think thats been going on the last few decades. Who is that your Literary Dinner Party . Ive answered this before, i forgot my answer. Id have dorothy parker, mark twain, i get to name three, who else im going to name all that people. Three people that would fight,. Harper lees new book coming out, how big a deal is this . Is a huge deal. We have seen that in terms of the attention that has gotten. To me what i have found most powerful and moving about the attention it has gotten is that it really shows the impact that early reading has on people. Most people read to kill a marking bird in school, most of them read it because it was assigned to them. As much much as people complain about assigned reading and how boring those books are, they have a tremendous impact. So, the fact that many people read decades ago that so much attention and generated such excitement, to to me it shows the power that books have and the influence they have, their inspirational effect on a persons life. And so many peoples life. Its coming out in july 2015, have you gotten an early copy of it . And be assigned a reviewer to that . Its a given that we. Its a given that we are going to review it. We do have a reviewer but we do not have the book. That is my next mission. There keeping that pretty tight. Is harper collins. There keeping it pretty tight. They are i can tell you that, thats most fun, fun, most exciting part of our job, which is the books themselves, but then its finding that match, finding out who should review that harper lee book. Who would be the most interesting person, whose, whose voice havent we heard from on the subject. Who would provide a different perspective than you might read elsewhere. When the staff meets, what is your Editorial Staff meeting like . We meet as a whole, rather rarely. This is a very informal place. So we are having micromeetings and and informal meetings all of the time. I would say its fun, most of all. Theres a reason why this job is good in this because everyone here, at the the book reviewed no matter what role they play is a huge reader and opinionated reader. Someone who enjoys and relishes having opinions about books. There is bit of debate, there sometimes disagreement but also a lot of humor. We take what we do seriously but we have a lot of fun while we are doing it. What is the purpose of editorial reading. We have editorial meetings with each of the previewers. We will meet with them of the small group, usually once every week or two to discuss the books that that editor should think should be review. Sometimes to talk about the ones that they think should not be review if there some reason to debate it, to make sure that we are okay with skipping it. The purpose of those meetings is the editor will tell my deputy and me about the book, why its worthy of review and then, and usually with a suggested list of threefive names of sometimes this is my first and second choice and why those people would be good. If its an author who has been reviewed a lot, they will come in with a list of of everyone who has reviewed that person before in the New York Times book review. The reason for that is we have some unusual rules and one is if you have reviewed stephen king before, you cannot review him for us again. Why . Because because we want to get a new voice on it. So our daily critics they will review the next even king even if they have reviewed him before. Thats part of their role. What we do is to get someone with a fresh perspective. That becomes challenging when it becomes a popular author. We want to thank, who would be to and different and interesting. How would you recommend to viewers to readers how they should read the book review. I still like to read it in print. I think it reads a lot like a magazine. We really think hard about our cover and about what is going to be that review, that one review or maybe those three books that we are going to have on the cover that we can who is going to review it. That has a place. My name is jude, im the production editor at the book review. Im in charge of getting all the various elements of the section, headlines, sections, photos, text, on the electronic page and off to the printer. How to get all those elements together . A lot of an aching but we moved to desktop publication here about ten15 years ago. We use adobe in design. Within that all the elements of the section are checked into that system. I can look to see if its caption ready, headline ready, i can look and see that we dont have the art director. I can zero in on things that have not been cleared for copywriting and that i know who to go to. So lets look at a recent book review cover. Heres the Summer Reading cover. Who designed it . What was your role in putting it together . The art director came up with the overall concept. I i gave him a blank electronic page and he looked at it, all of our covers have a logo, date, New York Times banner there so he takes the blank canvas, looks at it talks to the editor figures out what kind of image they want to have. A lot of times we have type on the cover but this was a happy summer cover. Then he finds an illustrator who will agree to do something around that line. He gives me a rough version and then i pull it inches if if we need to put an illustration credit on i will put that type on sunday copy desk and make sure the persons name is spelled correctly. The scan the art and now get a highresolution copy of it and pull it into the page. That will be what goes to press. Since we do do desktop publishing we do digital plates. Those go chart print sites when we close the issue, its all adobe, acrobat sites now. You dont really see the old metal film negatives that started happening when i was doing them. So once you send off, how quickly can this be printed . We can close this by close at five we will have copies back in the morning. They will do it overnight. So and i probably have them done for three hours but were just not here to get them done yet. Our first one is out of college point, queens. You have your computer open, what are you working on . This is an electronic page its done in adobe, in in design. Making sure the High Resolution art is in place. See things are fuzzy down here are art director roughs this out and then i will go through and make sure all the real art is in. We have to see if its in here and i dont see this one yet. Once i get this done it will be ready for press on the our side. The tax have to go. Youll see that theres credits are not quite on, still work in progress. Normally would be two days before close. Were making up for lost time here. Were going to go to press tomorrow with it. It will have all the parts. I check this into the system, and if we use k for to track all of our pages, if we check that and i will pull back and see an image of all the pages in this particular issue. The grayer ads, we dont know the ads are like yet. They come from a different department. I can see the editorial pages. I give it to the art director so he can see it and make sure it looks nice. Make sure we dont have the art across the page or for too many pages in a row. Its a good overview of the section. If i see green on top i can see its in place. Was the cover . This is still like every one else it, its a work in progress