we are going to have a great grofare going to be speaking tos today and we have a wonderful ceo panel where they're going to talk about how they're transforming their leadership te industry. so to introduce our panel. we have jonathan karp president and ceo of simon schuster, leading essence's, numerous publinternational companies. previously he was publisher and an imprint of the hachette book group and editor in chief of randomblishing career in 1989. i love to say that as an editor assistant. and then we hav's the president. are we sorry? he's the presidt and ceo of baker and taylor before helming the country's largest public and academic library wholesaler, a role he assumed in 2021 after divested from follett corporation, he was

executive psoftware products as and educational thnolog prior to baker and taylor, ammann was chief pro o vice pref product development at mcgraw-hill. amazon, also an author of a children's book series, gene fudge. and author of oak mary mcadam. mckinney mckinney, m.s. messed that up, becament and ceo of abrams in november 2022, making t position in the company's history. her appointment marked a return to abrams after 30 years having there in sales and marketing. prior to abrams, can you say your name again? mcavennie. the chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer ated media and r roles at s.a., harpercollins and

we have peter warwick. he's the president and ceo to his appointment, peter was an independent director on çjáscholastic's board for seven years. he has held several senior level positions at thomson reuters. reuters, including as ceo of significant business units, and has he and he began his career at pearson, first in an editorial capacity and eventually becomingsional educad information business unit and our moderator, lucia rahilly is global editorial director at mckinsey and company. lucia is global is also deputy insey global publishing, a team of more than 100 people worldwide. lucia co-hosts the mckinsey podcast and co-moderator mckinsey life. please welcome our guestscan yo?

hello. hi, folks. i'm lucia rackley, i i'm mckinsey'stor and i am so grateful to be together with you today to speak with the leaders of some of the biggest anmostpublishing housese bu as you know, like many other industries, is in the throes of rapidhange in technology innovation. and we'll look to oble and our panelists today to illuminate what's new, what's now and what's next. in other words, how they're navigating this potentially disruptive interval and hownd te culture and the leade■ahip vital to continuing to thrive in the to let'siocontext on the dyname

industry. how do you see the state of book publishing right now? is itis it contracting? and how sanguine are you on the ■8tradjme sector? and peter, why don't we start with you? okay. thank you. well, i think i think the industry at the moment of pret, actually. i mean, perhaps more rapid than for for some time. and in the short term, there's a certain amount of cyclicality. and i think we're in a bit of a down cycle at the moment because of we've been in quite an upcycle and then immediately immediately afterwards. i feel i feel pretty i look at it particularly from the point of view of children's publishing and what excites me t"about it, i really is, first of all, in terms of kids

reading, there's never been a greateneed than now to help suort finance and fund literacy in schools and and in homes everywhere. and that applies to many s. it's not just in the united states, and it's partly because ■ the issues that we've all seen of increasing social economic polarization in the society in which we live, that that readers, the kids who get u know, get good schools, they've got profsionalarents and all the rest of it. they're by and large doing fine. but there's many kids who are not. they come from underserved co they need our help. and i think that good things that's happening at the moment is that state governments,ti federal, certainy other sources of funding, are

realizing that books in the home something that really matters. and that givesof optimism that there is actually a lot of the second thing is that publishing not innovative and creative. if you look at, for example, the rise of graphics, not necessarily to every parent's taste, but but if you just think about, you know, we' latest sort dogman pokemon and t scarlet shadow and it was published in march. and we've, i think the number of copies we've sold. so far is 740,000 something some ee quarters of a million copies of that book. i mean, that's through innovati that that that that whole genre has. and i think we'll see more innovation in the industry as we as we gou.

peter was looking at me during that in part because i was bellyache to him about my children's preoccupation with graphic novels and whether i should be concerned about their insistence on buying the new dogman mary, why don't we go to you since you're also in the children's and graphic books space and we'ome back to jonathan? yeah, i thinkell,irstnd opens optimistic about the industry aside from the success we're seeiproperties like dogman like diary of a wimpy kid. what i'm seeing more systemically throughout publishingof independent publisy rising up and finding their way through the. through to the consumer. and i think that is heartening for the whole industry. and i tnk there are a lot of

lessons in that, in the way that they present themselves, the w e way they find their audiences. i think a loyou're going to tour your questions today. and the things that we' gng to be talking about. but i think that's a real more books are being published now so and jonathan. well, actually, i want to talk about the graphics, too, because. well, no, it's true that and i don't think it matters, you know, i mean, years those classs wheref literature were presented through comics books. and i remember when i was a kid, this hbo, remember, i've never talked about this, but those those mr. magoo cartoons where major character in american literature. i mean, silver and treasure island. i mean, i learned a lot from mr. magoo. so anyway. yeah, so so the industr you know, it's like talking about the weather, right? and elmore leonard said, d'ah write about the weather.

