speakers. on about books. we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing

industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current non-food auction books featured on c-span's book a 2023 nobel prize winner and now a booktv. we want to introduce you to adam levy. he is the co-publisher along with his wife ashley of transit books. mr. levy, what kind of books do you publish at transit? well, thank you so much for having me. we publish primarily international literature. we're an independent publishing house based here in the san francisco bay area. we publish a carefully curated list of really excellent literature from around the world, both literature for adults and also recently literature for children as well, with a new children's book imprint that we started. now. when did you get the idea to focus on international. that was that was a long time in

the making. actually. and i met in a writing program at columbia university. she she is a writer herself. and i started at that time as a translator. we were getting to know these different worlds and corners of the publishing industry. and then later we both found work in the publishing industry in new york and i think we started to see how much literature was coming through and what was also being left behind, what was being overlooked by the corporate houses and we saw an opportunity there for works that we could champion and connect with readers, booksellers, critics. and we saw and we saw an opportunity for for a list of our own. and that's that's the. those were the the original seeds of of the press. well, i've kind of buried the lead here, mr. levy.

but the washington post recently had a headline, one of my favorite headlines of all time. this couple just published a nobel winner from their living room. tell us the story. well, we started the publishing house after we moved out to the san francisco bay area in 2015. at that time, we both held full time jobs, you know, to afford the rest of our lives. and we got in the habit of working on the press in the margins of the day. so in the morning before work, in the evenings, on weekends, on vacations and this was kind of just the way that it we had assimilated the press into our lives or we had assimilated our lives into the press. and the two have always kind of been intertwined, ever since. so, yeah, we've we've operated the press out of the house since

2015. and since then, you know, i've left my job and spend my time, my days with transit. but those days are also spent in the house. there's there's been some i think the pandemic also changed things for us because there was a time beforehand where, you know, we were we were somewhat cagey about the fact that we didn't have an office. sometimes an agent would come out to visit or. an editor or a writer and they would ask to visit our offices. and we would say we meet in a café or something like that. and we we would take all of our meetings just, you know, in oakland where we were living at the time. but now with with remote work, it's actually it's kind of been somewhat advantageous for us. we've spread out a little bit. we have coworkers in l.a. and new york, and we're here in the san francisco bay area. so it's allowed us to be a little bit more flexible in terms of the kind of work,

culture and office life that we that we're able to support. so how big is transit? how many employees at this point and how many books do you publish a year? we're four. we're four of us. and we publish historically. we publish 6 to 8 books a year. this year we're doing eight, and next year we're going to be increasing it to about 12 and seeing how that feels. but ideally, work will be at this kind of one book a month cadence. and what we find is that really allows us to focus a lot of attention on all of our books on the front list and also our books on the back list. and to give them the attention that they deserve and not just have them, you know, pop in week after week and then forget them as soon as the primary sales window closes. so how did you convince mr. levy that first author to join you at transit when your competition is what?

simon and schuster, penguin, random house, etc., etc.? that's a good question. you know, i because i had a start as a translator, i kind of came up with a network of translators and i wrote to a translator who i really admired. her name is lisa dillman. she's the translator of writer like yuri herrera and hillary clinton. and i wrote to her and said, we're thinking about starting a publishing house. do you think you have some kind of book that has been passed over by another house for being too long or too short or too strange or too hard or too something? and i'd be curious to read it. and she sent us what would become the first book that we published, such small hands by the spanish writer andres barba, and it turned out that it was too short for the commercial houses that she had sent it to. also, a little too strange.

