dive. they recovered all of the engine and tested them at tinker airforce base and recovered the crumpled tail session and determined why the plane crash occurred. and in the report i was able to also find that this was talked about in the days prior to the crash between the pilot and between the other pilot on the b-52 who said i see your rutter is sort of squirrely and moving back and forth. i am not telling it. they are communicating. it is eerie as you read the report because you know it led to this accident occurring. it is tough to answer for 1965. i made copies of the accident report and sent it to the families i had contact with saying this is what the air force found. ...

but also a lot of times we miss that and for things to go back to normal we need to talk about them and every time i speak about this in the community setting the families come out and talk about it in a way it gives us a sense of getting this off our chest because there are many around today that lost loved ones at the time but never spoke about it and now they have an avenue to talk about it. >> so this is reagan arthur and

bonnie is a fabulous agent of bonnie the hill.u take due to take over? caroline is remembering my late 2 partner who died in 2011 so itr isn't really a coup when the other person died.tedorking wi ith was 25. i come from publishing in newshing new york and has been working for new american library and then assigni and schuster and i met her through had worked afterctorian,n

working with an attic taste inand i san francisco bay.an agent? he was like it do you want to be mean an agent and i said i'm not meanever enough because the agents i hell talked toon were like hell on wheels and he said he will learn, and of course i did.ot ted >> why don't you tell us how you ed could startit an editor. editors >> i was a graduate school refugee. i started as a reader and then rders you find yourself with too many degrees and too few skills as a an flashing light of salvation i think that i finished graduate school and i started looking for std as a job in the publishing industry and i started as an assistant and stayed around long enough to

hear now 20 years later. >> >> how did you get started? here >> i grew up here in themy dad was woodland hills. i grew up in a boathouse and always wanted to live in newrehensib york which may seemo incomprehensible to everyone in this room. publish and i wanted to work in publishing so because a job in edito an editorialasan editorial assistant and i never left.. >> when did you join click. >> 2001.s. >> and was a little brown then?k. th >> it's been around for 178 years i think they started inlishers boston with the publishers and

other luminaries. thank you all found careers in the publishing industry but isn't publishing dead? a >> she broke down the gauntlet. [laughter]feel like're in >> i may be counterintuitively feel it clear that we are in a golden age of publishing.nd full i think it's an interesting andly i full of possibility. 199 i started in 1993 and that's for a number of reasons.publishi landsca the traditional publishings landscape is as viable as it's there been. there are big publishers areunding doing excellent books. if there are any number of small sized publishers discussing and wrirs taking chances, sometimest books.

difficult books and i think that the bookselling after some crazy stabiliz for stabilizing. see in everything you see in the self-publishing landscape is giving people more options than they've had to get their workwork out out there so i think theriod. opposite. there was ai shaky period at thehe other things but festival a few were years ago we were undergrads. >> i once worked for bonnie and it was a shaky time. >> have things gotten better? rece >> yes. was the height of the recession and it's hard to get people to spend lots of money when the stock market is going down 500 i points today and no one waswho's a buying books and i said to my husband as a restaurant criticings we do things nobody needs. th

when people get desperate they don'ted b need books and go out to farme eat.. we should become dairy farmers or something. [laughter] and then it all got better. >> is also there was a an contraction, there was an go- expansion part of the 80swere a lotof there were a lot of bookstores into a lot of perhaps overexci te overexcitement and so would haver been in the recession a recession and i think over the past ten or so years it is a necessary contraction andot of it has been painful. the loss of borders is something're trying to we feel when we are trying to estimate the book sale from a something we have a sort of shorthand in the office because that especially for the fictiontion publishing that hurt so it's not boo like those that are being stopped and i forget how many bordersre there are.

