state department in american diplomacy in the world today on war on peace. after that, it's an account of the life and career of comedian robin williams and wrapping up our look at the los angeles times nonfiction bestseller list is clinical psychologist norton petersons 12 years rules for life. some of these authors have appeared on tv. watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> ..

anti. this is the ceo roundtable publishers on publishing. want to thank everybody at black expose for work with the aap to present this panel for you and they have asked me to tell you that in light of the standing room only crowd they're looking for more chairs. so chairs should be coming soon. >> wear going to have a fantastic discussion but the health of the publishing industry. to my left is john sargeant, the ceo of mcmillan. also the longest serving member of the executive committee, the officers of the aap. carolyn ready is the president

and ceo of simon and schuster. the farmer chairman of the board of director offered the aa poe and marcus is the ceo of penguin random house and the current chairman of the aap. so, at aap, just a word about aap. we advocate for laws and policies that incentivize and protect publications in the modern marketplace because we believe that publication matters and published word matters. publish hes invest in authors, inform and inspire readers, and they facilitate progress and the greater world. books, as you now, can be transformative. have a huge impact on education, culture, and even on political systems. this makes the returns of the publishing business immeasurable to society, whether the business is booming or whether it is

soft. however, today we have three of the most respected publishing ceos in the world with us, and what many people here today want to hear is how the publishing industry is doing. is it as strong, forward-thinking, and important as it's ever been? so here's some data for the audience. publishing in the united states is approximately a $27 billion industry. that's arranged over the past five years. nearly 16 billion of that is for trade publishers. in terms of formats, gross percentage, downloaded audio dominates. from 2016 to 2017, we saw a nearly 30% growth. e-books, after declining for a while have stabilized, and the

format with the most revenue is hardback books. the category with the most revenue and unit sales is books for adults. and we just released at aap our first quarter 2018 revenue and sales statistics, and i'll just say that relative to the first quarter of 2017, everything is up. revenue in all categories. so, panelists, going to ask you all the same question. marcus, i'll start with you. in thinking about this kind of data, and drawing on your considerable experiences as ceos, decades of experience in the publishing industry, what do we need to know about book markets? how are they evolving?

>> [inaudible] >> they're doing better than their image, actually. both globally, so, over the last 15 years, since the transformation really started, book markets have been growing, and even in our mature markets, large markets in the world, we have seen growth. that is very positive. but there are more reasons to be confident about the future of long form reading as the future of the book. besides the growth that we have seen-especially compared to other meet -- media

categories-we also have fairly stable business models for print and e-books and have a business model for digal content to beginith. we know that in many other media categories that's an issue. we have also over the last years -- to talk about the development of e-books, we have reached a fairly healthy co-existens between print and e-. for us globally it's 80-20, and if you had asked, seven, eight years ago, what the ep mix might be in 2018, many people had said, well, it's going to be 80-20, right? 80% e, and 20% p. it's actually the opposite and that has stabilizes the anti-become ecosystem. our addressable reddership around the world is actually growing every year because the

world population is growing, and and illiteracy rates are in decline. so that expands our addressable market every year, especially for english language, which becomes more and more popular around the world. and last but not least, it's very encouraging and heartening to see that over the last ten years, the children's book categories and young adult books have been the fastest growing categories so that makes us very confident about our larger purpose, which is to create the future of books and long-form reading in our society for generations to come. in addition to that, you said it, we have seen 30% growth in digital audio, last year and more than 30% in the first quarter ofs year, again, and that is another reason to be

confident about the future. so, i think there is no reason to be pessimistic and theres no data and no kpi, neither in the u.s. nor globally, that speaks for a significant change of that trajectory. >> okay. thank you. marcus. marcus is covered. >> now is it working in marcus covered the positives out there. what i would say is every time there's a change in our market, there are doom sayres, but the fact of the matter is that the view of the book and all of the

things it brings to society and to individuals is as strong if not stronger than ever. when you see anything that happens in a major way in the world, there's usual lay book -- usually a book they public grabs on to understand exactly what happened. things change, mass market has been decline, digital audio increasing the growths of e-booksbooks and then the declie of e-books. through that the actual market has remained. just changes what it wants so makes it all the more important for us to be the people they're trying to figure out how do consumers want the book presented in what format. how do they want it? and that is as strong as it ever was. so, makes our purpose even greater, but the market itself has remained robust and solid. it's just within that market, what people want and how they want it keeps changing. that is part of what makes our business interesting.

