so that people can have meaningful deaths but don't leave their families traumatized. >> host: in "knocking on heaven's door," you write: doctors are often insulted by the suggestion that financial strictures help shape their medical treatment. economic incentives and disincentives along with discomfort with dying, the fear of being sued or accused of conducting a death panel and feelings of professional failure encourage specialists to refer patients to hospice care only days before death. >> it's sad but true. half of the people who enter hospice be are there for only the last 14 days of their life or less. and, for example, an oncologist who suggests yet another round of futile chemotherapy will get 6% of the price tag of that chemo even if it's a $10,

$20,000 chemo. but if he has a two-hour conversation with the family that's meaningful and says i think we're at the end of the line, and i want to refer you to hospice, he will get virtually nothing for that two-hour conversation. so why are we creating pathways that actually reward doctors for doing the wrong thing and situations where they sometimes even know what the right thing is? which is, it's not a knock on. doctors, it's why do we put hem in such an impossible position? >> host: so, katy butler, when you talk to doctors you know about this book, what's their reaction? >> guest: there are a whole rake of reactions, from your mother was right and you two did the right thing, to saying i don't understand -- either i don't understand how medicine works, that's one line, but the other one is you don't understand how afraid we are that a family is going to us for not, for

wrongful death and that we don't know our patients. people come into the emergency room, we've never seen them before. we don't know if it's a katy butler family would a dnr and a very mean -- clean running well, i want you to keep my father alive no matter what. i so i think i came to understand as i wrote the book what a difficult position that they're in. there's actually a phrase in hospitals called the nephew from peoria who flies in, nonexistent, and now insists that everything be done, everything be done to prolong the life even if the family member who's dying has his living will and it says very clearly that they don't want extraordinary measures. so i think i have a lot more compassion now for difficult positions we've put them in. yeah. >> host: changes in medicare's reimbursement structure could

help. snaps someday medicare will offer us the choice in exchange for the willingness no not to expect medicare to pay for a last ditch $35,000 defibrillator, etc., etc. >> yeah. i really think, frankly, we need a grass roots movement of caregivers to transform how we approach the end of life so that they can do right thing rather than the wrong thing. >> with respect to movement afootsome. >> there there there is, actual. there are groups that are groping towards this territory, but we're up against some of the most powerful lobbies in washington. and be those are very sophisticated forces who understand the ins and outs of medicare regulation, and i think we're a long way yet from the

average caregiver understanding the amount of what tear dealing with. >> host: "knocking on heaven's door" is coming out in the fall. where did this book spring from? >> it federal judge from a new york times magazine article. well -- called how a pacemaker wrecked our family's life. and this article was published on a father's day, and i was afraid that the readers would think that my mother and i had been heartless and cruel towards my father, and we had just the opposite reaction. we had an explosion we mails, a large number of doctors and nurses.

>> host: where did the name of the book come from? >> guest: well, it's a bob dylan song that i played over and over while i was writing this book. "knocking on heaven's door," it's a very short, extraordinary piece of music that really defs you the feeling that you're in the presence of a dying person, and it's transcendent and beautiful, and i don't know, somehow, archetype also i wanted to have that sense of this is not really a book about heaven, this is not a book to reassure you about the afterlife, but it's a book about standing on that doorstep in that flesh hold sates, where death is about to open its doors to you, and your choice is how do you want to meet the opening of that door? >> host: there is a spirituality in this book. >> guest: yes. yes, i'm buddhist, but i have a strong christian-anglican

background. i seeded to having my father get last rites on his deathbed. i feel one of the reasons why're terrified of that is that we no longer are in rnlg at the end of life that our old religions did so beautifully for us. one of the people i interviewed for the book is says the purpose of death is to guide the living through the experience of death. and i the we need to somehow recreate some of those richals because giving my father last rites was immediately relieving of my anxiety and suffering. it really helped me now that i vrt of -- i felt that i had done the right thing. and i was being rehay sured by an ape chept, ancient tradition that was do to do exactly what

that volunteer was going more me. >> were you able to ago we gate how much the u.s. spends in taxpayer dollars on end-of-life care? >> guest: yes. >> host: was that easy to find? >> guest: it was not easy to find the right statistic. there's a lot of wrong sawtistics floating out there. a quarter of what medicare spends is in the last few years of life. that's an extraordinary imbalance, and it shows something majorly wrong with our decision making at the end of life. >> host: this is a preview. katy butler's new book, "knocking on heaven's door: the path to a better way of death." you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org or tweet us