>> they were great but they tend to buy the normal order they aren't going to buy 20 because it is not two towns away anymore.t t >> what about the role of e-books in terms of sales. >> that's been interesting, too. mos they had the most direct effect because it used to be if you if didn't want to pay the money forhe the hardcover would wait around and the paperback would come out toent and you might want to print itf on video or dvd. now what happens of course it is simultaneously, available simultaneouslyan and soa it has had a real effect on paperback for the most part. often >> i wonder if we can talk to the people often ask why sinceal

itit's just a digital filebe shouldn't it be cheaper?or >> so many answers to that question. go ahead.et >> i get angry is a strong word but i get defensive because it assumes i think for a while andigh this tenuous period with seven or eight years ago when they were coming into their own and the candle was reagan thinking thatar experience people thought c j the same with music if i couldtton and hea push a button and hear a song for free why can't i get a book the are for free and there are good both a reasons why both were wrong and speaking about books first of all a writer spins years and a iolved publisher there are salaries e involved in copy editing and making a jacket, nothing about know, noth the book is free or came freely

shou to people that created it and so therlde is no reason why it should $1. be pretty or a dollar 99 either. at th the low prices were somehow to going to set a standard nobody fact, thought a book should be moretor than that but it costs more tond that is create something and that's what publishers including my own have fought so hard to keep thets that prices in line with the actual pap i cost.only a >> so essentially the paper is book a only a small part of what the book actually costs.ake, you >> exactly. if does make a couple of dollars but difference.doesn't t that doesn't get you from $12.99 to a dollar and 99 cents.and t it doesn't make it free. i understand the frustration on yo because when yurou buy in the old book you own it and it's on your

shelf. it d if you buy one on the right path and it disappears so from my-books thae perspective if they take them they are like goodies. i worked at mcsweeney's couple of years and we were making a copy of the works and he was eager to have audio files into these kind of things you would we h think you would want which is to perfectly logical but because softwar the hardware and softwaree is had different we had to make a different difference book for every single fil d store.i workn the sound files didn't work in the same way. upload we would try to upload them and bug we would have to repeat them. extraord it was extraordinary the amount of work we had to put into theinto this book but supposedly it is cheap sposedly

and free to everybody and the frustrating thing we made athis beautiful print object to begin book, next week assigned project and it turns out that's what people e-g, wanted. actually they wanted the objectthing, but which was reassuring and i think it is the spin of experiences that made the agents like us it feel the print principal dissent disappearing right now and it stabilizes or business a littlek, bit. >> i don't think the size that i up have a copy of the book and it gets dinged up really fast. coverd it's a white cover and it's a ag beautiful. can -- boo >> you can buy a second.nder [laughter] you >> so i wonder if you could talk a little bit about because i y think collectively there's atperiencen

the least 50 years of experience at this table. if i w conder if you can talk about could talk about was there any time that you made thi like one mistake you still take you w yourself over or that you wish publishing was doing differently to sort of work better. you can point fingers instead of kicking us. >> as an agent, part of what we do is we are the first sort of line of defense of someone's work and so what that means is that we have to decide. it's like triage. there is the immediate problem could compile and then though it's very easy but maybe it's

actually quite hard. and one is always doing this with a time factor involved because while there are certain writers that will send us material and to say i'm only sending it for you, more and more especially because most are electronic or like i'm sending it to a bunch of agents at the same time and read this fast you can. so probably the last few years, he is nowhe's now published one books and one on macarthur and i think i'd do deny them and has been nominated for -- in any case he had sent me his first novel and i started to read it and was like this is interesting. and african-american men in brooklyn and then i go to distract you and when i go back to it it was too late and he had an agent of the agent he had is a very lovely guy so i don't

regret any of his success but it's one of these things where i should have read faster. >> there are manuscripts where you are considering in any given week how many things are you trying to read? >> there are five of us reading in the office, two interns one associate and another agent and myself and i don't know how many things we get because i only see the ones that are sort of at the top of the pile. we get about 250 a week but i'm not even sure because if they told me this site would have a nervous breakdown. they just sort of get answered in just things get pretty replaced but that's how it works. when it's on paper it's easier because you have a stack you go for an independent --

