this together, and when she talks about the holy spirit being in the room. um, i think was all sorts of spirit that, that, that, that, that brought us, that brought us together. i think that was truly extraordinary. yeah. well, just wanted to thank you all for being here tonight. i wanted to thank column diane i know it's been a busy last couple of months on the road. you know, we've talked about radical empathy. we've talked about jim's great moral courage. i also just wanted to end by saying it's also beautifully poetic story of love. so you for being with us. we thank peggy and we thank all of you here at politics and prose and all of you took time to come. so good of you. thank. thank you all.

on about books we delve into the latest news about the publishing industry with interesting insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews. and we'll talk about the current nonfiction and books featured on c-span's book tv. well, over our 25 year plus history book. tv has covered thousands of authors and hundreds of those authors have been published by simon and schuster. jonathan karp is the president of simon and schuster. mr. karp, congratulations on celebrating 100 years in publishing. who are some of the favorite authors that you've worked with over the years?

oh, my gosh. well, i guess i'll start with bob woodward, because i do think he's he's a classic simon and schuster author. and the funny thing is, i actually met bob years ago when i was a summer intern at the washington post and he came in and he talked to us and he told us a story about being published by simon schuster at the time. and he he actually told the head of simon schuster that he had an idea for a book. he thought that he should write his next book as an exposé on the publishing business and the ceo, simon schuster. snider said, i've got a great title for that. my last book and i never forgot that joke. and bob didn't write that book, but he has written many other great ones. and and i've i've had the pleasure of working with him for a long time now, and he has such integrity as a report. he follows the facts wherever they lead them. he he obviously is assiduous in

cultivating his sources. and he he finds he finds things out that that nobody else does. he's an extraordinary reporter. walter isaacson is another author you've worked with. walter isaacson is a truly convey veal writer. i would follow walter anywhere and the thing that i think elevates walter above a lot of other writers is his mixture of curiosity and expense sense of intelligence. walter obviously has written about some of the most remarkable people in civilization, whether it's leonardo or benjamin frank lindh or steve jobs and he he's able to. einstein. i think he i think that walter's ability to traverse the worlds of science and culture to to find the artistry and imagination and genius in his

characters is what's made him a really extraordinary author. i read everything he writes. susan orlean. susan orlean is well, i love susan orlean. i think susan orlean is one of the greatest literary journalists alive. and and what i mean by literary journalists is that it's not just that she's a really terrific reporter. she's got a great eye for detail. but what makes susan orlean special is that she is she is funny as hell. she's got a great sense of humor. she loves people. she loves what she writes about. and i had the joy of working with her on the orchid thief, which is a book really about passion and obsession. it's about orchids, but it's but it's really about passion and obsession. and susan follows her obsessions to extremes. and she she takes a while to write her books.

they're they're elegy that we crafted and and i look forward to every one of them. we published the library book. we published a book on rin tin tin, everything she writes is just an absolute pleasure to read. and doris kearns goodwin. well, doris kearns goodwin is a national treasure. and she's been called america's historian in chief. you know, it's interesting. i think that doris has a lot in common with susan orlean because they both take their time to write their books. and i think one of the reasons why is because they really get to know their subjects. and i think doris loves people. and, you know, because doris is writing about politics so much, about politics is about people. and she understands the way people fit into the contours of history. and her new book, an unfinished love story, is her most personal book. it's a personal history of the 1960 years as she lived it with

her husband, -- goodwin, who was one of the great speechwriters of that time. and and and what was so interesting is that in the course of their marriage, they had this prepared sexual argument about who was the better president. lbj or jfk. and she'd worked for lbj. so it he but he also worked for jfk. and and, you know, and throughout their marriage, this is an argument and and it's so interesting to read this book to see them relive those years in the sixties and then come to different opinions. and their dialectic about these two presidents and others in the sixties changes as as they grow older. and so it's kind of doris is year of living historically and she's and she's really keeping the memory of her husband alive but also telling a story about the remarkable people who they both worked with. simon and schuster has put out this book in honor of its

centennial. simon and schuster, a century of publishing,. 1924 to 2024. for people interested in publishing. what are they going to get in this book? mr. karp they are going to get a cultural history of america through the sweep of the books that we've published. and we actually went and we we got a committee together and we picked out the ones books we thought best represented simon and schuster. i mean, we've published, you know, ten, you know, we've published more than 14,000 books. so, i mean, we've got more than 14,000 print. i think we've probably published, you know, a lot more than 14,000, actually. and but these 100, we think, are emblems of what we represent. and so it's fans. it spans, you know, works of, you know, award winning works of history, great works of fiction, but also books that had an influence on popular culture. you know, like he's just not

