Hello everyone. Thank you for turning out. I am laura miller and the books and poultry columnist for slate. Com. This is another social distancing social from [inaudible] in partnership with a partnership of slate, new American Foundation and Arizona State university. Today were talking about the future of books and im joined by priscilla who is Vice President and executive editor of simon schuster, Brandon Hensley is the National Political writer for cnn politics. Hello, priscilla and brandon. I cant hear you. You have to unmute. Hello, nice to see you. Thank you for having us. When i was asked to moderate this one of the things that it brought up or brought to mind or brought up in my memory was how in the early 2000s it seems like everywhere you went there was a discussion of the future of books and people making a lot of predictions about the future of books and how things had to change and which way they needed to go and that was all tied to the emergence of ebooks and ebook technology. Most people said at that time it did not turn out to be true. Ebooks did not take over from printed books. And in particular younger readers, more than any other Demographic Group preferred print books so the idea the Book Publishing needed to change with its technology or maybe you did in some ways but not maybe in ways that people thought and im wondering first, priscilla, i dont know if you remember that time or the kind of craziness that went along with it but do you feel that, i dont know how much credit you gave to that idea at the time or, but what do you think about it now . To think any of those productions are likely to pan out and how has that changed your own personal feelings about the future of books . For me, its terrified to make a production. I am still terrified and making predictions. I was then and i am now. Before becoming a book publisher i was a political reporter so i learned humility early but what i would say is that yes, you are absolutely right. I remember the charts and you would see the ebooks go straight out and think that the end of the bookstore but what happened is about five, six years ago that trend stalled and as you say, physical books continue to thrive. The Biggest Development though is that not only to millennials like physical books but they love audiobooks and that has taken off and that is also really good for publishing because what it means is that you can take a book with you as you vacuum your living room and you can take a book with you everywhere and that is also, frankly, at a time when we needed a very reliable source of income and it has turned out to be be exactly that. The good news for me and to meet the big headlines is so simple which is people will or are reading more than ever but they are just doing it across a whole different set of platforms but, and i call it the harry potter phenomenon which is, you know, everyone thought we were no longer making generations of readers but, you know, a whole series of books of that popularity came along and what we have is generation after generation of readers who just changed the way they consume what they or consume a page but they dont change their desire to see something on a page. One of the changes that feels the most urgent right now has been about diversifying the industry and we just recently have seen the day of solidarity where Publishing Industry workers took a day to do whatever they felt was necessary and people of color who were writers or worked in the industry and have exacted some promises although what exactly those promises will pan out to be from management about making the industry more representative. Its very white and everywhere from, i have figures right here but depending on which survey you look at, 76 84 white where the general population is 60 white and hispanics and blacks in particular are underrepresented. I am curious, you brandon, are a young writer of color and i dont doubt that you have ideas for books where you are probably working on one so how does the Publishing Industry look to you from your perspective . It is interesting for me because on the one hand i see that there are certain more diverse forces being represented and out there and those are, i think, these are voices people love and they elevate and celebrate them and then when you think back you realize everyone is talking about the same two people so it seems like a few people get in and we have that dont want a book which valuable and people are revisiting them right now but then you think about all the people who have not been that successful and not been able to break through and when you think about it i think it is not disheartening but this industry has not been changing but you see how much the change confined writers to not only want stories but are in powdered to write the stories and one thing ive noticed recently especially on twitter and you probably noticed the Different Campaign where people try to talk about what they were paid for their books and things like that but its galling to see somebody like [inaudible] got 70000 or something for note awad and he was already pretty well known at that point and respected as a writer and so you see stuff like that and you also see people or at least ive seen people talk about they will have an idea for a book project and approach an editor and the editor might say the discounts are good and this is a story that needs to be told but i dont know if i am the person to work on that story which is a double edge store because we get on the one hand it shows the degree of selfawareness and you dont want them necessarily to mess up someones work if it is not something you feel comfortable working with but on the other hand still need those editors and you still need people comfortable working with these diverse stories that may be it makes people uncomfortable to edit a book about race and racism but at the same time when you make people get to a point where they feel comfortable and they have the resources to be able to do this work because it impacts the stories that are told and their willingness to tell their stories but someone seems