>> so, i agree with the long-term health of the industry isood. i think there's some serious issues that we will face in the coming years around changing consumer buying behaviors, and particularly at a show like this, what happens with retail book selling in america specifically, and the issue of discoverability as consumer buying patterns change and what we need to protect is lots and lots of shelf space in n america for people browse in and understand the books and that's the biggest single thing. you see digital audio coming up strongly, which is very exciting for bringing new readers into the sort of environment. people who didn't traditionally read books. so, there's a lot of plus signs in that. the demographics, again, globally are good.

the question will be, as we look at the different formats and the consumer behavior s t issues will be as we go through the transition, can we continue to do what weave done, which is protect an ecosystem. right? which is the book retail ecosystem, authors, publishers, retailers, can that ecosystem continue to thrive as pressures come to bear, and if you look at the media -- various media businesses, the book business has done a very good job of getting to where we are now through the digital transformation periodnd then the next thing up will be the change in consumer buying patterns. >> thank you. let me do a little bit of an informal analysis with our audience on some of this data. so, let's see. if you are under the age of 40, between the categories of

hardback and downloaded audio, raise your hand if you prefer and tend to purchase your books in hard cover, hardback. and raise your hand -- nobody cheating on the 40 thing. a little questionable. and raise your hand if you prefer audio downloads and tend to purchase in that way. okay. people over 40, same question. raise your hand if you prefer and tend to purchase your books in hardback. and raise your hand if you tend to purchase most of your books in audio downloads. panelists, where are the downloads being purchased, not in new york. must be california. >> this is one of the reasons you see 30% growing is the law of small numbers. audio is a tiny business at

present. it's growing very fast but it is very small. >> yeah. and we have of course a very bookish audience here thatoes not reflect the average demographic. what is encouraging with audio is -- i think there is an element of growing -- growth and not only categorization of other -- it goes back to the old campfire experience, someone telling a story and people listening to a story. that's very positive. another positive is that you can listen to audio book while doing other things. if you're always talking but a media competition and do people take the time to really go into long-form reading anymore, it's

encouraging to see that it's not just the commuter remember goes across many other things that people do while listening to odd audio book whether it's the jogger or someone with gardening or the kitchen. and when you look into the numbers listener shine of audio books, it goings across basically all demographics. it's not just tuned into one area. so i think audio books present an opportunity, again, formats are shifting, as you said, carolyn but the audio format in particular has an element of growth in it and it's go. not a 1 hundreder categorization of hard format. >> religious presses, huge increase, even with small numbers. from last quarter 2017 to this

quarter, up more than 20% revenue. why do you think that is? anybody? >> i think that's got to be subject driven. gote specific titles that fuel that, because whenever you see a growing like that, that can in a quarter in a small are part of the market, it's usually a subject -- usually author-driven. there's one phenomenal book or author that cause that. >> any other comments on data stats, categories, revenue, health of the industry? >> i would just add one other thing to what john was saying about the need to keep the healthy book store, which we completely agree with. one thing that is pretty phenomenal, we recently did some looking in our own figures and

the number of unit sold in physical outlets from simon and schuster has remained as a percent of our business, remained rock solid for five years. so it has not declinedment even though within the physical outlet business, there are different accounts that have gone up and down and had e have struggled or succeeded more. the fact of the matter is, it is holding firm, which i actually a great testament to the booksellers of america, and that includes not just independents or chains or -- but also mass sellers and despet the focus of online selling the number of books and audios sold through was remained solid, and variety heartening and we'll take even

