our plan was to publish on the upcoming anniversary of his death in september. we have wonderful contributors writing about different parts of richard holbrooke's life and career, vietnam, bosnia, afpak, and exerts from his own work, including his wonderful book and a lot of, you know, more speeches and essays. and we think it gives an incredible portrait of holbrooke both in his own words and reflections on his career by people that knew him well. >> we've been talking about with susan weinberg. :

>> i'm going to introduce my panelists, and somebody give me a sign when he have 15 minutes for question and answer. and what's our time frame here? an hour total. so, at about 4:00 5 we'll break for questions -- 4:15, we'll break for questions. so if you hold for them the end, if we have a lot of people dying to speak, we'll start earlier to my far right is my friend, bob weil, the executive editor for

norton. he works with annett gordon reid, jg ballard and patricia high something, and hey has been in publishing in one form or another since we both got out of college many decades ago. to my immediate right is johnny temple, a small publisher in brooklyn, new york. the publish urban literary fission -- fiction and political nonfiction. immediately to my left is kim robinson, who is the regional director of the university of california press -- regional publisher, formerly at oxford university press. she has been a music editor and a head of reference, which is

interesting, because she is the one person on the panel who has worked in reference particularly. everybody else is in general fiction or nonfiction. and last is carriy goldsteen, and he was there for the launch of 12 five yours ago? five years ago. before that, he had worked at ferris strauss in the publicity department. his writers include benjamin hale, and he works with a writer named christopher hitchens, and a writer named christopher buckly. so, i think that the first question, which your presence here answer, is some wag said to me this morning, you're doing a panel on publishing in the 21st century.

will the be publishing in the 21st century? i believe we're all their say there is. it's obviously very different. this has ban year or two of tremendous change. we talk about some things said with absolute ferocious surety a year ago about the growth of ebooks and what ebooks would sell. they're completely wrong, and if you guys at c-span2 have the tapes, i would like you to destroy them. let's start with bob and go down this way. what do you think is the single biggest issue facing publishing century going forward? >> it's for publishers to adapt to the new technologies, especially ebooks. there are as many readers as there have always been. there are passionate, voracious

readers, and an increase in ebooks in terms terms of fiction the past year. the role of the editor and writer in coming up with the idea and the public want to read is it strong. the way it's disseminated is completely new and creates major challenges as we're dealing with tectonic shifts in the way books are made and printed. although i still believe, as a traditionali, that people also want to read the physical books, and i still edit all my manuscripts with pencils. [applause] >> i agree completely with bob's perspective there, and it's a very exciting time. but it sometimes seems that publishing is almost like not a politically conservative business but socially

conservative business. when technology changes, they don't say is music going to disappear? the fear is on the business side of things in publishing, people do seem to have this sort of tangible fear that writing is going to somehow sort of stop or there's not going to be anymore venues for story-telling. i'm not afraid of that at all. my one biggest concern and one challenge, very serious challenge, is ebook piracy, which is a huge problem. there's no way to protect ebooks from being pirated because there's these fancy new scanners. anybody can scan a book and turn it into an ebook, and a company like mine is relatively small independent company, and if you go searching, if you bad people go searching, you'll find pirates versions of our

ebooks, and if that's already happening to us, you can only national what is happening to gigantic international best-sellers, and i mean, as of right now, i don't think that it it's hurt our business at all. the ebooks thing is actually very exciting, and we're doing quite well with our ebooks. i think that is one sort of -- having seen what free did to the music business, it's going to be interesting to see how the publishing business reacts to the threat of free. >> going to come back to that. that's a pig subject. kim? >> i have to agree. digital is shaking it up. you mentioned my reference background. when i first started working on rev reps, it -- reference, it was about the time everybody thought cd-rom would be the way we would distribute things, so i go back to that to give myself perspective that these

distribution systems come and go but we're creating amazing atlases and dictionaries and creative ones, some of which aren't printed because they found a different form that smooth fit their content better. and i think there are these exciting possibilities for writing that doesn't necessarily take a traditional narrative form to find interesting ways where the form might fit the content. not necessarily better but in new and exciting ways. and so i think that's something that is a positive spin on what to look forward to. there's definitely going be people that thrive in that environment and probably in people that don't thrive. >> a colleague of mine referred to the delivery vehicle as plumbing. i think it would be really interesting to think about what kind of conversations were happening around mass markets when they first came out and other sort of new packaging ideas. but in essence they're all delivering the same material, which bob was saying begins and

ends with the book. and i heard a great speech the other night at the festival in new york, and the publisher -- a pusher was talking about the power of words and the power of books, and we forget, watching these moms -- movements happening around the world and people talking about digital delivery and social networking but what begins revolutions are books and words and i think what we do in pushing -- publishing books is very important. i talk with our art department about book jackets, and i said that book i would keep on my shelf at home and that one i would lend. and the focus on the physical object and the text itself is a primary one for us. >> i have to ask, what was the difference? why -- you mean you would len

