under her strong leadership over the past 12 years, the company has placed 48 of its books on "the new york times" bestsellers list and an enviable feat in the competitive world of publishing. recent bestsellers have included courting disaster by mark season and cultural corruption by michelle malkin. read very by far the highest batting average of "new york times" bestseller publishers -- published per title published by any publisher. marji graduated from dartmouth college with a b.a. in english and she earned her master's in journalism from american university. she is married, has three bright and beautiful daughters. two are in colleges one is in high school. in 2005, their clear boothe luce policy institute presented marji with our woman of the year award and we are also blessed to have marji is a member of our board of directors. please join me in welcoming

marji ross. of. [applause] >> thank you. it is delightful to be here with all of you today. thank you very much. thank you michelle and bridget for hosting and as michelle said it's a wonderful thing for this partnership between claire boothe luce and the heritage foundation to be bringing together conservative women every month. it's a terrific opportunity for all of us to get together and i'm delighted to be here. and i'm so happy to see so many smart, young, confident conservative women in the audience today. it gives me hope for the future of the country. and in fact that is part of what i want to talk to you about today, the future of the country. and the important role that i think all of us, and i mean everyone here in the auditorium today, the important roll we have to play in that and along

the way i am going to hopefully share with you some food for thought on how to navigate the world of politics and publishing and business and family successfully. and we will talk a little bit about that word success. and what it might actually mean in the context of your career and your family and your future. but first, i probably should explain what i am doing up here, talking about the future of the country and how i purport to know something about success and family. so let me tell you just a little bit about myself. i am marji ross publisher and president of regnery publishing which is as many of you know, the leading publisher of conservative books in the country. we have been for 65 years and the company was started in chicago in 1947, started by henry regnery who moved to d.c.

in the mid-80s and taken over by al regnery and in those early years, regnery publish some of the sum all -- seminal work of book publishing, many of which i'm sure you know and i hope you have read including william f. buckley's god and men at yale and whittaker chambers witness, russell kirk the conservative mind. in 1993, regnery was acquired by eagle publishing and since then the regnery eagle team has built on regnery's tremendous foundation to become a powerhouse of conservative political bestsellers. i joined the company in 1999 and in the past dozen years, we have published a lot of bestsellers as you have heard, but i will tell you home we have published. we have published most of the influential conservative writers in the country. we published ann coulter,

michelle milken, mark levin, mark steyn, an aashto souza, lauren graham, david horowitz, ted nugent and of course william f. buckley jr. to name just a few. we have also published many of the most thoughtful and articulate conservative politicians of the last decade including newt gingrich, bobby jindal, mitt romney, mike leigh, denny hastert, haiti hayworth and many more. and of course, can't forget a handful of looks which arguably change the course of history, that regnery published. i'm thinking of bernie -- unlimited access and john o'neal's unfit for command which arguably change the course of an election and all of which by the way were number one on "the new york times" bestsellers list. next month for the preview we are adding another powerhouse national figure to the list of

authors, hopefully best-selling authors the regnery is published and that is donald trump, of publishing the book of donald trump called trying to get tough. i would love to say that it is really a strategic work of the regnery team that made it so successful. of course that is a factor, but in the past 12 years, just as important is that in addition to being good at what we do, i think since 1999, maybe at that point in our lives, conservative media was that something at a tipping point. rush limbaugh, "fox news," all of those were just beginning to gather steam and approach critical mass in the late '90s. so at regnery what we did was we leverage that explosive conservative media and what we were trying to do and have tried

to do since is to find, shape, promote is the best conservative books in the country so that they would be successful and in this case that means not only that we could sell millions of copies of books but also that we would have an impact on the national discourse. i tell you all of this not to low our own horn, but to remind you that a book publisher, especially a -- bus -- but public -- we make sure that authors like donald trump and michelle malkin and newt gingrich can leverage their already high-profile to really make a lasting impression on millions of americans and also help those lesser-known authors, men and women, who were not yet household names, to reach a much broader audience. and i am often reminded that

