>> talking about the current status and future of the book industry speaking with becky anderson, president of the american book sellers' association. this is live coverage from book expo america here on c-span2. >> good morning. good morning.

we're going to start exactly on time. [laughter] it is 10 a.m., and we have our friends from c-span here, and this is being broadcast live. i'm warren teicher and i want to welcome you to what we anticipate to be a really fascinating conversation between john sargant and becky anderson. this is a full schedule, and we hope you participate in the range of educational programs, and i want to express our appreciation of all at college expo america, whom we worked closely with this year in developing what we hope is interesting program for you to attend and participate. thanks to steve, sally, and to

their team. the title, the subject of today's talk, "planning, publishing, and the whole damn thing" is a little provocative and intentionally so, but it really underscores how in this incredibly rapidly changing world in which we live, all segments of this business are becoming even more interdependent. given that, especially we're really grateful that some of the key decisions that john has made over the past few years and the extraordinary articulate and forceful way in which he's carried out macmillians policy affecting this industry industry. as many as you know, the independent bookstore channel saw strong gains in 2012 of almost 8%, and those increases continued in the first quarter

of 2013, and some of you may have seen we'll announce this week that for the fourth year in a row our membership numbers have continued to increase, so we're doing pretty well. they ared modest gains, but they are positive numbers, nevertheless. that success is the result of the millions of collective hours that i know everybody in this room puts in and the hard work you do in bookstores, but it is also been impacted by some of the things that our colleagues in the publishing community have done that have made the important tests of trying to reinvent the way in which we do business together. under john's leadership, macmillian participated and has been a leader in the efforts and fought hard. one thing that he fought hard on this, the agency model, which some of you may have heard about, and from the outset, all

of us at aba felt strongly that was an innovation that helped level the playing field that was an important effort to be made in our business. as you also know, the justice department and court felt slightly differently. we'll know that for sure in a few daysing but we couldn't have had a more forceful and vigorous ally than john. we know that john's going to continue to represent the interests of all of us in this business moving forward, so we're really delighted, john, that you're here and willing to participate in this conversation this morning. i also just want to say a word about our other panelist, becky anderson, who i know will have opportunities over the next few days to say some nice things about. becky, as you know, is concluding her term as president of the american book sellers association and the many, many years of extraordinary service to the book selling community,

but for now, i simply just want to acknowledge becky that she's been an extraordinary leader whose commitment in independent book selling simply knows no bounds. her commitment to everything that we do. as many of you know, becky is the fifth generation book seller and her and her family and staff made anderson's book shops clearly one of the best independent bookstores in the country. becky has a really clear vision about what it is that makes independent bookstores succeed. she's brought that commitment to her work at aba. she's championed the localism movement passionally and effectively represented everybody in the room over these past years. before we start, i know everybody in this room will want to join me in expressing our thanks and gratitude to becky anderson.

[applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> and so with that, welcome, and i will turn this over to them, and we're grateful that john and becky will just talk about the whole damn thing. >> yes. [laughter] john, we need another round of applause. everyone in this room -- [applause] we need to express thanks to you. [applause] for making, you know, a more fair market place for books and readers. i know you have not spoken out publicly, not too much about this, so we're talking about the whole damn story. >> right. >> why now? why do you want to do this now? tell us the story. >> okay. >> the whole damn thing. >> so this is the one question that i'm actually prepared for. [laughter] per our agreement, so there are a few reasons. i have, throughout my career, and particularly in the last four or five years always tried

to be sort of in the background and not be very public. i don't give interviews generally speaking, and i don't offer many quotes in the press. i try to stay strictly in the background. that's my natural inclination, and this is nervous-making for me to be stepping forward. there's several reasons why i chose to do it now. i think first and foremost, book sellers, authors, agents are partners in what we do. it is a fast changing and complex business. we need to have a relationship where we can speak to our partners and that we can, our partners can understand what it is that is going on. it strikes me at many times for me as we go through this, sort of the transition period, it is

