emily: the amazon-hachette war, you are published by hachette, you and your books got caught in the middle. how do you feel about this? malcolm: it cost me a lot of money. that's for sure. it breaks my heart a little. i had thought of amazon as in partnership with writers. and for a company to try to make a business point by turning its back on -- i have sold, through amazon, millions of books. i have contributed mightily to their bottom line. i would've thought they would see me as an asset. me and other writers have brought people to their site in droves. and now they have turned on us. it is, to say the least, a puzzling strategy for a business to turn on its assets. i would love to have a conversation with jeff bezos about the self-destructive nature of this particular strategy. emily: amazon is arguing that books must be cheaper in this environment where there are so many media distractions. do you have any sympathy for their argument? malcolm: complete sympathy for it. i just don't understand why, in order to get to that preferred outcome, they have chosen to screw over the people wh

i started out hachette books.before we were grand central, we were owned by time warner, and we were warner books. had completely time warner and warner books. we simply change our identity. the industry. to have clout you need to be big. but you do want to be small enough and is we're divided into divisions. my company has industry and want to talk to our two publishers, phone numbers are up on the screen. you can dial in, 202 is the area code 748-8200 if you live in the east and central time zones 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we'll get to those calls in just a minute. susan weinberg, how'd you get your start in this business? >> guest: you know, i got out of college like a lot of people unsure of what i wanted to do, but secretly in my heart i wanted to do publishing, but i wasn't sure if publishing wanted me. so i -- but i got out of college. i had a brief internship, and i started looking for jobs. and at that time -- this was a little while ago -- you looked for jobs in th

i started out hachette books. before we were grand central, we were owned by time warner, and we were warner books. we had to completely change our identity. and, you know, i think that's true throughout the industry. to have clout you need to be big. but you do want to be small enough and is we're divided into divisions. my company has grand central, we have a christian division down in nashville, we have little brown. you want to be small enough so that you can give authors attention, and you can, you can really focus on books. so it's, you know, it's a back and forth between, you know, trying to be a big company that still retains, as susan said, an intimacy. >> host: and if you're interested in the publishing industry and want to talk to our two publishers, phone numbers are up on the screen. you can dial in, 202 is the area code 748-8200 if you live in the east and central time zones 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we'll get to those calls in just a minute. susan weinberg, ho