Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tour Of Regnery Publishing 20180224

Would become National Bestsellers one of which my favorite is leo damores senatorial privilege about senator kennedy and how the truth about chappaquiddick. He was ticked off that kennedy saying the swimming out of the chappaquiddick river, could you say you were driving cracks years later leo more gets this on the record. No new york publisher would publish it. Registry publish it. More recently there was a patriotic book, flags of our father and since it was not flags of our mothers 27 new york publishers turned them down. When publish 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list to the way things are going now in the trunk area the hysteria, i dont know if any of you are still reading the times, but its every day about somehow some sad little Facebook Page that they think russia swung the whole election and if you visited america in 2016 you would notice outside of the major cities you could not drive a mile without seeing a 6foot tall trump sign, but im sure that little Facebook Page in any event they have become more hysterical than i have seen and ive lived through the mccarthy era, nixon era and ive written about them and i think its worse than even that and if they get control of the internet, we could be right now back to Regnery Publishing being the only way for conservative to communicate with one another, so stay on their mailing lists and remember there is a reason he is the most dangerous man in america. Regnery publishing recently celebrated their 17th the 70th anniversary and we visited their office to talk to many people responsible for bringing their books to publication. Marji ross, what kind of books does regnery publisher . Bestselling books, of course, but broadly we publish books for conservative readers. We publish a books on Current Events and politics and culture, but we also do a lot more than just political books now. We publish history books, a little bit of hip fiction. We publish kids books and we have a new line called regnery fay, publish book for our faith readers. Lets break that down a bit. You say a conservative audience, has that always been the case . Always been the case since the beginning, Henry Regnery who started the company 70 years ago this year was dedicated to publishing books for conservative readers and at that time and for a long time he was one of the only if not the only book publisher who was friendly to conservative authors and conservative ideas and he started off publishing some of the books of the modern conservative movement in the early years of Regnery Publishing we published william f bob William F Buckleys first book. We published witnessed by Whitaker Chamber and all of those books are still in print today. We still sell them today. Does that Say Something about the Publishing Industry that those books were published necessarily . It definitely does and Henry Regnery recognize that and saw an opportunity in the marketplace and he back then did what we still do today, which is we publish books because we bumped we publish conservative books because its great business and because its part of our mission. Marji ross, who are some of the authors you published today . We publish a lot of the leading lights in the conservative Movement Including ann coulter, David Limbaugh, and klein and a whole host of others if eu puts a ann coulter bookout, does it sell automatically because her name is on its . It certainly helps that her name is on it, but i cant tell you any book is a guarantee success anymore. I think that as the Book Business has changed over the past 15 or 20 years a lot more of the business has gone online, of course, and people are buying online so you lose the opportunity to visualize those books then publicize those books physically and you lose the sense of discovery that people have had for generations going into a bookstore and finding a book that they did not know existed, finding an author that they didnt know about before and that has been a big change in our industry and its put frankly more pressure on publishers to come up with interesting and creative ways to help people know that a book exists when there isnt a celebrity author attached to it. So, how do you market a book book of the last 10, 15 years . Regnery has become i think the leader in using media to sell books and by that, i mean, we think organically from the very beginning of a books life, about how that book is going to become part of the news cycle and how the theme of the book and the topics and issues in that book will be connected with whats happening in the news so we have a crystal ball that we look what will be happening. We try 268 watch the big concern will be within our marketplace, what will be driving the news for our market and how our books and authors can be relevant to that and we use earned media whether its tv or conservative talk radio or certainly online Media Outlets to really drive the conversation and try to make our books in our author part of that conversation. Doesnt matter which party is in power for sales . Thats a great question. For a very long time we said what is bad for america is good for regnery and by that we meant when liberals were in power that might not be good for the future of the country, but it was great for selling conservative the books and certainly when the Opposition Party is in power, conservatives become very engaged, very concerned about the future of america and not the terrific landscape for selling conservative books, but we have also found over the past certainly the past couple of years bad there is so much debates and disagreements and concern across the Political Landscape which is happening in washington that conservative books are selling very very well even with a republican in the white house and i think thats because people are genuinely concerned about the direction of the country. They are concerned about the divisiveness within the country and they are looking for an explanation for whats going on, what direction we are going and how the country, i think, for conservatives and how the country can return to some of the Bedrock Foundation principles that conservatives think are important to keep this country on the right track. While visiting regnery we spoke with Harry Crocker who is responsible for acquiring books. So, how do you acquire a book and an author . Traditional way is waiting for agents to come up with proposals, but a lot of what we do here is trying to project what will be in the news and the best books some of the best books we do our books where i think we think collectively this author on this topic will