when you hold a megaphone, you have a special responsibility. i remind you of an iconic megaphone moment when george w. bush was standing on the rubble of the world trade center and what did he say? he said i can hear you. that was a fascinating thing. he recognized what that book publishers i think recognized and good business people and certainly women recognized, that when you have a megaphone you have to be a good listener. so i have tried to be a good listener and pay attention to the lessons i have learned from the many authors and businesswomen that i have had the privilege to work with over the years, and i have learned some very interesting things about politics and business, about what is effective and what is if emirel and about the many faces of success. so i will try to share some of

those with you. and you know as i was preparing for the speech and gathering my notes i reflected on what makes regner a successful and how some of those lessons might be useful to you. i also began to consider some unique lessons that i have learned from the female authors and businesswomen that i have worked with and how their approach to work has shaped my own definition. so let me start with a few minute sharing with you some of regnery's success secrets that i think you might find useful. so here is her first secret for successful publishing. and i would assert that this is the secret that is applicable to all communications and we are all communicators, whether you are a parent or a teacher, whether you are working on your church or your business or your community board, whether you are a public speaker or just part of

a group, we all have have to be effective communicators. the secret i think for regnery that i will share with you is that we start with one quest. who is this for and why do they care? and i think if you ask that question before you write a speech, before you write a letter, before you write a memo, before you think about a communication that you are going to have that's important to you, ask yourself, who is this for and why do they care? the second secret that i will share with you from regnery is that we have been very successful because we don't try to be all things to all people. we are experts in publishing books for the conservative audience. we publish conservative political nonfiction and that clarity i think helps us be very successful and i recommend that in your lives, find what you are

good at and do that. it will be not only making you more successful but something we'll talk about in just a minute, i think leading to greater happiness. in the third lesson for me to share with you from regnery is something i call hunt where the ducks are. this is based on a story from the millionaire next door. he had this wonderful story about a duckhunting convention and the duck hunters all got together once year at this great convention and so one evening at the convention, they were all sitting in the lobby of the hotel, having a drink and sharing stories, and one duck hunter came in carrying this huge bag of ducks that he had shot. the other hunter said, wow, tom, how did you get some money decks? that's terrific.

that's really amazing. you must be a great hunter. he said well, while you guys were all spending time with the duck hunters, i was spending time with ducks. and the moral of the story for us is, we spend a lot of time with our market. i spend a lot more time with conservatives than with book publishers and i think that is the distinction between how we approach our business and how a lot of others approach their business. so that was a few secrets from the regnery toolbox, not specific to women in publishing or even publishing but lessons that you might be able to put to use. but what about that promise i made in the title of my speech to give you seven surprising secrets from the female best-selling authors and businesswomen that i have worked with? so here we go. these are insights and lessons that are in my experience, uniquely well understood and

embraced by women and i want to share them with you for two reasons. first, i think they reveal how women approach work and life and making a difference in the world and secondly, i think there are secrets that are rolled back not just to book publishing or conservative politics but the two worlds that i work in, but also to most professions and even more importantly i think they are relevant to virtually every aspect of your life. so i want to share them with you today. the first one is best described as think as women uniquely understanding the importance of building relationships. i think women understand this and value this in a unique way and i will tell you in a minute how i think that is so.

women nurture. we seek out relationships. we nurture them, we worry about them, we promote them and foster them and i think that lays a particularly strong foundation for problem solving and solutions. i often try to, for instance, in my work life, build relationships with author so that we are working with them over a period of books, not just an individual book and i think that's just a very simple way of illustrating how relationships in business but i also think that the unique way that women approach relationships is applicable beyond just publishing obviously. i think one way of thinking of it, and there's a difference between networking relationships, a lot of people think well about networking and sometimes the really code for who who i know when what can i get out of them? i think women and large,

