Episode 26: The Changing Publishing Landscape

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Media Relations Director Deborah Broide talks with Voracious and Spark VP/Publisher Michael Szczerban about the changing landscape of publishing.

Deborah Broide is the media relations director for the food media company Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, and she also works on select publicity projects for the Mayo Clinic and The Jerome Robbins Foundation and Trust. Before joining forces with Kimball 31 years ago, at what became Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen, she began her career in publicity at Crown Publishing, where she worked with Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She has also held senior positions at Workman Publishing, where her successes included the Silver Palate Cookbooks and What to Expect When You’re Expecting, and Putnam, where her authors included Tomie dePaola and Eric Carle. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and her passions include books, theatre, ballet, music, and her family.

Michael Szczerban is the vice president and publisher of Voracious and Spark, two imprints of Little, Brown and Company that help readers improve their lives by making them more delicious, more beautiful, healthier, and happier. He started his career as an editor at Simon & Schuster, where he worked with Samin Nosrat on her mega-bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and then joined Little, Brown ten years ago. He has edited numerous bestsellers and established several million-copy series that include books from White House photographer Pete Souza, cookbooks from Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, and Sarah Knight’s collection of “No F’s Given Guides.” His upcoming books include titles from activist and icon Pamela Anderson, chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, star baker Bryan Ford, online phenomenon Accidentally Wes Anderson, and more.

Resources:
America's Test Kitchen
Mayo Clinic Press
Spark
Frankfurt Book Fair
London Book Fair

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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Transcript

Marni: Hi, welcome back to the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, where we bring you conversations from our bookstore's rich community of book professionals who talk about a different aspect of the book world. And if you're new to our podcast, thanks for joining us.

Marni: I'm Marni, and I'm here with my co producer, Kathryn. Hi, Kathryn, how are you? 

Kathryn: I'm good, how are you doing, Marni? 

Marni: Good, 

Kathryn: thanks. What are you reading these days? Uh, 

Marni: Well, I'd like to plug our book club at the store. It's the, 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. It's the New York Times list that they published this summer.

Marni: And we are about to discuss Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. And the next meeting is Monday, October 28th at 7pm. And if you'd like to register, you still can. And we'd love to have you. How about you? What are you reading? 

Kathryn: You know, I will second that book club because it's a nice big group and Belcanto is a great book.

Kathryn: It's been so long since I've read it and probably since most people have read it that, uh, it'll be new to you even if you have, , read it before. But right now I am reading Loved and Missed by Susie Boyd, uh, which was recommended by you. It's so good. 

Kathryn: It's about a woman raising her granddaughter because her own daughter is addicted to drugs. And um, I'm not very far into it, but it's just beautiful and a very short little book. And I think, I think 

Marni: it's great. It's such a good book and we've come full circle because actually our guest on today, uh, Deb Brody, recommended it to me.

Marni: Get out, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. And I've since recommended it and bought it as a gift to like ten different people, so. That's fantastic. Yeah. 

Kathryn: Deb is a voracious reader. 

Marni: Yeah. She reads probably more than anyone I know. Yeah, so today we have on, uh, Deb Brody. She is the media relations director for the food media company, Christopher Kimball's Milk Street.

Marni: And she also works on select publicity projects for the Mayo Clinic and the Jerome Robbins Foundation and Trust. Before joining forces with Kimball 31 years ago at what became Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen, she began her career in publicity at Crown Publishing, where she worked with Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Marni: She has also held senior positions at Workman Publishing where her successes included the Silver Pallet Cookbooks and What to Expect When You're Expecting and Putnam where her authors include Tommy DePaola and Eric Carle.. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey and her passions include books, theater, ballet, music and her family.

Kathryn: And with her today is her long time friend and colleague, Michael Zurban. , Mike is the Vice President and Publisher of Voracious and Spark, two imprints of Little Brown and Company that help readers improve their lives by making them more delicious, more beautiful, healthier, and happier.

Kathryn: He started his career as an editor at Simon Schuster, where he worked with Samin Nasrat on her mega bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and then joined Little Brown ten years ago. He has edited numerous bestsellers and established several million copy series that include books from White House photographer Pete Souza, cookbooks from Christopher Kimball's Milk Street, and Sarah Knight's collection No F's Given Guides.