be dynamite so we try to make those marriages happen. We will come with an idea and tripe at the the two together. Thats sort of been our go to strategy, not about waiting on the agency, but going out and actively pursue authors. So, ann coulter on immigration. Is that when you all put together . I think she came to us with that and even all of those ones where we take them to the author, the author makes it their own so i will call someone up i know who i think would be good for this book and i think i say what you think about subject x and they say what about subject x minus two and we talk it over and it eventually works out, but any idea we generate here because the authors idea. I can only help him make his case the best way he can. Someone you published several times as edward klein, so if you have a conversation with mr. Klein, how does it go . Well, ed is interesting. is a reporter, so what we can do is say can you find this out try to seat if he can get sources to get out the information we think will be newsworthy, but also ed is saying im on the trail of this and should i keep pursuing this. Its a giveandtake backandforth. But, when you acquire a book, how long between that initial conversation until that book is on the bookshelf . That varies a lot, but i will say one thing that sets regnery apart from other publishers is because many of the books we do because many our current event driven, they are very short incubation time. Reporting is being done, but especially when you do a reporters book. You cant sit on the story for too long so we could sign a book in a matter of mean lets go back a bit. To get the books on the shelves and shipping the books on trucks takes four weeks to get coast to coast on the bookshelves. Essentially, you have shot two months already humming when you go to press with the book. We have had anything from turning around a book in a week, a matter of days to more leisurely and more traditional publishing schedules. All of our books are very slam bang from conception to the shelves matter of months and rare cases weeks. Have you started acquiring books for the fall of 2018 . Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. The bookstore trays dont like what we call dropins because the Current Events you think is you dont know about who knows that there will be in the news in september 2018. We will have a better gas in april, but to drop in a store you have to have a really hot topic or a really hot author because they have already sold all of their shelf space far ahead of time, so they much prefer books six months, you know they once a good handle of what will come into the store, so we press the issue a lot. We are a thorn in the side of bookstore schedules. Harry crocker, one of the National Conversations going on right now is about Sexual Assault. Is that something you keep an eye on and think okay, we had this author etc. . Well, thats interesting because there are topics that are really important and get lots of news. Those arent necessarily the same topics that sell books in a case like this if you did a book on harvey weinstein, you could probably sell a lot of books. Thats not necessarily our sort of book, though. All berks our books are newsy, but also tend to be more political and tend to be more based on whats happening in washington, not that Sexual Assault is an happening in washington, but thats not one of our big topics. Capitol hill tax reform, another a good topic. No one cares about reading a book about tax reform. All books, even serious books are entertainment and if you do a book about why we should have a flat tax could be an instant pay her back, but our bread and butter are hardcover 24. 95 plus price points and theres not a big market for that. That will drive book sales for us is if we are at a restaurant and you are telling me about a book we published because theyre so many good stories in it that you are bursting to tell me and everyone else. Thats what works for us. We need books about hot button political issues that you want to read about coming want to know more about and the book is presented well enough that you want to talk to your friends about it and not many people have conversations about tax policy over dinner. George gilder has written about virtual coinage and you a lot by reading what interesting case because gilder is not that newsy model, but its another model that works and thats what we call sort of paradigm set of books. Of these are books you actually do enjoy, but you enjoy them on a different level in a different way because they help you understand the world. George gilder is a great example of that. Another one on our lists marc stein whos is more entertaining, witty and snappy like a standup comic, but his books are really big sink books, very serious at the same time and those actually are rewarding books to do because its one thing to have a book where you have lots of nice stories to tell, scandalous stories whatever, those are great, but its really great to publish a book that alters your perception of what actually is happening. Helps you to see it more precisely, i should say. You put pieces together think oh, now i get it. Now i understand thats why the country is going this way her politics are going this way or people are behaving this way. Of those are important books that can last. Marji ross, have you published biography or an explanation of sorts of donald trump of President Trump . We published a number of books that relate in many different ways to donald trump including publishing a book by donald trump himself. We published a book in 2011 called time to get tough by donald trump, so that was fun and an important book. It was a book that allowed him to talk about his vision for america and what was going wrong in the country when he flirted with the idea of running in the last president ial cycle and decided ultimately not to run, so we published books by donald trump and certainly published books about donald trump during the 2016 election we published a really important book by phyllis her last book called the conservative case for trump and that, i think, played a role in helping him get elected by explaining to people who might have been wondering well, hes zero conservative, but explained by someone who has unimpeachable conservative credentials to say yes, he is and reason why its important for us to vote for him. You know, throughout the 2017 we have been publishing books that talk about different aspects of the Trump Administration and what not only what he stands for, but also all of the forces arrayed against him including one of our most recent bestselling books by ed klein called allout war, the plot