on about books. we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span book tv. and welcome to about books. this is book tv's program and podcast, which looks at the

business of publishing. now, in just a few minutes, we'll focus on one place where the rubber meets the road when it comes to putting books in the hands of readers. we'll be talking with richard ho worth, who is the owner of square books in oxford, mississippi. but first, here's a look at some recent publishing news. a judge in virginia last week dismissed a lawsuit that sought to declare two books as obscene and to ban their distribution to minors. the books were genderqueer, a memoir by maya cobb in a court of mist and fury by sarah, mass. both books describe cyber illustrate sexual acts. now the associated press reported that tommy altmann, a virginia beach tattoo shop owner and former republican congressional candidate, argued that the depiction phones were inappropriate for minors, and he sought to keep bookstores and libraries from distributing the books to children.

now, in the wake of the judge's ruling, the associate of american publishers said the decision was, quote, a significant and unequivocal victory for the free speech rights of readers, authors, publishers, booksellers and library as well. also in the news later this month, the washington post will bring back its stand alone book review section. the move comes as the post has increased its book staffing, including the addition of a new book's editor, john williams. washington post book critic ron charles said that the new section will include reviews, profiles, author q&a as publishing stories and quote, anything else we might dream up for this luxurious new space. meanwhile, another newspaper is also expanding its book coverage. canada's globe and mail is bringing back its standalone arts and books section after a pandemic hiatus. the news site publisher at lunch

reports that the globe and mail's book section will return on saturday, september 10th. and now a conversation with one longtime bookseller. his name is richard howorth. he's the owner of square books in oxford, mississippi. and in a recent profile piece, the new yorker described him as a man who nurtured generous fans of southern writers and readers and changed his hometown in the process. so, richard howorth, how did square books get started? my wife and i started the store in 1979. we worked in a bookstore in washington, d.c. for two years with the explicit purpose of learning the business so that we could come back to oxford, not my hometown place where i grew up, and open a bookstore here. so how has oxford changed since you opened it in 1979?

well, a lot has changed. everywhere since 1979. and certainly a lot has changed here. it's it's a home of the university of mississippi and both the university and the town have gone through an enormous amount of growth in that time, which has been good for business. and and good good in many other ways, but also for worrisome to those who are concerned about real estate prices and housing and and traffic and those sorts of things of course. but it still remains a wonderful community and i'm happy that we still live here. did you expect growing up to own a bookstore? not really. i was, as i think i may have

said recently to someone, directionless in much of my youth and but i had an older brother who always had a lot of cockamamie ideas about what we would do. and we grew up. and one of those was to open a bookstore in oxford. there wasn't a bookstore here. it seemed like a logical and and conceivable thing to do, although, you know, i didn't i didn't really pursue it until after i had graduated from college, got married, been out in the world a little bit and decided on until then that i decided that i would try to open our own bookstore. how did it get the name square? well, we're on the town's square with the courthouse in the middle of the square and shops all around the perimeter and restaurants all around the perimeter of the square.

it's, you know, it's pretty it's some somewhat like the courthouse square. and faulkner's jefferson yoknapatawpha county, although it's you know, things have changed a lot since then. the main reason i called it square books was because when we first opened the store, we had $10,000. we borrowed another $10,000. we didn't have a lot of capital. we couldn't find a good location on the square on a new. i wanted to be on the square. the only place i could find was it was upstairs. so i rented this upstairs office space really for $100 a month. and mainly called it square books, because i wanted people to understand that the bookstore was on the square. and now you've expanded into about four buildings or four locations on the square, correct? well, three for separate

operations in three different buildings. and they're about 100 feet apart. so give us a sense of how big the business is, how many books do you have in square books, foot traffic? how many customers. i read somewhere where i had 50,000 books at one point, and i'm not sure how i got that figure. i know what our what our gross sales are. of course. but the books are, you know, one of the stores is a children's bookstore or i'm sure there must be, you know, ten, 10,000, 15,000 titles there that and then the main store, which has most of our category and is on two floors, has the bulk of the rest of the that those titles and then the third store off square books has remainders used