it, meaning you didn't like it? >> one was a beautifully designed jacket, a work of art. >> you wanted it as an object in your house? >> and one was a traditional jacket that didn't speak to me. wouldn't live on my shelf with as much love. >> what you have to do is get people to buy both of them. one to keep and one to lend. i've been known to do that. >> one for the library -- i've been known to do that because it's because i have too many to figure out which was the original one. so i have to dig through the stacks. you peep love me. a couple of things that you guys just brought um i think we -- i'd like to explore a little bit. about a year or two ago, when we had these kinds of conversations here and elsewhere, i thought -- and i think a lot of people thought that -- well, i think none of us knew how quickly the

ebook was going to catch on, and i don't even credit the ipad necessarily. it was starting before that. and the success of the barnes and noble nook. i wrote how it would be a disaster for the company. shows you what i know. so i think we have all been surprised by how quickly people have taken on ebooks and how much -- how often they buy them and how many they buy. i think we used to think that the kinds of books that would work in ebook were going to be nonfiction, they weren't going to be books you read for pleasure. they were going to be guidebooks and going to be travel books and how-too books, stuff that you needed to get information from rather than enjoy the experience of. and i think, bob, if you want to address this, i think what we're seeing is the exact opposite of

that, or somewhat the opposite. >> sarah, you're right. the recent studies have so shocked i think a lot of people in the business. the growth of ebooks in fiction, especially what we might call genre or more disposable fiction, has been explosive. something like 20% growth in the last year, whereas i've seen some studies where serious nonfiction is a 1 to 2% growth. so there are huge numbers of different ways. the more sort of disposable, the recent more -- people go on vacation and will buy five ebooks and say, which two will i read? the price is cheaper. i did the hemings of monticello, and it wasn't as large an ebook when i did a novel as opposed to the nonfiction. the growth in ebook in the fiction is really pronounced. i also -- i think there's sort

of -- we can reduce it all -- i think there's a bit of a whole herd mentality, a thought that we'll all go to ebooks, and i want to say very emphatically, it will not all go to ebooks and there's such a profound need for the physical book and physical libraries and the actual book, that i think people have been toe too alarmist about the disappearance about the p-book as they call it. >> let me ask you something. i appreciate the applause there. and this is anybody can jump in. what if we did? so what? right? if we did all go to ebook, what -- but what we're seeing is that people are still reading. just reading in this different form. so what if really people --er in going to be 100% of anything, but a real high number of people started to read almost exclusively or exclusively on ebook. why is that a bad thing

necessarily? >> well, i'll talk about it from a scholarly perspective. and paper archives better than anything else, and if we are trying to create a record of knowledge and idea, it's risky to move to a completely digital world. these thing change and we're struggling to get back to things that dr. king tiedded and get back to them again because the digital world is changing rapidly, and without printing i talk about the debate between publishing academic mono graff which are of interest to 700 people in the world verse a reference book with a determinedded set of knowledge, and which one do we print? we're making choices between which ones sit on our library shelves that we might have a lasting able to access. so that becomes an issue in the

digital era. >> i want to bright a slight counterbalance, and like probably most of the people in this room, i prefer to read my books in print form. but i do want to stress that there are very, very tangible advantages to ebooks and all sorts of reasons, environmental and otherwise, why ebooks make sense, and more of a conceptual level, book publishing desperately needs needs to keepp with modern contemporary culture, and culture evolves and there's this fear in book publishing about the evolution of culture, but it's -- i was having a meeting with a political cartoonist, mr. fish, who we're just about to publish his first book. he is here at the festival. about a month and a half ago, me and a staff member were having a meeting with him and we talked about what kind of events we

would be promoting. because the book is full color, we're printing it in asia, but there was -- this identify is a political cartoonist who is on very visible on the harpers web site, and we're having our meeting and saying we can have our first event on such and such a day, and my colleague says, yes, because on february 26th, that's when the boats will leave from china, i'm like, ixnay on the oat from china-bay. the whole world is moving at this crazy fast speed while there's literally like a boat from china carrying his book across the sea, and it's kind of absurd, you know, and so i agree completely. i don't believe the print book is going away. i don't think there's a threat of ebooks taking over. once you accept the ebook and

wrap your ahead around it, it's like you realize that book publishing needs the ebook and we need to be relevant. we can't be -- romaine remain that's 19th century art form. we need to be part of the 21st 21st century. >> i think arguably in the last six months we have seen a big explosion in ebook sales,, traditionally we publish a cloth and follow that with a trade paperback edition, and we're seeing on fiction titles, like bob, sometimes almost as high as 50% of sales on ebook and more often about 30. but what i'll be curious to see is how that affects the trade paperback, and what that means for those numbers, and whether these people buying at possibly a lower price point for the ebook, are trade readers who