>> if it sat on the shelf even realize i'm never going to read that or i'm going to keep reading it. as an editor i would get calculated on average five manuscripts that they paid. >> i probably get wonderful manuscript every day and that's just agent to manuscript. >> so those are things that have been represented. do you try to read all of them. >> absolutely. i try to at least see before i pass it along to somebody but now, i can't read because every book is through -- i'm not talking about the firm i'm talking about myself getting

1500 pages of manuscripts and peace withintothese are the books we are not publishing so it is able for submissions and competition. >> did you have any that got away? >> i think in business when success involves forgetting the things you missed. [laughter] dot one continues to be resentful of the things you try to get it for various reasons you lost. >> is a politic answer. i have a syndrome on panels where i am compelling to blurt out my most mistakes into the book i turned out. i'm not going to name it. but it's something i was on the fence about and it was preempted which is like would have what happened with bonnie and this is something mostelse that'smost of the factor that speed is of the essence. editors make decisions fast and suddenly you are reading something into the agent says

it's gone to that happened to me in this novel and frankly it was preempted for an insane amount of money and went on to be a major bestseller so it happens. >> i remember thinking when i was at my first company we did the book fast food nation by a journalist is never published a book before and i remember it went for quite a lot of money and i remember thinking i don't know they must have to be betting that every single thing is going to go right. >> but at the time i totally understood the perspective so it's not one of those regrets because the logic still makes sense to me and they did a brilliant job.

>> told me a little bit about the inverse. tell me about the coup were something that you saw the potential that other people didn't see it you were able to get it. >> one of my favorite stories about myself -- left her co- i got a manuscript from an agent i didn't know well. she said it's like the office. op i looked at the first page intokay an amazing opening paragraph so i took it home with me that night on the train to my house. i clearly remember sitting on my couch reading it like staying up late to finish it and thinking at a certain point,

please, don't screw this up because it was going so well, and then it took a couple turns, and i thought oh no, it's going to go off the rails but it didn't. and i came in the next day and said we have to buy this book so that was a wednesday. and then i made a preemptive offer on thursday. on friday i was meeting the author for the first time and celebrating, and that was "then we came to the end," by joshua ferris, and he is an amazing writer to i'm happy to still publish. one of those things where the reviews came in great and then we were at the frank further book fair, and we got a call that he was a national book award finalist and i burst into tears. [laughter] it was just a really happy time of thinking i just loved it so much, and things went right for it. >> i don't want -- oh. go ahead. >> a lot of i mean, no matter what anyone tells you about plushing a huge amount of it is luck. things just have the go your way. i represent rebecca suggest

snuck, and i've represented her for years and years and years and first book we did together was a book of migrations which i feel like i couldn't give that book away. i did finally sell it to a british/american publisher, but it was an incredibly difficult sell. and then about a year, year and a half ago at this point she did a collection of essays called men explain things to me. and we sold it to a tiny publisher called haymarket who she knew the people who were running it. they bought it for very little money, very little money means, like, under $5,000. and it has gone on to be the biggest success, and part of it was that it was riding a wave of like feminist essay collections which took off in the past year. part of it, unfortunately, had to do with, yes, all women hashtag that came out of the santa barbara shootings and all

that. b part of it came out of all that and the book is now sold 45,000 copies in 12 countries. publishing surprises you. part of the reason that we have so much business is that it always surprises us when you think you know it's going what's going to happen it doesn't and sometimes it's when you hope something goes well and it hardly takes off. so that's happy version. >> maybe there's a perception that we have to be market-driven and people give up on the writings but few publishers go into this business to make money because we could do something else. >> accepts teach english. it's too hard. it's a tough business but being

willing to follow them where they are going to go and where they want to go into so agent or editor, you have to pick someone that you are going to follow where they go because it is a long game it might be the fourth or fifth or tenth that really works. and i guess my mini version of the story would be one a british writer i've worked with the most of my career who i published a very eccentric book for the first ever published and then he came in with a different book about an obsessive book and i loved it and i thought it was a sort of generational a significant book comes something about the voice told new and we published the first and it's done okay but about the second it is different and not what anybody was expecting and the