more focus and attention from all of to us keep that way. >> less -- interesting, less than the rest of the world. there are book markets where physical books have dropped over the last few years, and in the united states, where we have certain of the most pressure on the digital front and me most pressure on the internet seller front, physical bricks and mortar stores have done remarkably well. >> so, i want to touch on two things that you guys said before. one is the shift of format. that has always been happening. when ellen lane invented the paperback format, we have seen paperbacking and mast market growth and decline. so the format is nothing -- that does not -- when he e-books came up or audio download,

threat not the essence of tran foreignation. we have more formats in which our consumers can actually consume our content. that is very positive. it is indeed the inevitable shift to online that we have seen in sales, and even, channels have changed over the last 40 years significantly, right? we have seen the rise of the chain. the decline in independent book stores and that was a big discussion 20, 30 years ago in the industry. perhaps even more heated discussion than the discussion about the shift to online right now. so, now we have seen significant growth in that shift to online and in e-commerce for books in general over the last decade, and a stabilization or slight

growth in independent book stores and they are a chunk of the business, and the chains have come under pressure, but that has been sort of a phenomenon also -- again, changes in channels have been around for a very, very long time. so, what is really interesting is that indeed, we have seen decline in e-books and for us, it's been sort of a wash between the growing, lower levels, high growth in audio books, and the decline in e-books over the last two years, and the print format has been growing over the last years, and with that, even in physical book stores it has been stable, which again stabilized -- has stabilize the entire book ecosystem significantly. imagine we are at 20-80 or

50-50. the environment of physical book stores would be a completely different one today. so, thank god that the printed book is that strong again and has been greg over the last year in our large markets and in the united states. >> are we good? all right. let me turn to a different topic. i'd like to explore a little bit the role of publishers as public citizens. the impact of publishing in the broader society and the world. john, i'd like to start with you. in january of 2018, as i think this audience knows, you received a letter about michael wolf's book "fire and fury" from lawyers representing the president of the united states and the trump campaign.

the letter not only objected to the content of the book but stated that they would seek to restrain distribution and sale. as one point of reference, this was the same month that aap and pen and other organizations were looking into the whereabouts of hong kong publisher ha who was forcibly removed from a train in beij for the second time after publishing salacious books but chinese government officials. as another point of reference, we have a famous case in the united states, known as the pentagon papers case, in which the court prioritized the public's right to know and the government famously lost. in your letter to mcmillan employees you said, quote: there no ambiguity here. this is an underlying principle of our democracy.

we cannot stand silent. we will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our constitution precludes him or her from achieving in court. [applause] so my question to you is, what went through your mind as the ceo of macmillan at that time, and how much of it was a business decision and how much of it was about other things? >> so, i found out that he had done that, i was at a higher ed sales conference in phoenix. and in all honesty, my first reaction was, holy cow we're going a sell a shit-load of books and then i went through the fantasy responses that could

go back, realizing that anything that would engender a tweet back might in fact sell a few more copies, so here was a real opportunity. and then i began to think about it, and as i was coming up with these -- some of. the quite spectacular fantasy responses, i thought, wait a minute. this is actually -- this is very serious. this is prior restraint, which is the single thing that is the worst violation of freedom of speech. right? it's not after it's out, stopping it. it's i will not season this coming out. so, then thought long and hard about two things. one, how to respond to the president, and, two, how to use the moment to make sure that the people, particular he the people in macmillan, in other words

the importance of free speech, and understood how actually key this is, and how it is the very greatest value as publishers we bring in america, is the freedom of speech. so, i came up with this sort of plan to write this letter to the employees so they could understand it, and i knew the letter would get out because if nothing else we were going leak it. so i knew it was going to get out, and so i wrote -- i sat and wrote it and i got the people from the national coalition against censorship to helpmy me -- give me a list of court cases i could refer to and wrote it on my dining room table on a saturday and i kept thinking, when you write these things you want one line that you know the press will pick up, and i worked hard on that, and i got my draft done and i thought i had actually gotten it pretty well and can i showed it to my wife,

