so realized just because of that -- to realize that and when the new york times magazine was on the front cover and i was in the sub world in new york one sunday morning and nearly everybody opened this thing so it was instant no matter what and i played around the ring but it changed my life immensely. >> from "radiance of tomorrow". it is in the end or the beginning of another story. every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, grandmother, a girl, a child, every story. >> i believe that strongly. again, going to the idea of a

story, every story starts with something you discover at the end with a full moon so every story given birth to something, an idea, a fox, a new landscape so you are bringing them around. and when, all of us in the world so it is like a direct window had this is actually from the position. being a part of that. and my grandmother was a very strong tight and moral philosopher doing simple things, understanding ten years from now. that was something. >> what is sierra leone like

today? >> sierra leone is coming along. we put the world behind in 2002 and c-span and a lot of development coming along slowly and a lot of young people turning back to studies and small business and people going back home so the political fight is going not for the ones we want in terms of people looking and moving this forward and actually be of service to people and this is where the war started because we didn't have the government for the people, very small countries so if somebody is really interested in shaping this it can be done. we have leaders who are there for themselves and how well do we want to serve them before we define the leadership, it doesn't mean when you are in

power that you are at the service or public service. you are not there to do whatever you like. these of the problems we're having but the country is very fit. we have no violence at all. we are moving along slowly. >> they still see a lot of anti tees? >> the preoccupation as much as possible which i write about in "radiance of tomorrow," renovated, haven't changed because it is so remote in the capital city where a lot of those developments are manhattan first so the lot of that is dignified by the fact that there is nothing you can do and you

have to do that. that is one of thing i love. if it wasn't for that to come -- >> you are watching the tv on c-span2. "radiance of tomorrow," ishmael beah's second book coming out in january of 2014. >> welcome to book expo america, a panel called beyond self publishing, destructor or defender of the book publishing business. i am business director of development for the clearance center based in boston, mass.. happy to have you join us for this special program on c-span2. when i look at the way self publishing is driving itself into the traditional publishing business, i would like to start by asking about the latest report to the book publishing industry. the headline reads, it always

reads of people predicted. self publishing is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the publishing industry with 211,000 still published titles in 2011, a figure of 60% from only 133,000 titles in 2010. in the hour ahead, dozen new books have appeared in the marketplace and as i contemplate figures of that kind i think of may west but not for the reason you are thinking, not the hourglass figure but the subject she said, besides being a fine actress and the great author with wonderful lines one of the things she said was too much of a good thing is simply wonderful and i have to ask a question. when it comes to self publishing, the ability it gives us to express ourselves is there too much free speech? can we have anything like that?

a question we need to ask and to answer that we have quite a panel. i start on the end with james, welcome, vice president, physical analyst at forrester research based in cambridge, mass. attacking and defining the power and impact of digital destruction on traditional business and also author of digital disruption which is just out this spring, digital description:unleashing the next wave of innovation in february. angela, angela james is director of digital first imprint, no great story goes unfolds in 2009, the books weekly and the number of fiction genress including romance, gay lesbian fiction and science fiction and

finally to my left keith ogorek, welcome. keith is senior vice president of marketing for the indianapolis-based market solutions which penguin acquired in july of 2012, self publishing with author house, transferred, the company has strategic alliances with reading trade publishers like thomas nelson and sulk publishing imprint in the u.k. spain, australian, new zealand and singapore. panel to talk about this issue. i want to start with the advice you would give to book publishers today is disrupting themselves. >> absolutely. you open the session by asking whether self publishing was the destructor or the defender of publishing and i would contest the idea that it is either/or. i think disruption is the best defense for publishing and self publishing is turning out to be a boon for publishing because

you can sit there and watch people market themselves, share their ideas, see which things gather any kind of momentum in the marketplace and then make your mind. the risk is taken out. a lot of the market that you are probably not going to have much money to spend to build any way as a publisher in the modern world so this is part of the best defense of the publishing world to my mind. all the industries i work with turns out digital destruction turns out to be a better friend when all is said and done. >> a lot of people in publishing perhaps we should going to the definitions to explain why that would be the case. what is there to make friends with? define this digital disruption. we have disruptive changes unleashed in the past but this is something different. >> it is very special in that it is affecting every part of the

business and this is true of traditional publishing as well. it has to create some finished good. a new service or product or whatever it is. it has to distribute and market that and support the customer. what digital has done is created and infrastructures that makes every single one of those easier and faster and cheaper and this is true whether you are citibank or random house. it turns out the consumer is ready for it. let me give you an example held ready. go back to 2003, the two year mark for the ipod. at that point the ipod after two years old 1 million units. back then fat was a big deal. apple has really changed the music business. fast forward to the ipad, talking about a device that sold eighty million units in its first two years and has gone on to just over three years to sell