to like this book but they seem skittish about taking it on themselves so this is my general observation with the two or three weeks. Do feel like they are skittish because theyre basically white editors and they dont feel like they understand the issue in the organic way that an editor of color would . I do. You know, i think it is matter, it seems like its a matter of perspective. I dont want to watch somebodys very interested story about nuanced story of race but on the other hand that can also be a crutch so that people dont have to do the work required to actually rigorously think about these issues that clearly there is an appetite for people to consume and read about. I do think it is matter of this intellectual experience that you are to work with in a question of how do you bridge and how do you get white publicists or white editors to feel comfortable throwing their weight behind these sorts of stories. This week, the paperback bestseller list on amazon is almost entirely booked with antiracism so it is exciting but then you realize most of the people who are buying those books are really white and i dont think black people necessarily need to read about how to be antiracist so in a weird way most of those books are written by people of color but they are presumably written by still a couple of majority white audiences but there are lots of readers of color who are interested in reading about their own fiction about their own experiences and other kinds of stories about their own experiences and priscilla, what do you think are some of the most promising or even effective, i mean, the industry has not budged that far on this. Have you seen the strategies or policies that seem particularly helpful or promising to you in this . Voices. Let me stress, i was going to say, the solution to skittishness is to have a diverse, you know, in print. You are absolutely right that publishing remains one of the most starkly white businesses around and you know, i guess it has the capacity to be dangerous because assumedly books have something to contribute to the culture so that, by definition, is not a healthy situation. You are right that the good news is that i was reading the New York Times bestseller list the top ten entries since ebook nonfiction are about race. That has not happened in my lifetime ever. It starts with white fragility number one and number two you talk about race number three how to be an antiracist and it goes all the way down to our favorite just mercy and of course, number 11 is michelle. I mean, based on what i have seen the strategy is that the people who have the right nerve endings for the stories should be all of us, i think, there shouldnt be a skittish about it but more importantly we just need to change how we hire. It is really basic and you knowt into details but there is still a sort of, you know, a kind of, it is on the side to attitude as opposed to its integral to our list. It is not this thing we do over here my you know. That is a big attitude that needs to change. You can correct me if i get any of this wrong and i havent really technically worked in Book Publishing but my understanding is for decades the economy of Book Publishing ran on the cheap labor of this junior staff who all came from like the same set of east coast schools were mostly women and at a certain point many were not even necessarily on the rear career track but this is just the little hobby job because their parents are rich they were doing this until they married a stockbroker or whatever and then that was the model of publishing that you are a junior staff people who do not need to be paid a living wage or to really have, you do not need to offer them the possibility of forgetting one. It feels like its only gotten worse because the industry is in new york and it is more and more difficult for anyone or even middleclass income to live there let alone editorial systems are paid and yet everyone always says publishing is a lowmargin industry so one of the issues is partly that there is a certain class of people who can afford to work for publishing or work their way up in publishing and i am assuming you came in at a higher level from journalism which definitely happens but for people who want to start out in the trenches and work their way up they have to be able to live in new york on a pittance for several years at least and then they arent that many and there arent that much or no guarantee and not that much space to move up in. That limits the candidate pool a lot and it limits people by race and limits them by, you know, class. I am wondering what are some of the measures that can be taken to deal with that because i feel like that is a wall that you hit at a certain point. You are right that 50, 70 years ago there was a culture of where publishing was, your entry job was people who could afford not to make money and i would say the salaries of entering people are still low and are still difficult to live on in new york city. If one of the cyst this thing that comes out of the pandemic is that we were able to expand the universe of where people can live and edit that would be a very good thing. I spoke to a brilliant editor today who let go of his job by another publisher because he wanted to relocate to providence and i said you know what, they will get hired because no one cares where you edit your book so that is a good thing. I believe the biggest remedy is to change the range between the higher salaries and the lower and you dont make a lot of money even at my level and publishing medians as Vice President level and its not like on wall street or at a high level or at a big ibm type place but there is still, i think, quite a gap between what entry levels editors get paid and part of the philosophy behind that is you get trained on the job, right out of school. Without the good news is that what i have seen in recent years is a lot of hiring of nonwhites very ambitious for book type people who just have to be near a book every day of their life and, you know, the pool is getting larger and we are Getting Better at finding those people and hiring