especially the most successful women that i have worked with, understand that it's not really networking that is going to make you more successful. it's building relationships with people. i think in personal life, you could say, but having three daughters, can tell you i hear these concerns often. the difference between hooking up in having a relationship. we know that come even when young girls and up hooking up, they really do want a relationship. we published a book a couple of years ago by a very smart female doctor who talked about the biological differences, the biotech -- biochemical differences between men and women held actually our brains are wired to want and seek out relationships in a completely different way from them way men are wired. and i think that is actually an

asset we have, not a liability. the second secret that i have learned from successful women is that women like to communicate, so there was a cliché that women like to talk. it's usually men who say that, and i guess it's true but i don't think it's the whole story. my husband likes to tease me that there is a boy version and a the girl version to every story that i tell her can be told. of course i like to tell the girl version because the boy version is no fun. but men like to talk too. we hear men talk all the time. they liked it hear themselves talk. we know lots of men who spend three hours a day talking on the radio every day. they are very good at it. but i think the difference is women like to have commerce asian. they like to relate to people. they like to talk with other

women. i realize i am talking to you now but i liked talking with other women. think of the book clubs they do now. they are almost always populated by women because they are talking with other women and sharing an experience. i think that is something publishers see all the time. women use talking to build relationships. and so i think, if i were to tell you how that applies to work, certainly in our business, brainstorming sessions -- we have lots of meetings -- and brainstorming sessions and meetings i think are some of the best ways to release some of our best ideas. in life i think good communication, talking with someone, not at someone, leads to stronger relationships and mutual respect. number three, the third secret i have learned from female authors that i've worked with its unique

character to have integrity. what do i mean by that? let's talk about character first. we did a book earlier this year with another wonderful female author who wrote a book called don't let the kids drink the kool-aid. mary beth gabel has a lot of great advice about protecting your children from the brainwashing of the last, from the myths about fairness and victimhood, but in the end, her method really was pretty simple. it's about character. it's about who you are. it's about listening to your internal moral compass. and i think that is something that women often are championing and certainly a lot of women authors that we publish talk about this. it's something very important, obviously not just for women but for society. another one of my favorite

authors and one of the country's most successful female conservatives is michelle melton. you heard that her most recent book, which we published a couple of years ago was called culture of corruption and a big number one "new york times" bestseller. i think one of the most interesting things to me was to note that even there she was talking about integrity, and she was calling people on the carpet for lack of integrity which is something she has done throughout her career and her reporting on her blog in their web site as well as on her book. we certainly can't can think of plenty of politicians or sports heroes for that matter, who talk a good game and then they are found cheating on their wives are sending pictures through their phones to other women or letting people down because of a lack of integrity. and i think women feel a special responsibility to help other

people and society kind of stay on the right track i reminding them that you need character to have integrity. it's not just who you are. it starts with who you are and then it leads to what you do, and of how your actions shape your future. certainly on the national stage we see a lot of mega-celebrities fail, wipe out their successful career because of a lack of integrity. i think what women understand is that failure of character and integrity will undermined not only your business success but also devastate families trust and happiness. the fourth secret i want to share with you is that, in my experience, women look for win-win solutions, and this is

not necessarily true when we negotiate with men. i negotiate with lots of agents and authors and one of the things that i see very frequently is that women almost always are looking for a win-win solution. and i think of that as an expression of a belief, which i share, that there is not a finite amount of success in the world. there are two sort of mindset here. one is the zero-sum game where there is a finite amount of success and if you have some, then i'm going to have less so i had better take some from you so i can have more. but the competing think far better and truer mindset paradigm is the success breeds success mindset, where you understand that if you are more successful, you will help other people be more successful and if you help them he successful, you

will actually achieve more success yourself. i think women also understand that the little things matter. i had the privilege of working with a wonderful new partner in but publishing and a new venture that regnery is starting next year, watching a line of children's books called little patriot press. in in the course of launching that line of books and working with a very experienced at author and illustrator, who is a terrific person, and she really understands and has reminded me that the little things really do count. i don't mean to suggest at all that the big things don't count. they do. but i think women are particularly good at allen think that out, paying attention to all the little things without losing sight of the big picture. and that to me is a true secret of success.