1 forty million units. it is not a really good marketer because consumers like the fact benefits more easily than before how >> the book itself is a conflict, not a thing. this is a hard thing for anyone. talk about branch banking, what is a retail store. it is hard to rethink those words because they are in such

common usage. books have been around half a millennium in terms of their print and they have gone beyond that before mass printing is possible. the idea of a book is ingrained in who we are especially those of us in this room but does it need to be? can we rethink what a book is as we are rethinking what an author is? rethinking what a publisher is. the answer is yes we can and we should but the idea is not just the >> reporter: we get rid of it and replace it with an apps or something so we expand the notion of a book, make it include more concepts, more ideas, more processes and out comes. that is where we have to start, that fundamental change. >> i read in your blog you recently attended the blue ridge mountain christian writer conference and the second gutenberg revolution, james alluded to the fact that it has been around for 5 and the years

or longer. why do you feel this revolution, this moment in book publishing is as revolutionary as when gutenberg created the printing press? >> when you go back the title of the address, blue ridge mountain christian writers affect and the premise i put forth was there was a shift in the authority and ability of people to share ideas and impact other people coming out with the printing press restricted at that time to the institution and limited by the hand of scribes tiexiera content. from a historical perspective gutenberg saw his printing press as a way not just to expand what he felt was a christian mission but also education on the middle class as a whole. historians would agree with that. there was a power shift, a phrase in one of his quotes

about words are no longer restricted by the palsied hand that goes higher but now by an untiring machine. that change in authority from institution to what became the publisher said fourth tremendous impact. publishing shifted the authority once again from the publisher to the author. that has in all democracies good things and bad things come about. that is why i call some publishing as a second gutenberg affect and in time self publishing will have a profound impact on writing and authors and sharing of content as did gutenberg's first printing press but not much has changed in 500 years. >> one of the other shifts as far as gutenberg goes as it shifted money into the pockets of the others because he died of a bankrupt man in it is an interesting lesson that the printing press was invented at

that point but we didn't have the publishing business for 150 years after is that. >> wasn't a good market for him. should have protected gutenberg as the name but that is another panel. >> what is interesting is as the revolution is happening, author alice, author solutions and the interest you had began going back ten years acquired flat summer by penguin groups. why would penguin acquire a self publishing company? >> i could go back to 2009, we set forth what james was saying what was taking place in publishing was the next in the revolution. we have seen similar content explosions in film and music and following an intellectual property that was written and produced as a book. so that, i think is what we are seeing in publishing we have already seen. if you look at the statistics,

the number of films that have been made and the amount of music published after the revolutions we saw a similar explosion. i can't speak to all of penguin's investment premise but if you go back to the press release there are some key things. penguin as the company has always had a history of innovation. if you go back and look at their start, always were disrupted in the publishing industry. >> you are thinking of the paperback for example. >> i love that story if you have a chance to read the book of penguin, wonderful story of how the founder had a very different idea how to put content into the hands of people and we said this at the time, can one really started with the democratization of reading and self publishing was democratizing publishing. the other thing is penguin has always been a leader in international expansion and we have seen self publishing take off in the u.s. but it is

exploding outside the u.s. publishing services companies like ourselves and other people as well too. that was part of the press. and third self publishing clearly was something all publishers including the big six had to figure out how to the player. ..

what the kinds of things you will disrupt to understand the approach. >> it's been a digital-based publishers. they have been forward thinks. they brought me in to disrupt the business. they said positive disrupter going back to what you were saying disruption doesn't have to be a negative thing. we had to approach in a number of ways from the systems to the personnel to the resources. it was from the bottom up we were scrupting.