difficult for me to understand what's going on, and it's difficult for me to have a -- the breath of knowledge i need to make good decisions so i sort of put myself in other people's shoes who are not in the middle of it all day every day like i am, and i think, you know, how would it feel to not know -- to know even less about what was cg and what was going on. to me, we owe it to the community at large to discuss these things, so first and foremost, it's to make sure that we tell you at least our point of view and plans about what we are doing, and it's time someone comes out and does that. that's first. second, i think in this rapid changing environment we're a communication's industry, and we don't communicate, and this pace of change make it very important that people understand what's going on. third of all, i have a great fear about what i think of as

sort of the victim effect, having been in the sort of whole of the doj and lawyers every day, it is hard to not take that knee to be silent and not to meet or say anything. it is hard to take that and move that aside, and i think it is dangerous for us as an industry if everybody in the industry lives under a, you know, the department of justice or legal action which is actually specific. we are not allowed to discuss price or set business models, but things like piracy, we can discuss those things. there are a lot of things we are allowed to discuss, and this sort of feeling of -- look, the

doj is aggressive and good at intimidating. we need not be intimidated as an industry. book sellers over the years, this is an industry based on freedom of speech. book sellers have stood up over and over again for generations to defend that, tan we can't lose sight that we are the core. we can't be in a position where we question ourselves on that. we have to be strong, and we cannot be intimidated; right? this is sorpt of my, hopefully, my way of saying this is something i'd like to see as a more in the industry. we need to talk, okay? >> yeah, point of conversing, but also investing in one another. do what we can. >> exactly. >> tell me about the whole damn story. >> yeah. >> you talked about the epiphany on a treadmill and how it started. tell us the story, how it all began, and up to the macmillan

settlement and feelings on the aftermath. >> okay. first off i say, if you see me struggling with my language a bit and see me being ten thattive, i'm going to be called to testify next week in court, so i have to be a little bit careful so i may struggle to answer all your questions exactly as i should, but -- >> we totally understand, okay. >> the story is really quite simple. it starts with a world where as e-books launched, one retailer had 90-some percent market share pricing books below cost, and that was an issue for all of us in the industry; right? if you look at what that does in its logical extreme; right?

as they keep -- if they keep that market share for, you know, a long time and the books do actually all go quickly over to e-books, the discourse in book form in america, at the end of the day, is going to the distribution of books. it's going to be controlled by one man running a publicly traded company; right? the relatively unacceptable for us as publishers; right? there was a moment where i think it was common to everybody in the business that, you know, here's an interesting moment in time. apple commences to launch the ipad, comes to publishers and says, you know, we'd like to launch the ipad. we have discussions with apple and macmillan went on for a period of time, a couple weeks, and at the end of the day, we

made a decision to go agency. we went -- we -- i watched on tv on a screen as mr. jobs announced, you know, five publishers were in off in seattle, and, you know, i think the rest of that is reasonably well-documented, off to seattle, came back, the buy buttons were off, and there was paramount of trying to work through getting to the end, which is, you know, amazon is our largest customer and important distribution channel. we wanted to have a competitive marketplace with an even playing field, and there was a lot of work to get there, and since, it's been a lot worse, on a steady basis. [laughter] >> this whole decision -- >> yeah. >> -- what lasting effect will the doj case and apple have on our business? i mean, what do you think -- you know, because this could put your out of business, you know?