secret number six, in case you're counting. this i learned very early in my career and that is that women understand that service is strength. my very first full-time job, i worked for a remarkable entrepreneur who started her own company in a public relations firm and she gave advice to high-powered ceos, business owners. almost all of them were men and i think almost all of them were men at the time. she ran big promotion campaigns for them and so i was a little bit surprised the first time i saw her do this. we were at an event for one of our clients and the ceo was standing in line and he had his coat draped over his arm and he was holding a drink. she said oh can i take your coat? can i hold your drink? at the time i thought well, what is she doing taking his coat and holding his drink?

but actually, she was extraordinarily successful at her job and i believe parter was -- part of it was because she was not afraid to serve. she knew that didn't make her weak at all. it made your indispensable and it kept her in the inner circle, and she was very successful. i will share a little bit about my personal life in a way that i have learned that too. as many of you know, i lost my first husband to cancer about six years ago and as i was trying to recover drummed out, i found myself volunteering. i'm not even sure why i did it. it was not a conscious decision. i'd did want to keep busy but it was really amazing and profound to me how much volunteering, serving and helping other people helped heal me.

so i share that with you today. secret number seven, some of you know this. conservative women are the true feminists. we know that men and women are different, which is why we are the feminists and wide gloria steinem has given feminism that bad name. i believe feminists, at least the first generation, brainwashed a whole generation of women into thinking that success meant being an unwoman, a non-woman. basically the more you are like a man, the more successful you would be. ridiculous. i hope you have con to the beginning of the conclusion that some other reasons, some of the ways in which you can celebrate the difference between men and women are reasons for great success and great happiness, not because we are better but because we are not the same.

we are working on a book right now to be released next year by elizabeth cantor called the jane austen guide austin guide to happily ever after. and this is a really fun book. in this book elizabeth gives some politically incorrect advice about finding mr. right based on jane austen's heroin and how they pursued love. and she points out that jane austen -- were both more practical and more romantic about love, not to mention highly successful at finding chu happiness. so forgive me in advance for jumping from jane austen to my big fat greek wedding, but one of my favorite quotes from that movie captures what i think is a quintessentially jane austen

notion and that is when the mom in that movie said to her daughter, my husband is the head, but the wife is the neck. [laughter] you know if i had to sum up what i have learned from conservative authors, female authors and businesswomen, that i have had the privilege to work with over the years, i would probably sum it up like this. this is what they have taught me at least, to value and nurture the relationship you have and if you want others to trust and support you, be trustworthy, be supportive. so as they leave you today and you go back to your jobs and your friends and their families, do this.

embrace the success breeds success mindset. help others randy be successful. you will be more successful in our happy. be a problem solver, not a problem spotter, which is a good first step but not the whole story. be a problem solver. find a good husband. most female celebrities will not tell you that piece of advice but i think it's a very important piece of advice. i think if you find a good husband it will again, make you more successful because you are more happy. and while we are at it, be a good wife. i talked to my daughters a lot about this. i think that is one of the things that got lost in the seven improvements, the importance of actually asking yourself what does it mean to be a good wife? i don't actually have the answer to that question, but i suggest

you ask it all the time. when you feel depressed, help someone else. it works. i'm going to give credit for this next one to becky norton dunlop who recommended this in a speech that she gave that i thought was particularly good. she advised that you should take dig you out what you believe, write it down. live by it and share it with your family and your children. it sounds simple but actually most of us don't do that. we might have a bucket list of what we want to do but writing down what you believe is a very interesting and clarifying exercise. always bring a pad of paper with you are not ipac now if you want to take notes. i recommend this. i learned this very early on, not from a woman, and it's a very valuable, practical small piece of advice. because you might want to write

these down. i recommend in conclusion that you be a person of character and live a life of integrity and think about those things in your life. here is something i have shared with my daughter's a lot, especially when they were younger and would come home from school and somebody was mean to them or somebody didn't say hello to them or someone didn't do something that they had promised to do. i always say you know, the thing you will find out is that almost all of the time it has nothing to do with you. they had a bad day. something bad happen to them that didn't have anything to do with you. and so in your life, i say remember that it doesn't start with you, but it might end with you. and finally, i'm going to end with charlie sheen. you know he is always talking about winning and i think it's clear he doesn't have a clue