we looked at contracts differently. we disrupted in the finance model, we didn't use the advance model. we use a higher royalty. we were bringing authors in and letting them have even more control over cover and more say. we disrupted at the production level because we had to go in a quicker speed to market. we wanted things done much, much more quickly. people were planning had two years, we were planning ahead six months. we were disrupting at every level. that's something that they embraced when they brought us on. we to look at every level of the process and say how can we disrupt them and make a positive impact? >> i know some of the disruption what you learned that smaller pubbishers and smaller publishers doing. i was wondering for you were cal watching the successful publishlying world. >> it was interesting. i was thinking about self-publishers as a disrupter and defender. and as i saw it sometimes as

publishers it's driving price down and have to look at the pricing differently. as a reader i think self-publishing is driving prices down. >> are you with the department of justice, it sounds like? >> i don't have a law degree either. [laughter] i'm looking at self-publishing particularly in the form of pricing. also really have a for editorial point of view. rooking -- looking at self-publishing and saying what is working working in self-publishing? this is what the readers were demanding. i was going back to what keith said. he talk about the shift in the authority and thor. i would say there's a been a shift to consumer and reader. they are saying this is what i want to read. the authors and publishers are

responding to that because of digital and self-publishing. we see new adult, if you have heard of the new genre. >> give us a definition. >> new adult betweens fall contemporary fiction and ya fiction. 18 to 25-year-old it has a bit of a feel of the adult. has high expensety. it's not quite adult because we are dealing with the new adult. college being in college, all of the issues you dealt with. it was a hard genere to place two years ago. nobody knows how to shelve it. nobody knew who the market was. nobody was shiewrt if it was going to be a thing. we have seen it explode thanks to self-publishers. the reader said this is what i want to read. >> i was going make the point.

self-publishing has been particularly successful in so. gene rays you are familiar with. many of the first e books, going back more than ten years, reader and all that have. particular community the has driven it it's coming from inside publishing as outside. that's exactly right. the romance community were early adopters of digital ten years ago. because of erotic romance. we talk about "50 shades of grey," but ten years ago we were talking about erotic romance in term of digital. that's what the romance community was turning toward. we had so many process independent process popping up digital first to publish erotic romance primarily starting with -- they were pioneers in this

digital space, and because of that, romance readers were flocked to digital. when you look at the numbers, you'll see along the last decade romance has been there driving the masses. >> i know your point in the book is not about technology. explain that. >> it's a perfect example of what it's about. it's the customer. the technology has gotten to the point it's easier to not only deliver thicks to the customer but learn back from the customer what they want. in the old day in this case now they have more to choose from. their actions have a direct impact. you can measure them immediately which is not something publishers have a mind set of trying to do. they think of two-year life cycle as opposed to how did we sell today? digital can give you feedback.

how was it tweeted and posted on facebook? how was it blogged about? reviewed on good read. the feedback is cheap and easy now. you get insight you would never have had before. you turn around in the environment, use that technology right back at the consumer and offer the product they want. >> now el james sold 50 million books and -- [inaudible] solution the disruption in publishing is over. >> if i can add one thing. they really sthoift consumer. another way that i've thought about it and framed it that publishing business used to be more of a wholesale model. i had to sell a whole seller who had to figure out to sell it to a consumer. the shift which is taking place

which is dramatic, publishing itself has gone from a wholesale nogdz a direct consumer model. if you take advantage of data whether you're a individual author or publishing company you can know things very quickly. it's accelerated everything in the process. it accelerated toobility get content out. what cover you want to use, some of the smartest authorities are putting three covers up and letting the readers vote or vote on title. there's creative ways of doing that. but i agree, and i'll suggest that one of the things i think is happened, i don't think the disruption is over, i think if you look at the two big things of self-publishing disrupted apart from the technology, one distribution was a big thing that was a limiting factor. i could write -- . >> you had to get a book to a store. >> i couldn't get to it a store. between the digital readers that come up. >> even that. >> and online retailers. i have taken down the wall that used to keep me from getting to

the consumers. one thing, i believe traditional pub learning houses brought it an author was the collaborative effort to make that book as good as it could be. i think what happened is a lot of self-publishing books initially stepped past that thought and if i have distribution i can put it out there. there was a lot of criticism, and rightfully often leveled at the man scriewpts out there. i got nervous when i heard two faces. a one-draft wonder. and the other phase that would make me nervous is my daughter is an artist. it probably meant the cover was going to be not that good. i think -- i hope no one here has a daughter of who is an artist. my point is what you're seeing the self-publishing issue it's hard to say it after five years. it's maturing at the best authors are realizing they need to collaborate. they need to collaborate with people that are excellent at ed