at twitter.com/booktv. >> host: and now joining us on booktv is the founder of a group called publish ors lunch. start by telling us what that is. >> guest: well, it's lots of things. publishers lunch is an e-mail newsletter that tells everyone in the business what's going on every day. we have a web site, publishersmarketplace.com, that has databases and tools that all the people here at javits needs to find the information they need, find each other, get business done. >> host: why that name? what's your background? >> guest: the origin lunchtime when people in the business exchange information with each other. so when the internet came along, and we were trying to find the right metaphor for a lunchtime environment, lunch.com was taken already. so i came up with publisherslunch, and people automatically kind of knew what they were getting in the business before they even saw

what was in the newsletter. i've been in the book business professionally my whole life. i worked for workman publishing way in back in the '80s when i was a baby. it's a great industry, and happy to be a part of it even as time changes and media changes. >> host: mr. cader, the year 2012, early 2013, how's that been for the book industry? >> hunger games carried over into a lot of other young adult literature. "50 shades of grey" brought leaders into bookstores. digital books have become very popular and has given them access to books they might not have had previously. so statistically speaking, the industry grew last year and by most accounts it's at least

holding steady so far in this year. so long form reading appears to be alive and well. >> host: well, we're here at bookexpo america which is the publishers' annual trade show. and i'm holding in my hand here a book that, essentially, doesn't exist. buzz books 2013, this is putting two by publishers lunch. what is this? >> it's a big fat sampler. so it's free publication excerpts of 40 very interesting, highly-touted books that are coming out this fall and winter. so it's really meant to be something for readers everywhere that kind of replications the experience of what's going on here which is people are coming, they're hearing pictures about new books, they're picking out free copies of few books that aren't available to regular readers because the looks aren't right yet. now everyone can kind of get the

convention experience. >> are and where is is it available right now for people watching in this. >> guest: it's available in e-book form for everyone who's watching this show, it's available on every major platform. so whatever e-bookstore you want to read it in, you can download it for free. >> host: alan weissman's countdown by little brown. >> guest: sure. i actually read that again this morning because i liked it so much. he was originally the author of the world without us, how quickly would planet return to its natural stays. countdown is really sort of the world with us so what happens in a world where we have so many people competing for resources. the excerpt we have is set in israel and looks at those issues

through the lens of israeli families and palestinian families who like to have big families, and they have, you know, different reasons for having big families, and they're competing for water because israel's the desert, so he's travelinged around the world. i think he went to 20 different cups and found out how these issues -- >> and valley plame has a fiction book coming out. >> guest: yeah. this is the first of a series. so needless to say, she brings to bear her life experience, but is free being surveyed by the people he used to work for because it's all in a fictional lal context. >> host: the president has been shot, by scholastic. >> guest: that one's a lot of fun, it was about the search for the killers of abraham lincoln. he has written a book about the

assassination of jfk, and he's also done a young adult version from scholastic. and what we have is the sample of the young adult version. >> host: mr. cader, out at buzz books 2013, fall be, winter, what did you -- what are you excited about? >> guest: you know, i keep dipping in and finding things that i like. the nice thing is that we have all kinds of different stuff. we have authors people know and love, elizabeth gilbert, but we have great debut fiction. last year we were one of the first people to the tell people about the yellow birds by kevin powers which went on to be one of best recognized, awarded books of this year. so the best thing is it's got a little bit of everything, some of the nonfiction that we've discovered. one thing that might be fun for television viewers, there was a man who was johnny carson's longtime lawyer, confidant,

fixer who was in the shadows for rirlly decades, but he called him his best friend. and yet he has storied and insight into a man everybody knew so well but doesn't know at all. >> host: michael cader, his group is called publishers lunch. the web site is publishersmarketplace. this is booktv on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2 weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our scheduled toes at our web site, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. ..

>> there's a lot of boxes here filled with little folders filled with papers, and there's a lot of stories hidden in the papers. in fact, you get really quiet, and you listen really closely, you just might hear somebody take a piece of paper out of