publisher who is a sort of legendary guy he knew he wasn't going to like it so i wrote a memo to defend myself against the arguments against it and i gave it to him and a couple of days later i landed back in my inbox and was a manuscript that was fundamentally handled so he came back with pages sticking out over the place and one with red pen at the top saying awful. [laughter] so i was forced to reject this book and i was brokenhearted i had to send a letter to the british agent and i thought about it continuously and in the meantime it came out in england and was getting these nice reviews and i told the agent just send me off of the reviews we've got and this was a year after i rejected it and then i would quietly drop the review

one by one and the editor-in-chief box -- >> no wonder he was cranky. [laughter] >> probably true. he ended up promoting me to editor and i remember he said to me so we are making you an editor which means you can make your own stupid mistakes. so she was $7500 for the book you wanted to die. [laughter] it went on to win the national book award and within three years everybody at the company had forgotten how much they supposedly disliked the book. [laughter] and then we went on to publish continuously. it's becausespigots and characteristics of each book is different from the last. >> it's made him difficult to publish because of a commercial writer job is to produce and

replicate and he is an extreme version of that so yes they were all difficult but now they just publish. >> there was something that you said about how it was a year after you had rejected the manuscript. can you walk us through the process like what is if we start from bonnie if we got something in the inbox how long is it before it gets on the shelf? stomach i have divided into fiction versus nonfiction

because when you sell a novel you are selling the entire novel. i started publishing you used to be able to sell a novel and a partial. these days unless you are a best-selling author those are gone. the jk rowling could send a partial but the novelists i'm dealing with are either first of the list were on their second or third book and said they don't sell that on a partial. >> i sold a partial 1200 pages. at the time we didn't know that it is going to be quite so long so i think the contractor said 100,000 words or 150,000-watt 600,000 which is what wound up being. these days you have to solve the whole novel so to walk you

through it i sold a novel this past week where i started working with director in october of 2013. i read around christmas. we gave her editorial notes so the entire process has been a good year and a half of her doing to huge rafts and fixing it and this is the novel we love and we are like yes you have to fix this and the beginning. [laughter] so to rewrite and one finish. so that's took a year and a half and is sold in a week and got preempted for a lot of money. so then she's like it's so fast and i'm like glad to know you think so.

so novel's we are a hands-on agency and it needs we work with writers to get things in the best possible shape so that by the time i send it out it is as good as i know how to make it. i remember a book i sold a few years ago which she was conveniently getting on a plane to bulgaria going to a writers conference and it was a novel that i worked with for at least a year because it takes a lot to get to block area. by the time i woke up the next day she sent me any now saying i love this and i want to buy this. so the process can take to the process can take a long time and if you're lucky you can sell a novel fairly quickly. nonfiction is different because you are selling it on proposal, and proposals you have to shape

and that can take a long time. but then the writer has to go out into the research so there's usually at least a year sometimes as much as two years to write a book so no one expects you to do the interviewing and the travel and everything else on your own money. you could put a publishing contract. even writing proposals, people do 20 drafts to get it right. >> these are people who think journalists for years by computer guys winning journalist. yeah it's not good enough. so that is a long process. that's just to get it to them. this permitted the author that you've gone through and you change the beginning and ending

and get into this editor that bought it for the love of money is that this is great. we have to change the beginning of the medley and the ending because that's when the tory editing starts. i've gone through a couple of drafts of every book with the author to try to get it into its best possible shape. and none of this is strictly a state statistic i guess. it's a jacquard market and we are trying to get any given that it's best possible chance of being noticed and as all the view that walk in the bookstore there are a lot of different choices do we want to don't give you the reason to not put a book down and so that can take a lot of work but we are a small nonprofit press and we don't have large marketing budgets. >> how many finalists.