fitting and understand how to build a flat form and do a good cover and make the format of their e-book look as good on a file as an e book file. the product put out as a self-published author is getting much better. that's how i think that sort of the next phase is if there is something as self-publishing. >> do you think the product is getting better or there's so much out there that there's just that -- >> statistically speaking we're going get some good thicks in there. >> sure. >> yeah. i think it's probably both. i think people are realizing they have to do better. but i also think it's, you know, there's a book, "long tail" i think it should be the "wide runway" there's so much more people can get. in the law of large numbers there's going to be better content in there. i think there's a recognition from authors that they have to put out a good product. >> will the very large number of

competing ideas now is going to push authors to say, i better make mine as good as possible. i think that's positive. >> james, too. to get back to the question of how long disruption is going to go on for. and how we can get used to it. if you can get used to disruption. what are tips you can give the publishers in the room as a we approach it. is there a way of thinking about the business that other businesses have done you learned from? you can share with them. >> get ready for a very, very long transition. if i could -- could use a baseball metaphor. let say we're in chapter one, maybe chapter two of a dan browne novel. there's 49 more chapters to come. they might all be four pages long but -- [laughter] we are only in the beginning of redefining the book, the author, all of the things we talked about needing to be juggled a little bit. as a result, it's impossible for

a publishers to say, i have three years we will have figured it out and adapted. there's not a single digital or digitized business i worked with that has ever gotten to a resting point. turbulence is the new resting point. you have to get used to it. you change the skill set, instead of having a skill set inside the company that focuses on preserving the business model, you can have a skill set that adapts in pursuit of the consume as the consumer evolves. that means big data will be part of publishing from now on. not as a transitional phase. there's so so many changes that have to occur in the way we think about what we do in publishing. >> right. we're talking about self--- and angela james, you've been hearing keith and james talk about this. the point of acceleration and the accelerating disruption how does it feel inside? have people gotten used to the speed? >> do you want me to do an

interpretive dance? [laughter] >> yes, i would like that. [laughter] >> it can be very overwhelming, but i have worked in digital far decade, that's my history in publishing. and i have always seen acceleration, everything has always been changing in my business. so it can be nerve wracking. obviously we know that. butting it also exciting because it provides opportunities. there are a lot of opportunities that i didn't have even several years ago with content and pricing and reaching tout consumer, and doing things with authorities -- authors and projects and changing the way the book looks and how i market the author. there are a lot of opportunities that i didn't have before that i found myself wishing for. i didn't know quite what i was wishing for. so, yeah. >> and the approach that created takes with the author is different from traditional publishers. perhaps you can explain a little bit more of the model. and it brings you in contact

with different set of authors. >> we do a different business model. we don't offer an advance. we use a royalty base, we pay a bit more frequently. we closely with the author. we have tried to essentially create a small press feel within the larger press. we have brought them intimately in to the process. not cover approval but a lot of cover consultation, back for copy consultation, working with them closely in the marketing. and utilizing the author to help us build our brand. in the past, it's always been the publisher building the author brand. we have collaborated with the author to also help have them assist building in the press. i think it's a more collaborative process than it used to be. >> but you are competing against the self-publishing model that potentially is more lucrative for authors, and how do you explain to them the advantages? what do you think about the notion i think that many

self-publishes or authors considering publishing a book believe they have to start with self-publishing? >> that is a really great yes. i get that question a lot. authors saying should go to self-publishing and toast the market and be a proven market? the answer is yes, you can do that. what happens if the test doesn't work out the way you were hoping it was going to? because you didn't know how the business worked or didn't understand how to you said collaborate with somebody. how to find the right partner or collaborator? i firmly believe that some authors do an excellent job of self-publishing and should self-publish. i talk with dwhornts know where to start. when i talk to short -- authors i said you have multiple choices, if you are going to self-publish you have to understands all the aspect of the business. if to start, you want to write your book and market your book, and have somebody help you learn the business, working with a publisher makes sense. and you get a collaboration, you

don't have to go looking for an excellent editor and turn to the daughter to do cover art. because -- my daughter does not work for us. she is eight. i promise she doesn't do our cover art. as an author, you don't have to go looking for the resources. we'll bring the resources to you. help you build your platform, and then perhaps you will do both. you work a publisher and self-publisher. >> you are giving options. you are expanding options. that can only be good. >> it can only be a deservedder, a strengthening of the business. >> exactly. if everybody has more options and everyone has more information about using their options yielded for them or resulted for them as a result, they can then say, now in the future i can make even better decisions and go through multiple interration. i helped digital book world contact survey of ,000 writers.

