>> distinguishing characteristics famously that authors would take fantastic works known to new york publishers and publish them and they would become bestsellers, one of which, my favorite of that was leo damore's senatorial privilege about senator kennedy and the truth about leo damore. he was kicked off -- ticked off. could you say you are driving. so years later all on the record , no new york publisher would publish this, regnery publishes it. more recently there was a patriotic vote, flags of our fathers which is not flags of our mothers. 27 near publishers turned it down. 44 weeks on "the new york times" bestsellers list. so the way things are going in the trump era, i don't know if any of you are still reading the freedom times, but every day somehow on the facebook page they ain't russia was behind -- [inaudible] if you visited america in 2016 come he would notice outside of the major cities you couldn't drive a mile without seeing a six-foot 12 trump signed. in any event, they really have to come forward. the mccarthy era that i've written about them and i think this is worse than if they do get control of the internet we could be right back to regnery being the only source to communicate with one another. so stay on their mailing list and remember, there is a reason to read regnery, the most dangerous man in america. here is to regnery. [cheers and applause] >> regnery publishing recently celebrated their anniversary. we visited to talk with the people responsibly for bringing their books to publication. >> marji rothko at 10 of books does regnery published? >> best-selling books of course. broadly we've published books for conservative readers. we published books on current events and politics and culture, but also a lot more than just political books now. we publish history books, fiction, kids books and we have a new line called the regnery state. "the gifted generation" let's break that down a little bit. he publish books for a conservative audience. has that always been the case? >> it's always been the case from the very beginning. henry regnery who started the company 70 years ago this year was dedicated to publishing books for conservative readers and at the time and for a long time, he was one of the only it's not the only book publisher with conservative authors and conservative ideas and he started off publishing some of the seminal books of the modern conservative movement in the very early years of regnery publishing. william f. buckley's first book. we published russell kirk's the conservative mind. we publish what is by whittaker chambers and all of those books are still today. >> does that say something about the publishing industry that those books were being published necessarily? >> it definitely does. henry regnery recognize that inside opportunity in the marketplace. he back then did but we still do today, which as we publish books because they publish conservative books because they are great business but we also publish them because they are part of our mission. >> marji roscoe who are some of the contemporary authors? >> we publish a lot of deleting lines in the conservative movement. they include -- this is "-end-quotes or coming david limbaugh, a whole host of others. >> if you put a ann coulter bookout does it automatically sell? >> is certainly helps but it isn't a guarantee anymore. things have changed over the past 15 or 20 years. a lot more of the business has gone online. you lose the opportunity to visualize those books and publicize those books for generations go into a bookstore in finding a book they didn't know existed. i'm not that they didn't know about before and that's a big change in our industry units but frankly a lot more pressure on publishers to come up with interesting and creative ways to help people know that a book exist when there isn't a celebrity author attached to it. >> how do you market a book over the last 10, 15 years? >> regnery has become the leader in using earned media to sell books and by that i mean we think organically from the beginning of the book's life about how the book is going to become part of the news cycle and the theme of the book in the topics and issues will be connected with what is happening in the news so we have a crystal ball and we look what's happening, but we try to anticipate what the big concern will be within our market place, what be driving the news for our market and how are authors can be relevant to that and we as earned media, whether that's tv or certainly online media outlets to drive the conversation and make her books and authors part of the conversation. >> doesn't matter which party is in power for sales? >> that's a great question. for a very long time we said was bad for america is good for regnery. when liberals were in power that might not be good for the future of the country but it was great for selling conservative books. certainly when the opposition party is in power, conservatives become very engaged, very concerned about the future of america and that's a terrific landscape for selling conservative books. we have also found over the past certainly the past couple years that there's so much debate and disagreement and concern across the political landscape with what is happening in washington that conservative books are selling very, very well even with republicans in the white house and i think that is 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 what is going on, what direction we are going and how the country, how they can return to some of the bedrock foundation principles that conservatives think are important to keep this country on the right track. >> while visiting we spoke with harry crocker who is responsible for acquiring books. >> so how do you acquire a boat? how do acquire an author? >> the traditional way is waiting for ages to come up with her pose those, but a lot of what we do here is trying to project the news in the best books we do, some of the best books we do or where