Kathryn: His upcoming books include titles from activist and icon Pamela Anderson, chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, star baker Brian Ford, online phenomenon Accidentally West 

Marni: Anderson, and more. Enjoy the conversation, and we'll be back after to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

Deborah: So Mike, how do we know each other? 

Mike: Oh, how? We know each other, what, for probably eight or ten years now. We would have met through Christopher Kimball's Milk Street. And, uh, we would have met when we started publishing the Milk Street books at Little Brown.

Mike: And, uh, Do you remember our first meeting, Deb? 

Deborah: There was like some event that was with sales reps. That's what I remember. Oh yeah, 

Mike: I think that would have been for Book Expo back when that still existed.

Mike: Um, and we had Chris come and talk to a whole bunch of different buyers and stuff. Yeah, I remember we commissioned somebody to make , like a ten foot tall chalkboard drawing of Chris that he hated. 

Deborah: Well, that's typical Chris, right? And I also, it was weird because , he published two of his own books by actually Penguin, I think, no, Clocks and Potter.

Deborah: And, um, but what, at our former company, we published our own books. So he was not used to having. Editors and that was a new experience for him, but it went well. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Deborah: Right. 

Mike: Yeah. So with Milk Street, we've now, I think we're up to a baker's dozen actually with this new book that we're publishing in October called Milk Street Bakes, which, um, I don't know, probably the best one yet.

Mike: That's what 

Deborah: Chris says. I mean, every day he's like telling me that. Yeah. So far it's gotten good publicity, you know, in terms of like what we're setting up, but, and that book Really, going up there to Boston, which is where Milk Street is, every other month, every time, all the recipes, you know, they're always testing the recipes.

Deborah: I think they've been testing recipes now on that for three or four years. Seriously, too. 

Mike: Fantastic. Yeah, 

Deborah: yeah, so. We'll see, October 22nd. Yeah. 

Mike: Well, can you tell a little bit about what your role is on a project like that? So, you and I are people who are normally not the people on the podcast talking about the book.

Deborah: Right. So, I've worked for Christopher Kimball, who was the , person that founded, , America's Test Kitchen for 31 years. Um, and, , my job is publicity. So like I always say to people, um, I make people famous. And, and so that, and whatever you do, like Milk Street is a food media company. So we have a Emmy awarded winning TV show, NPR show, Milk Street Magazine, which has won a zillion awards.

Deborah: , Books, um, which is, have won Beards and IACP awards that you published. Um, our editorial director, uh, J. M. Hirsch, who's my, also my close friend. He just won an IACP award for Mill Street Magazine. So my job is just to get it in front of the media and have them cover it. Um, and that's really what I do. So I do publicity for the whole company.

Deborah: Everything in our company. And I'm also a director of the company. So If it wasn't in a circle at Milk Street, I would be in it. But you know Chris, so Um, but it's really, really fun. It's You know, I'm not a kid, couldn'tmost of the people I know are like retired by my age, which is sixty seven, but it's just so fun.

Deborah: And every day is different, and even thoughand I should say Chris is older than me even, but because he owns the company, We can try things and if they don't work, and we also have this retail store online so it's never boring and my job again is to get it in front of the media so that people will see it and buy our stuff basically.

Mike: I think the job of the publicist is one of the hardest jobs in the business. At least on my side as an editor, there's some discreet kind of portion of work that I can say like, Okay, I edited that book and now it's back with the author and they send it back to me and we do our thing. And at some point, The book is the book and it gets printed and then somebody's holding it and the reaction happens and there's 

hand 

Mike: holding and a lot of positioning and thinking about sales and marketing and being kind of the quarterback on the team inside the publisher to help the book come to market and find its place in the world.

Mike: But. You know, once that book hits the shelves, I'm not going back and saying, you know what? I wish that we should have included a croissant in this book. 

Deborah: Right, right. 

Mike: But for you, the, the bucket of publicity seems like it's, you know, impossible to fill. There's always going to be another outlet to go to, another angle that you can think of.

Mike: Right. How, How does that not drive you crazy? I mean, first of all, I do want to 

Deborah: say, just to give a little plug, Mike has a fantastic publicity director at Voracious Jewels, who I love, and so we work very much together on the books. The thing is about publicity from when I started when I was 22 years old, um, is that the whole media landscape has changed.