2,000 were aspiring authors, but about 2,000 of them were either published dray additionally, self-published, or one category we labeled hybrid authors had done both. the hybrid authors were the smartest. they knew the most about the business. they understand the most about the option. they were the most particular about what they were looking for in a publishing relationship. they knew the most about what royalty should look like. how they should get paid, i said that makes a lot of sense. they played both sides, they are actually blurring the middle. there isn't two sides anymore from their perspective. so they can get what they need each choice they are making. that kind of information asymmetry giving authors that kind of power is exciting to me. >> right. and it was new data following on that came out earlier this week at book expo that talked about maybe not only are they smarter but happier. they are more content with the writing career the hybrid authors. >> actually in the study they

make more money on average too. >> that's one of the reasons. >> yeah. >> if i could, please. build on some of the thoughts. i think if you look at just consumerism as a general statement, when you have more choice, it creates more opportunity, but can also can create more confusion. i think that's the place where we're at right now. not necessarily for readers but authors. i remember sitting on a panel of back in october and a author stood up during a q & a was campus rated and said what am i missing? she had a huge checklist of everything she should be doing. she was sure she had forgotten something. here was a woman who thought she needed focus on writing. she wasn't sure. that's why at the turn of the year, we put out a white paper that identified what we think are now the four paths for publishing. diy path, a general contractor path, a pub publishing package

path and dray additional path. each has a little briblg off them. those are four primary ways. they are found to be helpful for authors to decide. the other thing that is interesting it depends on what book you have and what project you have as to which path is best for you. that's the beauty of being an author right now. in some cases -- there's an authority that works with the imprint very successful in a women's fiction space, and has contracts and does traditional deals. she speaks in a lot of conferences about writing and writing method. she wanted to publish a book on writing method. she thought she could sell some. our agent didn't publish it. she gets a decent little check. i think that's beautiful as an author. she has the contracts, she's focusing on a core, she feels like she's impacting people through self-publishing.

that's what authors have available. >> and the blending of options is also part of digital disruption, james, because it brings in to play forces and players that you wouldn't have thought were part of the world in the past. >> that's actually a key in digital disruption is delta airlines forever thought they were competing with american. of course, they are. now they are competing with apps like trip et, and business traveler, you use it more religiously than ever used an app from an airline themselves. so it expands the ways of the people can meet your needs including people that were nontraditional competitors before. what we're seeing is expansion of options through technology that are available to authors. and, of course, to readers is the whole point of this. so it's expansion. this is all goodness, even though hurts. >> one of the places it hurts is coming from amazon. there was an interesting quote bryan formerly with mac mill

less than as a venture capitalist said earlier this week at book expo amazon is essential lay customer relationship management company. and book publishers are author-relationship management companies and inevitably they are going clash. i wonder if you could retook into account that, james. >> that's 100% correct. it's the important thing any company has. it's the most importants asset companies are building. every company i'm working with we are looking how do you strengthen it and make it deliver data to you so you know more about the customer? and how do you act on that information to give them more value through the digital bridge you are building. and amazon is a company that knows that. it's in the dna of the company. where as keith said we're talking about a wholesale model in the history of publishing. i sat with them that are conscious of it. the customer used to be the buyer and barnes & noble.

it was back in the cay. everyone else second and third. the customer is jose, gene, whoever is reading the book. they don't know where to start with that. >> it's dispruptding and threatening when publishers consider amazon as bryan put in going after customers and doing the thick it is needs to do for customers. amazon seems to be going after the book business. >> well, i think if i were in share -- their shoes i would too. they are getting to the film and television production business. they moe what people watch. they see it every day. they know how many times you there, they know -- >> they let the audience vote. >> absolutely. and so i think they are looking at all the easy ways to expand their relationship with their customer. and as you look at it in every industry, we see spot fi they are rumored to more media as well. starting with cross media

customer experience is an easy obvious thing to do. google play does music, books, google book not the strongest play necessarily. tv. can go down the list. everything you want to do they have. what is next? look at amazon. how many category of product do they sell? you might think, a publishing business is special, we don't want that to get lumped the summer san sandal. from the consumer it's convenient to get it all in one shot. >> one of the amazon has done is make aggressive play for the publishing business. they want to become a publisher themselves. there was an announcement earlier this week i thought i would get your comment on they are going to be creating a platform for fan fiction. licensing various type of titles, gossip girl. vamp pyre diary. giving those in the writing community that like to write fan fiction to sell their work.