to destroy donald trump. What do you consider a bestseller . I consider a bestseller to be a book that hits about publisher weekly bestseller list and that is a National Best seller list based on bookscan data and it really captures the books that are selling the most copies in any given week across the country. How many units . You know, authors ask me that all the time, how may books to have to sell together the best seller list. Its a moving target and its all relative. You know, in any given week you can get on that list with as few as maybe three or 4000 books. In a busy season, such as the lead up to the Holiday Season it can take 15000 copies to get on the list, so it really just depends on the competition in a given week and publishers certainly take that into account when we plan out when we will release books and sometimes you think you know, maybe we are better off release a book in april when there are fewer books vying for those top spots on bestseller lists. Some of the covers of your books just look at your bookshelf, some say National Best seller, New York Times bestseller, why the difference . Well, you may know that we made a pretty big decision here at regnery earlier this year to stop using the New York Times bestseller moniker as a promotion vehicle and a way to track bestseller success and we did that because we were seeing that the New York Times best seller list frequently did not reflect what really was selling the best in the country and whether that is a liberal bias or simply an outdated means of tracking sales, we felt repeatedly we saw that the books that were selling the most copies in a given week across the country were not any knopf on top of the New York Times lists and frankly that was especially true when those books were conservative the books, whether that was a regnery book or published by someone else, time and again conservative books would outsell liberal books or books from authors who were on the left, would outsell those books. When we looked at the Nielsen Nielsen book data and yet somehow they would be mysteriously lower of the New York Times best seller list and we decided that was not reflective of what was going on and do so we made a big announcement and a big change that we were going to use the Publishers Weekly bestseller list going forward. Have you brought this to the attention of the New York Times . We had on a number of occasions, not just this year, but in previous years and their response has been and has always been we have a proprietary formula and system for calculating this, so basically its a secret how they do it and thats a hard thing to argue with. Its certainly not a transparent way of calculating data or reporting on data and we just help that it wasnt reflective anymore. Was a good promotional tool to put that on a book, New York Times best seller . Yes, frankly it was because i think most people, the average reader who is not sort of following this controversy day to day didnt know that the New York Times bestseller list was no longer quite in sync with the actual bestselling book in the country. People inside the industry have frankly complained about it for a long time and have known this is an issue, certainly conservatives have talked about the sport years feeling that they had been treated unfairly, but the average real reader what is the New York Times best seller enter them that just met National Bestseller, so that was the reason we used it for so many years and certainly plenty of our books have gotten onto the New York Times bestseller and plenty of our books have been number one on the New York Times best seller list, so it was with a certain degree of trepidation that we made that decision to say no, the site the fact that that is frankly a powerful Marketing Tool in some cases we just didnt feel that we could in good conscience use that anymore if we didnt believe it was reflective of what was really going on. Marji ross, back on time to get tough 2011, whose idea was that . It was a combination of watching donald trump start to see get conservative events and speak more politically and is so we had the idea and he had the idea at the same time and we heard he was thinking about a book we have been talking about him doing a book, so we approached him and said we should talk about this. I went up to his office in new york city, and we made our case for why we thought we would be a good partner. He agreed. And so we struck a deal and started right away. It was a terrific project. I really enjoyed working with him and he was one of the hardest working authors i never worked with. He would not turn down one thing that we asked him to do in order to promote book. Then, the funny thing was fastforward four years and he announces hes going to run and we said, you know, we ought to to release the book in paperback and so before i said that i would back and took the book off the shells and looked at it to make sure there wasnt anything in their that didnt quite align with what he was campaigning on and what he was saying and there was nothing in the book that was inconsistent, which i was impressed with. So, we contacted his office and said we would like to do this in paperback. Within three days we had a response back, yes, we would like to do it. Here are the things we would like to update, lets go. We did. Tough dealmaking was it . It was fun dealmaking with him, actually. I thought we struck actually a really good deal. We arent going to hear anymore about that are we . Thats about it. Was the difference between a hardback and paperback . Well, thats a such an interesting change in dynamic as well because as people have gone to the books and as ebooks have become more and more popular the sort of role of the paperback has changed a little bit and people who used it to say well, i will wait till this book comes out paperback now dont really have to wait a more. They can just download it onto their ipad or kendall and read an ebook. When we decide to release a book we almost always do it in a hardcover as a statement of frankly the book and the seriousness of the subject matter. But, there is also a part of the decision that resides with our analysis of who the readership is because there are some topics sort of selfhelp and selfimprovement and even some Business Books and certainly some later lighter topics, entertaining topics that probably the readership is more more used it to reading those books in paperback and so we do release some of our books. By large our Current Events and political books we release first as hardcover. Our experience is that the media treats those books more seriously as well and so we want to make sure that we get the