Deborah: I mean, you used to, you wanted the reviews in the Times, and the Journal, and USA Today, and this and that. But now you have to keep up with everything, because there's the podcast, like this one. There's, um, all the websites. There's the social media. So you really have to, like, I always think of myself as a media junkie.

Deborah: And I have a journalism degree, so that helps. And, um, that's really what it is. It's like, what is going to help, you know, push the product. And in my case, what we're talking about is Milk Street in front of the consumer. So they, to see if they're interested in, , Taking a look. I also do a side gig, which I know, you know, um, for the Mayo Clinic press, I do it on select projects, which is a totally different thing than working food media because it's serious physicians and this and that.

Deborah: And that's also fun because it's so different than Milk Street. I, I, I work on two or three books a year, maybe big ones, and that's a whole different set of media. The thing about. Publicity, um, having taught some courses on this, is you really have to be curious and you have to think fast because some pitches you have like 30 seconds if you get somebody on the phone, which Jules can tell you too, and then even in the written pitch it has to be Quick, you know, what's the three points, why do I want to talk to that person?

Deborah: And that's really what, you know, what publicists do. And that's what, specifically for Milk Street. Luckily with Milk Street, there's always new things. Which, as you know, because you know Chris. And that makes it interesting. Um, but things they might have covered. A few years ago, they won't be covering now.

Deborah: And that's what makes it hard. 

Mike: Yeah, that's the thing that just makes it seem completely endless. 

Deborah: Endless, and we're lucky enough, we have an AP column that goes into almost most of the big outlets in the country, which is, Help the company helped our books and I now oversee the kind of like, for example, I just said, okay We're switching to Milk Street Bakes for this and we have a writer who does it I mean, that's something that a publicist would never have gotten involved with when I was a young publicist because there was no such thing Now let me ask you so do you actually read proposals for?

Mike: All the time, just before I got in the car to come over here to the studio, I was writing to one of my editorial colleagues about a proposal that ultimately she said she was going to pass on, which I said, great, because I started reading it last night, fell asleep with the phone on my face. But yeah, we're reading proposals all the time.

Mike: All the time. Um, but one thing that may be interesting for people listening to this is just to hear about the the volume. I think that the volume of stuff that an editor gets, usually this is from people who are represented by literary agents, and we're hearing from literary agents with whom we have often long standing relationships.

Mike: Um, But an editor often is looking to acquire somewhere between 8 and 12 books a year. I would say that's generally a pretty fully loaded editor. Is that each 

Deborah: editor? Yeah. Because like, your Voracious Books is part of the Little Brown, part of Hachette, which is a big company. Yeah. 

Mike: And there are people who do things differently.

Mike: I, over my career, I tend to, have tended to publish more books, in part because Um, you know, I get to work with people like Chris and JM at Milk Street, where, uh, unlike somebody who's never written a cookbook before, we have a shorthand. I can have a, a call with JM, you know, as I'm driving back from the gym or something, and we'll hash out an idea.

Mike: And I know it's going to get carried through with a really high degree of precision and precision. Creative quality, and that's a little bit different than somebody who's never done this before. It requires a little bit more hand holding. So, through my career, I've tried to find ways that I can scale up a little bit and have more out in the marketplace in a bunch of different ways, just the way that my mind works.

Mike: I get really excited by doing that. And when we started these imprints at Little Brown, for When I started Voracious, and then earlier this year, I started looking after our um, health and wellness prescriptive non fiction imprint called, um, Sparks. Yeah, Little Brown Spark. Spark, a thought, a feeling, a change.

Deborah: Yeah. 

 As we're building out those lists, we are thinking like, okay, if you're an editor who's kind of in mid career, obviously it'd be great to have four. incredibly huge bestsellers. I'd rather have that on our list than 20 books that are not really making it. Um, but to get those, let's say it's 10 books a year, you're probably reading at least a proposal a day, sometimes multiple proposals a day.