and he's right about that. outif there are any writers in the weather, but, you know, some days it's , think that generallu know, the outlook is bright us reading. and and also, obviously, the and you' audio books later. but, you know, for the half of the population thategular bookso books presents such an growth. and the idea that you can also listen to audiobooks while you're doing other things expands the amount of time■ tha' read books. so that's very exciting. thyo alan, peter spoke to the socioeconomic discrepancy and you are one of the biggest suppliers, if not the biggest supplier to libraries. yeah, i'm going toch upon this from a couple of different lenses. very optimtistry per se. a adults and children, i think

diverse stories being told where children and families can see themselves. there s concept i used to use called windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors. and to mary's point earlier, independent authors in american stories, real lived, authentic stories is where we see a lot of the growth coming in■l from. our goal is to enable libraries and schools c lifelong learners so that when they grow up, they are willingly sent spending a portion of their disposable income on books. there's actually spending real money, i believe in that. that contributes to a healthy lifestyle. and so i think with more awareness about how running can be good for cardiovascular health, that reading and literacy is good for your mental health with, you know, we're w' the verge of full

mental health epidemic, if you will. and the written word, real, authentic lifelong learners and readersch. so i'm very

affect the book publishing industry and how fast how quickly? peter, let's start with you. okay. well, is it. it's yeah, it's it's it's the in the room. and and i think i think that the you can look at it a variety of different ways. but i think one way of looking at it is thinking in terms of supply and thinking of demand. i think when you're looking on the supply side, there's some major concerns about the protection of authors rights ae, etc., etc.nk, over 40 lawsuits currently in the united states about protection of of ip in that sense led most prominentlyhe by the new york times. and take chapter have our bks already entered jpt probablyhey're

in you can't take them out. and so it's a major concern that we have to work as publishers with with our authors in order to protect and get proper, proper value and remuneration for the intellectual property that that that that belongs to writers and to to publishers. i think one of the one of the other sort of impacts perhaps of of ofand i on the supply side is an even greater proliferation of of books and all the rest of it that that. and i think that's going to■■4 important for publishers in the sense that i think it can be even more important that publishers are being a sort a you need to have an imprint and a brand and a reputation in order to help you decide what's really good and what's not. so said, i think when you look at the demand side, then i think that there's

all kinds of ways in which using jenn-air i in order to reach the right customers, in order to develop newnd of thing, there'sf opportunity there. if as long as jeni's intelligend realistic jonathan well, i guess i'd like to disagree with your metaphor of the elephant in the roo i think it's more like the cicada in the room. so, you know,■ ls of buzzing and lots of screwing and and and look, i mean, you know, this is this is clearly, you kno&.w2 the rights are being these rights are being infringed. and, you know, our our books are authors are the building blocks of these albums. and it's like they're they're the basis of it. it's like building a house. and we're making the cement and and, youz÷ know, thought we got into publishing to put great

works of ofnow i'm realizing th, well, i guess we've also put some really great data out rich. these these sentences are, you know, they're edited. they're they're obviously labored over by■ writers for a long period of time. and it's some of the best material that's available. google i think, paid something like. $60 million for the ts to everything on reddit per year. nk that, you know, authors and publishers should i'm very happy that those 40 lawsuits are going on. and i think that eventually will work its way through the courts and be rve until then, we're going to we're going to just our way through it. and i think it's still very early days. i'm not not really, yous know, i don't think it's worth going to defcon five about just valuable tool. it's definitely going to make us more going to help us, you know,