will not buy it next year, or are these hard cover readers responding to a review or media or something like that and that's going to be interesting to watch play out. >> in most cases, do you publish your ebooks at the same time that you publish your hard cover? i know that's been a question. did it get resolve? is pretty much everybody publishing both at the same time? >> at 12 we are, yes. >> we. >> we try to publish simultaneously. >> i mean, you know, putting on my consumer hat, at it like, if this is a book -- unless it's something i know i want to have on my shelf, which may be the book from china because the physical object is important to me. for a lot of books i don't even know i like it that much yet that i want it on my shelf. so, i want to -- i don't know about it yet. and i'm presented with this is a conundrum i think we have been working on in publishing. i can get this book on my

ereader and it's going to cost me ten bucks, or i can go to the store -- or order it and it's going to be 20 bucks. which would you do? you're going to buy the book that is ten bucks once you head made whatever hurdle you have to read on a screen, which more and more people have done. the problem is there's so much worry about what this is going to mean for publishing, and it doesn't mean anything bad for publishing of narrative. as we have all said so far today, people are buying more and reading more, where it's a problem is for the economics of publishing as it's set up now. >> i think there are more -- i think there are more other problems as well with the rise of ebooks. we're seeing far fewer medical book -- physical books in

independent stories stories. the independent book store could shape what the public and local areas wanted to read now. now, when you see the disappearance of so many book stores and you see fiction collapsing in -- the bruised quotient, you can't physically look at books in book stores, so the need to publicize exists in a different way and is more challenging, and culturally we're really challenged and at a real loss to see the threatened book store which became a public place, and we have -- i think the great book stores like city lights, which is here, powell's, tattered cover, where you can go to the book star, barnes & noble, and you can see the book. i think the public needs that. i think the reader needs that and i worry about that. >> okay. [applause] >> anybody else?

>> everybody up here on this panel shares something to the same degree, which are small, focused lists, curated ones, and 12 at its core mission is publishing few and publishing well. one of the things i think following bob's comment, that we're doing very consciously now, in all acquisitions, making them not merely editorial but with a vision for publishing the book at the time of acquisition. do we know how to publish this book? >> something else bob mentioned i wanted to get to. the book stores, the demise -- when i spoke with publishers two years ago, there were 1800 independent book stores fulltime independent book stores. i would bet it's lower than that two years later. it was 20,000 two decades ago.

so there's no question that on the book selling side there's a real crisis, and it's partly due to -- i mean, for a while we were blaming amazon because people could get books without having to go out of their house. now it's because you can get ebook without having to get out of your pajamas and can have it that minute. so, the internet book stores would say that you can browse. it's a different kind of browsing. right? that's why they have -- if you have the people who bought this, bought this, and other titles that are similar. they're trying to arrange in a digital world the front tables in your book store. and then there are the number of internet sites that talk to you that recommend friend-to-friend.

ed would -- i would be interested in how you guys feel -- how we're going to make up for the loss of book stores, because i think it's pretty clear -- i do not believe -- is a bob does -- there will be no book stores. i think book stores will serve as showrooms. but they're not -- i mean, this is -- they're not -- i mean i know in new york, everybody big book store, all -- the bigger the book store, the fastest at it closing because the real estate -- people don't need that much real estate. i'd like you to address, what you think is going to come into and what we can make come into replace the browsing experience, the community experience of a book store. i mean, this is one of the big issues. >> well, one of the big -- some of you i'm sure are authors but the real challenge are the

publishing house, the editor, and specifically the author, is what we all call social media. it's not only publicity but how does the author -- does he have a facebook page? does she tweet? what kind -- i know it sounds -- some people say, i can't do that. you're so much of a greater expectation that the 21st 21st century author and the publisher is required to publicize in a different way. i have a friend, neal porter, created a youtube video which resulted in the 100,000 copy sale, and he spend a few bucks doing it. so there's all these challenges ways in which we have social media people in our country -- every other place do. the books are no longer in the store. every publisher is shipping fewer books so there's a bigger

problem in how to get the word out to the public in different ways and that's one of our big challenges. >> do we have any sort of numbers or any way of knowing -- does that stuff work? if you are an author and you go and you tweet about your book or about dish mean, i gather actually what you're supposed to do is tweet about everything but your book, and then kind of gather a following of people who are interested and then you drop in that you have this book, rather than beating people over the head with a book. does this work? >> depends on the writer. i think there are writes who have devoted, passionate audiences who have been following them for a long time and take their order from the writer. there are certain political figures who can make this happen. there are i think certain kinds of genre writers who have the same kind of devoted families, who wait for characters who occur in series. but i think it's very