>> yeah. >> you know? >> there's no way to tell; right? that's in the future, and i have a lot of hope for where we stand today in business going forward. there's an awful lot of good signs as far as the movement to digital, the fact that people are not moving. if you think -- when you got an ipod, and you listen to music on it, you thought, oh, wow, that's great, nobody i know went back and said, oh, let me add cassette tape because that was cool; right? i think in the publishing world, what you see is people are moving back and forth between formats. there is not this sort of in the end the consumer was always going to vote; right? the consumer decides how we want to read and what is dangerous is if you allow sort of artificial acceleration based on the desires of someone to further

their own corporate goals, artificial acceleration is dangerous. at this moment in time, it seems to be a relatively stable market. the independent book sellers are having a good go of it. the -- i think the country was over stored. barnes & noble and independents doing it in big boxes, there was a moment where we were over stored, and now it looks like it's probably sustainable. i think at the end of the day, i am very hopeful that, you know, in the future there's an even playing field, and the agreement we signedded with doj ends in december of, you know, 20 # 14, and at that point, it's, you know, we'll work to have an even playing field all the time. >> can you say what happens in 2014? will you move back to agency?

>> i can't comment on any business models going forward. [laughter] >> okay. we've been frustrated, independent book sellers, have been frustrated with the doj, gone there, spoken a few times and all the letters and people within the industry sent to the doj, and yet their attitude, it didn't matter. it didn't matter that somehow consumer was king and nothing to do with the fair and equal marketplace. >> yeah. >> that's what was really frustrating for us, and i'm sure for you. >> i disagree with a statement, consumer is king; right? i think that doj was extraordinary myopic, and i struggle and have been struggling for three years now with how you could make that bet and decision, and, look, at the

end of the day, they were doing their best to be a traded corporation, publishers doing the best in the best interest of themselves, but of the industry and of the ecosystem and to protect what reading is in america; right? to actually protect that core thing. the publishers are working hard on that. they are -- economic interests for the long run, clearly, not for the short run, but interested in the long run. you look at it in the doj has essentially come in and made the decision that they will carry amazon's water in this case; right? saying, look, this -- these guys have 90% market share. we are going to -- there's a new entrance coming into the market. we're beginning to discourage

new entrance from coming in. cases set precedents; right? we'll discourage new interests from coming into the market; right? saying -- by trying to protect people at 9 it -- 92% market share. this is, on its face, ludacris. the guys at the doj, they a fine guys. i don't blame them. they are assigned, you go out win this thing, go, go, go, that's fine, but the senior guys who made the decision to bring this case, eric holder, all that, just incompetent. [laughter] [applause] >> it is confounding when you think so much about it, but, you know, talking about the emerging view of e-books and what share of the market it has, and people say 20-25%, leveling of

technology, where are we going? where do you see that? are you in agreement with the emerging view that's where we're going to be? >> no. i think we're on a plateau certainly. if you think about the number of new screens that are in the market place on an ongoing basis month by month, explosion of screens, and yet the growth of e-books is pretty much pegged, you know? pretty flat for us. i don't know across the board, but for us, that's dplat. that suggests new people reading on the screens, there's as many people who used to read on screens not reading on screens anymore. it suggests there's a plateau. i have no idea what the next innovation is, and one of the frustrating things about, at least my job, is the pace of innovation is exhausting; right? there's something new every week. there's something new to consider. i think they'll be more innovations, but it's hard to imagine 25-30 years from now that we're still sitting here

with 33% of the business being e-books and 66 being paper books, but we have been making our decisions for a long time now based on a -- look, what is dangerous for us is this sort of cataclysmic change; right? retail book sellers, you guys are superb in adapting. you proved that over and over again; right? here comes the big box, a chain next door first, then a big box next door, then the online seller. you guys adjust do that. what you need is time to adjust and figure out the right square footage, the right product mix, time to adjust. what we need is a curve that looks like this opposed to a curve that is doing this with a sharp drop off. what we have so far, we got a pretty good curve; right? it is going okay. if it stays flat, i think we're in good shape, and if it

declines slowly, i think we're in good shape. the problem is, you know, big sudden change, which right now, we have not had for quite a while. >> you know, there's been a lot of conversations about reinventing the way that publishers and book sellers do business. you know, reinventing the model of how we do things. what can you tells about macmillan's plans. a couple weeks ago, this was something in the air. can you say anything about what may be coming? >> uh, no. [laughter] sorry. >> okay, okay, i tried. [laughter] >> look, there's -- one of the really interesting things that has been -- i keep seeing over and over now is i look at all the stuff, and at the end of the day, what people want in every format is, apparently, primarily, book length works generally that tell a good story

