obile phone is really going to be the payment device going forward. so i write about this extensively, and there's a lot of technologies here in america that are trying to capitalize on it. but that really is the future of money, the mobile phone. >> and you have also sir richard branson of the virgin group. what's his connection? how did he get his hands on this manuscript? >> >> again, just a letter. and it is, basically, just i had a friend who he'd invested in the company, and i sent a letter, and he forwarded it along, and it was a really really -- again these things are not, they're not lock-ups right? it's almost like a message in a bottle and hopefully they respond. [laughter] >> i think people in general have been impressed by the journey you took the odyssey you took. nobody's really done that in your generation, to travel around the world and kind of report back to us all on what you've seen, and it's so much to be learned in this book.

on behalf of book people and austin and texas in general, thanks for coming down here kabir. >> thank you. >> it was wonderful chatting with you, and i hope you all get "coined." >> i also want to say doug has been a great friend and a mentor, and it's important that we remember the people who shape history, but it's also important to remember the people that help us remember history. so hoping one day -- you have a national treasure here in austin in doug brinkley. i know you write about the national parks, but one day they should name a park for you. [laughter] >> thank you kabir, so much. thank you all. good night. [applause] yep, go ahead. >> some more applause for doug brinkley -- [applause] >> anybody still needs a cope of "coined" or, for that matter any of doug brinkley's books,

we've got them all down at the information desk. so go out and have fun. >> thank you. >> here's a look at some books being published this week:

>> booktv visited the printing plant in berryville, virginia to see the manufacturing process and to watch the books come off the presses. while there we talked with ve printers america plant general manager mark bone about business of printing books. [background sounds]

[background sounds] c-span: mark bone, what's the most difficult part of printing a book? >> guest: it's organizing the process, getting the content in and just organizing the schedule, be sure we have all the books we do at the same time are scheduled properly and meet

the customer's required date. c-span: what's the beginning of the process? >> guest: it's receiving the customer's file, the content they want to be printed. their design and the materials they want to use for the job. c-span: from the time the material gets to you until the time it rolls off the presses and into the trucks, how long is that? >> guest: typically on an initial we are looking at a three to four week period, physically on a reprint we do that in the same week. c-span: tell us about this company. >> guest: company's been here since 1956. it was the doubleday company in the late 1980s. in it's been designed, the berryville site in 1956 for book manufacturing and distribution. and that's what it's been doing for all these years. it's grown. we've, obviously, increased our customer base and we're fortunate to be, have a large customer base that we service every year. c-span: how many books would you guess that you publish or print

a year? >> guest: ing we do somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 million a year. c-span: how many different books? >> guest: thousands. tens of thousands. c-span: and what's happened since you've been in the business that changed in the printing of books? >> guest: run lengths have gotten shorter, you know, obviously, the plushers are very conscious of -- the publishers are very conscious of their inventory ask it's costly to maintain. they basically have looked to us to our ability to take care of short runs and be cost effective at doing that. basically, we can do shorter runs which makes them more profitable. c-span: bertelsmann's a german company? >> guest: that's correct. c-span: how big is it in this country? what do they own? >> guest: penguin random house which is a publisher, they own

be printers which is what we belong to. so that's pretty much the holding in the united states. c-span: and the book business itself, how have you seen it change since you've been in it, and how long have you been in it? >> guest: i'm going on my 36th year in the industry. basically, the quick turns, the needs for how quick books need to get out, the change in the materials and then, you know, the competition, you know? the e-book has come into play now, digital printing, that type of thing. c-span: how have the e-books i affected your business? >> they're just another part of the business. obviously, they're part of the business. we accept that and, or you know they service the customer in a different way than we do. we've been very fortunate. our book volume has increased, so that hasn't decreased our need as far as what the publisher's looking for. spab so go a little --

c-span: go through the process of how a book moves through here once you've got the material. >> guest: once the content is ref -- received from the customer, they decide what kind of paper they want to print on we will schedule it, put it into the prepress department which will compose it so you can read it. plates are made, plates are put on web press, the office press. we take that, and we take the signatures off the web press and we take it to the bindery. basically, from there we just gather signatures, bind it case it in and ship it. c-span: and how many people will tail be in the -- will actually be in the process as it goes through the assembly line? >> guest: all told in the manufacturing sector probably 30. if you took it just the one shift, 30 people. c-span: and how big a business is this around the country? are there a lot of -- are there other companies, a hot of

competition? >> guest: there's definitely a lot of competition. there's been acquisitionings and mergers, so there's less names of printers but there's still a lot of competition. there's less work, and we're all vying for that work. like i said, we've been fortunate to actually increase year-over-year. c-span: how much has the technology of printing changed and how has it changed? >> guest: a lot of the technology has changed on the front end. if you go back, you know, setting type film and that type of thing. the pre-press area's changed quite a bit. ering comes in electronically d everything comes in electronically. it's a electronic file which we compose and make it into a product we can make a plate t out of and then print. so that's the biggest change, is really on the front end side. c-span: so if a person walks into a bookstore and they see a book sitting there that's $30 on the cover, is there any way to estimate how much it cost to actually produce that book of that $30? >> guest: it's a few dollars

less tan that. [laughter] quite a few probably. c-span: i mean, known that the publishers, that about half of the $30 goes to the publisher and the rest would go to a bookstore. so that leaves $15 of the 30. would you say it would be on the, you know $3? >> it could be in that range. i'm not really sure. obviously, you know, the manufacturing cost for us, you know, we have our cost which is mainly labor the expense of running the equipment materials like that. a lot of the publishers furnish their own material so i don't know what all their costs are. but ours is strictly, you know, manufacturing costs, labor that type of thing. c-span: what's the, one or two of the biggest books you've printed here in the haas few years? >> guest: obviously, we did a few harry potter books here. we've done john grisham books, dan yel steele -- danielle steele we've also done the 50 shades that were a bestseller.