process and gather informatind w workers to do a higher level of work that's more interesting and creative for them. but ■ral■zl yof the caveat to sy and we have to regard it with caution, i personally don't think it's going to blow up the world, but, you kni ople out there who do. yeah. , i often come down on the side of technology and this i'm in the same pl i think there is a lot of value in what i can do. to me, it's like the birth of the internet. it's going to be that bit's gois in our lives. and i think it's not going away. the the genie is out of the bottle. there's nothing publishing can do to put it back in. our books are:u■5 all out theren digital formats and they're with the same companies that are

so from a content creation, i think there is certainly a cautionary tale in terms of how we approach those infringements. and i agree with you 100% on think that in the day to day, to your helpful. i think publishing needs to be more is a dearth of capability and time in publishing companies to devote to data analytics, where i can be enormously helpful, where they can. more later about direct to consumer and the importance of of having that relationship with your audience and understanding what they're reading and how they're reading and all of those things are critically important and all of those things are fully addressable by a.i. so it's i mean, we've all recognized it's a double edged sword. we want to use it and we're afraid of it. so i want to make a couple of

7y you know, no surprise here. i had an overbearing middle so so my undergraduate degree w science. but, you know, having actually done machine learning and deep learning here as fundament toole publishing industry is to authee fiction and nonfiction. and i works on a principle of collective wisdom. it can only look back and draw from the experiences that it already has in its database, wie the the laborious work that goes into creating a fiction or nonfiction work of art. i was reading yesterday that scholar johanson and i in open air and conflict, because they used a voice that sounded silar to her, but they offered it to her. and now they've pulled it down

and to extend the cicada metaphor, this have a short life, but it is here to help if you want to take help, sort of. mary's point, if you just flip the paradigm of a.i. to iaas instead o it sending out edicts or wa rk may sell, but if you ut instead of artificial inigassistant to help you get me lifecycle, there is a had in he. that's that's my belief. we use it to support and enhance and increase productivity and time to market or reduce supply chain challenges and have this around as well? so my view is, is here to stay, but the noisy part will have a short life. to jonathan's perspective, i

just can make one more point that i think it's quite interesting, which is thinking about how how gen ii particularly has had an impact on some other areas of culture. so think about music. s very powerful in terms of facility setting, so if you're on spotify or you know, whatever you are, immedian quickly leads to what i tnk cat? which is you usually only listen to things thatre either the same or similar to things that you might have listened to before. and it also can lead to. the fact that that's all you ever do. it c■r lead to what happens in ■lsocio soci which is you just n to■athere are have been sort of channel to you. i don't woy about that for our industry.

and the reason i donecause of te ecosm bookstores and library suppliers and retail and everything else. one of the great joys of being a publisher is introducing readers to books they wouldn't necessarily otherwise have pickedp.wonderful read. and whole ecosystem rather than just publishing, because i think this is where it's so important that we, you know, curated book bookstore doors, the availability of bookstores, the■5■é available if libraries, the availability of libraries, suppliers, i think, will mean that we don't see that personalization and know, and everything actually very attractive. that's that's come from that interesting here. i want to acknowledge and i'm going to introducenoz2ther metaphor and then i'm going to pass to jonathan to see if he

can re■@ne me. so, you know, i think of jen swt left. it gets allhe only act in town really? beyond on, jenny? what's the biggest in your company or in your industry and how are you going about addressing it? all right. well, ippreciate the queson. i think taylor swift is always a good analogy and so i think there are. raise your hand if you're literary agent. , good. i'm very glad, because one of the reasons i wanted to come to this was to talk to some of yo lunch, when i have lunch with literarygents and wh i have lunch of literary agents, i ask them, you know, what they think. the biggest challenges. and i agree with them. and i think it's i think it' it's marketing. it's making the books known and and what's interesting is that when they you know, when when i

get them one on one, you know, they will say, i don't think that, you know, again. and i want to see new ideas and i want to and i want to feel more assured and ipublishers ar. and i takeha seriously. and i and i really and i and i fe t for my entire 35 year career. and i remember when i was at random house,conversations about marketing. and, you know, the senior one of the senior executives would say was ever thus. and i think probably, you know, gutenberg wasn' happy with the sales of his bible. so i do think that, you know, and an to and i'm not critical of the people who work in marketing and publicity. . i know they work incredibly hard because i work very closely with a lot of them. and i also know that the literary coming from a very sincere place. they're they're their authors. their authors want publishers to be better at marketing their

books. and so i think we all, as an industry really have to talk about this and talk about it much more. candidly, i've i've had town ■ohalls with literary agents whe i have begun the meetings by ying, if you have ideas, if there are things that you think we should be doing or were not doing, let me know. let our publishers know. we are open and we are interested in new ideas. chief marketing communications officer and younow, one of the criticisms that people have of publishing is that it's too insular. and, you know, youaybe there's some brilliant person out there who can come in and show us something the're not already doing. i'm a little skeptic, all of that■-. i'm open to it. but i do think that the basic challenge here is that we're oft of books, you know, whether it's u , small publisher, you know, you're still probably you still only a few people to work on a particular book. and it's pretty much the same ratio.