challenging for less visible riders to get traction from the social media. but you're streaming into a very big room with a lot of voices. to be heard, experience remain that the main driver of sales and attention for books is national media. one of the things that we were all a little nervous about a few years ago as pack review sections started to close was that -- you mentioned social media sites, friend-to-friend recommendses. what remains, i think, vital for our business, is our voices of authority, to do that sifting for the discriminate reader. voices you trust who you will pay attention to, and there are still these voices and we need them. i don't think customer reviews can replace that. >> i think it works on limited -- doesn't work everytime. i have a novelist, who is

selling 1,000 copies of his novels, and he has a new girlfriend who is using facebook in his name, and selling the secret life of emily dickinson, and we're selling 8,000 copies of a literary male novelist, and this is facebook media, which is really creating a new audience for this author, and he has whole knew life based on social media. everyone needs that kind of girlfriend or that kind of talent to promote themselves. there are knew which will -- new challenges. >> i'm sure there's an element of -- in jerome's girlfriend's strategy -- he is a fantastic writer, who i highly recommend to everybody. >> the girlfriend maybe should be renting herself out. >> hire her. she is phenomenal. there's this motion -- notion that you have to have a

presence, but the obvious there has to be something creative and organic to the social media outreach and to the approach. don't think it's just the author. ati'd be curious to know what se has been doing. don't think it's matter of doing what everybody else is doing. >> she creates an audience and gets readers to respond with their own stories. she makes it very participatory and interactive. >> but she is not saying, buy this book, buy this book. >> nobody is going to listen to that. >> when we published "war. wow" we built a community web site for soldiers and families and that has become -- not only was it a very effective marketing tool but now has a life of its own where the soldiers have a social network, and they're communicating.

you may have red this last week, we lost two very talent photographers in libya one of whom was a directing partner of sebastian, and that community board was on fire with testimonials, memorials, information about where to send money to certain charities. it was really inspiring. apart from any business. >> and it sells books ultimately. that's the -- or it furthers the brand of sebastian. >> absolutely. >> i did a book about california politics last year, and both of the authors are extremely media save savvy journalists but the spoke at the league of conservation voters, league of women voteres, rotely include, old-farced community oriented, talk can about the content of what they wrote, and they reached out directly to people

who would care about it. and whether or not that was online or in person, i think the online stuff was complimentary to it, but i think they really had to go hand in hand for them to get the word out about the book. >> i was talking to friend, it's easier to do that when they're a top pick, it's about the war and. it's harder when it's about fiction, when it's a novel. and he said to me, every novel is about something. so, we were joking but it was like, did the people drink coffee? well, okay. let's go the coffee sites. do people drive volkswagens? let's go to the volkswagen -- whatever it is. obviously those are silly examples, but if it's about -- a thriller about a missing child, help us all, you know, there are

sites that are gathering places for people with this particular issue or problem. if it's a book about one of the, whichs has alzheimer's, or -- i don't know why i keep picking negative things. you should where i'm going. you have to get into the -- you have to know the book to see -- it's one thing to say, this is science fiction, so i'm going to all the science fiction blogs. that's good. that's a start. but it's science fiction about, you know, x. so, then google that topic and find places where you might be able to get in there and start a community board, advertise, whatever. >> sayre sarah, that's good publishing. it's the trampoline effect. where is my trampoline audience. if it has an artistic theme in

it, you want to alert people to the themes of your novel. you're selling a novel with an audience in mine, and i think that's just smart publishing, whether in the print book or whether true speaking traditionally or through electronic media. >> we published the evolution of bruno,. >> we got these fantastic reviews, and i kept waiting for a very particular one to show up, and it finally did, and some blogger says, i keep reading about this book and everybody talking about enter species sex and nobody is acknowledging this, this is blasphemous, and i jumped for joy and said the evangelicals are getting mad. it's great. >> did it help? >> not so much. it's harder to get the evangelicals mad than you might

think. >> that's disappointing. >> in terms of the -- johnny -- i mean, brought it up a little while ago about the closing of book sections and less reviewing in traditional media. do you fine that -- i mean, always argued there may be fewer book sections newspapers, which is sad and worrisome in its own way, but there are many, many, many blogs and web sites devoted to books. so, have you found that those have made up for the other or do you still feel that a "new york times" review or oprah magazine review or a -- >> fresh air? >> npr review -- does it make a difference? what moves the needle? are you still able to tell?

