jed lyons, the president and ceo of rowman & littlefield and had a national book network. geoff shandler, editor-in-chief at little, brown and company, and gail ross, the president and founder of ross yoon agency. before i do a good job introducing everyone i just wanted to start off with a few words. i have been studying the publishing industry for about seven years now, and it's actually a pretty long time if you think about everything that has happened and just the past three and a half, over the past seven years or so i have watched a lot of changes going on in terms of not just what is being said about the future of books, but actually also who is actually talking about it. because over the years a lot of newspapers have really scaled back their coverage of books. and i can't think of a single paper off the top of my head that has scaled back their coverage of the tech industry, or technology industry. a lot of what we are seeing in just day-to-day press if it comes from the view or the lens of a tech columnist, or it comes from the marketing department of a multibill

jed lyons coming as the president and ceo of rowman & littlefield publishing group. rowman & littlefield publishers about 1200 new books annually under the imprint of rowman & littlefield, scarecrow press, lexington books, gary dale press, government institutes, taylor trade, and others. jed also serves as ceo of national network, 200 independent publishers which rowman & littlefield launched in 1986. jed graduate from podunk college in 1974 and is a member of the chief executive organization, the council on foreign relations, in a chapter of washington national cathedral. jed, welcome. >> thank you. well, i've often heard the book business referred to as the accidental profession. and when i first got into this, 36 years ago, i asked why, and the reason i heard that there's really no way to prepare to be a publisher, you can't, at least in those days you couldn't go and get a degree in publishing. you can now get even masters degree in publishing. but the accidental profession has now, as it's been now for longtime come if you'll indulge me i thought i would so you