and i had deliberated long and hard, how do you say essentially, f-u to the president of the united states. right? so i had to say it in a way that wasn't coarse and all that and i gave her the letter, and she got to the expend said, that's good letter but that laste has to go. i say why? i think the last line is great. she said, john, you can't say, go fish, mr. president. at the end of the day, i it was both business and it was the importance of freedom of speech and it's something i worry a lot about in today's publishing world. the freedom of speech is moving farther down the scale of what we think when we're going to publish something, and it's hard to be brave and publish against this polarized view of the world we have, and so i think it's really important, and i thank the president for give us a

chance to talk about it and sell a few copies. >> in fact you moved publication up, if i recall. >> that was don wiseberg's decision and a great decision. >> panelistses want to jump in on free expression while we're on the topic? >> what. >> carolyn you were honored last week at pen. >> john and i have had conversations but this very topic. because i do think that in the current polarized environment, there are lot of people on both sides trying to tell us what we should publish or not publish, and it's bad coming from either side, and to have courage in the face of that, and even to deal with your own staff who sometimes fall on one side or the other, is actually a big challenge in today's world and something that is publisher it does behoove to us work diligently make sure we're open to ideas we don't necessarily

agree with. in my recent pen speech i quote he peter mayer who said our job is to challenge readers and to challenge ourselves, and in fact to shock and hurt us, that even bad ideas need to be published in order to be aired. so, it really is -- john and macmillan's behavior was exemplary and we were all there cheering him -- cheering behind him, and so i agree, actually. a great opportunity to air those -- that topic. not only in our industry but also to the public. >> just quickly two things agree with you guys. one, john, you really made the entire community proud with your response. i think that was really fantastic. you brought us all together, and secondly, these times really remind us all how important this

service is we provide our society with. so, i think we are all in iting to, and i think we -- in it together and we pursue the same purpose. >> it must be said that the talk of -- this was n- i wrote the letter but this was a macmillan-wide effort and pieces of the letter were written by other people and improved by other people. very much a macmillan group effort. wasn't about john sargeant. >> let me follow up on that briefly. at macmillan, did you fine that in general the -- your employees throughout the organization of all levels are fairly well aware of the fact that this was free expression issue and publishers have a duty and right under the law or what is scary for some people? exciting? >> we live in this sort of liberal east coast publishing world, right? and a lot of the vast majority

of our employees come out of that world, and so this was by the vast number of employees, great stuff. this is us standing up against trump and -- look, at the end of the day, this authoritarian governments start. they say i don't like what the press is saying about me so i'm going to stop the press from saying it. so, across the company there was a great deal of enthusiasm. there's less enthusiasm when you want to go publish somebody who is on the right or who is difficult and obstreperous and does things that are unappealing and then you fine -- you find within the company lots of pressure of employees saying, that's not what we should be doing. you say, wait a minute, freedom of speech. comes from both sides. both sides of the aisle get it. it's not 50% of american gets freedom of speech. 100% of america getses freedom of speech. so these are difficult times and anytime when the culture shifts

like the culture is shifting now, it's very important to dry to stay focused on treating all americans with the same rights acro the board. >> just one last question on this topic. because you're a global company, were there colleagues in other countries calling you and saying, wait, you're in the united states, right? >> yeah. i had a very full e-mail box for a while. interestingly the german markets -- maybe you can talk about this -- in the germans have history here, and are particularly upset with mr. trump and what mr. trump represents and are appalled by it and feel quite passionately about the issues of freedom of speech and where it can lead you if you don't follow it. >> thank you, john. carolyn, i want to turn to the