attention of the media with their new releases. What percentage of your revenue comes from ebooks . About 25 . Study, growing, lowered . Its plateaued and thats been the case throughout the industry. I talked to two other publishers all the time about their eBook Business and we have all seen a very steep curve over the past eight years, which has pretty much leveled out in the past couple of years. Some categories see a much higher percentage of ebook sales. Fiction is probably close to 50 . Ebook versus print, but overall for the industry and for our program as well, about 25 . How many books a year do you publish . We are growing and we have planned 50 books, 50 new titles for 2018. About an increase of about 10 over 2017 and an increase of about 20 over 2016, so most of that growth all of that growth is outside of our Current Events political category. We are growing our history line and we are growing our faith line and we are growing our fiction line, but our sort of poor political conservative current event books stay about the same and that will be somewhere around 25 titles next year. So, you have got 50 books in the plans for 2018, when do you start working on those books that will actually be in book bookstores and 2018 . We started work on some of those books earlier this year, but we also are well known for crashing in titles and rush ebooks to press because of our focus on Current Events and breaking news and we have we are negotiating right now books that we may not sign until the end of the year or even early 2018 that we will release in 2018 we are able to get most of books very quickly to market if they need to be rushed to the marketplace and a sometimes theres a breaking news story or a new trend or a new issue that becomes really important that we want to be a part. We are pretty good at brushing those books out and still making them very successful. Marji ross, as you well know they use a National Conversation going on now about sexual harassment. If you decided today to put a book out on that topic, how quickly and what would be the process . It all depends on whos writing it and how quickly they can write it and we love to collaborate with our authors to help them write things quickly. Obviously if you have a breaking issue like this it can be important, so we can get a book turned around we have had books that have been signed, delivered within 30 days and in the bookstores two months later. Two months. What happens in that two months . Are a lot of things happen very quickly. It was in those two months we need to edit, layout, design, print, ship, market, sell and get those books on the shelves. But, that is possible if you have a good track record for doing that well, if you have good relationships with your printer and also with your retail partners, which we do and if you have a branded that is known for Current Events, quick moving books. Where are your books printed . Our books are printed at lake books, which is a printer located in chicago. Of a do all of our printing work they are a wonderful partner and we worked together for many years and they also believe in the kinds of books we are doing, so that is fun, but they are very very good at getting books turned around quickly and at getting really goodquality books and they work for a lot of other publishers as well and of course, being centrally located helps to because then you cannot only get books to our warehouse, but in some cases when we have a fastmoving book we might ship those books directly from our printer to the bookstore. So, marji ross, is there a big warehouse somewhere with thousands and thousands of regnery books . Hundreds and thousands of regnery books. There is a warehouse jackson tennessee that holds all of our books. We partner with ingram as our distributor and they handle all of the warehousing, shipping and fulfillment of all of our books to route the. We sell are books that all of the places people think of buying books, barnes noble, of course, amazon and also cost walmart and target target and bjs and sams club, airport stores, krogers and places that people like to buy books. Because of the types of books that you publish, has anyone ever said no, we will not put that bucket our bookstore . Yes, they have. I think that by and large all of the accounts i just a named, the big National Retailers are very savvy serving a wide market may understand people, from both sides of the aisle and they would make sure they serve those people. I think it is more true in the independent stores where those of stores are curated maybe through a local markets and a very specific Customer Base that that store knows particularly well and there are definitely some of those a stores that survey conservative marketplace and dont want to conservative books in their stores. Look at some of the titles and some of the designs on the covers on the bookshelf behind you, what goes into that . Some have authors name in big letters, some have images, some have pictures. We have a lot of fun coming up with titles and designing jackets and its a very very important part, i think, of a publishers a job is to help an author come up with a title and come up with the right jackets and i think there is a great part to that that can help enormously in a books success. Some of the things we think about when we come up with and help brainstorm on titles is making sure that our titles are not only unique and distinctive, but also that our title can be a phrase or a word that becomes part of the conversation about the book. So, when we, for instance, came up with ed klein came up with the title allout war we knew it was not only a sort of headline grabbing title, but also a phrase that really describes what our author believes is happening and also what our audience suspects is happening. Of there are a lot of people that believed there is an allout war being waged against this president and against this administration with about desire to take him down both politically and personally and its not just a sort of a typical partisan battle, but it is something on a totally may be unprecedented, but certainly a larger scale that is probably best described as allout war and when we think about our Media Campaign with our author we like to think about ways that the title of the book could become part of that media discussion and that, i think, can make a very powerful title because i could its more effective than just a saying, in my book xyz, in my book allout war, but to actually talk about the allout war thats going on and how that become a phrase that resonates with our market. So, thats one of the ways we think about coming up with powerful titles. As for