Columnist for slate. Com. This is another social distancing social in partnership with the new America Foundation and Arizona State university. Today we are talking about the future books and the National Political writer for cnn politics. Thanks for having us. When i was asked to moderate this, one of the things that it brought to mind is how in the early 2,000 it seems there were people making a bout of predictions about the future of books and how things had to change and which way they needed to go. That was all tied to the emergence of the book technology. And most people said at the time that it didnt turn out to be true. Ebooks didnt take over from print books and in particular, younger readers more than any other Demographic Group preferred print. So the idea that the Book Publishing needed to change with this technology, maybe it did in some ways, but not in ways people thought. I dont know if you remember that time of the kind of craziness that went along with it i dont know how much credit you gave to that idea at the time, but what do you think about it now, do you think any of those predictions are likely to pan out and how has that changed your own personal feelings about protecting the future of books because funny i felt terrified to make any predictions. Im still terrified of making predictions i was then and i am now. I was a political reporter, so i learned humidity debate co humility early. But i would say is you are absolutely right you would see the books for tha go straight ud think at the end of the book thats whabutwhat has been dispx years ago that trend stalled and as you say, physical books continue to thrive. The Biggest Development is not only do millennialist like physical books, they love audio books and that has taken off as a genre and is very good for publishing because what it means you can take it with you as you vacuum and you could work anywhere at the time when we needed a valuable source of income that has turned out to be exactly that. The good news for me, people are reading more than ever, just giving it across a whole different set of platforms. I call it the harry potter phenomenon. Everyone thought we were no longer making generations of leaders. A whole series of books of that popularity came along and what we have is generation after generation who changed the way they consume the changed now is about diversifying the industry. We have recently seen the solidarity where 1100 Publishing Industry workers took the day to do whatever they felt was necessary to support people of color who were writers or worked in the industry and have exacted some promises although it is not clear exactly what the promises will pan out to be from management about making the industry more representative. It is anywhere from i have some figures right here, depending on which one you look at it is anywhere from 76 to 84 rate the general population and hispanics and blacks in particular are underrepresented. I dont doubt that you have ideas for books. How does the Publishing Industry looked to the view from your perspective . Its interesting to me because on the one hand, i agree that there are certain ones that are out there and those targeting places a lot of people love and elevate and celebrate, but then when we realize everybody is it seems like a few people get in and we have the books that are valuable and people are reading them right now but then you also think about all of the people who havent been that successful or been able to actually break through i think i dont want to say the industry hasnt been changing, but how much still needs to change to find writers that not only want to see the stories that are empowered to write the stories i think one thing that ive noticed recently and you probably noticed when thetheywere paying for the bookd things like that, to see somebody like 70,000 or that feminists already pretty well known by that point. You see stuff like that and people talk about they will have an idea for a book project and may be approaching an editor and they might be like that sounds really good but i dont know if i am the person to work on that story. On the one hand it shows the selfawareness that is very important and if it isnt something that you feel comfortable working with on the other hand, you need people working with you. Maybe it makes people uncomfortable about race and racism and people get to the point they feel comfortable and have the resources to be able to actually do this work because of the impact of the stories that are told and people learn if they told stories, somebody seemed to like this book or this idea but they seem skittish. Do you think they are skittish because they are white editors and dont think they understand the issue in the organic way that an editor of color were the . It seems that it is a matter of respect in a nuanced story about race. On the other hand, that can also be a crutch so people dont have to do the work required to think about these but clearly theres an appetite for people to assume and read about and how you get the editors to feel comfortable in the stories. One of the things everybody is talking about this week is the fact that the paperback best seller list which is exciting but then you realize most of the people are white. I dont think black people is a thrilling to read about how to be antiracist. So, in a weird way, most of the books are written by people of color, but they are presumably written for the majority white audience and there are readers of color that are interested in reading about their own with other stories about their own experiences. What do you think are some of the most promising or even effective like have you seen strategies or policies that seem particularly helpful or promising to you . I think the solution is to have a diverse you are absolutely right that publishing is one of the businesses around and its you are right that the good news is i just was reading the New York Times bestseller list, the top ten entries number two, you want to talk about race and number three i think it goes all the way down and number 11 is the michelle. Based on what