role of publishing in the greater creative sector, both culturally and economically, and at simon & shiite exterior a leader of a -- simon & schuster you're the leader of a top five publishing house and a leader of the large he creative industry, and not only because simon & schuster is part of cbs and book publishing is parts of that big ecosystem. on the other hand consumers have many choices and distractions, and like other companies that target audiences you have to compete for readers 'when asked about this at the frankfurt book fair last year, you said, it behooves publishers to keep books central to the discussion in the culture and not on the level of a tweet. can you expand on that for us? >> that was my example of a little tweet kind of comment. in any case, books take time so

theyake time from the consumer, but they also take an awful lot of author time. so, books are really thing on long form left. authors spend year, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, living with researching, coming up with their ideas to produce the books they do. what i said earlier, i believe very strongly. itself is still gratifying how crucial they can be for the conversation, and any book can become part of the conversation. i've learned this actually a long tehenst came to simon & shoes -- simon & schuster and were purchasing "truman," and it was right before the presidential election and people had nonbeen paying attention to truman as an historical figure and that book changed. all of a sudden because of columnists paying attention it to, it was part of the discourse of the election, both candidates were shown he lugging the book

around, pretending to read it. margaret truman said neither of these -- it was a commentary on the presidential election. when ohno was elected you head team of rivals, a book but lincoln and his cabinets that was for the second time a huge best seller because people were interested in what he was doing. more recently, a book we didn't push but i wish we did, hillbilly elegy, bent to explain what happened with this trump election. through time there are books that can become touchstones and explain to people. so, books create empathy, actually been recent studies showing that. for children and help them learn how to navigate the world and do the same thing for adults. so they provide something that no other form does. no film form does.

no magazines do. no newspapers. we're very happy there are people who can write so fast to write for newspapers and magazines and things like that, and we have some authors who can write very fast and we're grateful for them, too but most of them spend an awful lot of time. what the consumer is getting is a work of measured intelligence that is embracing an idea or a story, doesn't have to be nonfiction -- that brings them something nothing else does, and it is up to us to make sure that the consumers out there understand this, remember this, that ts stays in the forefront. we make our books part of the conversation. so to me, that is what i minute by that rhelip kind of statement, which is that we have to make sure that the books we publish remain part of the culture so that the value they bring, which is real and

different from everything else, remains in the fefront of consumers. >> and any -- just building on that a little bit, carolyn, what about the -- how are books perceived in the greater creative sector in your experience, within a broader entertainment company? obviously so many books are immediate into films. >> right. so, there's -- what the rest of the entertainment industry prize about book is the stories, the story-telling. wasn't to add one other thing to what i said. fiction can be a touchstone the culture. when the din vinci came out it display the fact there was a kind of pair he now ya building in the world of seek vet societies and unknown things happening, and not -- lack of trust of institutions. so, you can -- now you have the unreliable female narrator, i

throw it see what that is showing about the cultural, but no matter what fiction is teaching us and expressing what is going on. so in a large entertainment world, what they want is they want to kind of suck the story out of books. the good thing about it is that we -- if you -- even a bad movie can sale good book. so often last year glass castle did not get great reviews and everybody said the book was so much, be and the book became a best seller. gave it's huge sales uplift. so, it doesn't -- what is gratifying about that is that the public understands that maybe the book is better even though they sigh the movie or not. on the other hand you had a great movie like "it" and it made a book book a best seller. so there is a -- the kind of sucking of books by the rest of

the media can have positive as well as a -- can have a very positive added benefit to the physical itself. >> but d l want to meet the authors? that's what we need to know. >> some of them. >> well, i just want to pause for a moment and tell o au that tomorrow, at 12:30, aap is sponsoring a panel on the cycle of book to film with our partner in the motion picture industry. so talking about -- what carolyn laid out the cultural significance and cycle of readers being discovered for the first time and then again and the economic cycle of the power of creativity and the global economy so please join us there. marcus, at penguin random house