>> certainly -- i mean, radio seems to sort of consistently be a venue for generating book sales. npr, strong npr coverage for a book seems to consistently help a lot. that's one thing that i'll say. i don't think that the significance of radio has dissipated too much, or at least i haven't seen that. >> word of mouth is the biggest way to sell a book. also npr, key print reviews, c -- span. all major ways to sell a book. i have found parts of the evangelical community very helpful in selling books. and i am not at all -- there are -- one cannot throw mud at an entire group because norton

published the blindside with a huge support from the evangelical group. wilson published the creation about saying the environment is so imperiled, but saying he has to good and speak to reasonable ministers and baptist ministers out there because the environment is so critical that we have to work together. so i think the 21st century publisher has to set the model and not continue the mud-slinging which divides our country, but in many cases work together with groups that they may not always agree with personally. [applause] >> just in case i was misunderstood, i was merely getting excited bat certain controversial review that might have helped my book get an audience. but in agreement, we have also been very successful in working with evangelical markets and very specific needs, and there are very specific markets and very uunique ways of going after

different marketsful we publish the nurture shock and got a really faction endorsement from albert muller, a huge champion of that book. because many of his listeners were educating their children at home, and that was something that hadn't occurred to me, but we realized that was a special way into a market for a book about parenting. >> from a small press, some of our authors are colbert, but the majority of our books have never been reviewed in those venues, so its incumbent to find the organized constituencies. for nonfiction might be home schoolers or environmentalists,

and we reach out directly to them. because we're probably going to have better luck with them. then the media venues they create, theirs newsletter or publics. publications. >> one last question i want to ask everybody and then we can open it for questions. somebody said at the beginning of this, all four of you work for relatively small publishers, and i wonder if you think that this is a better time for the small, independent and -- small and/or independent and/or curated publisher than the conglomerates. >> i worked with a publisher

called "12" and the model is designed to address this, which is to publish fewer and better and guarantee each of our full books a full month, and when we acquire books, go in with a sort of vision in mind, can i make the most use of that month with this book? is there one audience -- one way to publish to one audience or several different ones we can really mine during the course of the campaign? i think it is essential so that you're not only -- when you publish a book you're not only competing with other publishers for attention can you're also often competing with you're own riders and your own lives. from my experience, it's been very useful to focus and really publish one book at a time as well as we can. book severals may respond more to the impresent than a reader

would. >> it does let -- it might have a perspective they would assume might come from us. >> i have to say now as somebody who reviews books in a monthly magazine, the public date is extremely important, but sometimes -- i sometimes end up looking at two 12 books, and then a month later will read a review. johnny, can you speak the idea, as the big publishers are cutting back or paying less or able to publish less, does that

change your publish -- the books you get to see? how does that affect a smaller publisher? >> definitely a lot more authors of stature coming our way than there used to be. i think in general authors who aren't sort of already best sellers are fining it harder and harder to get book deals with the big companies, and one of our initial missions when i started the company was to sort so provide a home for books that wouldn't otherwise have a home, and as we have grown and developed, that has delved as -- developed as well. plenty of booking we're publishing that could have a home somewhere else. the scale of our business is more suited to the times we are in. we have a low overhead. for us -- i mean, i have to say, up front, our advances we offer are very small, and there's very

little substitute for a big advance for an author. once you remove that, outside of that, there's a lot -- i feel that we're able to compete on sort of almost every other level, and this is a little bit intangible, but if we can sell five, seven, eight thousand copies of a book, that's like a big success for us. and for authors who are working with bigger houses, that same 6,000, 7,000 sales might feel like a failure, and how this is just sort of talking about feelings, it's important to an author or any artist that the company you're working with is treating you like a big success. so we're in a fortunate position to be able to have pretty much all of our author are feeling quite successful. i also think it's just really the best time dish don't think there's been relatively speaking a better time to be a small

company. i think about the -- the random houses of the world, and when the recession really hit, i've seen before what happens to an office environment when a group of people get fired. it just sends paranoia through the rest of the office and everybody is clinging to their jobs when the economy started tanking, bigger companies had to lay people off, had to let go of books. for my company it's been a desperate scramble since i started doing it, and the rules of the business have not checked at all. we didn't have to reduce ourlies, didn't have to let go of any people. we're used to sort of darting around and having to try sort of instant strategies to make up for sort of looming economic problems. so, for us, you know, it feels like the business is ailing, but we actually, fortunately, are stronger than we have ever been. >> i underscore that.

the akashic has had exciting fiction but norton is the oldest, and we are growing phenomenonnally in this early part of the 21st century, and norton has always tried to maintain a high level of quality, and while some of the very big houses go for a mass market component, we found that our decision to always present both quality fiction and quality nonfiction, has had a huge payoff. so, we're actively expanding, and i think that's important to know when we're talking about the collapse of publishing right now. >> i'm glad that johnny brought up mission. that's such an important part of what is going to make any book publisher succeed is that sense of mission. and knowing that we're going to be around as a press because what we do is important regardless of how it's