ive seen they dont have the right nerve endings this should be all of us i think. We just need to change how we hire. Its really basic. I dont want to get into details, but there is still a sort of kind o of undecided attitude as opposed to its integral to our list. Its not this thing we do but we are here, you know, and that is a big attitude that needs to change. You can correct me if i get any of this wrong because i havent technically worked in Book Publishing but my understanding is that for decades they ran on the cheap labor of sort of junior staff at the same set of schools that were mostly women and at a certain point many of them were not even necessarily on a real career track. This was just their little hobby job because their parents were rich but they were doing it until he married a stockbroker. That is like the economic model of publishing that your junior staff were people who didnt need to be paid a living wage order to really have it seems like its only gotten worse because the industry is in new york and its more and more difficult for anyone even on a middleclass income to live there, let alone with the editorialist systems are and get everyone this publishing is a lowmargin industry. So i think one of the issues is partly that there is a certain class of people who can afford to work for publishing to work their way up in publishing. I am assuming you came in at a higher level that definitely happens but for people who want to start off kind of in the trenches and work their way up for several years at least and then theres no guarantee, ther, theres not that much space to move up in. So that limits the candidate pool by half and im wondering what are some of the measures that can be taken to deal with that because i think that that is a wall you hit a certain point. 50 or 70 years ago there was a culture of publishing where your entry job for people who could afford to not make a lot of money. I would say its still low and difficult to live on in new york city. If there is one, if one of the things that comes out of the pen pandemic is we are able to expand the universe where people can live and edit, that would be a good thing. I spoke to an editor today and he wanted to relocate to providence. I said you are going to get hired because nobody cares where you edit your book that is the biggest remedy is the change between the higher salaries and lower. You dont make a lot of money even at my level o with the Vice President level. President s level. Its not like working on wall street or at a highlevel Big Corporation between what the entrylevel editors get paid and part of the philosophy behind it that is to actually get trained right out of school on the job. So, with that, the good news is that ive seen in recent is a lot of hiring of nonwhite i ambitious people that have to be in a book every day of their life and it is getting larger and we are Getting Better finding those people and hiring them. One of the promising concepts that have come out is we need diverse books that started out as childrens Book Publishing to sort of help fund internships for people of color and i would hope other lowlevel jobs so people can actually afford to get started in the business if they dont come for money. Let me ask you what you think, what you feel is missing. What do you see the Book Publishing industry not providing to readers like you . This is a tricky topic of what kind of stories people want from writers of color. I think theres often a sort of not a totally inaccurate for a memoir or collection of essays or Something Like that the books that sort of allow that range of exploration and interrogation. Again its not necessarily a bad thing but i feel like it becomes a bad thing when it only thing that is available or the only way to bring the industry in. Or to make [inaudible] that is the thing that will do it and to understand that there are many things besides purely learning about sort of their own experience. Again its not important, but extending the conversation and representation. But ive also heard them say it is to focus on the on the traumatic experience its a whole range of human lives with everything in them. Are you working on a book youre soft . Guest soft . Guest i am trying the idea that im interested in is as a cultural figure somebody that hasnt gotten more cultural criticism treatment. The expectations that we have for somebody that came in those obviously black didnt want to seem too black and how theyve changed the trajectory of her career later on and the sound of her music after that. I am interested in the fog legacy of thought in the mainstream in particular. Im guilty of little bit of what i just said. It sounds fascinating and maybe somebody will find that intriguing. What you said about audiovox, ive been writing about them for a while and i got into them may be about ten years ago and theres a complete protection for me. To control the number of books that ive acquired, any time it does seem like there is a lot of competition from podcasts and there is a great app that has long form journalism which was a dream come true for me. First of all, are you an audio person at all . Booth. When you mentioned millennialist gets the benefit of both [inaudible] one is a book club and we are reading the hard copy. People are doing both. I have seen from some of the younger readers, this love of the printed book as an escape it seems alien to me. Presales did get a boost during the pandemic [inaudible] i think its great that on the other hand i know there are a lot of people who feel like it not really reading because youre not getting the attention. You can see where that goes, but the more popular audiovox become, the more significant performance becomes because its not just like a simple translation from the page to the microphone. We are at the point that we can take some questions. I thought we were at that point, but im not getting any signals, so while we are waiting to figure out if people have questions, you mentioned audio books, but what else do you see on the business . Today we acquired a book thats going to come out and for different formats