about this book and then they give us each a copy of the book for those of us who come to the event and so it's -- it's a wonderful story. >> book t wants to know what you're reading this summer. tweet us your answer at book tv or you can post it on our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. >> who was william warter nor norton. >> probably as important in the history of my firm is that he married a fascinating woman. mary norton and the two of them effectively together founded the firm. mrs. norton was always very much a part of the operation even though they realized that she was never a paid employee because this was the 1920's,

the firm was founded in 1923. began publishing mostly trade books. the original book had academic plant to them because mr. and mrs. norton like to go to the people's institute which is a sort of adult-education branch, cooper union in new york city and one can imagine mrs. norton tugging and saying, someone should publish these lectures. it was mr. norton kept his day job in import-export industry but began to published from the people's institute. we were first founded at people's institute press and operated under that name for three years. mr. norton 1926, the firm was reincorporated as w.w. norton and company, he quit job in the industry and became a full-time publisher.

>> how long was mr. norton active? >> he was with the firm for 19 years, 1926, he died unfortunately rather suddenly in 1945 after which the firm began an evolution through the generosity of mrs. norton who was incredibly proud of this publishing that she and her husband had started. by the mid 1950's or formerly in late 1950's the ownership structures switched from mrs. norton to the senior managers of the firm and very quickly, we created the stock ownership plan we have today which has anybody who has been at norton for three years or more is eligible to buy stocks and as i walk the hallways at norton i am looking at all of the stock holders. something we are very proud of. >> so not a public company? >> we are a privately-held company and employee-owned firm.

we are not one of the big publishers. we are somewhat outside but with 93 years in the business now we have the balance to do the kind of publishing that -- that the big publishers do and i would argue this the focus we have the employee ownership we have little more interest. >> who are some of the authors you published? >> i myself public policy, i was a temperature book editor in the field of economics and had the great good fortune while doing that to meet joseph, a mayor norton author, go onto win a nobel prize, also while i was working, met paul, later became new york times columnist, paul later became nobel prize winner and a number of other pretty big

name economists, but i sort of liked bring -- getting that policy viewpoint out there. it's something that norton believed in that there are brilliant people on college campuses, if you can go and find the interests ones and the ones that can write well and convey ideas to the public at large, that's what we want to be doing as a publishing house, but oh to some extent i represent, many years since 1923 but that's grant. >> now, you joined ww norton in 1976, became president in '94. what kind of work did you do in the years prior? >> okay, i started college travel, a term that means a lot in w.w. norton. what it means, what it translates to i was the sales rep at the university campus for norton. did that for about three and a half years. i always wanted to be an editor.

there was not a question in my mind that's why i entered the publishing business and that's what i wanted to do. eventually i was persuaded that going on on college campus, a, i would learn a lot more why the books worked and why they didn't, but i would also begin to meet the people that one day might become authors for me as an editor. that worked. i became an editor in the college department. about 1980 and that all went very well. we built temperature book list in economics that i'm very proud of. norton does not have big walls between its textbook division and trade book division. i began to publish some other interesting authors for the trade and i got known in the trade department. in 1994 was a transition time for norton, the then president was beginning to -- wanted to

start a phaseout, was looking at his retirement and my honor and privilege that i was select today run the company. >> when you hired an editor, what do you look for? >> oh, we look for interesting people who represent -- so on the trade, i should separate trade and college and i think your audience is probably more interesting in the trade side but i'm proud of what we do in the college side. you want interesting people, what you are betting on as a trade publisher is your editor's sense of taste and it's going to be corky and interesting but afters mask very well on the taste of readers in the united states. so that's what we are looking for and we are always -- it's rare that we have one of those spots open but when we do, we are really looking for somebody who has something interesting to the list or build an interesting part of the list that's vacated

by somebody who has left the firm. >> the college temperature book world has changed, hasn't it, over the last ten years? >> changed enormously. we still believe that it starts with the book and starts with getting the books right, it starts with helping really good revisions of those books. we are superproud of the authors and we have a very distinguished list of authors on the college side. we are superproud of that. what you're alluding to is very, very important. over the last eight to ten years, the advances in educational technology, the ability to do assessment with students online is very, very important to the adoption decisions that professors are making. in order to play in that space you better also be good with education technology and i'm very proud of what we are doing in that field as well. >> the digital revolution, how

has that affected your business? >> well, i feel as if the most interesting stuff with all due respect to our trade department and what's going on, the really interesting things are happening in the educational technology area. general revolution on the trade side, e-books are a huge part of what we do. there's no question about that as a way that readers enjoy consuming their books, not a huge technological problem to figure out how to deliver a file so it can be an e-book the problems aren't that interesting and the importance of e-books is clear. you also have with the online revolution the marketing possibilities, sort of tapping and being able to go out and become parts of various community, a huge part of what we are trying to do is help

readers discover books that they'll be interested to read, and so we are constantly looking for opportunity through social media to either leverage book review or attention in an author in the major media or just to go straight to the online communities that have certain interest that match up well with the type of book. >> how many prints at norton? >> i should probably list them. the main one is norton, college is a separate and also norton and there's a lot that goes on between trade and college in both directions. i think you had a good conversation with the director of that imprint.