with a great narrative. you know, that's not changed. the channels of distribution are changing like mad, half the people are reading is changing whether it's socially or not socially is changing, but the plain fact of the matter is most people still want a great book, and that is our area of expertise. i don't actually feel a need to put in film studios into, you know, the officers to make short films. i don't feel a need to invest tremendously in the enhanced e-book. i mean, we sold an enhanced e-book thought, okay, let's test it out, spent a bunch of money, do an enhanced e-book, put all kinds of really cool stuff in it, and then we kept the price exactly the same as the unenhanced e book so you can have the enhanced one or the unenhanced one, and 7-to-1 people chose the unenhanced

e-book; right? where's the logic of dumping an incredible sum of money into developing enhanced e-books. what we have to do is understand the consumer and what they want. you guys see it all the time in your stores; right? you understand what people want when they come in the stores. we have to have a way of understanding that and giving folks what they want. also, coming up with new and interesting things, and we have an author -- you know, our authors are incredibly creative people coming up with new and interesting stuff, which we're working with them with all the time, but as for, you know, are we going to, you know drk i don't know, are we going to start a data based company to try and develop new software delivering on a word-by-word basis on the back of the glasses to read a book faster, no, no. [laughter] >> thank you. >> okay.

[laughter] >> so -- expwr my -- >> [inaudible] >> just don't touch that. >> okay. okay. >> all right. >> okay. >> going to what publishers do well, the proliferation of people -- we are all barraged in the stores with people who are self-published or want to be doing it digitally and in print, but they think they can bypass traditional publishing, and you spoke to that a little bit, can you talk more because i think there's a lot of crap out there, you know? [laughter] >> yeah. >> the thing is -- [laughter] they --

.. ins, tens of millions of books being published and one thing is for sure, not everybody can write a great book and very few people can. in a world with unfettered

ability to publish a role of the publisher becomes more and more important than the role of the book seller becomes more and more important. publisher has got to -- what we do for a living is low canada huge amount of manuscripts that come in, decide which one the good books. you have an instinct will still built in 2 years and years experience and people who are good at it are hard to find and it is tough to do. you could crowds force it all right out, theoretically that is a possibility but people forget that this is a human business, you guys have customers that come into the shop and say what should i read? and you say i know your daughter and she was interested in this and she might like this book, you have a personal connection. it is the same with us and our

authors and authors for the most part do not want to be aggressive internet marketing professionals. what they want to be is give me some help, have writer's block, who glycol, someone who can help me do what i do for a living better and make it valuable and that is of tremendous service and you can't downplayed that or do it with an algorithm. that is the human experience. this is the business we are in. at an end of the day most publishers who are self published with a few vocal exceptions are pretty happy when we pick up the phone and call them and say we would be interested in your next book. most of and don't they go fish, i love it here. it would be great to have a book deal. we have a valuable endeavor more

valuable thing as people become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice. if you think when you are overwhelmed by choice what do you want? you want to go somewhere where the choice is narrowed and someone who knows configure out how to help you and for booksellers that is the key value and the key value for publishers is the ability to recognize talent. every great publisher, what we do is we understand how to generate word of mouth about books. that is what sells at the end of the day. we take some ads and do some stuff on radio but it is finding a way to generate word of mouth, tremendous tools to do that. our job is what it has always been, to use every available pull and mechanism to generate tremendous word of mouth about individual books on particular topics. i think we are actually pretty good at it.