you have 270 in print? and although pentagon rein -- penguin random house is the largest trade publisher, your imprints are independent, bothedder toally and entrepreneurially, and in an interview you gave this year in india, you said that you are multilocal, multidomestic business. could you a lab brate why is in-print independence a hallmark of your business and why do you think hays strategy that is valuable to the global public? >> so, let me basically dwyer like to touch on three points. one is, yes, we basically create -- we see ourselves as a

community of small presses. i think that's not different than other houses. for us it's 270 with our german sister companies. it's even north of 300. small presses that are indeeddedder toally and entrepreneurially independent with 300 publishers with their editors shaping their lists every year. and fairly independent way. and on top of that comes the international aspect. yes, we see ourselves. we have these imprintses around the world. and our publishers around the world shape their lists, and we want to be multilocal and multidomestic because the essence of the publishing business model is that it's multilocal and multidomestic.

publishing is a rights business. publishing is a language business. and on top of that we think it is really important that we support local culture and local talent in the respective markets that we operate in. so, we are basically reflecting the publishing businessel with the way we define ourselves, and that is fairly independent. then, that's thereativ side. on the reader side, on the sales and market side, on the side of global distribution, we really want to scale up and benefit from the economies of scale we have globally to reach the largest possible audience for the books we publish, and that enables us to sell 700 million books through 120,000 retail

locations around the world every year. so, in the end of the day, i think the value for the public of that approach is twofolds. one is it actually ensures that we provide a diversity of opinions, ideas, stories, and that is of course right at the core of what we do, and secondly, our multilocal approach and the support of local culture and local -- ensure that healthy balance of local publications and global content that we launched into the entire world. so that's basically how we try to manage our business globally. >> i would add to that, to what marcus said, all of which is

relevant, but it's also the reason for having multiple imprints is because publishing is an incredibly people intensive business. you can't actually publish a book well unless the people working on it have read it. now, you can only read so many -- there's only so many hours in a day, so you need to in fact create small teams that can say, okay, this book, what is it, who is its audience, how are we going reach it? that means you have to actually know what is inside of it. you have to read it. and that includes the art department, the design people. not jt thedder toal people her to marketing -- thedder toal people or the marking people. so it's a necessary toy have small imprudents in order to pressure well and to find an audience nor authors, which is what we're all about. >> i agree with carolyn.

>> all right. let me -- mindful of time, i want it to get to a lot of the question is have on my mind. i want to turn a little bit more introspectively to your own career paths. perhaps highlight and get some reflections from you. and, carolyn, let me stay with yo is a mentioned last week you were honored as pen's 2018 publisher honoree and gave an incredible speech about free expression and the role of publishers as defenders of free speech, and last year you were publisher of the weekly person of the year, and you are praised in press around that not only for your impressive list of authors published during your tenure, the last ten years, but describe to somebody, who quote,

leads from the front. what does this mea to you and how do you think you inspire other people of what is your objective going to work every day? >> i think that we're very fortunate to work in a business where by and large all of the people in it love the product that we produce. so we love books we love what they can do. we love finding an audience for those authors. i personally get excited about an incredibly -- incredible range of possible audiences and books. there's no one type. i always believe our goal is to help an author make every book as great as it can be for itself and then find the audience. think, number one, it's important that the people who lead publishing houses share

that enthusiasm and belief, and that helps to unify the company in what they're doing. i actually believe a large part of my job is to make it possible for everyone else to do their job, because trying to clear out the way for them. as i said publishing is an incredibly people intensive business, and it takes a lot of skills that no one person has. so, it takes graphic skills to be able to make the covers. takes design skills. takes selling skills, takes editorial skills and not only that, even within all of that, it needs people who understand different kind of books and get the feel for them. so, really what you're trying to do is encourage everybody to flower in whatever it is they bring to the organization. so, we need young people who can tell us about things that people my age just haven't even heard of. when the youtube stars came along it's like, i then went and