we think collectively this author on this topic, that would be dynamite. we try to make these marriages have been. we try to put the two together. that is sort of been our go to strategy. not waiting on the agents actively pursuing authors. >> ann coulter on immigration. is that when you'll put together. >> i think she came to us without one. those are ones where we take them to the author. i'll call somebody up and say what you think about subject x. they will say what about subject x minus two. talking through and eventually it works out. any ideas we generate here of course become the authors idea. i can only help him make his case the best way he can. >> someone you've publish times as edward kline. if you have a conversation with mr. kline, how does it go? >> at is an interesting case. that's a reporter. we can say can you find this out and see if you can get the resources to go to information we think will be newsworthy. but i'm on the trail of this. you think i should keep pursuing this. when you acquire a book, come on between the initial conversation until that focus on the bookshelf? >> that varies a lot. one thing that sets regnery apart from a lot of publishers as many of the books we do because they are occurring events driven the reporting is being done, especially a reporter's book. you can sit on the story for too long good we could be signing up a book, because it puts books on the shelves, you are shipping the books on tracks come it takes four weeks to get coast-to-coast on the bookshelves. you've got to print the book. essentially you shot two months already. we have any time from turning a book in a week in days to more leisurely, more traditionally schedules. from conception to on the shelves in a matter of coming rare cases weeks. train to have started acquiring books for fall of 2018? >> yeah, yeah coming out. the bookstore trade, they don't like what we call droppings. things you don't know about, who knows if it can be in the news in 2018. we can guess. you have to have a really hot topic for a really hot author because they've heard he sold all their shelf space or ahead of time. they much prefer book six months. they want a good handle on what's coming to the store. we press the issue a lot. we are a thorn in the side of bookstore schedules. >> carry crocker, one of the conversations going on right now is about sexual assault. is that something you keep denying on and think okay, we have this out there, et cetera? >> that's interesting because they were topics that are really important to get lots of news. not necessarily the same topics that sell books. if you did a book on harvey weinstein, you could sell a lot of books. her books are new z, but they are also tend to be more political and more based on what's happening in washington. sexual assault is not one of our big topics. >> capitol hill, tax reform. >> a good topic -- nobody cares about reading a book about tax reform. all books come even serious books retain out. a book about why we should have a flat tax. achieve payback come and get this out to a lot of people. our bread-and-butter are hardcover, 324.95 plus price points and is not a big market for that. what's going to drive up sales for us to further restaurant and you tell us about a book we published a near bursting to tell us. that's what works for us. we need books about hot button political issues that you want to read about, one in know more about them than book is well enough that you want to go talk all your friends about it. not many people of conversations about policy over dinner. >> little esoteric, but george gilder has written about virtual coinage and you can learn a lot by reading. >> it's an interesting case because it's not that new z model. that is what we call a sort of paradigm set of books. these are book you do enjoy, but you enjoy them on a different level, a different way because they help you understand the world. another one on our list is mark stein, is much more entertaining and witty, but his books are really big thing looks, too. very serious at the same time. those are actually really rewarding books to do. it's one thing to have a book for you can have lots nice stories to tell, scandalous stories wherever they are. those are great, but it's great to publish a book that alters your perception of what's actually happening. it helps you to see it more precisely they should say. putting pieces together to say now i get it. now i understand. that is that the country's going this way or politics this way. those are important books. >> marji ross, have you published biography for an explanation of donald trump? >> we published a number of books that relate in many different ways to donald trump including publishing about a donald trump himself. we published the book in 2011 called time to get tough, by donald trump. an important book. it allowed them to talk about his vision for america and what was going wrong in the country when he flirted with the idea and decided ultimately not to run. we publish books by donald trump family published books about donald trump during the 2016 election we published a really important book by philip shapleigh. her last book called the conservative case for trump and not taking literal in helping him get elected by explaining to people who might have been wondering when someone who had unimpeachable conservative credentials to say yes he is and here's the reason why it's important for us to vote for him. and throughout 2017 we've been publishing books that talk about different aspects of the trump administration and not only what he stands for, but all of the forces against him including one of her most recent by ed kline called all-out war, what to do story. >> what do you consider to be a bestseller? >> i consider it a seller to be a book that hits the publishers weekly bestseller list and is a national bestseller list based on bookscan data and captures the books selling the most copies in any given week across the country. >> how many units? >> authors asking that all the time. how many do have to sell to get on the bestsellers list? it is a moving target and it's all relative. any given week you can get onto that list with as few as three or 4000 books in a busy season such as the lead up to the holiday season. they can take 15,000 copies to get on the list. they really just depends on the competition in a given week and publishers certainly take that into account when the plan now when we are going to release books. sometimes we think we are better off releasing a book in april when there are fewer books vying for the top spots on the bestsellers list. >> some of the covers of your books looking at your bookshelf, some say national bestsellers, some say "new york times" best seller. 