>> the best of what we do, face-to-face time, the way we are, about things we love. >> authors like to talk to a human being everyone's in a while too. >> so true. where do you think the industry went wrong in letting one major retailer, the company that sean not be named becomes the dominant or are we passed the point where we pull back the reins? you think it is -- >> i don't think we let anyone become dominant. the guys at amazon are extraordinarily bright guys. they work really hard and they are incredibly innovative. they have developed a lot of innovations that are quite

useful and work really well. the problem is concentration of power at that level in our business is dangerous beyond the financial pressures, dangerous for a lot of reasons. we continue to have relationships with them call our retailers and make the playing field even and if the american consumer ends up wanting to buy all their books from one online retailer in digital or print form, it they are going to do that. that is the way the world works but everything i have seen in the last two years suggests that that is not true. what you see now is people are beginning to realize it at all want that bookshop to be on the corner in my count i had better

go buy some books and people are beginning to realize, one of those things that is different from all the other industries is a bookstore has tremendous value to the community, tremendous value. much more value than the music store had. not even close. i think the american consumer will adjust to what they want. i am relatively optimistic we don't end up with everybody out of business and one retailer. >> that speaks to the local -- what we have done in our communities, place the exchange, ideas and conversations and all that. in your support you have been a huge supporter of brick and mortar and looking at the whole book ecosystem, will we continue to exist? we see what happened to borders, closing stores around the country, we don't want to lose any more brick and mortar.

how do you see it? you have already answered it. >> it all depends on how consumers want to read books in my opinion. if they want to read books digitally and don't vote for brick and mortar, we will have -- if other large forces continue to push things a certain direction, we will have a situation like music stores where the traffic dips fast enough that there becomes a moment when your bottom lines are tough. retailer bottom lines are tough. the moment when the store traffic drops too much and you can no longer support your square footage, it becomes very difficult for retail to stay open and you could see a situation where a lot of retail close down quite suddenly and that is something we have been really passionate about trying to make sure as best we can that

we don't facilitate that. i was much more pessimistic year-and-a-half ago than i am now. i think there's probably going to be long-term room for brick and mortar as well as online shopping. i think the bookstores are less. >> independent bookstores, third year in a row increasing the number. >> it makes my day. that is the single greatest news. okay. i obviously can't run a microphone. >> this is a question that came from one of our members. inside bookstores, percentage of the total market over the last decade has declined the we have seen some increases over the last three years but bookselling partners, we are all lined culturally in what we are trying to accomplish. how much are we considered in bottom-line decisions you make

at macmillan? >> depends on the decision to be honest with you. being completely honest, when independents, 35% of the market share, of course there was more resources but selling independents being in touch with the pendulum many more of you, sales forces were bigger and all that, what has been consistent entirely consistent is you have always been much more important to us than your market share would show. we have always realized the great value of independent booksellers discovering and making first novels happen, there books actually end up being huge bestsellers across all the market because of your ability to create word of mouth. you always punch above you're wait but as far as total resources devoted, we do make

business decisions based on how big each piece of the market is. i would say we always, always keep you guys in mind. no doubt where our heart lies. you are always the greatest value you bring is in our mind and after that we make a bunch of decisions based on that. >> as macmillan's c e o you have a lot of responsibilities outside the united states, what happens here. the marketplace for mcmillan and books in europe, when i think of countries like germany and france, not the way they look at books as an interval part of the dna of their culture, where here i don't think especially, not looking at books that way. what can we do here to emulate what is happening there? there is such -- more books published per person in germany than any other place in the

world. bookstores thrive everywhere. in that kind of culture, how can we make that happen here? how can we change the mindset? >> the single greatest way to do that would be to put back in retail price maintenance laws of some sort. if you didn't allow discounting for books, some of that sort of help of the bookseller environment is driven by that. you look at e-book, it is still numb to% or 3%. and there is something we can't have, there is in germany a sort of ancient cultural attraction to the book which is more broad base than in the united states and that is near impossible to address. it gets buried in culture, the great belief in value. it is one of the most remarkable

things to me, a brother and sister have intellectual putter she did not question what it would cost to get to the underside. all the tens of millions of dollars in settlements and legal fees and all these things, they have been absolutely steadfast in that we need to do what was right, and right culturally, not dollars and cents. let's do what is right culturally is the first sort of hurdle you have to get over. after that we can talk money. there is in germany a true believer in the value of freedom of speech and a true believer in the value of literature and culture and you can see why. they have a particular