talk about your reaction to that. >> it's a very smart. i wish i would have thought of it first. fan fiction, as many of us in the publishing industry and particularly in it's a huge community. one that has built its own fan base, the own resumes, and -- rules but sometimes difficult to navigate. for much the same reason self-publishing can be hard to 1/2 gaiter. you have to wade through not so great stuff to get to the better. i think amazon is smart to partner with somebody to give permission because fan fiction authors have felt a little bit like marginalized, first of all, and also sometimes they might bont fridge of legality not always be sure how legal what they're doing is. especially if they turn to monotizing it. now amazon has given them an avenue to do something they are already doing. this is brilliant from the author point of view. from the consumer point of view,

i heard people say, why would i buying something i can get for free? these are people who don't read fan fiction. because there's gate keeping for you now. it's going to be easier find and goes back to james saying it's right there on amazon. you can get the shoes, self-published book, and the fan fiction needs met. it's a smart move. >> keith? >> one thing i think is interesting publishing should look at is netflix repeatedly came out with original programming. i have confess the name of the show escapes me. >> "arrested development." >> "camelot grove "if you understand how they gopped it, they have enormous amount of data about what kind of movies people like. and so there's some kind of super natural aspect. some romance, some kind of criminal, and i can't remember what all --

they took that -- >> it might be a vamp pyre in there. >> probably. they took the data and fortunately as author solutions we have a lot of relationship with hollywood right now. even though right now if you go to the movie theater you'll see "end of the world" or super heros. they are locking for good ideas. we have a lot of them because of the number of authors. we had conversation with producers and said what was brilliant about what netflix which is scary for them and dealing with intellectual content. they said what do the consumer want in they gave it and said come up with a series that has those element in it. we'll produce that. that's what they are doing. they took data, which was digital, they were directed consumer and create some intellectual property that from what i've heard is getting a good traction. >> keith, if can i follow quickly. data is important to the big player and important to the

self-published authority. how can they gather that data and glean information that can help their career? >> google an lettic can give you amazing information about where you are getting people from. if you have a blog, which i would advocate highly you do that. wordword press is a great platform. i have a blog anybookwriters.com. i have written a simple blog called the "five essential element of a great story" every week it's the most liely trafficked blog posti have. i don't even -- i have looked to see the links. what it does to me i should write more blogpost with great story. if you use the data. it's out there. you can capture e-mail trayses and build an e-mail list you can market to. those are three that come to mind.

i'm sure there more sophisticated. those two can show you about your readers. >> don't try to be more sophisticated. you'll overwhelm yourself as an author. either some magic or science. paying close attention to those easily available data sources you have is a plenty good start. >> i think there's one other data source you can use. especially in the fiction community that is good reads. there is a wealthy of information that readers are put on there about the books. and it's not just review, it's actually the shelves that readers are creating and the tags and lists. you can see how your book falls in there. and what other people -- what they are reading and tagging. your shelf might be your book shelved under alpha heroes and vampire and wear wolves and something unusual like ware hampster. and oh, twentd supreme listed it or they have shelves like this. there's a lot of data that authors can farm from good

reads. i think it's a good tool. >> i want to go back to that. >> i want to go back to the netflix point. it's related. they did in creating ideal programming was yes, learn from data. but remember, they also then have your name. they know which of their millions of customers now 30 million want to watch that show. they can put it right in front of them the next time they log in. you're going like this show. so, yes, authors can and should learn from these things that are happening in their environment, but i like your point, keith. start collecting e-mails from people who follow you. if you're an author. then you go back to them and say you told me you like what i'm doing. i'm doing more of it. here it is. more likely to strike a chord with them that way. >> so. smartest self-published author there's a gentleman that writes historical fiction, he does a lot of research to make sure it's accurate. he developed a fan following, he will -- he's i think done five or six