them. The more promising concept that came out of the organization is we need diverse books which started as the children Book Publishing which is sort of help fund internships for people of color and i would hope, you know, other lower level job so that people can actually afford to get started in the business if they dont come from money. But brandon, i want to ask you what you think and what you thought is missing. You are a younger reader, reader of color so what do you see Book Publishing industry not providing to readers like you . That is such a tricky topic so let me be careful about how i talk to it but one way is to expand the universe of what stories people want from writers of color and there is often an assumption and its not totally inaccurate that writers of color are able to talk about or experts on their own experiences and beyond the genre of like firstperson essays is familiar that and you dont see as much or i havent seen as many books that allow that range to be that exploration and interrogation and its not necessarily a bad thing but it becomes a bad thing when that is the only thing available where it seems that is the only way to break into the industry is i guess i have to back pack some parts of my life or make a part of my life legible for right readers and white audiences and i get that is living and then i will do it. People to understand that there are many, many things and that readers of color can just decide purely learning about sort of their own experiences. Its not important but expanding that conversation in expanding that representation. Ive also heard some of the writers they focus on the dramatic experiences as exposed to a whole range of, you know, it is human lives that have everything in them and are you working on about yourself . I am trying. I guess its not related to or im not guilty of what i just said but you know, the idea that im interested in Whitney Houston as this cultural figure someone who hasnt gotten the sort of more cultural criticism treatment and im interested in how we can get she is somebody in a lot of ways her life and career were a microcosm of the expectations that we have that ancient society has of black artists and someone who came in very topheavy and obviously black but sort of, you know, do not want to seem to lack and how that changes the trajectory of her career every time [inaudible] she changed the sound of her music after that but im interested in the broader sort of the effects of mainstreaming, in particular, black artists but im guilty of either side and i [inaudible] it sounds fascinating maybe there is somebody who is listening in who will find that intriguing. Sounds great. Lets talk about technology because the future is technology and what you said about audiobooks really struck me nervously because ive been writing about them for a while and got in there ten years ago where there was just a complete addiction and i dont, i can completely control the number of physical books i acquired and any time one is sale i will be like okay we love you. [laughter] but it does seem like there is a lot of cap competition for podcast and a great app called autumn that now has toplevel audio that was a dream come true for me and first of all, are you and audio person at all or an eyeball reader . More of an all by eyeball reader but at the top of the conversation we mentioned people lineals be a representative for millennials but am the both see it as the best. I am in two book clubs that adjoined once the pandemic started and so one is a Gay Book Club and we are reading hard copy of politics form of an immortal girl and then another one is the siobhan trenches by andre and for me that wasnt audiobook so that is the one i listen to when im eating dinner or cleaning up the house or something and when he said that people doing both im literally doing both right now. Yeah, i deftly have seen from younger readers that i have met this love of the print book as like an escape from screens which is, which was not what was anticipated but that is you know like the tiktok videos of people opening books in a strange way that feels kind of alien to me almost like a fetishizing of the fact i am in paper but its presented as this relaxing escape and yet, well, i dont know. Print sales really did get a boost during the pandemic so maybe that but then audiobooks are kind of the book that you read so you can multitask really. I mean, i think it is great but on the other hand i know there are people who feel like it is not really reading because youre not giving it your full attention. It will be interesting to see where that goes but the more popular audiobooks to calm the more significant the performance becomes because it is not just like a simple translation from the page to the microphone and there is another artist involved that can make a huge, huge difference. As you were saying brandon, he reads his own book. Yes. So that has to be fantastic . I think we are at the point where we can take some questions and is that i dont know. I cant tell. I thought we were at that point but i am not getting any any signals from the powers to be. While we are waiting to figure out if people have questions, priscilla, you mentioned audiobooks but what else do you see on the horizon in the Book Business . Well, today we have acquired a book that will come out in four different formats immediately and one is the first is an audiobook because it is by a Famous Artist and then the physical book will show up and then at some point it will become a vinyl and it is a book of poetry and im only mentioning that because we never would have sort of, five years ago there wouldve been first the hardcover and then the paperback and then the ebook and now there is a lot of experimentation going on with what does this book mean to get its biggest audience and 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 you could tell that story in a graphic novel and in a graphic Nonfiction Book . So, i think that is, it made a big difference but a lot of the experiments that havent worked at one point when i first joined the business which was, g