today we bought recently the maze runner series which has been prevalent. so that's been very popular. c-span: what's still exciting about this business for you after 36 years? >> guest: i think it's the challenge. it's basic manufacturing. it's, you know, people actually putting their hands to machinery and actually producing a product so they can look at the line and say i did that and the it's not all electronic. it's actually mechanical and they've done something to produce a physical thing. c-span: where'd you grow up? >> guest: i grew up in wisconsin. c-span: where? >> guest: just south of madison. c-span: where'd you go to school? >> guest: university of wisconsin. c-span: how'd you get into this business? >> guest: it was one of those summer jobs that lasted for 36 years. c-span: where'd you start? >> guest: w.a. kreiger in wisconsin. c-span: what'd you do in the beginning? >> guest: i was a helper on the floor. c-span: and then what? >> guest: i worked my way into

aparen disship -- apprenticeship, got my journeyman's card and had some good people who helped me along. c-span: how did you get to berryville virginia? >> guest: i worked in kansas back in the '80s, and that plant was shut down. i was out of work, and berryville was looking to hire people, and i needed a job. they interviewed me, and i accepted a position here the first time in 1991. c-span: what's the hard aest part of this kind of -- hardest part of this kind of his? >> guest: it's really having to deal with the schedules. it goes back to the schedules. we have a lot of people that work here and put a lot of heart and effort into it, and we have a tough schedule to meet. and the people have to work a lot of hours, and their schedule is often dictated by the needs of the customer so that we, you know, get the books out in time. so we are always asking the employees to do more. and they're very willing to do it. we have good employees here that step up every week, and it's

you know it's one of the tougher things. but i think everybody that's in this business has been in it for a while and understand that, and they appreciate the rewards of that too. c-span: if you look at your printing company today, your printing press and compare it with when you started, would you have more people on the floor now or less people? >> guest: less people. less people. c-span: how many less? >> guest: i would say somewhere you know 25%, somewhere in that regard. depending on, you know, the process we're talking about. some of the things the technology has improved. could be as high as 50%. but, obviously, the costs of labor and trying to improve the process and get more capital you know is always, you know looked at. so we want to just reduce our cost. one of the things we do is look at the crewing be sure we have the right crewing. it's definitely an area that's reduced over the years. of. c-span: how does someone train to be in this kind of work? >> guest: it's really on the job

training. it's not something you can go to technical school. our i.t. program gives you the basics of it and that's, you know, a good foundation to build on. but to actually learn the printing process and, you know, things that evolve around the print process the requirements for customer service or if it's in pre-press or digital composition, all those things are really on things you learn. so knowledge gets passed on from one person to another. c-span: we read a lot about the book business being in some trouble because of the e-books and tingal and all that. digital and all that. what has been your experience here with the number of books you've been producing other the last few years? >> guest: well fortunately, obviously, when the e-book first came out, we were doing trip -- they were doing triple digit growth and we were doing double digit decline. we're seeing that level off. fortunately for berryville graphics, we basically maintained, you know well over

100 million books a year, and i think for the most part, you know each our competitors would probably say they're not seeing any major dip in their volume. c-span: how far out does a publisher come to you and say i've got a book that i want you to print? >> guest: if it's a large print and it's, you know a bestseller that they think is going to be a bestseller, we might get some advance notice and a preschedule. because it's a large quantity. other than that, you know, it's not a huge amount of time ahead, you know, they can be put it in six weeks or eight weeks something like that, and we would be, you know be prepared to produce it. for a large quantity, we'd want to preschedule. c-span: go to the "50 shades of grey" which sold millions and millions of copies. how much of that did you print? >> guest: we did close to 0 million with all the reprints, so 15-20 million units total, all three volumes of it. so yeah that was hot and

heavy, i think it was 2012. c-span: did you print a lot of the harry potter books? >> guest: we did the original harry potter here atteberryville graphics at berryville graphics and, basically, that was a very big seller, obviously. and it went on to do more volumes and editions. c-span: was it bigger than "50 shades of grey"? >> guest: well, it was quite different. it was a hard cover, so it was definitely a bigger undertaking. "50 shades," i think if you took all three books was probably in one block of time for one season was probably one of biggest there ever has been. c-span: how many employees do you have? >> guest: there's a total of about 600 employees in the building between the three companies. we have berryville graphics here, coral graphics and dynamic graphic finishing. c-span: and why is this company based in beforelyville, virginia, and how far is it from washin