jackets, sometimes we do what we call a facebook which is we know we have a celebrity author and we want a face on the cover of the book. That works when you have an author who is very beloved or very well known with the audience and the job of a jacket is to get in our view the job of a jacket is to get a perspective buyer to reach out and grab the book who would want to be drawn to the book. In some cases its because they are drawn to the picture of someone they know. In other cases its because they are drawn to what we tried to convey as the emotional method of the book. We want our book jacket to convey in every way in the title , in the design, in the image, in the colors, in the fonts, in the layout the Emotional Message of the book, whether that is fear, anger, hope, reassurance or whether that is outrage. Primarily my responsibilities are to oversee, create, conceive and design the high profile covers for all of our books. We have, i think, five in print starting off with the political and Current Events and faith in print, history and print and we recently got into fiction imprint in the last year and half, i think and not quite sure we have another one. Well, we do the children in print is another one, so basically the high profile covers i do and i also have a great team of designers who help me outs and i think they have a couple pieces appear and then i also direct and watch over the interiors to make sure the typography is consistent with the covers. Why would a Sebastian Gorka get a cover like that while George Gilder will get life after google like that . Well, i think what is vastly different good question i dont think George Gilder is currently as visual as Sebastian Gorka is. Obviously chief strategist for trump and he basically in this photograph right here hes giving one of his famous speeches to the cia, so we think that putting him on the cover in one of his in his domain and he basically is explaining why we fight and so everyone is familiar with google, so this was just one of the Many Solutions for google. We had google upside down. We had another crossbow and visual of that. But, now, we are thinking about that this is really about the botched economy, so which is all about big coin and we are thinking maybe the google upside down being placed high bid to coin and the botched economy, not just two versions of that when. Has that been decided yet . No. In fact, that is kind of the tough thing for this wall is this is all very still to be flushed out. Some of these things are completely going to be published like this one for karen depends and Marlon Brando is pretty much a done. Thats a Childrens Book about the bunny rabbit. That is the Vice President bunny rabbit, correct. Who had input into a high profile book like that . This was all margie. Marji ross . Yes. This is her baby and quite a surprise and quite a big surprise when she informed us all that she landed karen depends. It was great. Alyssa, myself and marji ross went to the Vice President s house and met with him ended a signing, a paul signing of the bunny on the contract and it was quite exciting. Now, is that one of karen tenses illustrations on the front . Yes and this is a situation where it kind of helps to be the art director on this because these are actually two illustrations. Of the original illustration is very much saturated and this was a totally separate illustration, but we wanted to give it a sense of place, where is this, its the Vice President s house. I took a scan of her original house which is going to be inside and screened it back and put the subject the bunny, in front. I really like that. Very good illustrator, actually very surprising good illustrator john, when you put it Newt Gingrich or ann coulter or Sebastian Gorka photo on the front of the book what are you saying . That they are well known, that they are celebrity. Basically we have a lot of facebooks. This is a facebook, famous pr guru, sebastian, obviously. You could even consider this to be a face book because everyone knows these gentlemen, so here is another its not really face book because hes not the author , but this is about the vote for the lost shepherd help misleading the catholic church, so we often do face books when they are high profile authors. Here are one of your history titles, but ted the biggest civil war blunders. Beautiful illustration. In the type said its also relatively unique, is it . Not unique to the period, and thats what makes it appealing. One of the things its all about my process. I literally turned the internet upside down looking for images and source material. I will go back to the civil war literally google civil war font and look those up and see what they use during the civil war to use this typography took this was a beautiful painting that goes around the entire black cover back cover from the civil war and with all of the millions and millions of photographs and images and paintings out there, this one just really satisfies, you know, all the destruction and mistakes and everything with all of the men falling down. Its a beautiful. Beautiful cover. An author like Stephen Koontz whose name is bigger than the title and an author like nancy houston, her name is smaller than the title. Stephen koontz has a very, very, very strong following a fiction readers and you will see that across almost all fiction books. They read the book of because of the author nancy houston is not so well known, so the subject matter for the audience, the christian audience, is probably more importance. Pretty selfexplanatory there and that goes along with any others. David limbaugh took everyone knows David Limbaugh, so his even though they are equally in size, we talked bottom, left right so we see him first especially if he is on the shelf does David Limbaugh have a say in how the cover looks . David limbaugh says he loves everything we do and i am not kidding. He absolutely loved it. Does ann coulter have a say in everything you do . The very first book i did for her good question. I have only been here three years and i will admit i did not even know who ann coulter was three years ago. My very first book, one of them was ann coulters book and i had to ask myself looking back and doing my research why do all of her books look like and the city meets politics. Yes, shes attractive. Very thin, nice body no and i dont want i wanted to be about ann coulters brain. So, the first book i did was just it took away from her mold was just her face and the look on her face basically follows you everywhere, the eyes. She loved it. She said it was her best book ever best cover ever. I was really happy with that. John, if we went to a bookstore, could we