that into you or arnold schwarzenegger's guide to bodybuilding or, you know, and then we've got we've got great memoirs. and i one of the books that i edited that i, i only have one book in there that i edited. it's, it's bruce springsteen's autobiography, born to you, born to run, which is just a, you know, a great story, brilliantly told you know, and he's a true artist. but we have we have our classic novels, lonesome dove catch 22. we have we have wonderful children's books. you know, chicka chicka boom, boom. are you there? god, it's me, margaret by judy blume. and and and then we've got, you know, the books that had an impact on the culture, like all the president's men and steve jobs. so it's it's a the book goes into how those how those. simon schuster books came to be the people who produced them.

how the company grew and changed through the years. so it's it's just sort of a way of talking about the influence that simon and schuster had on america, on american publishing, but also how how we as a company changed through the years and in this book, you also tell the story, a short story about how david mccullough became a simon and schuster loyal author. yes, david mccullough. we published david for over 50 years. he was a beloved author. and he my favorite story about david mccullough. i'm not even sure it's you know, i'm not sure it's the one you were referring to. but i'll tell it to you, because i i think it really exempt defies. you know what we are as a publishing company. david was under contract to us to write a book about picasso, and he he spent about a year on

it. and he came to the conclusion that he didn't want to write the book because he really did not want pablo picasso in his life any more. he didn't like the guy and david david had a really terrific literary agent named mort janklow. mort came to simon schuster. he said david wants to give his money back. he wants to give his advance back. he doesn't want to write this book and the people at simon schuster at the time, i believe it was -- snider, said, keep the money, don't return it. we want to publish whatever david does next and he'll come up with a better idea. and the book that he came up with was truman. and obviously that changed the trajectory of david's career. it became it was it was really a massive bestseller. it also was a book that a lot of people were reading in the cycle of that years presidential

election, because all the people running for president, when that book came out wanted to be thought of as the next harry truman. the guy who could make the tough decisions, who was, you know, who had tenacity and and so it was an influential book for the for the time. but david was just such a class act and didn't it didn't waste a word on the page. he was he was not a verbose writer. he he was he was an artist himself. he literally he he he made watercolor illustrations. and i often thought that his his artistry extended to the page that that he was writing like a painter. and you could you could see the characters in his books. i loved working. i got to publish his book on the wright brothers. and and that was a kind of a classic david mccullough book, because he could. it allowed him to write about the optimism of the american

spirit and, you know, the can do nature of americans as told through these these brothers. and that was a story, the truman picasso story that i wanted to get out there. mr. good. mr. karp, how much time do you have to work directly with authors and edit them since you've been ceo and president for the last four years? well, i still get to do it. i don't get to do it as much as i would like, but i do get to work with doris kearns goodwin. i'm still working with bob woodward and john irving, who is my favorite novelist of all time. and i've worked with john on three of his novels, the first one, which i think is really a classic, is called in one person. and it was years ahead of the curve on on transgender rights. and and then i did abc mysteries and most recently, we published

the last chairlift and john, i think is one of the greatest novelists alive and and for all time and i've been reading him since i was in high school. i think he's a pure storyteller and somebody who's been able to write about the changing the changing nature of our culture, the the the mutable city of gender and the and the way we love and regret and love again. janet and karp, is it his topics or his style that attracts you to john irving? both. i think that he he has i think he has written about politics and sexuality and. and liberal values and in a in a really compelling, emotional

way. but i also think that it's his sense of humor. john irving is a very funny writer and when i read the world according to garp, you know, in high school, i was laughing, but i was also crying. over the hundred years, how many honors has simon and schuster had and how independent is it today? we've had, i believe we've changed ownership. seven times and it did start out as an independent company. so i buy something from simon and schuster. they were two guys. they were as independent as you could get. and then, you know, they were sold and ultimately wound up as part of a media conglomerate, gulf and western paramount. cbs viacomcbs paramount. and and i think that as part of a media conglomerate, that independent spirit wasn't quite

as pronounced. and i'm very happy to report that last year we were sold to kkr, and kkr has spun us off and made us truly an independent company again. and one of the biggest independent companies, in fact, the biggest independent publisher of adult and children's books in the usa. and we hope to two to grow even further and become even better than we already are. how many titles are you planning to publish this year, your centennial year? it's about 1200. i haven't i haven't counted and that number is a little bit ambiguous because sometimes we first of all, we publish all over the world. so we're publishing in the united kingdom original books and in canada and india and australia, in addition to those in the usa and also sometimes we'll do two editions of a book. so a children's book might be a board book and also a hardcover.