what winning is. here is what i think women know about winning and so the last piece of advice i will leave you with today, and that is don't chase success and leave happiness behind. thank you very much. [applause] >> that was excellent. you seek him i was taking notes. i don't know about you all but as she started to talk about her husband, i'm so sorry i meant to mention she is a wonderful husband, chuck, who is a good friend as well and sorry. if i didn't mention it before i should have. i wish i would have heard your speech today because i sent off a very important letter and you hit some things that i missed. we do have some time for questions. we have alicia from clear boothe luce. if you wouldn't mind waiting until the microphone is at your

face because in the c-span not 90 and can hear it and -- marji t. want to call on folks? i have one question but it's not really about your speech. >> alright, question right here. >> i was just wondering since you are a publisher and everything do you have a favorite book, not one that you have published but something that you go to as a comfort up or something to you going? >> i have several favorite bucks and among those that have been published. one of those, just have to say this, is a book that was one of the last books that william f. buckley wrote and we publish it. it's called isles gone by. if you haven't read that book, it is a marvelous book. is beautifully written of course and it's a wonderful way to learn a lot about william f. buckley's life and values and what he learned along the way. but in terms of the book i like

to read and in terms of my favorite book, probably do have a favorite book. is called a soldier of the great war, and it is a remarkable book about world war i and it's one of the most beautifully written books i have ever read. mark halperin. i read of lot of historian and biographies and it takes me in that direction. any other questions? yes? a question over here. >> i have really enjoyed your talk. thank you. it seems like a lot of the very successful political commentators have a very hard

edge, and so a lot of us don't feel like that is us. i love to hear ann coulter but i would never be able to deliver my political message or my conservative message in the same way. the same with rush limbaugh or mark levin. so i'm wondering, do you think that you have to have that kind of edge to really capture attention and be successful? >> the short answer, no. i don't think so. i love listening to all the people you just said. i think and hope coulter is hilarious and all of those people i view as entertainers. yes they are commentators, yes they are pundits, guess a lot of them are very smart, but they also are entertainment and i think of lot of what they are doing in terms of their hearts and their shock value is for

entertainment purposes. i think that there are lots of ways to be successful and there are lots of ways to be an effect good communicator and i definitely think that all of us can be good communicators and actually change the direction of the country, not necessarily by having people listening to us on the radio, but by making a difference literally and our families, in our communities, in our towns, in our churches and synagogues, in our schools. and i think by and large, those venues and the communication you have there, a hard edge is not a good way to go. >> why do you think the left has not been able to --

[inaudible] >> i think probably the simple answer is the majority of the country is actually in -- a majority of people in america are fundamentally conservative. even a lot of people don't call themselves conservative. i think when you ask them questions about value and their beliefs, you would categorize those answers as conservative, so i think we have a great benefit of talking to the majority of the audience. and i think a lot of the time, the media on the left has to distort their message to convince people to go home with it. >> marji more often that you might think, the left will come and say oh i really would love to write a book. i said that myself one day long

ago. but what is the advice? what do you do? certainly for regnery, what would you tell someone if you had a wonderful story and you wanted to write a good regnery published book? >> it's hard work. and it takes a lot longer and a lot more work than you think, so that is the first thing to recognize, but it doesn't mean you should write a book and obviously plenty of people do. there are about 300,000 new books published every year. so, yes, so that is sobering statistic. but i tell people that the things we look for and the things that make regnery books successful, including and maybe especially with first-time authors, we look for authors who are passionate, so make sure you are passionate about your subject. we look for people who are in a mission, on a crusade whose goal

is not necessarily how many books of my going to sell but how many people am i going to reach with my message and of course we do that by selling a lot of looks. you do that by getting your message out on tv and radio and how they all get their message out. for people who are passionate, who are crusaders for their message, who are expert in something, i think there is an opportunity to be a successful author. i think when you are first-time author is usually a good idea to find an agent. is usually it's usually a good idea to find a very good match because u.s. a publisher do some research into is publishing white and find a publisher that matches up well with your message and then you go to the bookstore. you look on the shelves and say these books are similar to what i have in mind are these two books appeal to the same people that i think would buy the book that i have in mind.