pick out your covers . No, because every single cover of mine is unique to the tone of the author and the contextual elements inside, everything. Everyone looks like they are so different, yes, you collect the whole bookshelf and say everyone of them is different to the only thing you could probably say is wow, they are beautifully clean, beautiful images and beautiful typography and i think that is the hallmark if you will love a good cover. Its appropriate for the subject matter. Does it help to have an author go on to her to sell the book or how would you incorporate it as well social media and marketing book . For many, many, many years authors regularly went on the tour to promote the books and we probably were the first big publisher that pulled the plug on that and said that is just nuts and not a worthwhile thing to do. No leverage and that. We said on author can reach 100 times, a thousand times 10000 times as many people sitting in their living room in their pajamas doing talk radio as they can going out onto her speaking to people in person, so what we decided was we would focus on earned media, television, radio and print and now its Digital Print and that in person events that we wanted our authors to do. Only those that we could leverage by having media like cspan cover. If we knew that Media Coverage would be added to that equation for a life that, then it would be worth it, but in most cases, just and in person book signing in a multicity tour would not work be worth the time and expense in efforts. Now, we have definitely redeployed those resources, not only into earned media, but also social media as you mentioned and thats become a very very important part of our Marketing Campaign for our books. For many years publisher talked about social media and whenever they were asked, does it sell books, they would say we have no idea or how do you track the results or how do you know this is working, we have no idea. We just think we need to do it and its really only in the past, i think, 18 months that certainly we have been able to justify leaning into social media in a big way and now social media has become a very important parts of our Marketing Campaign because it is now the way we feel to build wordofmouth. It is the new wordofmouth mechanism for books. Thats not to say it has a mentor for a long time, but i think we did reach a tipping point, honestly in the past couple of years where because so many people are now in the habits of buying books online and binary thing online, people are comfortable getting their recommendations and discovering new books and new authors through social media and so we use that in a number of different ways whether thats facebook, whether its google ad , whether its amazon search ad, twitter, we use all of those things whether its instagram, all of those things are powerful vehicles for driving wordofmouth, driving buzz through social media. Nicole yeatman and alyssa cordova, every book according to marji ross has its own marketing and publicity strategy. Have you developed that . Well, we start by have a publicist assigned to it and we pull it apart and we talked to editorial and look at the positioning and what is it about this book thats going to sell that our market will want to hear about that our news will want to talk about that will make people click links. We put together a plan and a strategy and a lot of that is whats tied to whats happening in the news currently relevant to the topic of the book. We get on a call with the author and talk it out, hotshot id is is amended usually half of it works out if were lucky, but we are really collaborative here as a team and we bring in the author and a lot of their involvement in opinions as well scenic its important to click on a link i heard. Yes i think a lot of what we do in the Digital Marketing site is on facebook. People are sort of immune to advertising that looks like advertising, so a lot of our job is figuring out how to put out contents about the look and get drive traffic to amazon, the Website Media articles, but without looking like advertising or spam. To do that we have to make sure we are talking about what our target market cares about and just telling them this is a new book that you dont care about now, but you should. We talk about what they are already concerned about, worried about, thinking about and show them that if its into that framework. Give us an example of a recent Marketing Campaign. Okay. Well, we had world war ii book the last Fighter Pilot came out at the end of july, which was very exciting for us because the subject of the book, 93 years old flu last combat mission of world war ii and is a fantastic person. He goes for audiences. We sent him to a a lake, American Library Association Conference and he chimed charmed the librarians pick we had a cameraman fly to florida and talk to him and got footage of him telling stories and cut together a fourminute quick video with three subtitles and put that on facebook and push it out to some different audience, our core audience. We have some great custom audiences for re marketing on facebook and world war ii interested audiences and it now has over 2 million views on facebook and shared over 30,000 times. We are really proud of that and drove a lot of traffic to amazon nicole yeatman, how much of that was viral . I dont know. We only put like under a thousand dollars behind boosting it because we try to spend money carefully. We dont have like a moody movie studio polishing market, so we are smart about how we spend it and that like 700 because of the shares ended up reach and a huge audience. Alyssa cordova, what was your role in promoting the book . My team and i were primarily working on the news driven side, so really for us with that book what we captured was how what a special treat it was to have a firsthand account from a living world war ii veteran who flew such an Incredible Mission and has such an incredible life story since the war which is a huge part of the story, so really just targeting specific outlets that we believed would really grab onto the story, which they did and we got some great profile pieces. We got a huge profile piece board jerry yellin in the New York Post for the fourth of july so great prelaunch to lead into that and then on top of the video it all married together so well because it was one of those ideal situations where it felt like everywhere someone turned they heard about this incredible story, which is really made the book the successful. How closely do you Work Together . Pretty closely because as alyssa said our goal is to have that surround sound during launch where people are hearing about the book on