books. he'll put three covers or tights up before the next book is out and let them vote. you have to give the e-mail. he presells books, he's been doing it for five or six years. the first time i heard it it was smart. there's things you do to really connect with the consumer and make things -- one other thing, if i can make one other comment. i think the thing gets lost in the disruption discussion. i think the book is a great thing in culture and will continue to be. even though there's blogs and facebook and the things, there are is something in the humanity that wants us to establish something permanent. i go back to the cave drawings and said why didn't you draw in the sand. there was something in the human nature that said i need thref permanently. the book, no matter what you do, add video or do something. there's something in us that wants something permanent. that's why i think the book business is still has a great future even though it's being disrupted. >> and what interests me as i'm

listening to you speak. there was a point, at least among my author friends scratch one they had a problem with the publishers. they were complaining about something that publisher didn't do for them. they didn't do enough. what i'm hearing you say authors and publishers have more in common than ever before. and survival means banding together. is that too optimistic? >> i'm not going to say banding together. it might be in the best interest of the author to say i'm done with you. that's okay. in digital we have a concept promise use -- fifty shades of partnership? i don't know. >> not any better. [laughter] the point is that people like amazon and apple work together even though they much would rather see the other one die completely. [laughter] >> okay. >> that's okay. >> that's sort of like being in

the same boat and no place to go. >> well, no. it's not that. it's that -- i see thing you can do for me. i want those things. ly get them while i can. i'm going very, very aggressively pursue things that i can get without you as well. that's not the way partnership was done in the past. certainly not the way authors were brought -- remember back in the day when you could submit a man scriewpt to one publish at the time and put in the black hole by the time you are done and tell me not appropriate for the readers, i have to try someone else for another six months. remember that? that's crazy. that's about loyalty and faithfulness to a certain set of patterns. no. right now we're going expand the world of publishing. we're going expand everybody's option. if that means we work together for awhile. great. >>let expand everybody's option and give people in the audience a chance to ask questions. we have about five minutes left. i think we have a mic that can

come around to anyone. we have a question from there. if you can, tell us who you are. [inaudible] >> keith, what does the merge we are random house mean? what is the disruption it would bring and the opportunities to author solutions? >> you speaking specifically with the penguin random house merge ensure i don't know at the point. the deal hasn't consummated. i can speak to what it's been for penguin. i don't know what it will be -- [inaudible] i think one of the best things is it's created some collaborative opportunities for us with penguin. the one that was probably the most recent one was we launched a self-publishing imprint in india with in conjunction with penguin called partridge. we looking at expanding that to

other international market. there's a lot of other things that are underway that we'll have announcement later in june and july, and plus, they have been able to speak in to so. things we have been doing from book design and cover design and things like that to continue to make product that gets tout the market better. >> and james' point as partnership, you sign with simon and shuster along -- >> i'll resist the title. i think simon and shuster decided they want to get in to self-publishing through the dill due jensen they decided we were the best partner. we work with them collaborative. >> we have a question in the back of the room there. [inaudible] >> the best publicity option for a self-publisher? >> publicity options? would you say that social media is the best place to start if you mentioned blogging, keith? >> actually, there is something

that keith said and james said then they were talking about collecting e-mail. i would take that idea, but even say communicating with your readers. we have found a lot of self-published authors i heard bella andre speak to it and marine, cho is successful in self-publishing talk about the idea of responding to every reader response being where the readers are. i see coless than lindsay with penguin shaking her head. it's communicating with the reader and fostering a relationship. they will become db your street team basically. they will deposit publicity for you. >> the most important thing, i think, is understand who the audience is. that's what i tell self-published authors all the time.

asked the audience and say they say every man, woman, and child. don't try to to ten things. pick three or two things and do them well. facebook live on facebook. twitter, live on twitter. i think author get overwhelmed and say i have do ten things. you are better off of finding a core grouch audience and working with them. >> we have time for one last quick question in the front, please. >> this is a question for harlequin and penguin. is the hope of these large companies to bring the successful, the cream of the crop self-published authors in to the main stream publishing deals? >> i don't know if you heard the question. the question was if the hope of large publish was to bring the cream of the crop

self-publishing to mainstream publishing deals. that's a excellent question. it's something chris and i discussed earlier, and it's a difficult question over the past year we have seen a tremendous amount of very large deals done for successful self-published author, and james talked earlier about using self-publishing as a testing ground. that is going work to a certain extent and publishers are obviously watching that very closely. but what we are finding right now is that a lot of the successful self-published authors are hitting success at very low price point. it's not clear whether or not publishers big publishers can actually replicate that in a way that will make the authors as successful. because selling and hitting nyt at 99 cent. it's harder to sell at $5.99 or