background we don't share. >> i wish we had more of that here. it is of family business and knowing the support, going through a lot of tough decisions, the difference between a privately held company and those publishers who have to report to a bunch of stockholders, what a difference for you. >> i count my lucky stars when i go to work that i have two shareholders i have to make happy and one of unspent her career running a literary publishing house and the other is dedicated to the concept of science and education and things like that. so for me there is great pleasure, have worked in publicly traded companies before and first ones and i can tell you it is an enormous difference. >> relatively small numbers of members of gone into print on demand business in their stores. what is your view on print on

demand and how it relates to the publishing business? >> it is interesting. becomes a sort of huge thing. it is a printing press that happens to print small numbers of books. other wise it is just the way to print books. it is great, the printing machine, when the economy of it works, the best place for print on demand machine is as close to the customer as it can possibly be. theoretically speaking the best place for print on demand machine is in every retail store. that is in a pure theory because then you have no cost of shipping, no time of shipping call all that. we have a really long way to go on technology before that is of interest and we again, behind closed doors when we look at that decision, we actually worry about it. to facilitate a print on demand machine and it gets robust

enough, on the corner, that machine, so is everybody else, and if that is actually healthy for our retail environment, you know, it is healthy -- we need to have bookstores. we need to have places where they are about books and have the machine in the quarter that will actually facilitate that. we have that as the concern, something we should -- one of many decisions, we should facilitate this, do as much as possible, some retail bookstores really want it, some independent bookstores really want the machine, should we facilitate that? there is positive and negative and we try to make our way the best we can. >> you spent a lot of time working on the google bookseller, dealing with that. what is your view of that now?

>> it is fantastic. google made a copy of every book in every library was their goal, every book in every language was the goal. their stated corporate goal is we want everything, all information on earth to be available to everyone on free, that was their role. so the danger of having these guys have a copy of every book, what they might do with it, particularly if they give it to libraries whose mission is to make sure as many people as possible read as many books for free as well, it was quite a dangerous situation and what the lawsuit did, it would have been spectacular, spent a lot of time on that, they threw it out. doj wasn't useful in that case

either. really irritating. [laughter] >> the second one, at the end of the day we settled, the reason to settle is we got what we needed which was you can't go around grabbing copyright material and making copies of it and if google had succeeded in doing that and no one stood up to then everyone would be doing it and copyright wouldn't have lasted too long. the important thing there was to get them to stop and acknowledge if you are going to make a copy you better have an agreement from the rights holder. that is what we said and we got all the way through that. in my mind a great victory for the publisher. >> speaking to that how do you feel about piracy and the whole issues of releasing things that don't have the digital rights management on them? >> i feel pretty bad about

piracy generally speaking. when we were making the decision four years ago the greatest single worry we had was piracy and if we are smart it is still the greatest single worry we have. piracy can actually destroy the industry quite quickly. if you look what happened to music and a drop in sales in the music industry for high receive the amount of piracy in the movie business it is a scary number and we have to keep our eye on the ball. piracy continues to grow but grow slowly. what we could not afford was an exponential curve on piracy. piracy takes off, that becomes problematic. we are making all our decisions, we could have had a strategy where you said bring your books to market six months, electronic books six months after the hardcover but that would drive piracy because people want in the digital world they want that material now, they don't want to wait.