no matter how big you get. and, and so how do you give each book the attention and help it find the audience it deserves? it's a hard thing to do. i think it's i think that it is probably a perpetual challenge. but i also think that it is the challenge about publishing books and you want to i do think that's the biggest the biggest question you' asking. thank you, mary. that's definitely one of the biggest questions. and i was so passionate about marketing. i spent my career doing i think to your point, you have to find the audience. and i think that is what i constantly team at at abrams■2 to do all te time, to the point where they're probably sick of hearing about it, but it's that is definitely at the core of what blishers

must do. it is the function of publishing.■o it books that we're publishing to the readers. and i feel like very often it feels like an insurmountable tasks to publishers, and it ends up being abdicated,er it's abdicated to booksellers or a library ends or teachers. we're not putting those books in the hands of readers as the ultimate reader and we're not understanding the actual transaction with that reader. and so that has been a critical component of what we're developing. and. abrams that said, i think we know, bigger issues. i mean, time, do people have time to read? we looked at during the pandemi. why? because there were no sports teams to watch. there were no movies to go to. there were nonj■ reswas no broa.

i mean, you couldn't do anything except read and people read voraciously. so we are competingitit's one os so growing so fast because you can listen to an audio book while you're■ driving, while you're doing the dishes, while you're on the treadmill, and that's not convenient for print books. so i think we need to wrap our heads around how to reach book readers and howuz to how we're competing for thei'll probably e of a different books. so we're dependent on literary agents in the publishing community to get us the books we have all the challenges, right, from thes geopolitical crises fr a supply chain. the booktalk about in a minute. i'd say from our per identity ce

biggest cll got to consistentlyd value because we are den custome distributor continue. honestly, there's no reason why they can't go out there. they have choices and amazon still they're still selling books. apparently. ■nning massive sales, but i'd say our challenge is identity crises, whether ite librarians, educators, parents. we are continuously fighting the battle to explain whyneexist. and i would say that's my biggest challenge outside of everything that was shed earlier. i mean, scholastic is is, if you publisher and book

distributor through book fairs and bookendorse what you you're. the one and one of the key issues is really trying to make books as affordable as possible. in our case, children'snvironmey families areling less wealthy and having having less ing up, gas prices are going up, rents are going up. and all of those sorts of things. and we do face challenges of that■, kind because in order to make children's books affordable, particularly for younger kids, you do have to have a global ly chain. you can't you have to be able to do manufac various things in asia, in china and india and so o to be able to make you know, four color board books available at a price that the appropriate and that is threatened at the moment a of r.

and we have to be concerned about th. also think that just for for all of us, thatk some of the costs of our own infrastructure and operatg costs are really going up quite strongly in certain areas that we have to accommodate. the one that i pick out will be cybersecurity. e a strong brand. so i mean, we all have strong brands here. therefore you're a target and therefore, you know, you're looking at 15 to 20% additional expense every financial year on rity because you have to be it's you know, weat. so there are some those are some of the strses that i think i feel that that we want to be able to price is where they're most needed. and we, to some extent, have people and the whole circumstances of fighting against us in that respect. pete i your perspective on what you're dng

to bring more consumer ears to books. ■jonaan teed up marketing, but you're of their reading joury. there? well, i think, you know, i look at it. i look at i like to see book publishing, you know, within it, within the ecosy children's publishing, about, 'e talking about books. but but we're acty characters d entertainment. and that comes in audio. it comes in on the screen. it comes in large screen, small screen. and i think that what we have to think about is a sort of a virtuous circle of how we how we think about that, because you've got stories and characters they can actually begin in a book, in an author's mind, in a