watched them but before then -- i didn't know they existed. you need diversity. you need people who are bringing you dirt uncomfortable cultures, divvieds, different wives looking at things. you need to be able to say you're not just publishing the nice liberal bubble, who are people on the other side who are bringing fresh and new and solid ideas. so it's a matter of trying to encourage the expression through the organization of all of these skills that can help us in the endeavor we have, which is to locate the best authors and then fine for them their audiences. i don't know if that answers it. >> and i may not have this quote perfect but i think you were also quoted at one point as saying that -- this is about your tenure and your back list of authors, something along to the lines of last year's back list is tomorrow's front list. >> one of the challenges we have

right now -- one of the interesting thing ises the strong of back list in recent years. back list has seemed very strong sales and increasing sales. and one of our challenges is to actually market the back list. peter mayer was quoted as saying, a back list back is a new book to anyone who has not yet read it. we need to constantly remember that and in fact try to figure out how to take great becomes which we may have published ten or 20 years ago and bring them to a whole new generation that never heard of. the. that's big challenge we share with book stores and need to do in our consumer marketing and that is a big shift from before, where we relied on book stores to do that for us. we have to find ways to partner together to make that happen.

>> i would second that. the back list is base which are us where most of the profit comes from. comes out of the back list. it's a self-defeating thing to let your back list go away. so, believe that strongly. but i can actually say from personal experience, carolyn and i worked together at simon & schuster and when they say lead from the front, carolyn is in front of the troops in that way of take the arrows. she'll take them so the others can get on with their job. >> so if you -- the fact of the matter is that indeed the back list is extremely important because sales and also profits from back lists, finance investments to a certain degree into front lists, into new idea, into future publications so the strength of back lists is very good for the publishing ecosystem in general.

and eve if you have a rich back list and we all have a very rich back list, and you have classic and modern classics that become best sellers again, especially in these times we live in that are quite difficult and you sell the heck out of 1984 and the handmade's tale, that makes you, a., very proud; b., actually really feeds into our larger purpose in general, and of course, it's helpful for future investment into content, too; so that is important but what we indeed need to learn is, how do we really market that back list? given the shift of -- to online sales and how do we become more sophisticate in finding targets of audiences for back lists going forward. >> thank you. john, in your 2017 pen speech

when you were honored as pen publisher of the year you said that growing up you admired self-reliance, loyalty, and courage. how is that helped you in your publishing career? >> i'm not sure how the admiration of it has helped it. i try to be that way. look, you don't need a lot of courage in book publishing in general. you do need courage of most of us will run into one, two, three instances in your career when you need a bunch of courage, but other than that it's just sort of courage of your convictions. more so as we go through the cultural changes we go through now, courage becomes more important because there are more forces of change at work that

are difficult to deal with and you don't have experience in dealing with. so, that makes it more difficult as an individual to go forward. the others -- i think individuality -- i have fought against my whole career. publishing is a 100% collaborative effort and being individualistic and thinking you're right is not actually very use inflame most regards in publishing. occasionally useful but mostly something to fight against. >> thank you. and marcus, obviously at the head of penguin random house you're known as a passionate publisher. you have prestigious author list, but before you became ceo of penguin random house, you spent a lot of time in operations in print, and distribution, and it would be very interested to hear more

about how that experience has influenced your work at the head of a global publishing house now. >> thank you for touching on my operations life. i think it has served me very well. in the last basically 25 years, i have worked through the very huge chain of books basically in reverse. i had a life in distribution, supply chain, customer service, got to know retail very well, and then i spent time in printing and production, and for the last decades, i have spent part of the making of the books. so step-by-step i worked my way through the value chain and the last ten years have been a very -- a time of disruptive change in the book industry and