books and some new books that are in lifestyle. we describe it as lifestyle section cookbooks, design books, crafts, hobbies, travel. you know, they're there's some categories that are down there now. richard howorth, you mentioned william faulkner a minute ago. you and your family in oxford have kind of a special connection to two very famous authors, faulkner and john grisham. could you describe what those connections are? well, the house that i grew up in in oxford was directly across the street from farmer's home, now for faulkner, died about a little less than a year before we moved into that house. so i never knew, you know, but i certainly wasn't aware of his existence from the time that i was quite young and what else

you ask me? john grisham another connection. and of course, also there are people in my family who knew faulkner, both my grandfather. i had a great aunt who is probably his wife, estelle's best friend. so i grew up knowing that john grisham came to know when he was a young attorney living about 50 miles north of here, just outside memphis. and he came to see me because he's going to have a book published, a time to kill by a very small publisher, a subsidiary of a religious book company, actually. and he he was quite forward about his hopes and expectations and and about how i could help him with this first book. at first, we did pretty well with it, but it wasn't really

until the the firm. well, not that much not that it came out it was actually before it came out the doubleday paid a lot of money for it, mainly because john sold the movie rights before he sold the book rights, which is which is rare in the book business, especially if you're unheard of as a writer. but he managed to do that. and then, of course, doubleday wanted to pay a lot of money because it was going to be alluded to boom. the rest is history. and mr. grisham is still pretty faithful to square books, correct? is he a science book for you know, in the early days we would do a book signing with every book that came out and it got. to two to it became unmanaged. well, actually, i mean, there was no way he could have stayed awake long enough to sign books for all the people that were in line. and so he now signs copies and

those get shipped us and we still sell a good many number of copies of his books. now, mr. whole worth is square books in oxford, mississippi on authors tours, or is it tough to get authors to come down there? well, yes and no. i mean, that's something that that we've worked hard at ever since the stores opened again, when, you know, when i started in that upstairs and i'm in a town of 10,000 people, you're you know, you're thinking of everything you possibly can to attract people, at least in our working at this bookstore in see we did get james dickey, who lived in in suburban d.c. to come in and sign books. we got larry autry to himself, had a bookstore in d.c. to come in and sign books. it was something that we had done even in that store, although back in those days it was not all that common. the bookstores at book signings

a few did, some did, but not a lot. and so i tried to get. the first writer i knew, ellen douglas, who who lived in mississippi, did a book signing and bill ferris, who was the new director of the newly established center for the study of southern culture, was here. he just happened to know people like toni morrison, alex haley and back in those early days, who would agree to come here and do book signings for us. alice walker so we had people who are helping us do that and, and, and we've can continue to do that over the years. in 1992, we established a sign book club, if you will, where people would sign up and we would automatically send them one sign, first edition per month and that sort of supported

what we were trying to do so that we could tell a publisher that if you send your author here, we can sell 300 copies of the book and support it that help helped a lot. we also worked with the bookstore in jackson, mississippi, lemuria books and the owner of that store, john evans, and i were classmates at the university of mississippi, and we were sort of friends and we decided to work together. and rather than compete in trying to get writers to come to mississippi and it's about 160 miles south of here. and so we we worked hard at that or successful in attracting writers here. well, mr. howorth, in a recent new yorker profile of you and square books, it's written that one morning you and lisa woke up to find james dickey, best known for his novel deliverance drink drinking beer on a stool in their kitchen while regaling their son, then in a single digit with heaven knows what kind of stories while the boy

ate his breakfast cereal, that's a true story. we one of the things we often did when writers came here was it's kind of hard to get here. you can't just go in and out of oxford. you got to fly in to memphis, drive your drive back to memphis and so forth. and so frequently visitors would stay the night and as a way to defray the expenses sometimes which were undertaken by the authors themselves, we would put them up in our home. we had room in our home to we had a guest room and they could stay there and and one james dickey came. we made that offer and he did it. and and and the rest, as you say, is is is pretty much true. well, tell us about your co-owner, lisa howorth. lisa is a an engaging,

intelligent. individualistic. person who's charming and. and unusual in all sorts of ways, that 95% of which i love, i think it's and she's written a couple of novels herself. she also did a an art history book. she has a degree in art history. and and while she hasn't been as active in the operation of the bookstore as i have, she's always been a every bit as much a guiding spirit of the store as i am. and and she often helps entertain some of these writers when they come to town. well, we talked about book tours for authors. mr. howorth, and whether or not they make it to where books.