>> the four finalists for the national book critics circle award with only three books. >> it was the first time we have a single book that was -- >> citizen with a novelist to develop winning in the category because it is an extraordinary book and the whole story of that book has been the great publishing success but because we don't have these big projects we taken the time -- you can technically make a buck book in a few months or even less but the time it takes to make sure that all the booksellers out there have read it and are talking about is when the comes out in all of the critics that might be writing about it are ready to talk about it, that's can't take many months am so when i finished the final draft of the manuscript and handed over to the copy editors and we

start the process of publishing the book, but as a full year so the writer can be done in the box seat for another year where we need that extra time to kind of feed the field and make sure we have manuscripts to the booksellers in iraq individual notes to people like carolyn and let them know that something i'm excited about the process is quite slow and strangely in this technological modern world of e-books it is very much a person-to-person business. >> and we also have to plan if we have two novels set in the south and don't want them in the same catalog. you have to plot your entire list worth of scheduling and that means perhaps accelerating more delay so everything is fairly strategic but it does seem like sometimes you have this like five years ago and then it will come out next year.

>> by the time it comes out of did we publish this? [laughter] we've been talking about it for so long. >> ) of worst thing you can say is good that's come out of? [laughter] >> i wonder you published this debut mystery writer amanda wonder can you talk about that a little bit? >> sure. it's about 5-years-old and it -- that's what they do. i became the publisher about two years ago. he said the heavy read this book

by this author that used to be in the british secret service he said you should read it so i did did. and he told me i'm going to show you something nobody else in this company knows. it was a new cover of being so he published the book and then i was at the conference which uganda was a great conference that was july and i got a call that started the relationship and we go back and he said it's about to break it was one of the

lawyers and all these troubles are like is it. but we are sitting there freaking out about this thing that was about to happen but they printed 7,000 copies. she was very happy to have at least she got that one experience of writing a to publishing to try something new. that's a long answer but that's part of the story.

>> i remember where i was on a sunday morning and i was like what i want to be doing is writing about how the harry potter lady is writing mr. e-books all of a sudden. like it's sunday. that was kind of exciting to think what it must be like. what was it like for you trying to manage liquidity left to do try to block it? >> once it was out of the managed because i think that they had struck -- facebook to the guardian and gave them their first interview about it so we were lucky the first time because the editor didn't know the publicist didn't know. you'll remember where you are were when you heard about this. it was a big deal then suddenly

the book became exponentially bigger from what we thought it was. >> you have to tell of being your own company. >> it's the sort of thing you wish you could tell because it's great but it made it easy to get the secret. you can see years later we still have the memories of how secret it was. >> when you said there was a printing of 7500 copies is that normal? is that normal for a debut author and can we go -- say that i'm a debut author and i've written my first to being a being a journalist at the los angeles times. okay, zero copies of that. how many copies will you publish? in a time fine jk rowling how many will you print? >> now we get to the

nitty-gritty. it's used in the original form as an example. he wasn't worried. there wasn't much we could say because you could end up pitch profiles. he wasn't going to talk on the radio. so they were expecting the mega arrival of the big deal. there was a book later this year called city on fire. they paid a lot for it. i just saw the galley. it's massive and has illustrations and is cool. i'm guessing that they will print 100 100,000. >> the thing about these numbers is that i've seen really

successful books so 8,000 copies in 19 books having sold 60,000 copies. it attends where your expectations start for the buck. so there is no right number for any writer you are trying to put a sustainable career and to do well enough that you can write another book. >> the way publishing works in the technology is such that years ago publishers would overprint because they then have to ship them over the country whereas now it goes much faster so they don't overprint the same way. they used pulp books which is a harsh way of saying the just they just put rid of them and dump them. whereas now people will do lots of smaller printing as opposed to one giant one. william used to be known for their print run which was

printing 100000, 150,000, take as you he you go off that's 15,000. it was on the back cover. >> it's like a signal telling the reviewer is in the bookstore we have high expectations for this book and we are saying 50000 as a target. >> i wondered if there are any questions in the audience. i have many questions but i know that you are curious. we are going to do this on the past microphone because he wanted dvr begins. how about the women in blue first. >> i noticed that if you