Mike: There are moments in the publishing life cycle or, or a seasonal cycle when things end up being really dense with submissions. Right now, the Frankfurt Book Fair is coming up in a couple of weeks, and so a lot of literary agents are trying to get books sold in the United States so that they can go to Frankfurt and say, Wow, you wouldn't believe I just made this huge deal with Knopf or Little Brown or Ballantyne or whoever, and don't, don't you.

Mike: Mr. Dutch publisher, you know, Ms. German publisher, South African publisher, um, want to join in. Uh, there's, there's just so much coming at us that oftentimes we're, we're really looking for the thing that is completely distinctive or that, that really gives us a spark. , 

Deborah: So, just for our audience, so there's several big book fairs, a year, one in New York and other places, but also the Frankfurt and then the London, and so people could go to those book fairs.

Deborah: Um, there's also a foreign rights part of a publisher, so could you explain that? 

Mike: Oh yeah, this is, this is so much fun. I mean, fundamentally the reason why I'm in book publishing is because books are, What connect me to the rest of the world and to eventually, to be able to use our publishing to build relationships with people, probably most often in London with our sister company, Hachette UK, but To know that there's a great music publisher who I can do business with in Spain, that there's like a quirky guy in Germany who seems to have the same interest I have in visual books and so on, it's really exciting.

Mike: Oftentimes a publisher will acquire, um, a worldwide license for the book and sometimes that's limited to just the English language. Sometimes that includes translation rights and we have a, uh, a whole department of people who work with counterparts in different countries around the world to make sure that the potential to publish our books is presented to publishers in local markets.

Mike: And, you know, sometimes it's really interesting to see what's going on. What resonates in one area or another? So in this lead up to the, um, the Frankfurt Fair, I'm getting, you know, a couple of rights guides every day from different publishers and sub agents and people who are trying to sell English language rights, U.

Mike: S. rights from publishers from Australia to the UK. Uh, the Netherlands and everywhere in between. 

Deborah: Yeah. 

Mike: And sometimes you look at these rights guides and go, what the hell are these people reading over there? Right. And other times you think, wow, that's going to be such an amazing thing to pick up here. An example, I never had the chance to publish this book, but one of my favorite books that just delighted me to no end was a book about the Norwegian practice of chopping and stacking wood.

Deborah: Your favorite personal thing to do. 

Mike: I'm a dead tree guy all the way, you know. That 

Deborah: and moss. 

Mike: I do love moss. You know, the kids say to get out there and touch some grass, so I'm trying to do that. 

Deborah: I wanted to say, picking up on that, it's interesting because as, the whole, the whole Watchung booksellers, Margo and Marni, and everyone knows I'm a huge , fiction reader, uh, two, three books, um, a week.

Deborah: And I have kept lists of every book I've read since I was 18 years old. That's true. But I'm a very big, um, lover of British books, and I do go to London many times a year, including in two weeks, I can't wait. Um, anyway, but what always shocked me is how so many of the books that I love in London never come here, although more come here now, and some of like the biggest authors haven't come here, and , going to Holland every year because my family is from Holland, the same thing.

Deborah: Um, , and some of the, um, the Dutch books are actually also published in English, but they're not published here. So the whole foreign rights thing, it's like, what, you know, the culture, what they like. And I think now, like, because there's a lot of awards, as we know, in book publishing, and one of the complaints of the Booker Award, are there too many Americans.

Deborah: Um, the Booker Award just for our audience. That's 

Mike: kind of a worldwide complaint, depending on your politics. 

Deborah: Yeah, the Booker Award. used to be mostly just UK and, you know, Northern Ireland. And now, like, almost every single list is crowded with Americans. And often the Americans win. Um, but yeah, book publishing has kind of, I mean, we're different generations, but I'm sure you'd agree, even in your career, which has been shorter than mine, it's changed so much.

Deborah: I mean, when I think about, you know, my career was basically made at Crown Publishers starting in 1981. And in 1982, I was the publicist for Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and spent months on the road with him and we hit the bestseller list. You would never spend months on the road with an author now.

Deborah: And, and then I worked for the great Peter Workman for four years. And, um, the Silver Palette. I mean, I sent Julie Rosso and Sheila Lukens out, honestly, for two years to publicize that 

Mike: book. I mean, if, if we had the budget to do that today, where would we even, 

Deborah: I don't even know because the media is gone and it's, it's just such a different, like I was just saying to Chris it's shocking like the type of media that I now , go after to, you know, publicize not just our books but our whole company.