the radio, may be seen on tv and then sit on facebook, friends post about it, so we really coordinate well and when there is a great media hits my job is then to take it and package it and push it out to our audiences on social and to our email list. So, a book like that, an unknown story for the most part of the book came out versus pr for a Newt Gingrich, which is tougher . Interesting question, i mean, i think it depends on what aspect you are talking about. For someone like Newt Gingrich its easy to get new on the media because hes already on tv and people want to hear what hes talking about. The challenge with someone like that is to get to be that the book and not just commentary on whats in the news so really working on how you pivot that conversation naturally so it doesnt just sound like you are hawking a book, but actually sounds relevant to its happening in the news. When do you start thinking about a campaign for a book . Well, i mean, it depends across our imprints Something Like our history books, our fates of books, fiction, a longer lead time when the ending as soon as you sign a book we are thinking about how we position it and who the target market is because as part of the marking job is to help our sales team get retailers excited about the book and then when author turns in the manuscript, then we think more seriously and bring them in, so maybe about six months out, but with big political books, which are written with the deadline including the latest news, we are on it a really short timeline and thats part of what regnery does really well it makes us unique as we know audiences so well we are able to put together a marketing plan and really i would say institute a great launch within a couple of months. I think to echo something in the cold mentioned, for as we are looking at a promotion from the moment we receive the proposal. Its such a big part of our strategy. Its not only that is this a good book, but a book we can sell, is it a book our market world like, a book that media will like, so that conversation really starts from the very very beginning. You brought this up, nicole yeatman, but the news cycle effect that you guys do. Definitely. As you can imagine its challenging because it takes time to create a book so when you sign something if something is relevant in the news at that time, who knows in six months or a year if it will be important and then on the flip side, i mean, you can have a book and we have had this multiple times where its acrylic be incredibly relevant and then something changes the week before that no one expected or anticipated and that changes the position being and you have to ride that wave or navigate around that. Do you find that the Mainstream Media is willing to hear your pitch, your message . It depends on the subject and the author. I mean, our experiences, even if the Mainstream Media is interested or wants to talk about it, thats not really what a lot of our market watches. To provide most of their revenue and certainly most of their profits. So, its a little bit of a highwire act for a front lift company like regnery to grow and to be successful and to be profitable. I think we have been able to be successful and profitable all these years because we are very, very focused on serving our market, on understanding who our audience is, who our readers are, and being careful not to try to do every different kind of book under the sun. I would go toing conferences and they would say i run x, y, z, Publishing Company. And i would say what kind of books do you do . It was astonishing how many people said dierks a little bit of everything. Wanted to say, why do you do that . Doesnt seem like Good Business model to me. I believe in doing what youre good at, and figuring out what youre good at, doing more of that, and then growing by asking, well, what would readers that we know how to reach, and that like us our books what could kindeds of books to lie like, categories, what else can we sell them . When we have them all the conservative blacks we can sell them in a given year, what other pocket might they have money in to say, well, gosh, i like history, i like biography, i have children and grandchildren who id like to share a book with. I am a i believe in founds principles and i have a strong faith. Id like to buy books on that as well. Thats been our recipe for growth. Give us an idea of your revenues. As a Publishing Company now. Guest sure. Well, a large publicly Trading Company and we report our results every quarter and thats been an interesting change for us at regnery, not only to be part of a publicly traded company and also to think of our business as a quarterly business, which the Book Publishing business is certainly not. Its not built to be a quarterly business. But we publish our business is has been growing steadily, and we are net sales for the Book Publishing business are around 15 million a year, and growing. Host as president and publisher, how much of your day is spent on the business end as opposed to the editorial end. Most of my day is spent on the business side. I mean that broadly, because its spent not only on running the business of the company, but also thinking about the sales and marketing and promotion of our books. Its spent on thinking about acquiring new authors and signing up authors, which, of course, is essential to the Business Success and livelihood of our books. So i spend a lot of time thinking about the growth and the future of regnery and whether that means selling more copies of the books we have or signing up new projects for us to do. Thats my priority. Host margie, just to go back, jerry yellen, you mentioned historiedow, the last Fighter Pilot, 2 million views. Did that translate into sales. Guest yes. Its been one of our most successful books in our regnery history line, since we launched that line several years ago. We started regnery history six years ago, launched our first book, and basically we did it as reaction to our need for a backlift. Regnery political has always Current Events and political books from a consecutive point of view, but the books dont last more than two or three years soldier we wanted something that would stay on the shelves. We had done a couple of oneoff history books and they were successful and seemed to mesh with what we do. An overlap of the audience. Now we do history books. Its not history for conservatives, its not political history, its straight history. We have authors from different points of view but definitely a pro america perspective. We wouldnt do anything that is antiamerican. We do a lot of military history, biography, and just general history and some fun books. One of our