disseminated, that makes you excited about it. it's an important book that makes a difference and that's extremely motivating and makes you attract passionate people and it keeps you around through the economic ups and downs. >> authors do get tired of often times authors feel disrespected in the process of working with some of the very big houses. they feel ignored and neglected, which is in sharp contrast, for example, every author -- authors on norton, and our authors are happy, but you have to be author-oriented at a certain point. it's very important for the health of the business. >> you have to love your author and not treat it it toly as a business. >> just to echo one of the appeals of a list like 12's, you really have very personal interaction. it's a personal relationship, and the people, when you come in

to have your meeting, the two people you're sitting at the table with are the only two people you ever talk to. it's a real collaborative group affair. >> i always wanted to ask you this, cary. how can you schedule -- books don't always, believe it or not, come in on time. >> i'm learning that. >> and so your list -- i mean, do you ever get in a position where you, uh-oh, it's july, and i was supposed to be selling this book, either a backlog of stuff that comes in and is reddy to go at once, or two months offing in to publish. >> there has been occasions when we missed a month. we published senator kennedy's book earlier than we had planned to after he passed away. we had cancelled a book by robert alden book, and he pass away so we didn't publish that.

a couple other books. during one week period in the beginning of the printing it happened twice in one week, and i was reminded of the scene in history of the world where moses comes in with the three tablets, and -- [laughter] >> it happens. >> okay. >> questions? is there a sort way we're supposed to do this or anything? oh, can you come down to the microphone. go ahead. >> thank you. i have some specific concerns about epublishing. particularly in terms of preserving good works, speakly nonoffense. i have a rather robust library,

some 15,000 books, and some of my more cherished books are 100 years or older and i have books worth hundreds of dollars each. i'm curious whether or not the panel has any concerns about longevity of literary works, particularly the nonfiction ones as it relates to epublishing. >> you mean the actual physical books? >> well, yes. i mean, there's such a rush toward epublishing, that nonfiction publishers can't help but -- are getting a backdraft, if you will, and almost a suffocating one, in which they're wondering what the future might be like, and they're all downsizing. yao indicated they're publishing less, at least as an indirect consequence of this, and the growth is in the fiction area. i'm just curious --

>> in ebook. we have a very strong commitment to the print book. as a book collector i share your concern. i think it may make print books more expensive because we will be printing fewer books. >> thank you. >> one of the advantages i see with an ebook or any sort of electronic thing, the able to click on something and you go automatically to web site, a video, a photographs. do you see that as an advantage over the print book? >> i have done some work with some of the companies that do that. that make -- they used to be ck rom books with the video and authors letters and sort of add material and director's cut version of a book. i think that for certain books

that's going to be interesting. i don't think that -- i don't think everybody thinks every book will be published that way. i won't say they're nonbooks but they are mixed media, and you're not going to take an average novel or nonfiction -- piece of nonfiction and do that. at it much more expensive than people think. people don't -- when i was working with a company -- i hope brad is not here. they were going to do an addition of sherlock holmes, which was in traditional -- at it in the public domain, and they were going to run a film with it and little pullouts of film people of piecing talk can about this is an opium den. and i said this to my son who was about 13 at the time, and he said, you know, mom, if want to

see a movie, i'll go to the movie if i want to read a book, i'll read a book. i mean, out of the mouths of babes. and if you want to watch the movie or want to read an author interview, it's okay as long as -- when the stuff is imbedded for books it's more confusing than helpful of. >> going to doon do a series of short science books and create something which is separate which is an app. there will be an ebook version and we want to take advantage of app technology to use -- the first one is about waves so understanding waves, if you can enter different data points in your i-pad and tilt it and that's going to increase your scientific understanding, it fulfills our mission to educate

people on waves. but it's not going replace the back but in addition to the work. we're going to take advantage of the work we done for the book to form the app. >> the thing about reading, you create an uninterrupted spell to watch a child to sit still for three or four hours at a time, lost in a beautiful book, and some enhanceed ebooks, creates the ultimate add experience. it's not a opera longed spell. it's a series of distractions and extractions and you're no longer in the book. >> i've been pretty active on sebastian's site, and i was one of the people who helped promote the film. so when we were going through the whole pretty horrendous press junket last year because we had the book come out and then the film.