Deborah: Most of it didn't even exist five years ago, you know, and so you really do. I mean, Even, even book events. I mean, people still do book events. I mean, Ina Garten is having these huge events. But in the old days, you used to send even like a middle of the road author out. And that's how it was, you know, we called it the dog and pony show and it's publishing has changed so much.

Deborah: And of course, a lot of that too is social media. I am not in charge of social media at, um, Milk Street or at my side gig at Mayo Clinic Press. Um, Voracious has a big social media presence too, but that's a lot of how. You know, publishers get the word out now. 

Mike: Yeah. There are these words like fragmentation and disintermediation and so on, which are, are kind of operative here, but it, it just, to me, it seems like over my time.

Mike: So I first got into the big five publishing. I interned at Simon Schuster the summer of 2006 on the production side of things. Then when I came over to the editorial side, it was, would have been, you know, 2008 or 2009, something like that. And since that, that time, it seems like there are so many more options to pursue.

Mike: And. Many of those options can deliver less of an impact individually. And so, rather than waiting for that one hit, I think I was coming up around the time that the Today Show was still really powerful and potent. If you could get a cookbook author on at a great slot in the morning, really sell potentially thousands of copies of a book.

Mike: Now you need the Today Show and another morning show and hopefully something on daytime. All right. And something on social media. 

Deborah: Yeah, yeah. 

Mike: How do you manage that? I mean, it's so complex. 

Deborah: I really feel that, that part of it is that I've been doing it for so long that I don't get too crazed about it, because I know there's only so much you can do.

Deborah: And the main thing that I have always found interesting about publicity, and this is true from when I was a young publicist and now, is that um, In media, if you make a reporter, editor, writer mad, they will never forgive you. And you, so you have to be very, and again, you have to stay real and true, even if it's painful.

Deborah: If they turn you down, What can you do? You can go back at them sometimes if you have a new idea, but it is very, very hard. And, and then things like, I won't name the show, but things suddenly land in your lap, like landed in my lap this week for Milk Street and I had 24 hours to put the whole thing together.

Deborah: And that was great for us, you know, but it is very exhausting and you can't plan like you used to, you know, . But it's also fun. It is fun, though. I mean, most media people are nice, which is true, and fun. 

Mike: Yeah, 

Deborah: but 

Mike: what is the the relationship aspect of this? So you said that five years ago, 

Deborah: right, 

Mike: half of the stuff that you're pitching or trying to make happen for a book today didn't exist.

Deborah: So there's a lot of freelancers now. Like, there's a woman Who writes for, um, Parade Magazine, who's a freelancer. She specializes in food. She also writes for four or five others. You never, that never was like that now. So, like, making sure that I have content for her is the most important thing.

Deborah: The same thing, like people, I mean, we know this in book publishing, people move all the time. I mean, you now have my friend Raquel working for you, , and Raquel and I started out together working for Chris a zillion years ago. So publishing is like that, um, And the media in particular is a relationship, , business.

Deborah: You can't, you have to be able to know what they're doing. Like even, particularly with the, like the big papers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, don't pitch somebody when you know that that's not their beat , so you constantly have to be aware. And, and like what, what I always say, is particularly as a publicist, publicity director, you have to know how to pivot.

Deborah: And in the old days, you didn't have to pivot because it was, you know, like I was taught, okay, you get like what you said, you get this show, this show, this show, it'll do well. It's just not the way anymore. 

Mike: Well, how do you, how do you figure out when you need to pivot in this world where? 

Deborah: Well, and that's also very hard.

Deborah: And we, I think we should talk about that. So, so as you know, we get. A lot of media at Milk Street for a lot of different things. Does that sell books? I don't know. And so what happens is like, we then say, okay, well, if, if we don't like, if we don't feel like it's doing well, or like, again, we have this huge online store.

Deborah: If, you know, wire cutters doing something on one of our knives soon, is that going to sell it? I don't know. And so the thing is, is that we have to. have different avenues. Like you can't just stop. One of the things that Peter Workman taught me, um, and I lasted longer than most publicity directors, there are four years, is you can't just stop.