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 the promotion vehicle and ways to track bestseller success. we did that because we were seeing "the new york times" bestseller 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 the books that were selling the most copies in a given week across the country were giving up -- ending up on the top of "the new york times" list and frankly i was especially true when those books were conservative books. whether that was a regnery poker published by someone else time and again conservative books would outsell books from authors from the left would outsell those books when we look at the nielsen data in yet they would all somehow it mysteriously lower "the new york times" bestseller list we decided that wasn't reflect to a what was going on we made a big announcement in a big change that we were going to use the publishers weekly bestseller's list going forward. >> have you brought this to the attention of "the new york times" prior? >> we have on a number of occasions not just this year but previous years. their response has been in has always been we have a proprietary formula and system for calculating this list, so basically it's a secret how they do it anonymously hard thing to argue with. certainly not a transparent way of calculating data for reporting on data and we just felt that he wasn't reflect it anymore. >> was it a good promotional tool to put down on a book? "new york times" bestseller? >> s., frankly was. most people, the average reader who is not sort of following the controversy day-to-day didn't know that "the new york times" bestseller list was no longer quite in sync with the actual best-selling book in the country. people inside the industry brinkley complained about it for a long time and have known this is an issue. certainly conservatives have talked about this for years, feeling that they have been treated unfairly. but the average reader would see "new york times" best seller and to them that meant national bestseller. that is really the reason we use that for so many years. certainly, plenty of our books have gotten onto "the new york times" best seller. money of our books have been number one on "the new york times" bestseller list. it was a certain degree of trepidation that we made that decision to say no, despite the fact that it's frankly a powerful marketing tool in some cases, we just didn't feel that we could in good conscience use that anymore if we didn't believe bill is reflective of what was really going on. >> margie ross, back to time to get tough, 2011, whose idea was it? >> it was a combination of watching donald trump start to speak at the conservative event speak more politically and so we had the idea and he had the idea at the same time. we heard he was taking about a book. we have been talking about him doing a book and 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. he's pretty entrepreneurial 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've ever worked with. he would not turn down one thing that we asked him to do in order to promote the book. and then the funny thing was fast forward four years. he announces he's going to run. and so before he does that, i took the book off the shelves and looked at it to make sure there wasn't anything in there that didn't quite align with what he was campaigning on in what he was saying. there is nothing in the book is inconsistent, which i was impressed with. so he contacted his office and said we would like to do this in paperback. within three days we had a response back guess would like to do it. you are the things they'd like to update. let's go. and we did. >> tough dealmaking with him? >> it was fun bill with him. it was actually really good deal. >> what's the difference between hardback and paperback? >> that is such an interesting changing dynamic as well. >> people gone to e-books and become more and more popular. the role of the paperback has changed a little bit and people who used to say i'll wait until this comes out in paperback now don't really have to wait anymore. they can download it onto their ipad or kendall and read an e-book. when we decide to release the book, we almost always do it in a hardcover as a statement of frankly the gravitas of the book and the seriousness of the subject matter. but there's also a part of decision that resides with her analysis of who the readership is. there is some topic, sort of self-help and self-improvement and even some business to and certainly some later topics, entertainment topics that probably the readership is more used to reading the books in paperback. we do release some of our books as original paperbacks, but by and large our current events and political books we released first of hardcover books. our experience is that the media treat those votes were seriously as well and we want to make sure that we get the attention from the media attorney releases. >> what percentage of revenues come from e-books? >> about 25%. >> is it going lower? >> it's plateaued and that's been throughout the industry. we talk to publishers all the time about the e-book business and we have all been a real which i've pretty much leveled out the past couple of years. some categories see a much higher percentage, probably close to 50% for the industry and for our program as well. >> how many books year do you publish? >> we have planned 50 books. 