a lot of the decisions we made over time were driven by keeping piracy -- we were never going to keep it entirely in check. we were passionate about it, we are not going to do anything without the are an, nothing. every big deal, locking up, then taken off. actually that was an interesting decision based on a whole bunch of factors, not just one but basically the belief was the science and fiction and fantasy community had been wanting drm, their technology astute as the reader community and of her community, the authors we worked with always wanted drm free, the community always wanted drm 3 and we made a guess that if we took drm off of those books it

would have a limited impact. at the end of the day it has had a limited impact because i believe that community of readers and writers self police. i believe that they are actually, if somebody puts a book up, other readers and authors get after them to take it down. we have the very wide takedown program, we do a lot of take downs, we have not seen a huge wrapup and in privacy since we went drm rebut some of that may well be the fact of that particular genre. it is and exercise that we keep in. there is the value to drm 3 in that the danger for all consumers and everybody in publishing, the whole environment is substantial. to have the biggest environment, free would be better if

everybody could read every book and every device would be better for the consumer, better for authors, publishers. >> moving to children's books. the children the market has continued to grow and through the downturn economy it was really the green spot, the nice spot in bookselling and it is still moving. it is slow and reluctant and moving to digital and with a common core and stem moving into this there's a huge opportunity for trade booksellers to move into this. any thoughts on how we can continue to grow that part of the business? >> children's books now seemed to run a nation 25 to 26 months. for the reader of children's books, for us at least we look at what is a little different in that those are especially -- those behave more and more like

a notebook on the electronics side. very young books, it is interesting. the ability of devices, the ability to do it quickly and efficiently in a way that would suggest you do it on every book is getting better and better. it is getting there. i may be a bit old-fashioned but there's something pretty magical about having that kid sit on your lap and read them the book, that is a different experience, and you know giving a kid access and access code to a book based apps for christmas is different from opening the book under the tree. in kids' books and a lot of illustrated books there is a lot of gift-giving value and a lot

of physical interaction with the object that people valued greatly so there's a reason it is moving slower and i question what is the reason to push? we want to have digital products available for people who want digital products but should we really be out there trying to convince people that they wanted digital product of this book? we haven't been doing that. >> so your preference, are you eat or p? are you equal opportunity reader? >> one of the -- one of the great problems we have in the department of justice lawsuit is they couldn't believe i didn't have a cellphone. [laughter] >> they theorize i was using my wife at cellphone or my son or

daughter's cellphone or my sister's house phone or something but they were mystified. i am not what you would call a huge personal user of massive amounts of products. i use the digital stuff for the stuff that is important for me. i am pretty effective at web search, i know a lot of technical stuff. i have been building cd-roms 20 years ago, i know a fair amount of the technical side of the business but i got to read knit, when i go home, it is a nice evening and i have a light sitting behind my chair, i actually don't enjoy picking up a device. i enjoyed picking up a book, opening it up, smell the ink, feel the book. call me old-fashioned but that is the way i prefer to read.

[applause] >> we had a big fight in the senate for marketplace fairness. is there anything we can do to encourage publishers to support our efforts? it is a tougher fight when we head to the house of representatives. what can we do to get the industry more involved and get this through? >> the only effective mechanism the publishing industry has is for lobbying is the ap on the trade side, college side and the k-12, they all have their own lobbyists and a lot of work the individual companies do. the trading publishers do it through the a a p so it would be going there and having to get the lobbyists we get there given up, it wouldn't do -- i could call one guy down there or something but most of the time we go to washington, we go as the a p together and trying to

get into understand copyright issues and other issues of interest so that is the mechanism. >> this may be unfair and you don't have to name names but tell us about your favorite book stores, past or present. >> no way. >> tell us what aspects of us for make it right place to you? >> the right place for me to shop is i am not a shopper in any way, shape or form. i hate shops with few exceptions. the right place for me is where i can find the books that i wanted that are interesting books that are readily and quickly available. i love the atmosphere of a shop full of books so i am not one of the guys who likes to be absolutely clean, minimalist approach. i like a lot of books in the shop but i love the tables that sits there, six books that i

want to read, being a publisher there's a bit of frustration when you walk into a bookstore and see all those books and oh god, how will i find my books in here? the sort of wandering endlessly and a bookstore looking at rows and rows of books at least for me because depressing so i am a fairly quick shopper in bookstores. i go and 15 or 20 minutes in their, shop for everything. >> i heard that sales conferences you do a very unique thing where there's a suggestion box. interesting questions. you don't see the questions before hand. you drop them in the box and you answer them. tell us about some of those. do people under macmillan feel comfortable put in whatever they think in that box? has there ever been a question