immediately. One is as an audio book because it is by a famous artist. Then the physical book is going to show up and at some point it is going to be a cd and vinyl. Im only mentioning this because five years ago there would have been first the hardcover and then the paperback and the ebook. Nonow theres a lot of experimentation going on with what does this book need to get its biggest audience, what does its audience want specifically . Ten years ago, people discovered graphic books and it was a way for instance of telling the story of the iranian revolution. Who knew that you could tell that story in a graphic novel comnovel,any graphic nonfiction. So, i think that has made a big difference. Theres a lot of experiments that havent worked. At one point when i first joined the business 12 years ago, everybody thought we will have folks and then you will be able to press a button and either make a comment or get an audio video to accompany your book. Readers said i just want a book. If the applicant but they read the story. The point is we have experimented and continue to experiment. Another thing we try to do is lets get David Mcauliffe to write a historic version of the story and we will put it in an ebook in two weeks. Thats good and we should continue to do that as we did today. Thank you. We do have a question now from anonymous attendees. This person asked as a writer of color are there any good resources for those of us interested in monday writing a book that finding the various entry into the space a little intimidating . I think that it really kind of depends on where you are because if you are taking classes or you belong to a Writers Group then if you feel like its not that many people like you in this world that you are trying to break into, that makes it even worse. So i think that kind of the first step is to build the community. When you need other writers coming to make you take some classes, join a writing group, start to share information and network. Maybe you need a writer that is published and they recommend you to the editor but its kind of the way that it works because there are so many manuscripts floating around that Everybody Needs somebody to help them find the good ones and its usually somebody that they know. The first thing i would say to do even though it is a solid activity and you may feel that its just this thing you do and you dont want there to be other steps in the way, but building a community with others is going to be the First Step Towards entering into the community of published writers and people who work in the book business. But maybe you might have something else. I would like to add to that the other way to do that is go look at your bookshelf or go to the bookstore and go to the acknowledgments and see who the agent was. If it is a book that you above the book will have a literary agent and they will want to hear your voice because you think that person can really hear you and there are agents that have a track record that are now dominating the bestseller list and you can find them. I think they will listen. Heres another question. It used to be said big bestsellers for the subsidizing of other worthy of. I think just titles that are worthy but you dont necessarily know that they are going to be successful, but my thought so too many copies. So, is this an accurate description of the Business Model or has that changed and are there other books that are not out there in advance or that they want to publish just because they believe the book should be out there or above books by authors who maybe are not quite there yet but think they might get there someday. Its true that its a little less true than it was years ago as the internet brought about and affect or a book by the backlist and that is the model that we all aspire to, and its hard. That is the hardest thing we do is figure out is this book going to have value, and we look at it years from now and say that was the best biography that i ever read and pull it out again and recommend it to other next generations. I think that is where you really make money. Another anonymous attendee asked can you speak to those choosing to publish the Trump Administration or other controversial figures, and you were the editor of john boltons book, so maybe you can speak to that. He was already a house officer. He published a book years ago my brain has gone, but it was a modest selling books so we have what is called the option on his next book so when he approached us, we were inclined to publish it because we had had a relationship with him. I think the book was called surrender is not an option. Anyway, i dont know that im typical of the Publishing Industry. I come from journalism. When i was there we put mike omar on the cover one week and the idea was to sort of try to get across the range of voices out there and the different political influences that are shaping our politics i also published a memoir of what happened and karl roves memoir about his time in the white house. I feel like if they were books of quality, and i believe they were, then they are important contributions to what we need to know about how the country is either moving forward or not and on the other hand if the book is going to say things that are irresponsible and that its not going to be a quality book, then you wouldnt publish it. I like the way that she framed in terms of the first draft of history that sounds like a way to at least give the opportunity to have these kind of conversations. If something is bad or inaccurate or wrong or inflammatory, you wouldnt publish it but otherwise it seems like a good moment to find yourself in. It isnt my choice to publish things that ive been working on a piece and reading a flood of books by former members of the Trump Administration. Most of them are not people that i admire or respect, but im getting a lot out of those books and clearly with a lot of skepticism, but im also gaining valuable knowledge from them. I think when you talk about someone like milo through 80 of the things he says are not even true, then you dont necessarily want to get into that, but i dont thin