50 new titles for 2018. that's an increase of about 10% over 2017 an increase of about 20% over 2016. so most of that growth -- all of that growth is out side of our current events political category. we are growing our history line and we are growing our fiction line, but are sort of core political conservative current events book is stating about the same amount will be somewhere around 25 titles this year. >> so come you've got 50 books in the plans for 2018. when do you start working on those books that will be in bookstores in 28 team? >> well, we started working on some of those books earlier this year, but we also are well known for crashing titles in rushing books to press because of our focus on current events and breaking news. .. issue that becomes really important that we want to be a part of. we are pretty good at rushing those books out and still making them very successful. >> as you well know, there's a national conversation going on right now about sexual harassment. >> there is. from you decided today to put a book out on that topic, how quickly and what would be the process? >> we -- it all dpepped, of course, on who is writing it an how quickly they can write it. obviously if you have a breaking issue like this it can be important, so we can -- we can get a book turned around, we've had books that have been signed, delivered within 30 days and in the bookstores two months later. what happens in the two months? >> a lot of things happen very quickly. within those two months we need to edit, lay out, design, print, ship, market, sell and get those books on the shelf, but that's possible if you have a good track record for doing that well, if you have a good relationship both with printer but also with your retail partners which we do and if you have a brand that's known for current events, quick-moving books. >> where are your books printed? >> late books, printer located in chicago, they do almost all of our printing. we have worked with them for many years and they believe in the kind of books that we are doing. that's fun but they are very, very good at getting books turned around quickly and getting really good-quality books and they work for a loft other publishers as well and, of course, being centrally located helps too because then you cannot only get books to our warehouse but in some cases we have fast-moving books, we might shift those books directly from our printer to the bookstore. >> so margie ross, is there a big warehouse somewhere with thousands and thousands of gregory books. >> hundreds of thousands, there's a big warehouse in jackson tennessee that holds all of our books, we partner with our distributor and they handle all of the warehousing, shipment and fulfillment of our books throughout the country. we sell our books at all the places, barnes & noble, cosco, wal-mart, target, bg's, sam's club, airport stores, kroger, places that people like to buy books. >> because of the types of books that you public has anybody said, no, we will not put the book in the bookstore? >> yes, they have. i think by in large all the accounts that i just named, all the big national retailers are very savvy about serving a wide market and they understand that there are people from both sides of the aisle who shop in their stores and shop online and they want to make sure that they are serving those people. i think it is more true in the independent stores where those stores are curated to serve maybe a local market and a very specific customer base that that store knows particularly well and, you know, there are definitely some of those stores that don't serve a conservative marketplace and don't want to have conservative books in their store. >> looking at some of the titles and some of the designs on the covers on the book shelf behind you, what goes into that, some have the author's name in big letter, some have images, some have pictures. >> we have a lot of fun coming up with bite ls and -- titles and designing jackets. it's important to come up with title and come up with the right jacket. i think there's a great art to that that -- this can help enormously in a book success. some of the things that we think about is when we come up with and help brainstorm on titles is making sure there are titles are not only unique and dye -- distinctive but also can be a phrase or word that can be part of the conversation about the book. when we came up with the title all out war, we knew it was a grabbing title but also a phrase that really describes what our author believes is happening and also what our audience suspects it's happening. there's people that believe there's war against the president and the administration with the desire to take him down both plitly and personally. it's not sort of partisan battle but something on a totally maybe unprecedented but certainly larger scale and when we think about our media campaign with our author, we like to think about ways that the title of the book can become media discussion and that, i think, can maybe powerful title. i think more effective than saying in my book, xy, z, in my book all out war, but actually talk about the war that's going on and have that become a phrase that resinates with our market. that's one of the way that is we think about coming up with powerful titles. as for jackets, sometimes we do what we call a facebook, versus we know that we have a celebrity author, we want their face on the cover of the book and that's -- that works when you have an author who is very beloved or very well known with the audience and the job of the jacket to reach out and grab the want, to want to be drawn to that book. in some cases it's because they are drawn to the picture of someone they know. in other cases it's because they are drawn to what we try to convey