it's kind of like a shirley jackson crossed with the virgin suicides about a young girl at an orphanage. and it kind of alternates perspectives between this call. we of the other girls in the orphanage and this and the the the recent arrival and it's a very eerie haunting very halloween appropriate book. and we loved it. it's a brilliant it's a brilliant, really taut, slim book that we thought would be the right one to to kick start our list with. and so we we made the case, you know, that we were new press that were that was going to be enthusiastic champions of this kind of work. and yeah, we were really lucky that lisa was on board and andres and his spanish publisher publisher were also on board. and we had a great success with

it. now, let's get to the second half of that headline. yeah, publishing a nobel prize winner tell us that story. yeah, well, ashley and i were admirers of john fossey's work before we first sahis is what would become his masterworks, hepatology and submission. and so we received about 30 pages, typically with international literature, you're not reading a whole manuscript on submission in the way that you are with an english language manuscript. you're you're seeing just a sample of it. and sometimes it's synopsis, but usually it's just a short chunk of pages. so we read the first 30 pages of what we were told was going to be a 1200 page book of of slow prose by john foster, who we were we were a great admirers of. but this was going to be a

departure from some of his previous shorter works, as had a really kind of tight, more economical structure. and we read it. we fell in love with this rhythm of these sentences that meander and come back to a point and then take off again and then come back to that same point. there was something really hypnotic about the prose that we fell in love with. and i think, you know, one of the advantages of being a house of our size is that we can take these risks on projects that we feel really passionately about without needing, you know, a sales team and a marketing team to whisper their better, better judgment in our ear. and we decided to sign the three books that comprise the cytology all at once, and then started publishing them in consecutive years from 2020, 20, 20. what was the reaction or what

was the response to the first in this trilogy? well, we published it into a strange moment. we published the first volume. the other name, in april of 2020. so this was right at the start of the pandemic. we i was terrified, actually. we all these books had gone out almost at the same time that bookstores were were closed. we didn't know whether the bookstore i mean, the books were going to arrive. it just, you know, shuttered stores and come back to us as return as books are. return of all items of they're credited to sales when when a store purchases them. but they have the ability to return them and then have those sales credited back to the publisher. so we were terrified. we were lucky. we were lucky in some respects that first volume was longlisted for the international booker prize. but i think it was always our

plan with the with this hepatology to build up a following and to make sure that with each volume we could find more readers for it. we could find more critics who could champion it. we really wanted this to be i mean, for a house, for a house like ours, without a big marketing budget, without, you know, the ability to do a splashy campaign and also with a writer like yan, who is himself, you know, he's somewhat reclusive. he he doesn't like to travel. he doesn't like to give interviews. we knew that we would really have to kind of be his spokes people here in north america. so we found that, you know, with each successive volume, we were able to gain more of a following. but his breakout year was certainly. in 2022, with the the release of the third volume, which really

received wonderful critical acclaim. it was a finalist for the international booker prize for the national book award and for the national book critics circle award among others. so that really, i think that really was a standout year for for phosa. and also for us as a result of the success of those books. adam levi what is the impact on a transit publishing house when you get a nobel prize winner? that's a good question. i mean, in the short term, it's it's a lot of crazy days. we're we're really working closely with our distributors and with our printers to stay on top of demand. i think we were really lucky in some sense that we had two new books of his that were scheduled to come out in october of this year. and so as a result, we had a lot

of stock available. still, we ran out. we sold out of that stock within 24 hours of the nobel announcement. and our website was totally flooded with orders that we're still trying to figure out how we're going to fulfill. but, you know, obviously, it's it's incredible for a press of our size, this kind of national recognition that we've received, that john has received. it really, i think, raises the profile. both of his work, not just these most recent books, but his entire backlist and also of the press and the work that we do really allowing us to shine a light on all of the international literature that we've been championing since we started the press in 2015. and all of the work that is that is to come on our list next year and beyond. so we'll see. we'll see what it what what are what it means for us. a couple of months down the line. but right now, it's really it's exciting. and we're we're.

we're in a happy kind of madness stage. adam levy, the big new york house is, of course, have sophisticated distribution systems. how do you get your books out? we also have a sophisticated distribution system. we work with with a distribution company called consortium, which is owned by ingram. so they have a central warehouse in tennessee. so our books are usually shipped from our printers to their central warehouse where they are. you know, they move it through the supply chain to field retailers, which are independent bookstores and national accounts like amazon, barnes and noble. we also have a really wonderful team of sales reps through a consortium that work with our our field accounts to sell our books in each season. so, you know, we, we don't have quite the size and the the

robustness of the the infrastructure of a a big five house. but we still have a really excellent team getting our books out into the world. will you be going to stockholm in december? yeah. yes, i will. we there is. yes, we'll be there. i will be wearing the the one tuxedo that i have. i thought i would never have occasion to wear after last year's national book awards, but i'm really glad to have occasion to bring it out of the closet again. now you're son is also involved in the company, in a sense, correct? yes, he is. he's not exactly on the payroll. he's four years old, but he was instrumental in the starting of our children's book imprint transit children's editions. i don't think thate i think we got into it like many others do.