you didn't answer? >> we have a number of ways to get questions in, is through e-mail. the box was done so you could be completely anonymous. people dropped stuff in the box, nobody knows who asks questions and i answer every question that is on every card, i think there have been two or three questions that i haven't been able to answer overtime. the most i have fried, one question that stunned me into complete and total silence but that is because there is a subset out there at mcmillan who want to figure out the question i won't dancer. they're always personal in their nature. they range from why is the maintenance in the bathroom so crappy to serious, very serious questions about the business.

i used to take live and people wouldn't ask what happened over time, they ask tough questions live, first, did a sales rep in the front row held up his hand, it was my first year there and i decided i would do this, he held up his hand and the first question i got was what do you see as the future of the sales force? do you have any plans to lay off reps and do you think you will be laid off reps any time in the future was the very first question. i will take any -- any question as tough as it can be and try to answer it and some of them are pretty flaky. and i suspect there are two individuals in particular who put in that box questions i always answer. >> to do this that is pretty cool. my last question is how do we encourage, how do we help

independent booksellers to be braver and boulder? how can we be braver and bolder in standing up for undeniable importance of what we do? the literary life not only of our readers and communities, who we are will we do but also how do you, how do we encourage the rest of the industry? .. thing that you can do that is currently important is keep doing what you have done, which is learn how to adjust.

from what i can see, the ones that are most successful get deeper and deeper roots in the community, more and more reason for people to come to the bookstore, the really inventive in making sure people love having a bookstore in the town and making sure you do everything. you can speak out when there's issues, i've got to say, there was a tremendous outpouring when there was a time for it in the legal thing, there was tremendous outpouring from independent bookstores who were willing to sit down. some of them, i've read almost every single one. some of them working incredibly diligently on those letters that they were riding in to tell the government why they were wrong. so being active. you have tremendous political power, the independent bookstore. when we look at who is the best person to talk to someone in congress, the only people who want to talk to me in congress

are the representatives from new york. because we're publishers, we're in new york. a guy from virginia is interested because whether warehouse there. but the people who really care about publishing are from new york. on the other hand, your representative in congress really cared about small retailers in their states, right? and the power of the bookstore. we had many thoughts over time in all these legal issues about the great power that could be brought to bear if we could figure out to do it, of having the bookstores take a lead role state by state. because you have the power in the states that we will never have. so there's a role to be more activists on issues that you care about for the independent booksellers. and as far as, i've got to say, i don't, i don't see macmillan or myself anyway has been

particularly bold or brave. i think a lot of publishers were making decisions that i've got to assume, i'll tell you, i'll take a great story. in the middle of apple, the apple negotiations, there was an ap meeting and there were three ceos who were there and it was around the table. and you know, we're all looking a little bit ragged i would guess, and one of them said, you know, i've got to say, i have not been able to sleep much. and another one of them said, well, that's strange because, you know, my wife said to me just the other night, all you ever going to talk in this house again? because i go home, i just stare into the middle distance. i don't actually have the ability to communicate by the

time i get home. and my wife, that very morning, she had woken up early and she looked at me as i left the house, she said, john, you are going great. [laughter] so you know, there's this tremendous pressure that you're making enormous decisions, you know, buy yourself. there's no right answer, there's no wrong answer. there's just a bunch of options, and at a point you have to sit there yourself and make a decision for which way your company is going to go with the realization that is going to have a broad impact across many people who you admire and have great relationships with, your employees, your partners, all of that, right? so you know, i would say, my guess is there are a lot of people who had a lot of bravery. i don't think, i just don't

think it's a macmillan trait particularly. >> thank you. thank you for everything you've done, macmillan. [applause] >> a great conversation. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> [inaudible conversations]