as the emotional message of the book, so we want our book jackets to convey in every way in the title, in the design, in the image, in the colors, in the font, in the lay-out the emotional message of the book whether that is fear, whether that is anger, whether that is hope, whether that is reassurance or outrage. >> primary my responsibilities are to oversee, create, conceive and design the high-profile covers for all of our books. we have five enprints starting off with the political and current events and face enprint and we recently got into fiction enprint and not quite sure, basically kids imprint, i have a great team of designers and i think they have a couple of pieces up here and then i also worked direct in watching interior to make sure typegraphy is consistent. >> why would sebastian gorka get like that as life after google would get a book title like that in. >> that's a good question. i don't think george is currently as visual as sebastian gorka, obviously he was chief strategists for trump and basically in this photograph right here he's 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 is -- he basically is explaining why we fight and so everybody is familiar with google. so this was just one of the many solutions for google. we had google upside down, we had another cross-bones visual of that but right now we are kind of thinking that this is really about the economy which is all about the bit coins and now we are thinking that maybe the google upside down being replaced by, you know, bitcoin and the block chain economy, these are just two versions of that one. >> has that one been decided yet? >> no, in fact, that's a tough thing for this wall, this is all very still to be flushed out. some of the things are completely going to be published like this one for karen pence and marilyn, that's pretty much done. >> that's children's book about the bunny rabbit. >> the vice president bunny rabbit, correct. >> who had input into a high-profile book like that? >> that was all margie. >> all margie ross. >> margie ross the publisher, this was her baby and it was quite a big surprise when she informed us that she landed karen pence. it was great, we all went to the vice president's house and did a signing of the bunny and it was exciting. >> was that and i lust ration on the front? >> it was one of the situations where it kind of helps to be the art director on this because these are two illustrations, the original i lustation is very, very much saturated and it didn't -- totally separate illustration but we we wanted to give it a sense of place, where is this. this is the vice president's house. so i basically took her a scan of her original house which is going to be inside and just screened it back and put the subject marilyn bundo, the bunny in front. i really like that. >> when you put a newt gringrich 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. we have a lot of facebook. this is a facebook by michael, very famous pr guru, sebastian obviously. everybody know those gentlemen, lincoln and jefferson. it's not really facebook because he's not the author but this is about the pope and -- or the lost shepherd. how pope francis is misleading the catholic church. we often do facebooks when they are high-profile authors. >> ten biggest civil war blunders. >> beautiful illustration. >> and the typeset is relatively unique. >> well, it's not unique to the period and that's what makes it appealing. one of the things -- i think this is all about my process. i literally turned the internet upside down looking for images and source material, i will two back to the civil war and literally google civil war font and look those up, what did they use during the civil war, this was a beautiful painting. with all the millions of photographs and paintings this one really satisfies what all the destruction and the mistakes and everything with all of the men falling down and it's beautiful. beautiful cover. author like steven, his name is bigger than the title, a title like nancy houston, her name is smaller than the title. >> steven has a strong filing of fiction readers and you'll see that almost across all fiction books. they read the book because of who the author is. nancy houston is not so well known so the subject math for the audience, the christian audience is following more important. that's pretty self-explanatory there. that goes along -- i don't know if i have any others. david limbaugh. >> does david limbaugh have a say. >> he says that we love what we do. >> does ann coulter have a say in anything that you do? >> the very first book i did for her -- aye only been here three years and i would admit i didn't know what ann coulter was three years ago. my very first book, one was ann coulter's book, looking back doing researching, why do all of her books look like sex and the city meet politics, she's attractive, thin, nice body and i don't want sex -- i want it to be about ann coulter's. it broke away from her mold, just her face and the look on her face basically follows you everywhere, the eyes and it was -- she said it was her best book ever. best cover ever. i was really happy with that, so -- >> john caruso, if we went out 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 contextual elements inside. everything. wow, they are so different. yes, you could look at the whole book shelf and see every one of them is different. the only thing you could probably say, wow, they are all beautifully clean, beautiful images, beautiful typography and that's the hallmark of a good cover. it's appropriate for subject matter. >> does it help have an author go on tour to sell the book or how have you incorporated social media in marketing a book in. >> well, you know, for many, many years authors, went on tour to promote books and we probably were the first big publisher that pulled the plug on that and said, that is just nuts, no leverage in that, we said an author can reach 100 times, a thousand times, 10,000 