we want to show a little bit of video of you interviewing a well known author who i read. it's great to see you. thank you so much. appreciate it. they're hawking books. i've got a question for you. it's actually a two part question. go ahead. how on earth were you able to get any reading done? and i mean, sort of sort of reading that you would like to do while you were president and the second part is, what would you recommend that joe biden be reading right now? well, i'm going to answer the first question or the second question first. what i'd tell joe is read whatever nourishes his soul and and that's going to be different things for different people. richard, how was that? it's what we would call in the tv industry a pretty big get for you to get. former president obama has a

guest. how'd you do that? actually, that was done through his his publisher at the time that his autoblog biography came out. and they were i don't know whether he asked for them to do this or this was their idea. but part of what they wanted to do was, i think they wanted five different independ booksellers to ask a question of president obama. he was he was open to this idea and i don't i can't remember whether i said what phrase my hand said. i've got a question or what whether they call me. but in any event, it happened. i had met him a couple of times. he the first presidential debate in his. first campaign was held here at

the university of mississippi in oxford. and i met him at that time, and i also met him very early on in his campaign because he had a fundraiser in jackson, mississippi, sponsored by ray mabus, who was his secretary of the navy and a former governor of mississippi. and ray is an old friend of mine and good friend of mine and invited me down for that. so we met then i miss him. well, we should note that richard worth has served as mayor of oxford, mississippi, as well. now, you mentioned the publishers had a role in getting president obama. what's the relation and ship at least your in your case, of an independent bookstore to the publishers? most of that is facilitated through sales representatives who call the call on us mostly in person.

twice a year, sometimes three times a year. publisher have different timetable and publishing schedules, but mostly there's a spring season and a fall season and they send their sales representative to visit with us. and it's a sit down discussion about the about what we're going to buy on the on the coming list and i stopped doing the buying when i went over there to city hall in 2001. cody morrison does that here now. so it's been a while since i've done that, but. apart from that, we do interact some with their marketing people. it's inevitable in this business when you read books and you love certain books and you love that writer and you find out who the editor was who acquired the book

and publish the book, eventually you get to know editors and publishers and so those made a lot of friendships that way, but also, you know, good. i've had good business relations that way because you've got a head start on who's doing what. well, you recently, along with the new yorker profile, you wrote an op ed for the new york times as opposing the penguin random house. simon and schuster merger. and you say that, quote, it would be bad news for american book consumers. why are your view would that merger be bad news? well, you know, one of the things that's happened over the course of time that i've been in the book business is the the the the big publishers have gotten bigger and.

the smaller publishers have become fewer. it's it's very complicated. but, you know, the larger the publishers become, the more weight they have to throw around in terms of how they publish books and which authors they decide to publish and you, you know, the cost of the books and, you know, all those important sorts of decisions which i believe are are healthier in a more competitive environment than what we have now been essentially reduced to. we have five publishers that control 80% of the us book market and one publisher that controls us, according to some

figures. half of it. and i know that in my own business, penguin random house has more than half of our entire business. if they decide to get mad at me, which they may for having written this piece. no, i don't think so. then you know, that could be bad for me. that could be very bad for me. and you know, maybe they won't. and writers here on book tour anymore, you know, whatever, you know, i don't think they're going to selectively punish me that way. but it gives you an idea of what what they could do and a, i think that if it's if they're more publishers competing for books, then it's healthier for writers. i think it's they have a better chance of getting published period and be maybe i don't

about the money but it you know it could be it's you know better monetarily a lot of the large publishers now have many imprint rates some of which publishers the same sorts of books and you know, minors standing is that while some of the people at the top of the corporation have have corporations, i should say, have said that that that they're not going to let their imprint that they will allow their imprints to compete against each other for, let's say you submitted a manuscript to random house and it and and to editors who want it. yes. that would be great if they got into a big war and you could get more money for your intellectual property. i don't believe that. that's really happening or it doesn't sound logical that it

would happen if i were the ceo of that giant corporation, which will never happen, then i would be asking those two editors, why are you bidding against somebody that's in our own company? it's going to end up costing us more money. no. so i just i'm very concerned about it and i think the a lot of publishers, what began as an outgrowth of a of an individual, as a personality, and that imprint takes on somewhat the sort of taste and personality of that person. and and that's how it becomes the imprint that it is, which gives it definition and, you know, for a reader, you know, a sort of kind of understanding about what that publisher is about and i'm afraid we'll lose that, though. i know that they're great editors that are still at the large publishing houses. i'm just wary of that becoming