remember one of your newly acquired books into the sentence that sold you and then you haven't talked about titles how important are they and will that convince you to read the book at your favorite person from history so that's kind of three. >> i do help with titles. nice to offers that come up with terrible titles and i'm like i forbid you to call it that. my husband is amazingly good that's titles. he came up with the title is a book published that that has gone on to sell a lot of copies. one of the worst was titled the

quest which it was about a dog sled race and six months and they were like it doesn't actually mean anything doesn't? and i said no. so, i came up with titles over time because i need a good title i can sell it on. sometimes it remains the good book and sometimes it does not. >> we go over the titles and subtitles and you have to do that before it gets to the jacket. it can be funding and it can be exhausting too. we definitely spend a lot of time on the titles. >> it can be very tricky.

we argue about them a lot. it's likely unrelated but i have the title story which is a legendary work for a guy that i knew in his later years and he had been one of john's editors he was in japan for a conference conference. he was telling a story about being in japan for a conference. there's no book that i love more than angry reason. [laughter] >> packet have another one travels with my hand and said it isn't a good title and basic that it be simpler to change publishers than to change titles. [laughter]

>> you said it just basically slammed even to the chariot you stated there. >> i'm glad you asked because i could recite it. >> are there any other first sentences but you know unlike? >> the first couple of pages may be the easy way to say it is labeled sometimes read a bunch of the submissions and not be sure what i'm saying to torture myself and almost always i should reject the book. it took me a long time to get there to read when i read something i like unlike my god i like my god my job is easy. you know it very quickly. because the reaction isn't very

sophisticated and different then when you are a kid and you decided you really like it. our jobs as editors is to articulate that reaction for the reader. i will say the start of the book isn't actually here. it's two paragraphs down. they were doing all of this post clearing at the beginning. so sometimes it is just getting right into it. sometimes the first sentences and even there. >> have you also do not draft the manuscript starts on page five and chapter five? >> i did that in the system where there was a chapter in by mike that's not your first chapter. your first sentence goes on from there and i'm like that store beginning. and he was like okay.

he disagreed about a lot of things that we had a fight about the end of the novel where you could end in the middle of a sentence. and i had a fight with him and i lost him and his editor had that fight with him and lost interest in the way it was. but i did from the beginning. >> how about this one here and the vast. >> several of you mentioned if everything goes right, what has to go right for a book to sell big? >> you have to buy it you. [laughter] >> i think so much knowledge about what happened actually before publication. like the publishing process for the begins at least a year

before for everything to go right. we have to do so much work ahead of time to make other people and other booksellers, bloggers come everybody aware of the book. they got it out there and got people talking about it. >> that's one example. there were other things, too. but it was like a week after publication they gave it a review that said this is the next bond girl and that's another thing. that's one example. if the reviews came in the way you want them to people were responding vocally. >> that that review alone wouldn't have been sufficient enough without all the work you did to support that. >> bright. and from my point of view,

everything that has to go right in order to sell it i can love a book and belief in it but then i have to get -- i do delete need at this one if not several. you send out for number of editors at the same time, they kept talking about it. there is a sort of drumbeat in the industry where i am based in la so there's no one near me in publishing, not like right near me. i will hear from editors i didn't separate the book to people known as scouts who are always gathering information for foreign publishers and movie producers. they will be like i hear you have something else and that's when i know the drumbeat has started. then i can try to use that to

the best of my advantage. >> sometimes it works and sometimes it goes to hell. >> just right there and then come around to this site. >> i'm sure all of you publishers love each other but are there any backstabbing stories that you can tell us about? [laughter] >> it happens. it's a competitive industry. there is bad behavior. but we will talk about it later. [laughter] >> what's interesting about that is all of you are in different cities. even in san francisco and does it allow a little distance away