times as many people sitting in living room in pajamas doing talk radio as they can going out on tour and speaking to people in person. so what we decided was we would focus on earned media, television, radio, and -- and print and now digital print and the in-person events that we wanted ahors to do were only those that we could leverage by having media like c-span cover. we knew that media coverage would be added to the equation for a live event, then it would be worth it. but in most cases, just an in-person book signing and a multicity tour was not worth the time and expense and effort. now we have definitely redeployed those resources. not only into earned media but also social media and that's become a very important part of our marketing campaign for our books, again, for many years publishers talked about social media and when -- whenever they were asked, how do you track the results, we have no idea. we have no idea we just think we need to do it. 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 and now social media has become a very important part of our marketing campaign because it is now the way, we feel to build word of mouth, it is the new worth of mouth mechanism and if that's not to say that, you know, that hasn't been true for a long time, but i think we did reach a tipping point honestly in the last couple of years where because so many people are now in the habit of buying books online and buying everything online, people are comfortable getting their recommendations and discovering new books and new authors through social media. and so we used that in a number of different ways, whether that's facebook, whether it's google ad, amazon search ads, whether it's twitter, we use all of those things, whether it's instagram, all of those things are powerful vehicles for driving word of mouth, driving buzz through social media. >> so nicole, alissa, every book has its own marketing and publicity strategy, how do you develop that? >> well, we start by read the book, each book has a publicist assigned to it and we pull it apart, we talk editorial, we look at what the positioning is, what it is about the book that's going to sell and market is going to hear about, that the news is going to want to hear about, it's going to make people click links, we put together a plan and a strategy and a lot of that is tied to what's happening in the news currently that's relevant to the topic of the book, we get on a call with the author and we talk it out, hash out some ideas and then usually half of it works out, if we are lucky, so, yeah, collaborating team and we bring in the author and a lot of involvement and opinions as well. >> it's important to click on a link, i heard. >> yeah. i think a lot of what we do on digital marketing side is on facebook and people are sort of immune to advertising that looks like advertising so a lot of our job is figuring out how to put content about the book and get people, drive traffic to amazon, drive traffic to media articles but without looking like advertising, without looking like spam. so to do that, we have to make sure we are talking about what our target market cares about and instead of just telling them this is a new book that you don't care about now but you should, we talk about what they already are concerned about, already worried thinking about and show them that this book fits into that framework. >> give us a reason for marketing campaign? >> well, we had world war ii book, the last fighter pilot came out the end of july which was very exciting for us because the subject of the book, 93 year's old flu last combat mission of world war ii and it's just a fantastic person -- he goes before ad yefnses, we sent them to ala, the american library association conference, and he charmed librarians there, so we had camera man fly to florida, talk to him and got footage of him telling stories and we got 3-minute video subtitles and pushed it to audiences, core audience, we have some great custom audience for remarketing on facebook and then world war ii interested audiences, and it now has over 2 million views on facebook, shared over thousand times. >> nicole, how much of that was just viral? >> we only put only $100,000 to boost it. we have publishers marketing budget. we are smart about how we spend it and got it. >> what with your role? >> that was the media side, what we captured was, you know, what a special treat it was to have a first-hand account from a living world war ii veteran who flew such an incredible mission and had such 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 that story which they did and we got some great profile pieces, we got a huge profile here for yellen and that on top of the video, they really married together so well because it was one of those ideal situations where it felt like everywhere someone turned and were hearing about the incredible story which made the book be quite successful r. how closely to you work together? >> we work very closely because our goal as we said to try to have the surround sound during launch where people are hearing about the book on the radio, maybe seeing it on tv and then seeing it on facebook and so we really coordinate really well and when there's a great media hit, part of my job is to then take it and package it and push it out to our ad -- audiences on social and e-mail list. >> a book like that, unknown story until the book came out versus pr for a newt gringrich, which is tougher? >> that's an interesting question. for someone for newt grin griff, he's already on tv, the challenge with somebody like that, it's to get it to be on the book and not comment on what's on the news and working on how you pivot the conversation naturally so that it doesn't just sound like you're hocking a book but actually sounds relevant to what's happening in the news. >> when you start thinking about a campaign for a book? >> our history books, fiction, when the author -- i mean, as soon as we sign a book we are