scriptwriters mind, whatever it happens to be■h and then just taking that, it's a book. then a book is published and you begin to the books, publish the book, and then be transferred to screen. animation live action whether be big screens, small screen, tv, whatever it happens to in in stimulate more reading. i mean, whenever we have that's recently been ons we seee afterwards in the number of books that we see. the goose bumps and one's live action and the books are not. they're actually aimed at different, different ageve actir children, the books that we publish are for youngeridea of a franchise that different media is the way that i wouldb'o

this is children but i guess it apply to to adults too is you've got to be where they are an doing and then you can begin to work on that. in terms of the publishing that you do, in terms of your job books that you do, you can transform them any book into an eader, for example,as you have and things like that. so i thinknk of this is a virtuous circle whereby you start with charactee in the booto bin they can be on screen to begin with. where you begin get that, that sort of virtuous circle. and i think in children's publishing particularly, that's going to be the way that things develop and grow in the future. ?jamanda, do you want to speak o that given your role in su schools. yeah, without sounding political, this is an apolitical. that's my caveat.

but librarians, for all their wo, must be protected at all costs. :áp

game. you can check out th sort i learned about indigenous peoples today. this is what i learned about different food today. this is what i learned about a different dog species■: today. you just walking around the park and libraries that are most prevalent. seors and young families and so i think the ingenuity of what libraria(l can do to promote, to market the products that publishers and authors wincredit valued enough. the second example i'll give you is that libraries are promoting artists tree andinculcating the love of reading and writing. carolina, believer in art, has a progm where thgzere's an entrepreneur in residence and they come for 2 hours, twice a week, where can come in and have a conversation saying, hey, what is it like? at's the life you lead? being an author now? the parents may not like the

answer, chat with a be a performance artist or a writer e ways. so i say it library ownership to ournt, to pmoting literacy and getting young opd spending their disposable income books cannot be overstated. now to what we do, we simply wer they ask us. and all i do, i spend a hundred days on the road. all i do is ask them a question how n i help? and they have a long list for both publishers and us. and i'm sure all of the publishers on you know that. our role is to enable those thousands upon thousands upon marketing and promoting published products every day,

every hour. thank you. i'm a super important in the interest of time i want to home in jonathan on the rise of influencer and infening. how that has changed the book publishing indusy, iat see simor taking advantage of thties the n because it it's it's exciting. i think i think it's actually galvanizing because it's allowing word of mouth to and is talkingf/■ó earlier about the challenges of marketing, and i think that this is actuay one of the solutions and one of the ways we can all work together, you know, agents, authors, publishers to identify audie thm talking about our books. i think the most exciting things that's happened in the last ten years spread on on our books. and and it's also revived the

sales of books that were fallow. and that's that's really a great development. great.5r let's talk about audiobooks. one of you teed that up, obvirise. how do you see thatffec for overall? mary, do youre, i think along w. influencers, i think any way that you can get people to discoveroo and if people are discovering books now on sfyrelationship chip there, f people areuse there are celebri, readers, if people are because it fits into their lifestyle, that's a plus. that's a win for the entire industry. and it also creates discover and i find that people don't necessarily■uthey're not

format specific. so in audio books. to audio will will they'll buy print books. they'll buy digital books. and i think that there is a virtuous circle around the whole creation that audio contributes to. peternd quite the same impact in children's pubshhe sense that ks don't drive■y so, so and so th's that's one impact. but but i do think what really matters, i think, is the way in which we shouldn't just think of books as standalone items. i mean, they can and they it's really important in that and i see, i mean, certainly an expandin part of what we do in children's publishing, but it's not been quite is as strong as theythe industry as a whole

kids don't■@vvmy kids are impatient. passenger bus. oka're running short on time and i want to be mindful of that. i do want to■ and book banning e resurgence of the banning of books in recent years has affected publishing quite significantly, i would imagine. how does your organizing and navigate potential conflicts between freedom of expression and societal concernsntent, etcy don't we start with you since you're at the juncture there of yeah, it's publishers and community is it's it's a big ch and i think the fundamental way that wedle is we respect the right for everyone to chse what they buy and bring into their home but the libraries that we serve are institutions for the■q community