from that? >> it goes up our little different from the hysteria and certainly there was a stage where anything that took place in brooklyn was selling. and if you live here you are like okay i give it its proclaimed people in the rest of the country don't care at all about that little café on the restaurant so it gives us a different perspective. there are issues and there are things that are important like immigration, the drought that we see here that we then have to explain to people in new york late the last two months in "the new york times." people are like i hear that it doesn't rain their. [laughter] and you were like no it hasn't. >> i would say it all depends on the company that you are in any way that it is a competitive

business and there is bad behavior and i think compared to a lot of the corporate businesses. but i heard one sometimes they are different corporate cultures and i heard an anecdote when saudi moves from one publisher to another at the new place they say if they have the courtesy of stabbing you in the front. [laughter] >> you talked about titles into the marketing. what is the process for discovering the books in how much does that play into the process and how much does it play into the marketing scheme and where does it come from? i. >> we have a weekly cover meeting into the first thing that happens is the editor comes in and it describes as to the department and a sort of unwavering slides of comparable titles.

we love this about that book and we love the way that the image -- the feel and the look of that. not to copy them but to give the part debate could department the and the hereafter and then we come back. the designers bring back covers and it can be frustrating because we don't like to show them. of all of the designs this is the one that we like because there's always the risk and it happens. when i'm like i'm going to do with this one time they pick the one we don't want to use and we are not trying to be jerks about it we have reasons and we have our salesperson and marketing and publicity persons. so we're thinking if it's not just in terms of the editor about what we think the market wants to end well respond to best. so it is a commercial business.

spinning the cover is an advertisement. it's not -- it should be graceful and elegant and that's appropriate. >> it's got to be appropriate but it's also responsible to stand out if you walk into a bookstore and you see ten books on the shelf when is the one that is going to capture your eye. this packet is a balancing act. you might see a bunch of books targeted at young women that showed huge shoes because you want to be able to speak to people about the last cute shoe book. a cynic but >> then you will hear these things ikea will books don't sell.

>> this is an agent question but it's not just for bonnie. if you want to see a publisher you pretty much have to go through an agent. traditionally that wasn't the case and i'm just wondering if it will remain so for the foreseeable future are there more publishers that can approach not that i wish you ill or anything. [laughter] when i first started publishing yes you could submit directly to a publishing house but that doesn't exist anymore as far as i know. there are a great many agents out there and more and more all the time who like all different kinds of books. i think it has gotten way easier than it used to be in that you

can find their readership without a publisher or agent that if you are going the traditional route you have to have an agent to facilitate that that. >> we had to stop taking the submissions. they generally don't have agents and we find work that way but now it doesn't mean i don't read the work. there is a distinction. >> they also have a nonfiction competition. >> we have an open door every other year now and that is one open door but it its not to say that we are an agent of writers.

i will read a literary magazine and then we will find that author and help them get an agent if they don't have one yet. but the volume of the submissions has become too difficult to give them everything that they deserve. >> how much of a digital presence does someone have to have before you take notice and hownoticinghow do you quantify that if amazon keeping their figures? >> i thought you meant what do you have a social media presence presence. >> you can follow them on flickr -- twitter. >> if it is a nonfiction author who is -- i'm trying to think of an example.

rebecca had a big presence on the to on twitter. >> if you have a big following that's something we say okay to 200,000 people no and that is a great leg up. then in the digital sales they don't. >> i would say it is not important at all. >> i saw more questions. hands up. the woman in and in the light blue sweater over there. i saw the galley that came in this week that said the author had 7500 followers and i thought that's like you for books right

now. >> i am a high school junior and i have been interested going into publishing particularly editing. i'm taking english and i served on the board of my school's literary magazine. my main question is what should i be looking for in terms of now during high school and during college and after that to kind of get into the industry and help prepare myself? ..[laughter] >> well, i think it's safe to say we didn't go the trust fund route. >> yeah, exactly. >> there are great internship programs you know, in college, you can apply to those and after college nyu, denver and columbia all have really good