so that's why the number is an exact. so how many? how many books will you sell in a year. about? well, i know that we sell about you know about $1,000,000,000 worth of books, but i actually don't know how many units that translates to. mr. karp if somebody picks up a macmillan book or a scribner book or an atria book, those are all simon and schuster is right. well, the macmillan is a separate company owned by holtzberg. it's a little bit complicated. we did buy some imprints from macmillan years ago, but yes, we have 50 different imprints. atria is one of them. gallery we started a new imprint five years ago called avid reader press that has had a tremendous track record. i think a third of their books have become new york times best sellers. same is true for simon element, which is more of a practical, all lifestyle nonfiction

imprint. we scribner is our oldest imprint. they are the publishers of ernest hemingway and scott fitzgerald and edith wharton obviously has a great backlist of classic writers, but also modern classics by by anthony dore. although we cannot see jennifer egan and and don delillo and stephen king. so a wide range of authors and a wide range of imprints. the idea is that you want to have people who have a certain sensibility for a certain kind of book, and atria right now is really the home for really big commercial fiction. they publish colleen hoover and frederick bachman and sister soldier. then there's gallery, which is really the home for pop culture. they had the biggest nonfiction

and memoir of of the fall. last year it was the it was britney spears. so, you know, simon schuster is sort of a home for topical nonfiction, political books, history, serious, serious topics that people are discussing. so there's there's there's a little bit of everything for everybody since you joined random house in 1989, by the way, when you were at brown university, did you want to be in publishing? was that your plan? i did not have a plan. i will say that i was interested in journalism. i was interested in writing and my father, this is true. my father said, you know, there's this guy named michael korda and he is an editor at simon schuster. he's the editor in chief of simon schuster. but he also writes books. so why don't you be like michael korda? why don't you get why don't you have a real job and write on the side? my dad my dad is a very practical guy. and so and i and the amazing thing is i wound up at simon and

schuster and working with michael korda. he he continued to edit for us. he's a great guy and he's still writing works of history today. and, you know, i get email from them regular daily and i'm hoping he'll be coming to celebrate our anniversary with us. and michael korda, of course, has been featured on booktv as well since 1989. when you started in publishing, what are two or three of the major changes in how books are published? well, certainly audio books are a much bigger part of our business. i think when i started, they they barely existed and now they might be 25% of our sales. and so that's a big change. and it's also a very exciting change because there are a lot of people who will never buy a book, but they will listen to one and and and that's that

could mean that we're going to be getting our books to an entirely new audience of readers and also a much bigger one, because i think that only about half of the people in the country actually buy a book in a given year and that other half they might be willing to listen. to an audiobook. so that's a big change. i mean, obviously the other big changes is amazon and have the the apotheosis of of digital online bookselling and the fact that people can order a book and have it pretty much instantly either as an e-book or an audio book or the next day or a couple of days later. that's a big that's a big change. and it's not just amazon, of course. i mean, other retailers are selling e-books online. there's a there's a wonderful new independent online bookselling organization called bookshop dot org, which which i think people are using barnes and noble, which is which is

really flourishing under the leadership of james daunt, a great national bookselling chain once again. so, you know, there are a lot of ways to sell books. mr. karp finally, publishing is often thought of as kind of a dusty, stodgy profession. how do you respond to that? i think that we're more dynamic and entrepreneurial and and, you know, it's so funny because the original simon and schuster would have been considered the equivalent of tech bro's when they started in 1924. and i think that, you know, we're right at the cutting edge and, you know, the tech brothers are calling us and, you know, they want to work with us and people still are influenced by books. there's still they're still animated by them. they're inspired by them. and we are amplify by some of

the most important voices and writers in the world. and and i think that the expression and expressiveness that comes in a book is still unique. there's only really one place where you can focus in. and here an individual's voice straight on in depth in exactly the way that voice wants to be experienced and that's why i think books have a singular or an enduring place in our culture. jonathan karp is the president and ceo of simon and schuster. congratulations on on your 100th anniversary this year. and we appreciate your joining us here on book tv. thank you. and thanks for joining us on about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span. booktv booktv. we will continue to bring you publishing news and author programs. and a reminder that you can get this podcast on our c-span now

app and you can also watch online any time all of our book tv programs at booktv dot org.

ms. butler: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, today i rise honoring women's history month to once again bring attention to the destructive practice of book banning taking place all across our nation.