publishing. we have discussed that. i think my sort of understanding of the operations, nuts and bolts, of the business, call it the service side, the back-end side, especially the supply chain side of the business, i think has helped me significantly to navigate random house and now penguin random house, through those changes. one example. when we invested heavily into our print capabilities, when actually the print format was very much under pressure. a., because we believed that a big chunk of our business will always be print. but, b., we also wanted to make the relationship with the book-selling community more efficient. we wanted -- we invested a lot into speed of our supply chain

to actually help increase in-stock rates while reducing return rates and we took huge chunk of inventory out of the supply chain, which freed up cash for book sellers and for us. the reason was that while print was under pressure, we wanted to stabilize physical -- the physical retail environment, and i think to a certain extent we have actually achieved that goal. so, all in all i think my time in other areas of publishing outside of the content piece, the making of the books, basically, has served me very well over the years. >> thank you. well, we're running short of time and i don't want to end without asking you each one impossible question, which is, what books are you most proud of publishing during your careers and i'll open it up to whoever wants to go first.

>> for me, i actually thought a lot about that over the years and there's three basic requirements. as i feel pride in what i do. there's three basic requirements. one of is that the book means something to the world. that it does go in the world. number two it's business we're in so that we need to sell a bunch of copies and make a bunch of money, publishing the book. so, those two things have to be in play. it's a huge bonus if i like the author a lot, and it's a huge bonus if there's a great story that goes along with publishing it and the final thing have 0 have put my personal effort into the publication over the books and the that generates the pride. for me it's relatively easy decision actually.

"being mortal" and "chick could chick kaboom boom." >> i would agree with john on your qualifications for what it does. so, knowing this question was coming was actually very difficult. and -- but i would say that one of them has to be "angela's ashes" because when that it book came up for publish -- is wasn't the publisher but when it came up for acquisitions, it was an irish book and the irish don't buy books -- this was the common belief at the time -- irish don't buy books about themselves, only trinity by leon uris was the only one that was sold but we had 100 pages of the book it and was so glorious and writing and the communication between the child narrator and the adult writer and the reader was so phenomenal, so be bought

it anyway and then decided to make it a best seller despite the fact it was irish, and we did and millions of copies later. so that was one of them. and frank wne of those absolutely fabulous, fabulous people. so, in addition i would add to that "hillary clinton's first -- hillary clinton's first living memo, living history, and all the light we cannot see, both case in which the company of simon & suester -- simon & schuster in every aspect of the company, pulled together like aigrette orchestra and made everything happen stupendously, and that sometimes happens with small groups and bits here and there but they werely just everybody. so, as the person at that point who was running it, instead of actually doing the work, that was -- they were very

gratifying. >> let me address three points here. one is -- i'm coming to one book or two. one is that what makes me proud is actually the diversity of content and books and voices that we launched into the world every year, and for us that's like some 15,000 ideas, stories, opinions, that we launch into the world every year which is so important to basically the service we provide our society and the world with. then if you sort of -- if you're able to transfer important back list titles to -- from generation to generation, like the best reads of all-time, and

i mentioned to -- that are very important right now and feeding into the discourse in our society and in the world, like "1984" and "th hand made's tale" makes me very proud, too, and in these rick times, like current voices, and books that take a deep dive, holistic view, especially in these post truth and sort of short-form and news cycle times, that are really important to contribute to the cultural discourse and the politicaisur that we are going through right now in the world, like books -- like the future is history, and books like "democracy in chains," or "collusion." and talking to basically a book

that is very personal to me, because i've been heavily involved from the start, i is, of course, michelle obama's "becoming" and i'm very proud of being part of that publication november 13, one week after the mid-term elections, launching the book on a global street by a into the world, i'm very proud of that project and the entire company is behind it and also a partner publishers around the world and hopefully we will be able to pressure president obama's book in 2019. so i'm verdict proud of these two books, of course. >> thank you all so much. ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming can i'm afraid our time is up. thank you. [applause]

>> booktive continues with michael smerconish who talk about why his views have shifted over the years. [music] [inaud conveations] >> ladies and gentlemen, i was