as a reader i was wondering about the question you answered. as writers, should we be thinking in terms of the multimedia platform? we have programs that just scrivener that lend itself so easily to that as we're writing books. we can automatically imbed things. so i wonder -- i think sebastian's case was special, but is that a direction that a lot of us should possibly be thinking? we got the book, maybe we've got -- i think kara goldstein expressed it will. i don't think one should necessarily replace the other. i think that reading experience of the two-three, four hours, it's so magical that you can have a book that way but you can create another way in addition to that book. i mean, i've signed with phillip glass to do stemwork, and we

signed if an app as well, which is perfect for a phillip glass, so if your writers -- some of your books helped. thes to this and others don't, and you don't necessarily need that. >> my question concerns platform, which you touched on earlier. in the realm of narrative nonfiction, you have an author who has a blog, is active on social media. at what point are you impressed by numbers? what does it take in terms of monthly visits to a blog? how many twitter followers? what makes you go, okay, this guy might be interesting? >> i don't know if you can put a number on it. when we have an author who comes in with a platform, and maybe is 2,000 people or maybe it's a million pain views, but whatever it is, we know there's a passionate group of people who are affiliated with this awe

tomorrow. that's an asset. >> i'm still blown away by great writing, regardless of the numbers. >> this is a very specific question for o magazine. how do you submit an article? do you need an agent to do that? >> well, this is a conversation for a different time. i really handle the books, and almost never publish articles. i mean, buy articles. so, i'm not completely sure. but i don't think you need an agent. just need a very well honed proposal, very clear, and then if you look at the mast head of the magazine you and you see who -- if it's in the health field, you look for thatted did for and contact them.

>> you might consider a minor competitor, you haven't touched on self-publishing as a force in the 21st century. is it worth talking about? >> i think that self-publishing is largely misunderstood. when the internet was exploding, it seemed like people were thinking, oh, artists can sell direct to the consumer, and while some books can be self-published well and there's certainly loot -- not a lot but certainly some impressive success stories from self-publishing, often times i fine that people who are self-publishing are misunderstanding how difficult it is to publish a book. whether it's on just the editorial level or the production level or the design level or the publicity or

promotion. publishing companies like to think of ourselves as experts in all those areas, and self-publishing i think can be a very dismal experience for a lot of people, because unless you are really -- unless you have the time and energy and the skills in all those areas that i just mentioned, then it's nice to have a book and for your family and friends, but it's extremely difficult for even established book publishing companies to sell books, that self-publishing -- if your going is to get your hands in as many hand as possible, self-publishing is a difficult route. if it's you're only choice, which is the case in some supreme, that's fine. but it's kind of a -- being a writer is already a lonely pursuit, and self-publishing kicks that up to the next level. >> i think this is a question of

expectations. i mean, i think there's a lot of feeling that publishers don't really do anything, and i can do this just as well myself. i think johnny's point is well taken, what -- there is probably not a writer who thinks the publisher has done absolutely everything he can do for her. but it depends on your expectations. if you want to have a black -- a book out. if you understand that you may sell 500 copies or a thousand copies, and may work very hard to sell 500 or a thousand companies but if that's -- if you think you're going to be the next john glenn good-gresham and self-publish, you're not. there are one or two cases a year where someone has really broken out and it's love at first sight and people think that's going to happen, and it

just doesn't happen that often. so, i think you have to keep your expectations in line. >> my name is joseph and you end most of my question. the one question i had is i've been trying to write this book for the last five years, and i go to these seminars and what people are teaching is they're trying try discourage the traditional publishing and trying to advise people to self-publish and i find that so difficult. but i want to hear from the professional people how true that is, and the second question is, what is the likelihood of someone whos brand new to be picked up by publishing houses. >> happens all the time. >> how? [laughter] >> somebody else want to take it? >> well, you might want to find yourself an agent. that would probably help.

but -- >> the best way to get picked up is to read a lot of books and to see -- to learn style, and to read other people's books and then to have a better understanding of what you're doing yourself. so read, read, read. >> really, i mean, i think everybody on this panel would agree, and it isn't said often enough. people who welcome in publish doing not work in publishing because they think they're going to make a lot of money and have glorious life. they work in publishing because they love to discover things and love to read, and there is no -- i think everybody would say that a book coming across your desk, yes, if is comes from an agent you probably put it at the top of the pile, and if it couples from somebody you never heard of, going to take you longer to get to it. but if you pick up a book and fall in love with it, it doesn't matter whether they heard of you

or not. >> on a certain level, brand new writers have an unfair advantage over veteran writers. if a writer has published four or five books and none have been very successful commercially, they're going to have hearder -- harder time getting interest than a fresh voice. >> and know your audience when you're trying to get published. i decent cook, i don't do science fiction, know who you're sending somebody to there's the internet. the way sarah described o magazine is the way to learn how to publish. >> that's what an agent can do for you. ...