we were reading picture books with our son. this is probably when he was about two years old. we got the idea or we were kind of were struck with the curiosity of what the children's book landscape looked like for international literature in the way that we had the same kind of curiosities and frustrations, even with the adult landscape when we were starting the the adult list. so we started putting out some feelers, writing to some agents, doing a little research of our own, and not long after we started signing picture books from around the world. and our son has been a really wonderful first reader for all of our children's books. i, i think one thing that's really been helpful is that it's easy to read children's literature and kind of confuse

yourself that it's that these are books for adults and not for kids. and the kids are the people who you need to entertain and challenge. and also not to underestimate, because they're they have brilliant little sponge minds and and our son has you know, he has really surprised us in the kind of books that he's been excited about, the kind of humor that he's that that has made him laugh and the kind of books that he asks for in the morning. so know, just because of the ways that we structure our days. i'm usually up early and working in our little office here and he'll come out and ask me what kind of books i'm making. i'm not always making a book in the morning. usually i'm answering, you know, dull emails, but he'll come out and we'll we'll go through some of the submissions that i have from children's book agents and editors and, you know, he he

really i trust his i trust his taste. and sometimes he likes some really ridiculous things that aren't right for us then. but it's okay. it's been a lot of fun to be able to grow the list with him, and we'll see where it takes us. have you thought about moving into nonfiction as well? we do do nonfiction. we don't do kind of. like history and things like that. but we we have a a narrative nonfiction series called undelivered lectures that we started in 2020, which are book length essays that we largely commissioned from authors that we really admire. so that's actually been a fun project for us and a really nice complement to the international literature on our list. the the, the series that features more american writers still internationally as well. but it allows us to have writers

writing on a range of subjects that excite them and kind of stretch their legs a little bit in a new in a new medium or form. so that's been that's been a lot of fun to get started and also to showcase kind of the breadth of what's possible within within a list like ours. and finally, one personal question. how do you and ashley as co-publisher as divide the work and 24 seven living together and working. i mean it's always been the case for us. i mean, we met in graduate school and books and writing have always been kind part of the fabric of our lives in one way or the other, whether we're reading books and talking about them or i'm reading in her writing or she's reading something that i've translated or with the press. i mean, it was it always was something that were able to talk about and get excited about. i think my favorite way that we work together is when we're both

editing, editing a manuscript together, because i think we have slightly different sensibilities when as editors. so occasionally we'll both be in the we'll both be working on a manuscript. i'll do a pass. she'll do a pass. i'll edit her pass, show edit my past and then about it's possibly much more time consuming than it should be, but i think it it brings out the best in both of us and together we are we are one, one brain. so it's a really nice thing to be able to share that with your partner. one advantage and one disadvantage hinge being 3000 miles away from new york city. one advantage is that i find that the publishing industry out here, i mean, it's smaller, it's a lot more flattened. it you go to a literary event and there are booksellers and there are editors and there are magazine people.

there's the occasional agent. it doesn't feel as stratified as it is in new york, where things are slightly more segmented by industry and function. it's also nice just to have a little more space. you don't have the you know, the the constant headache of life in the big city. it feels a little bit more relaxed here. but but at the same time, new york is the center of the publishing industry. and we're lucky in that. my family is from new york. so we go back several times a year, both or visits to family and for publishing reasons. and so we make new york visits a part of our publishing life as well. adam levy, along with his wife, ashley nelson levy are the co publishers of transit books, which published a nobel prize winner for 2023. congratulations. thanks for being with us on

peter, welcome. thank you for joining us. it's really great to