less and less the case there are fewer or fewer smaller publishers or mid-sized publishers. you've got a few like norton i mentioned in their article, grove atlantic is another great sort of mid-sized publisher. but when i entered the business 40 years ago, there was there were a couple of large publishers and a lot of mid-sized publishers. now you've got a very few gigantic publishers and very few midsize. so well, if you want to read it, if you want to read the profile of richard howorth, that's in the new yorker and the op ed was in the new york times in our remains minute. mr. howorth, what are some of the books that are catching your eye these days. booksellers are usually reading ahead of time. we're usually reading what's coming out next. and getting ready for that. so when that when the books come

into the store, we can you know, we can start selling them and we can prepare our marketing for those books ahead of time. one of those books which in fact, just landed the other day is a book by jim harrison. he's a writer who came to our store many, many times. he was we loved him here. lemuria books in jackson loved him. he he said at one point that i don't know why it is in mississippi. it's sort of like france. i have i have a lot of readers there. and and we were devoted to this guy. these are essays that he wrote over the span of his life, most some of which have never been published. some some have, but they're collected here in this book called jim harrison, the search for the genuine and even if you're not a lover of fishing and hunting, as i am not a lot of these essays are about that.

then you would love these other books. i'm very keen on is not this book by wendell berry, but another book which i believe is called to be whole, is it has not come out yet and it is far his biggest book, i think about maybe seven, seven, six or 700 pages long. he usually writes fairly short books when nobody's from kentucky. he's 87 years old. he's sort of agrarian and philosopher. and in this book, he reckons with race, he deals with race in kentucky in the united states throughout his life. and it is a thought provoking as all his books are and beautifully written piece to the whole wendell berry, one of our great writers. well, mr. whole worth mentioned readers in mississippi every year, book tv covers the mississippi book festival in jackson and always thousands of people show up at the state

capital for that. if you have a reason to be in oxford, mississippi, make sure to stop in at the square bookstore and say hi to richard haworth. we appreciate your time. thank you so much. i appreciate being with you today. and you're watching and listening to the about books, program and podcast. well, each tuesday, dozens of new books are published here. some recent ones, former goldman sachs executive jamie fiore. higgins is out with her exposé on the culture of finance and corporate america. her book is titled bully market my story of money and misogyny at goldman sachs. speaking of wall street. former wall street journal banking reporter greg steinmetz released his book about one of the wealthiest gilded age millionaires. it's titled american rascal how jay gould built wall street's biggest fortune. and freelance journalist mike mariani released his book on

what happens when humans experience life changing events. the book is called what doesn't kill us makes us who we become after tragedy and trauma. well, along with new books being released every week, reviews are written by national publications as well. here's a sampling of some recent reviews. the national review magazine describes noah rothman's new book, which is entitled the rise of the new puritans fighting back against progressives war on fun. as a quote, master class showing that progressives puritanical crusades manifest as a kind of behavioral, totalitarian ism in a role reversal, the national review writes, mr. rothman references some contemporary leftist insanity, then consults the historical record to show puritans doing more or less the same thing. and the wall street journal recently reviewed centuries

witness, which is a look at the life of foreign correspond pundit and journalist wallace carroll. now, mr. carroll covered the spanish civil war, world war two and the vietnam war, among other historical events. the wall street journal says that mary llewellyn mcneill's biography of mr. carroll chronicles, quote, newspapering, glory years and offers cautionary tales about the practice of journalism. keep an eye out for these authors and books in the near future. on c-span's book tv. now, before we close, we want to note that book tv was live this weekend at the 22nd annual library of congress national book festival here in washington, d.c. all of our author interviews that we did at the festival and all the book event coverage as well is available on our web site at book tv, dawg. well, thanks for joining us for about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span's

book tv. book tv will continue to bring you publishing news and author events, which you can always watch online at c-span dot org. and to get this podcast guest and all other c-span podcast, just go to our c-span now app. my name is spencer canadian and. i'm the director of programs here at, freedomworks. we're really excited. have you all here today for this book party, which promotes america in perspective written by david sokol and our own president adam brandon and a special thanks