thinking about how we are positioning it and who our target market is. another part of marketing job is to help our sale's team get excited about the book. then when the author turns into manuscript, maybe six months out . we are on a short timeline and that's what makes us unique, we are able to put together a marketing plan and really i would say execute a great launch within a couple of months. >> yeah, and i think just to echo something, nicole mentioned for us we are looking at the promotion from the moment we received a proposal. it's such a big part of the strategy, it's not only is this a good book but is this a book that we can sell, is this a book that the media will like and play good in social media that conversation and that process really starts from the very, very beginning. >> you brought this up, nicole, but the news cycle affect what is you guys do. >> definitely, as you can imagine it's challenging because it takes time to create a book so when you sign something, something that's relevant in the news at the time who knows in six months or even a year if that's going to be important and then on the flip side, you can have a book and multiple times where it's incredibly relevant and something changes the week before that nobody expected or anticipated that changes the whole positions and you have to be able 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 experience is even if the mainstream media is interested or wants to talk about it, it's not really what a lot of our market watches, so we could get a lot of exposure, but exposure doesn't always equal sales, so our motto here is fish where the fish are and we work primarily with the media outlets where our buyers have getting their news and information. >> is regnery profit? >> yes, it's profitable, it's a tough thing for most companies to be, most publishing businesses rely on books that have been published previously to provide most of their revenue and certainly most of their profits so it's a little bit of a high-wire act for company like regnery to grow and be successful and profitable but i think we have been able to be successful and profitable all of these years because we are 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, you know, when i started in the book publishing business, i would go to publish conferences and i would meet people and they would say, i run x, y, z publishing company, that's fascinating, what kind of books do you do, it was astonishing how many people would say i do a little bit of everything and i wanted to say, why do you do that, that doesn't seem like a good business model to me. i believe doing what you're good at and figuring out what you're good at and doing more of that and then growing by asking, well, what would readers that we know how to reach and that like our books, what other kind of books do they like, what other kinds of categories do they read, what else can we sell them when we have sold them all the current events conservative political books 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 i'd like to share a book with, i'm -- i believe in, you know, founding principles and i have a strong faith, i'd like to buy books on that as well and that's been our recipe for growth. >> give us some idea of your revenues as a publisher company now? >> well, large publicly traded company and so we report our results every quarter and that's actually been an interesting change for us at regnery not only to be part of publicly-traded company but also to think of our business as a quarterly business which the book publishing business is not built to be a quarterly business. but we publish our -- our business has been growing steadily and we are net sales for the book publishing business are around $15 million a year and growing. >> 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. now, by that i mean that broadly because it's spent not only on running the business of the company but also thinking about the sales and marketing and promotion of our books, it's spent on thinking about acquiring new authors and signing up authors which, of course, is essential to the business success and livelihood of our books and so i spend a lot of time thinking about the growth and the future of regnery and whether that means selling more copies of the books we have or signing up new projects for us to do. that's my -- that's my priority. >> so margiee ross, the last fighter pilot, 2 million views, did that translate into sales? >> yes, it did, one of the most successful books in regnery history line since we launched the line six years. >> six years we launched the first book and basically we did it to reaction for need for back list. regnery political has been current events and political points from a conservative point of view but the books don't last more than two or three years if we are lucky, we wanted something that would stay on the shelves and we had done a couple of history books and they were successful and seem today -- seemed to mesh with what we do. now we do history books, it's not history for conservatives, it's not political history, it's pretty much straight history, we have authors from different point of views, definitely from a proamerica perspective, we wouldn't do anything that's antiamerican, we do a lot of military history, biography and just general history and we do some fun books, one of our best-selling books is called drinking with the saints. that's a book written by a theology professor at waco and he paired the two and wrote this book called drinking with the saints, holy happy hour, cocktail recipe, a lot of fun. >> a lot of history books are focused on world war ii. >> civil war and world war ii are the most popular topics. we did a few world war ii books this year, we are doing kind of a shift next year, more civil war books. one of our most popular, most successful books is last fighter pilot and that's written by jerry yellen, he's still with us, 93 year's old, last fighter