$7.99. i think there's a lot to be learn there had. we are watching a lot of deals we have done over the past year to see. but i think that there is a lot to be said for testing ground. and wanting to work with those authors woo have fostered a relationship. not the ones who have done one book and hit the nyt. those doing a series and showing growth and showing a growing add yen and growing readership. it's only natural for a publisher to want to bring that readership in with that author. >> and with that we have to say goodbye to the c-span2 audience. i want to thank our panel today. james, author of digital disruption. angela james, executive editor. and celt, vice president for marketing at author solutions. and i want to leave you with a thought. you may want to tweet it. not everybody thinks self-publishing is a good thinking or writing. or being an author is a good

thing. times today are bad, children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. [laughter] cicero said that in the first century. [laughter] my name is chris, thank you all. [applause] [applause] historian wendy discussing her soon to be published book "hitler's furies" german women in the nazi killing fields. she spoke to book expo america. we have brought you several interview over the past two weekend from a publishing annual trade show and all of these can be viewed online at booktv.org. >> and now on booktv, a preview of professor wendy's new book. imper man women in the nazi killing fields. professor, what is your book about? >> it's about entire generations

of german women. i call them the world war i baby boomers. there was an increase right after the first world war of spike in births. about 1918, it coincided with german women getting to vote. you have a surge of female population coinciding with the opening of women's opportunity politically with the vote. so the story about the generation that came of age during a period of the nazi regime in the '30s who saw, you know, opportunity they didn't have before to be part of in political system, part of revolution. it was exciting. job opportunities, the first ways of getting out of their villages. many of these women, you know, were living in a small remote villages and. ed to get out and see the city and experience city life. so it's about the women who come of age with their ambitiouses and dreams, but these coincide

with the establishment of a criminal genocide regime. what happens when the political awakening is part of a horrible belie kind of political system they come of age in. right. and i ended up tracing these women to the eastern territories of the nazi regime where the crimes of the holocaust occur, out-called blood lands and killing fields of the holocaust. we see how they come in the german system in germany proper and mobilized to participate in the campaigns and eastern territories. and i had no read any books before that really placed women in large numbers in these sites, these crime scenes. that's what my story is about. how they get to the crime scene, how they react to what they see, how some of them move to the roll of polices and worst case of those who move in to killers. we often think of german female perpetrator as camp guards, and

in small numbers about 3500 based on some sparse documentation. the reality is that this was a mass movement, german women were sent to the east to be part of hitler's colonial imperial project, part was called the war of destruction as nurses, imperial developers, colonizers in all different capacity. they directly participated in this imperial project which included holocaust which included genocide programs. i -- in understanding the magnitude of this, discovering the magnitude of this through the extensive research i have done. i wanted to make book assessable to as many people as possible. it's grounded in a lot of research, i've been the field for about twenty years working in archives around the world. i went ukraine initially in 1994 i discovered some of the material and collecting the stories.

it took several years spending a lot of time at the holocaust memorial in washington, d.c. they have a fabulous collection there, going archives in germany, collecting material from survivors in the u.s. it was massive collecting effort of stories to place these women in these killing fields or sites. and conclude there were at least a half million, 500,000 women who were mobilized. this is new -- but in significant numbers and a variety of roles. that figure half a million is obviously quite a contrast to when we think of female camp guards enclosed camp settings behind bashed wall -- barbed wire and the walls. we have theme of women in the capacity open air settings. mass shootings were occurring. half the victim of the holocaust guyed.

gate liquidation, force marges through famine and starvation and so forth. it became in these settings, you know, communities of violence started to develop, you know, at the scenes. very much included women in these different roles. so with this large number, right, i are to then kind of bring it down to individual faces to put faces on the perpetratorrers. since in the history books, they are often very demonized and presented as kind of freebs -- freaks of nature or sadistic figures even pornographically so. i want to present the reality, these women when they came of age, they were people we could relate to. they were likable figures. the book kind of you warm up to them in the beginning, then you start to see how they are transformed by being moved to the east, and confronting witnessing the violence. then we see, you know, different reaction. the spectrum