i am a book that is similar and i have a book that appeals to the same people. i think publishers like it when you pay attention to what they do but you know what you do and what you bring to the table. that would be my vice. >> and the agent would do the work for you? the usually, yeah. right, right, exactly. >> anything else? >> thank you so much. i'm interested in your thoughts on e-books because a lot of people are saying you know we are not going to have anymore print books in a few years so i just like to hear thoughts on that. >> we have talked up about that a lot in book publishing, in our company. two things probably. one, if i were a printer i would probably be very worried about my business. as a publisher, in some respects, what we do doesn't depend on having printed looks.

we work with authors to try to help them deliver their message, shape their words, structure the message and the book together, promoted, market it, publicize it. all those things we do and in the end, it doesn't necessarily matter whether someone buys it as an e-book or a -- so i think for publishers, as long as we are delivering value to authors and to customers, there is a role for a publisher to play. but i also think that books may change a little bit in their role in society if you will, because i think people still like using books as gifts. and it's very hard to give someone an e-book. you can give someone an amazon gift card but that is not very fruitful and it's not a lot of fun and you have just read a book, you love it and you want to share it with someone or if

you know that someone likes a particular author or a particular genre, the only way to give that to them, again i think that is a uniquely female thing, to want to understand and share that experience with someone, you are going to have to give them an actual printed book. i think books are going to evolve in their production value if you will. they are going to probably start to look and feel of little bit nicer because the reasons people are buying them is for the physical value either to give them a gift or to have it on your shelf or have it on your coffee table. i think the print book actually won't go away. >> marji is a great publisher, great board member and a great friend. thank you so much. we have some guess for you here. >> thank you. [applause]

this is our limited edition claire booth luce policy institute coffee mug with her famous saying, no good deed goes unpunished. we have a presence present for you from heritage. it's a woman's item. a face with a heritage liberty bell and we have a gift outside for our guests as well. as you were talking i was reminded that regnery published a monograph. is an annotated bibliography of conservative bestsellers and really important conservative books and i would venture that publicly the majority of the titles were actually published by regnery's books so we will have copies of those during the lunch outside and i hope you all can stay and join us and continue the conversation with marji ross. thank you so much for coming today. thanks for claire boothe luce foundation today. >> thank you.

[applause] is there a nonfiction author a book you'd like to see featured on book tv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> now on booktv, laurie sandell recounts the fallout from bernie madoff's ponzi scheme and the effect it had on his family. the author was given access to all members of the nato family and reports of mr. made's two sons, andrew and mark, and his wife, ruth, reacted to bernie madoff illegal activities. this is about half an hour. >> hello. i'm diane leslie, and i am here to welcome you to diesel, a bookstore. when the information broke, i guess i saw it in "the new york

times," about, i don't even know what to call it, the, the madoff debacle, the madoff scandal. it was so shocking and so fascinating. and i don't think since watergate was i rushing to get the paper every day to read the next episode of what had happened. so, as the story unfolds, i was thinking this looks like a greek tragedy. this is amazing, and you know, only if we had that skill is here to write about it. and then later on as we got more and more information, and the victims we started seeing what happened to some of the people who invested with the made off. i started thinking know, shakespeare should've done this.

only shakespeare could write this so well. now, sometime later, three years later, here we are, and i came across laurie sandell's book. and i want to say that it's utterly fascinating. i mean, we thought we knew everything, but we didn't. and just reading about the family and finding out, even though bernie madoff is kind of absent from the book because you didn't interview him, but at least i as a reader, i would say you realize this man was a bully, and he bullied his wife and sons. and so they get to the point that they were afraid to ask him questions. they certainly never, he didn't answer their questions.