pilot and last mission out of japan when the emperor surrender and he goes every, where he givs talks, he's wonderful. >> who is sergeant reckless? >> a horse in the korean war and she was one of the most well-known animal heros of the last century and life magazine made top 100 heros and she was kind of forgotten. we had an author that came to us and read about sergeant reckless in a book somewhere and she did some research and connecticut find any memorial or anything about sergeant reckless, honoring sergeant reckless and so she raised over a hundred thousand dollars, built a memorial at virginia and then wrote the book, sergeant reckless which was a category best-seller for "the new york times" and she's got another -- she's put up another statute in southern california. it's incredible story. she was this horse they bought. she was supposed to be raised as racehorse and bought her to be mascot and delivered ammunition at the hill for large rifles and took some wounded down the hill and medal of honor and incredible story. >> so alex, you say that you're not a point of view necessarily when it comes to history but was there a frustration with how some history was being written? >> we were always looking for kind of a different story, the rest of the story or the untold story, that was part of sergeant reckless but in terms of a political perspective, we just wanted an open pro-american story to be told and that's what we look for. >> who is an author hidden gem that you found and who is one that you missed that you wanted to get? [laughter] >> 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 don't think he was that well known is mark steyn, he's one of my favorite authors to work with because he's both incredibly insightful and hilariously funny and i often say it's a good thing he's funny because a lot of things he writes about is pretty scary when he talks about the future direction of the country and the world but when we published our first book with him which probably seven or eight years ago, he's not a household name, he was a gem for the people who read him and knew him but he wasn't a regular on fox and on guess hosting for rush limbaugh and online as he is today and that was the fun -- fun discovery for us and fun opportunity to make -- to bring somebody even more broadly available to readers. somebody that got away, you know, there are big conservative stars that have published books and we haven't been able to publish all of them, probably one that i would have loved to publish was clarence thomas about his book, i would have loved to publish him and work with him and in the end he published with someone else. >> there's been a slew of big houses with conservative titles now, with conservative -- >> no, doubt. there's actually really fascinating and interesting timing. within a month of becoming president publisher of renery, everybody could discover conservative books. random house started crown for him, penguin, soon thereafter started threshold, the three enprints didn't exist in 2000 and five years later they were all actively competing for conservative authors and conservative books. i think it's been a healthy thing. i think it's 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 there's a really great competitive reason for an author to come with regnery, we have certainly had authors that left to go big new york house and came back. we heard from a number of authors that it was fun to be published with the new york house but they confirmed what we knew which is that regnery is really the home for conservative authors and that if you want a publisher who understands the conservative marketplace better than anyone else and who has an e -- efinity because we really do understand how the marketplace thinks. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 television for serious readers, here is our prime time line-up, mayor discussing career in politics. at 8:00 steve coal looks at wars in afghanistan and the relationship with the cia and pakistan's inner service intelligence, then on book tv's afterwords program at 9:00 p.m. black lives matter cofounder discusses her life activism and the beginnings of the black lives matter movement. at 10:00 laura muñoz talks about u.s. immigration policy and profiled daca recipients and wrap up programming at 11:00 with charles mann, scientist on opposing sides who influence modern ideas on the environment and the future survival of humanity, that all happens tonight on book tv, television for serious readers. >> recently announced its finalist for outstanding books of 2017, some of the finalists jack davis with look at gulf of mexico, russian american journalist report on generation of russians who came of age during the putin regime. the art of death, kevin young's bunk and roxanne, memoir hunger. book tv covered several of finalists. >> because it means losing people we love but one of the things i learned from reading especially the dying writers like christopher or audrey who were writing about their own death and even with my parents, one of the things that i realized that dying people want to tell us is to live, live the best life you can, live it so you don't have many regrets at the end. >> do we do find that message? >> i think we put that in the back of our minds and most of us -- we don't really want to concentrate on mortality but one of the things that christopher writes in his book mortality is that he was living and just living, you are constantly aware that you have expiration day. for us it's a possibility, it's something that lies ahead but for dying people they know that every single day is a gift. normally, ideally that's -- it would great if we all lived like that. it would also sad. >> you can watch the programs online or booktv.org or the complete list for national book critic circle in all six categories, head the book critics,.org. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everybody, welcome. thank you so much for