>> and that is something on the publisher's side you need to look at what the market is.

and maybe this is something more with the bigger publishers shakira -- with targeting the waste money that way ahead. >> one last question. >> i'd like to hear more about the threat of piracy. >> i mentioned it before. i am not sure what else there is to say except it is a booming problematic threat. i cannot imagine any way to completely stop it. >> i just hear things from the authors that published something with the electronic publisher but then within an hour a lot -- tae now or another site has it and that is all they talk about in a chat rooms how they are getting ripped off but you didn't feel your people had any

loss? how big is it? >> not a big threat right now. maybe in five years we will see whether or not it is a big problem but there is a bunch of people talking about how their stuff is being stolen. i am not sure what to think about that. steven kane or people at that level have something to worry about but i don't think it is an existing threats. my books are being pirated but if i had a guests i would say it is 0.5% of our overall sales or maybe 8%. it does not feel like it is hurting our business but i don't see how it is not going to be a much bigger problem as we move forward because of the fact that

anyone with a fancy new scanner could make a digital version of the book. >> thank you all for coming. >>[applause] >> i am reading ulysses by james joyce. started on january 1st as a new year's resolution to plow through the book by june 16. that is the dates will hold a book was built around i have one chapter to go but i do not recommend it. it is classic but very hard

to read but i will get it done. i will be reading founders which is a book about those who are part of the american revolution. not a lot of new ground pound but to books by patrick o'brien master and commander and far side of the earth which is what was put together to make master and commander movie. i loved the movie and want to read the books. the other book is called soared and honor which is a compilation of military stories some written about the 19th century battles and with the civil war. that is what i will be reading this summer. >> talking about fundamentals if you think about what a warrior is, a

warrior is a person who first of all, chooses a side the warrior clearly knows these are my people and those are my enemies. they will risk his life and limb to use violence to try to stop the people who are trying to do violence against his people. that is a warrior. a police man who would risk life and limb if he could not choose sides, have to be on the side of the law if the police man chooses sides, it is called corruption. we have fundamentally confused the role of four years and have put warriors who are trained to oppose another side into a situation to act as policemen where there is no agreed upon law.

you have to be on the side of the law. if you go to the state pen in any "state of the union" the people inside will tell you is it bad to kill or against a lot? they agree. we have put people who are trained as warriors into a situation where there is no agreement. it is perfectly justifiable to cut off a woman's years off she has humiliated her husband. where are we doing? and second, if you have policemen who are trained, generally they are more mature. infantrymen are young. would you take a 19 year-old sending him to a troubled neighborhood with the automatic weapon? not likely he will do a very good job. to go up against the enemy and he knows who they are he will do a magnificent job.

if we don't get over the fundamental confusion we will put ourselves in this situation time and again where people who are trained one way into a role that has some of the requirements to make that a successful. >> clarity of purpose is a force multiplier. we have a devastating moment when the u.s. officers suddenly realizes and began warring over the fact for where he is opposing is confused with the sense of purpose and mission and the devastating observation and that kind of clarity is a thing of the past four ago the marines seemed to be killing people that left a hollow feeling that will veiny tried to ignore by doing his job to kill the people. began quickly detaches

itself from a strategic missions with a ambiguity the. >> i thought it was an interesting parallel from the current war in afghanistan. think about world war ii my father, uncle, are we making progress? yes. we took the marriott and it is clear but we were doing. if you go to vietnam, how do we measure success is evolving into body count? high and clear in my own mind body count is a very bad measure of success. first of all, it is a moral. the warriors' job is to stop the other side from using violence and when that side stops doing that than you are done the job is not to kill the other side but sometimes you have to kill

them to dissuade them from what they are doing. the objective should not be to kill people. that is not a proper objective. that is inhumane. >> what i have read recently is one book that i wrote called the speech and i reread it and it is a good book talk about filibuster in december to talking about a bad agreement on extending the bush's tax breaks for the wealthy also about the middle-class in the country to collapse and talk about the growing inequality of america and what this means for the future of our country.

i did read it and it was a good book. although self advertising. another book that i like very much called the third world america by our rihanna huffington. she touches on the trends we have seen for a number of years in terms of our physical infrastructure and in terms of education and health care that frankly, if we do not reverse we will look like the third-world countries. that is about a friend of mine that came back last year from china flying into the united states while he was awaiting a plane back to vermont sitting on the floor and was wondering which was the third world country? a lot of ominous trends in moving us in the wrong direction with physical

infrastructure and -- superstructure, a gap between the rich and as the government of big-money interest and all street and we have to get our act together to reverse those trends to become the great nation that we know that we can and should be. another book that i am reading right now is the book about the life of someone i have known for a number of years. it is called willie nelson the epic life and it is not the most readable book in the world to give us the name of everybody in the world to do with willie nelson of the one of the

great entertainers the maritime the because of who he is and then he brings together a huge range of people that he brings them altogether and it passed do with his personality and decency as a human being. he is a very gentleman. as part of the family farmers of people are interested in learning about the life whose family migrated to texas and worked in the cotton fields, and grew up a very, very poor and he has a unique to buy a

to working americans today. i am a big fan of his and this is a book which talks about his life. what is interesting actually the topic considered to be boring is the financial crisis put together by the commission for the cause of the financial crisis how they ended up bringing us to where they are right now which is the worst recession since the great depression. it is tough reading with this recklessness from wall street with these financial