and they must be allowed to that ought to be told that many of you in this room represent and bring br's getting harder ar because state wide legislature acquisition and process becomes have to make sure that the professionals■# wo are acquiring don't get into trouble. and for us to keepall the different metadata standards and the evolving need of metadata to go right down to levels which nobody can afford economically afford to do, is a big challenge as well. and while there are many lawsuits, some settled, some active, some in favor of book banning, some against it, this is soon. and it's an unfortunate with lis with the belief library is our

community institutions. jonathan, any thoughts on well, i agree. i think it's think that the book larger polarization in the country. and it's■=ed as a you know, as an instrument statd we have to fight back. and so we're joi other lawsuits. we're working with we're working with penn and the national coalition agt and and the american library association and the whole thing is jus unfortunate, and i hope it will eventually wane as as the as these very loud and annoying voices realize that this is a waste of everybody' time. it's a liberal. to also remember is if books weren't powerful and influential, they wouldn't be got take heart from that that oks are powerful.

they make that can make■e chang. they can persuade people and we've got to completelys and evn that mission. to to do think everything that you said, i completely agree with mary. anything to add? i mean, just to: echo, you know, everything that is being said here. agree, peter, that, you know, if our books are being banned, right. but it doesn't mitigate that exl threat from book bans. it are, you know, inordinately be on their immedie ■d stand with our authors. we have to support librarians, support educators, support independent booksellers because they're being targeted to to wiu

know, what is all ofur cor free, right? that's why we're here. yeah. great. i'm going to to get to a couple of questions on talent and leadership. i would ask you to talk to us just a littl bit about your own journey in publishing. what are the traits that have helped youhrive in the industry? and are those the same traits that would■v starting out today? peter, why don't we start with you? um, well, i think i mean, i, one of the great things that has ed um, throughout my career, which i think would stl um, it is true today is you have to the one hand marry creativity, the encouragement of creativity andes

managing creatives,e, whether they be authors or publishers, commissioning editors, marketing people, whatever. but you've also got to do that within an organization that's healthy and can> be in the private sector anyway, can can make money for its for own as whether they be we're a public company or, you know, whatever, whether you're a family company or private equity doesn't really matter. it's that ability to think right from the get go when you start career is how am i going those two things and mytv career has been sort of, you know, i started offers an academic and then in education publishing i then worked for a number of years at thomson reute■4rs. have also not creative about the news but how they present the news. um, and there's always been that, that, and ofo's publishins marrying those two things together begin to think about that right

from the beginning of your true if you're working in the public sector of doing libraries or whatever it aims to be, it's is trying to make sure that you can be as creative as possible within a healthy organization environment. and i think it's it's sometimes challengutt'■'s something to focus. jonathan i i think that the having having really good bosses has definitely helped. um, and i've had, i've had great bosses, i really have. i mean, and i, you know, i medina's editorial assistant. and i've worked for such years. and, you know, and got offnd any and i just think that that prablyhe community of publishing has always been a very nurturing one. and i hope that it will alys th. mary yeah, i think i think what

drew me toó? publishing draws mt of us to publishing is are the books, the storytelling, the creative piece really giving outlet to, to the creators and, you know, respecting that process and giving them really hope in terms of theiri, i, i cd sales. and so that was always ingrained in what i've done is to understand market trends, but also to understand where we can find the inroads for each book and each creator. and then justnd an openness, i think that's something that hasthe board, whr an author who know, first meet or it's a i and what how it's going to affect our company or the industry, i'll i'll be say curiosity and courage.

the learn, always keep asking questions and the courage to ask for help because this is a very complex machine to find the right partner, whether it be an rtner or a literary agent or a publisher than a distributor are gone. campaigns go on. it's i don't want anyone in this room if you're if you're thinking of being an author lit there are enough people here to help you along the way. so be curious and have the courage to ask for help. it'll be fine. fantastic. we are at time, but i want to do one very quick lightning round each of you. tell us what is the book thatmot year? peter is thek it's my column tobin and it's called long island.

much. um, well, now i, like i should say harry potter, but. all right, well, i'm going to go with wonderful first novel, that avid reader, precious publishedf you're looking for a spy rill travel rom com, this is incredible this is it. it shoots out all the lights. it's just great. library, i'll go back to a children's favorite and rewrite. this year, after 25 years, dr. seuss, the places you'll go. oh, thank yso much. i read mary jonathan and peter. that was wonderful. thank you$ere and welcome at