best selling books is called drinking with the saints, a book written by a theology professor at waco, and he straight out of extra casting for madmen but also notes his charring literature and the takes hundred or he so holy days based on saints gives a history of them, has beer pairing, wine pairing and a cocktail recipe. A lot of fun. Host a lot of the history books are focused on civil bar and world war ii. Guest thats our bread and butter. Civil war and world war ii are the most popular topics. We did a few world war ii books this year. Were doing kind of shift next year more civil war booksment one of our most popular, most successful books is last Fighter Pilot issue written be jerry yellen, still with, 93 years old, the last Fighter Pilot out of japan when he emperor surrendered and he goes everywhere and gives talks and is wonderful. Host who is sergeant reckless . Guest sergeant reckless is a horse and she was in the korean war, and she was one of the most wellknown animal heroes another the last century and life magazine made her one of the top hundred heros but she was in the korean warkind of forgotten. We hat an author who came to us and she had read about sergeant reckless in a book somewhere, and she did some research and couldnt find any memorial or anything about sergeant reckless, or honoring sergeant wreck less, sew raid over 100, built a memorial at quantico, virginia, and then wrote the book, sergeant reckless, a category best seller for the New York Times, and she has got another shes put up another set in Camp Pendleton in california. So, sergeant reckless, she was this horse they bought, raised as a race horse, but they bought her to be their mascot and they ended up using her in warfare, and she delivered ammunition up the hill for these large rifles, and took some wounded down the hill and just get a medal of honor. Host you say youre not a point of view necessarily when it comes to history, but whereas was there a frustration with how some history was being written. We were looking for a different story, the rest of the story or the untold story, and that was part of sergeant reckless, but in terms of political perspective, we just wanted an open pro american story to be told and thats what we look for. Host who is an author, a hidden gem you found and who is one that you missed you really wanted to get . Guest well, one of the authors that we published that i think is one of the best thinkers and writers on the conservative scene, but when we published his first book, i dont think he was that wellnope, mark stein. He is one of my favorite authors to work with because he is incredibly insightful and hilariously funny and i say its a good thing he is funny because a lot of things he writes about are pretty scary, talking be in future direction of the country and the world. But when we published our first book with him, which possibly seven or eight years ago now, he was not a household name. He was a gem for the people who read him and knew him, but he wasnt a regular on fox, and on guest hosting for rush limbaugh, and online, as he is today. That was a fun discovery for us and a fun opportunity to make someone to bring somebody even more broadly available to readers. Who is somebody that got away . Theres several big conservative stars that have published books, and we havent been able to publish all of them. Probably one i would have loved to publish that we didnt was clarence thomas. We talked to him about his book. I would have loved to publish him and work with him and in the end he published with someone else. Host theres been a slew of big houses with conservative titles, conservative guest no doubt. Theres actually really fascinating and interesting timing. Within a month of my becoming the president and publisher of regnery, it seems everybody discovered conservative books. A very weird coincidence. Random house started crown forum, penguin started sentinel. Soon thereafter, simon and schuster started threshold. They didnt exist in 2000, and five years later, they were all actively competing for conservative authors and conservative books. I think its been a healthy thing. I think its been good for us to have to compete with other houses and know that we have to be really on our game and prove that theres a really great competitive reason for an author to come with regnery. Weve certainly had authors who published with us, left to go to a big New York House, and came back. Weve heard from a number of authors that it was fun to be published with a New York House but they confirmed what we knew, which is that regnery is he home for conservative authors, and that if you want a publisher who understands the conservative marketplace, better than anyone else, and who has an affinity for conservative authors, who can partner with conservative authors, because we really do understand how that marketplace thinks because we are part of that markplace. Theres nobody better than Regnery Publishing to do that. Every year, booktv sits down with Publishing Industry professionals to discuss the publishing process. Highlight upcoming book releases and more. You can watch any program of our web site, book tv. Org. Just type Publishing Industry in the search bar at the top of the page, and scroll through hundreds of results. From interviewed with publishers anding a book expo america. Conversations with organizations like the National Book foundation and tours of publishing houses. Heres a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. I took this picture and it was the first time look at mrs. Obama and it was like, my gosh, shes just like erv else, right . So, i have a dog, i love my dogs, and there was a lot of times that we set up for events to cover in the white house where we would do a taping, like a Public Service announcement or a video that would run on tv and sometimes that was the white house tv doing that and sometimes it was someone from outside that came in to do the taping. So, this time we were setting up to for the easter egg roll. A message about the easter egg roll and i found out there were always these seem to be pretty predictable environments but there was always a chance that something spontaneous would happen. Especially when it involved the president obama or the dogs. So, for this pick noor particular, bo is always ready to have his picture taken ubut sunny is the younger dog and always had her own ideas what she wanted to do. This is a picture where she was trying to get sunny to sit up and be ready foe video. I like to take can individual shots and this is a picture i go to when i want to feel joy. You can watch dismiss other programs online at booktv. Org. Joining us is lanny