that is going to be growing up, already growing up to be a major second front in our trade efforts. we've been having good years over the last eight or ten years, looking for opportunities to grow. i sort of believe 125 titles, about the maximum that any imprint can do. that's what we have been publishing on the norton imprint for as long as we have been thinking about it we have interesting imprint that we have acquired and why don't we revive that to suddenly that's another that we can do. it has its own publicity team and marketing group so it can have its own identity and nicely add 20, 30 books a year to what we are doing on the trade side. we have lifestyle imprint and, i guess, i'm counting a fourth

imprint and the last piece of the people. but sort of living travel books, all the kinds of things that are a very different kind of publishing that we do with the trade, imprint, and that is so many different varieties rgs professionals are what the books are trying to do. the idea is a somewhat technical book. the list has begun to branch out . >> what are some of the books that norton has coming out this year? >> yeah, we are really excited. we have one that's right around the corner.

mary just writes. she missed her calling and i'm so happy that she did because mary can be a stand-up comic. so she loves interesting but off-beat kinds of science and this one is going to be about the science of the military. this is not posttraumatic stress disorder, how do you deal with the kinds of issues that may come up. it is mary at her unique best, just coming out. sure to be a best seller. mary has many fans out there. what we are doing here at the conference is looking ahead to the fall. , i guess, moving towards the fall. we are doing an instant book in july about the zika virus.

donald mcniel who is the lead reporter is going to do a short book that we are going to produce instantly because we happen to think that this is going to be a book of interest. sorry of a nice story about the fact that you can do a book that fast. we will publish it as e-book and book. we expect to be a lot of interest in that book come july. moving on into the fall, alan taylor, two-time winner, now at the university of virginia, studied the colonial period and has a book called the "american revolution," looks nice and tighty in all the history books. the uprising against the british and that's certainly key to it. but has a lot of interesting

stories going on at the same time. they eventually all get pulled together by thomas jefferson and the others. the nice story that we have. but alan taylor with another one of the brilliant books about the colonial era. richard mullar. university of california berkeley. rich has written a number of books. "now," real history. only one true a way to understand time and it is to understand the present and you have to read the book to understand the rest of it. we have a book called "blood at the root" by philip.

a county in georgia that in the 1920's basely racially, racial cleansing ran the black community out of the country and patrick phillips sort of goes back home and didn't understand, the town that he grew up in, goes back to try to understand this horrific period in his county history. how many more should i get? >> how long are they in the process, what's your personal involvement? >> donald mcniel's book we acquired about eight weeks ago and we will publish about eight weeks from now and so, you know, when you need to, when you within the to you can move really fast. so the typical book we don't advise that.

typical gestation period is ten months. what ten months allows us to do -- we can physically manufacturer the book more quickly but ten months give us time to prepare the market for that book. there's a lot of things behind the scenes in terms of letting our department dood do the important work they need to do with the media to begin so that we are ready to get good attention for that book once it comes out. that's ten months between when that manuscript turns into a copy editor. sometimes things are pretty quickly. you're probably looking at publication a year, a little more than a year from the time that you acquire the book. with nonfiction, some writers write pretty quickly. we have books that have been 20 years in the making and the right book and the right author

and you wait patiently while they work and perhaps a simple of matter of 20 years of research that makes a good book. >> we talked to mary while we were here at the publisher's convention. she talked about book contracts. have they changed for you as a publisher over the years? >> pretty much the same as it was. the one thing that's been added, obviously is stipulation for the i-book, what the rate is going to be on the e-book. so it's been pretty standard for a good long time. it gets, you know, we are constantly talking with different literary agents and different authors about just trying to recognize things that are moving ahead, i would say in basic form it's been the same for a good long time. >> what's the role of a literary agent? >> literary agents are -- that's

our main source for writing. i started -- i still personally treasure the fact that i know how to go on university campuses and find the very best people but, boy, literary agents is a very interesting in terms of scouting for talent, being able to match that talent to the right editor. i can't tell you how often i'm at a cocktail party and somebody knows that i've been publishing, i know this friend that has a book. i call the needle in a hay stack, the chances that a random author is going to have a book right for the norton list and right for me, are so close to zero that they might as well be zero. what does the literary agent do? if that author can get a literary agent interested in the book, then the literary agent is going to take that book on because the literary agent can think of three editors in the business, five editors in the business who like to do that

kind of book. so there's a very important match-making role that literary agents -- and of course every literary agent is good at business side of things. the literary agent is negotiating the contract with the publishing house on behalf of the author. >> double question, has there been a book that you passed on that you regret and has there been a book -- >> sure. i don't really like to talk about the ones that got away. [laughter] >> we published jared diamond's and if i could have my life to do over again, i probably would have made that decision differently. there's your example on that side. the serendipity, i cite two

books. first book you or anybody should read before you start your portfolio. you want to get confident about how to handle your 401k. we have sold millions of copies of this book and i'm here to tell you that this book in the the flush pile in the business. it got discovered in stockpile and signed it up and millions of copies sold now. that's one bit of serendipity and i would also put in the column, we were one of three publishers who were approached to publish the 9/11 commission report when that came out in 2004. all secret, all behind the scenes but they decided to employ the power of commercial publishing house in order to

ensure that the book -- that the american public had a chance to read this very important document. the serendipity that were consultants and had an opportunity to bid on the project, it was serendipity, it was risk of the firm and so proud of publishing the 9/11 commission report and in the end worked out okay financially as well. >> we have been talking to drake mcfeely. this is book tv on c-span. >> book tv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress who they're reading this summer. >> right now i'm reading a book written by richard and i can't remember the names of the