Deborah: You know, he was very famous for , the backlist. You publicize books forever. And that was good because it was like, it was almost the beginning of pivoting. So, you don't just stop, and you just keep going, and , often, once you're established enough, and you have this too, in editorial, people will come back to you with proposals that you've already published.

Deborah: I have that too, if a media person likes that you help them, or like the story, they'll come back to you. That's what I would say. 

Mike: The image I have in my head is trying to swim across a fast moving river. I mean just culture is coming faster and harder at everybody than it ever has before and figuring out a way to break through that and get to the other side to deliver your message to somebody is just increasingly difficult.

Deborah: I also find it really interesting that some of the books that are the high, and I'm not talking cookbooks, I'm talking about some of the nonfiction, like serious nonfiction and serious fiction that are the hot, you know, you know that the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, um, Washington Post, which is a great book review section, you know, they're going to review it.

Deborah: And I would say that a lot of the times, People buy those books and they never read them or they start to read them and it's like why are people reviewing this so well that it still makes a bestseller, which I, and honestly that's always been the way it is, which I think is interesting. Um, personally, I always think that, I find like the Booker Prize, which is the UK prize, almost those books are always like people really like, but the, you know, the National Book Awards just came out and I looked at it and I've only read like two of them.

Deborah: Oh my God. And do those awards matter? I mean. 

Mike: Yeah. I mean, on the food side, we have that same question. We're just about to be coming up to the submissions period for next year's James Beard Foundation Awards. Ends. I complain a little bit about the award when we're not winning them, but thankfully, usually at least, you know, one or two books a year are honored or blessed in some way by the Beards or the International Association of Culinary Professionals on the cookbook side.

Mike: Um, but there's, there is always that question of like, is this the award that's going to make the difference for a consumer, you know, a potential reader to say like, yes, I want that. And my perspective is it can be the deciding factor. Earlier this year on The Voracious List, we won a Beard Award for a book called Pasta Every Day.

Mike: Right. Pasta, subject, that's been published. Oh, thank you. Meryl Feinstein, follow her at Pasta Social Club on Instagram. She's terrific, a great human being. Um, you know, there are many books in the world that are teaching you how to make handmade homemade pasta. Right. Um, why should you choose that book over, you know, Missy Robbins book or, or something?

Mike: Yeah. You know, from, from the past. And I think that it can be a differentiator if you're trying to help a consumer make the decision between one or another. But I don't know if it's really drawing in somebody who is like. Well, gee, I didn't think I was going to make homemade pasta tonight. Um, so it's tricky, just like everything else, even, even awards, even the really big awards, like the NBA, the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Man Booker, 

um, for 

Mike: fiction and literature.

Mike: Even those things don't seem to have the same muscular effect that they once did. 

Deborah: It's so funny too, because as a big reader, um, and of course, you know, it just, In the book biz, as we know, there's trade, um, reviews that come out before the books are published, and that's Publishers Weekly, um, um, Kirkus, Shelf Awareness, Booklist, what else, what am I missing?

Mike: Library Journal. Library 

Deborah: Journal. So, people who are in the, um, who are either in booksellers or library can see what type of review it gets, and then they can, you know, Potentially ordered from there, but even that I don't think has quite the kind of cachet as it used to. Now being a big fiction reader and growing up with Kirkus where Kirkus hated everything.

Deborah: They were so cranky. So cranky. And I find that when they like a book, I usually get it, you know, particularly like the type of book I like, but of course they don't do cookbooks. But it is interesting to see like what resonates with If it's a great review in the New York Times, does it sell things?

Deborah: The funny thing about book publishing, I think, is there's no rhyme or reason to how, you know, sometimes you can, like in the old days, we used to make a bestseller. I remember sitting in meetings when I was a publicity director at Putnam, which is part of Penguin Random House, with the great Phyllis Gran.

Deborah: And we would, you know, She would have like all of us in there, you know, different departments and she would say, we're making this book. 

Mm-Hmm. . 

Deborah: And we did, and you know, part of it was money, right? 

Uhhuh. Mm-Hmm. . And 

Deborah: it was a different era. Um, but it's just not that way anymore. 

Mike: Yeah. I, I, a phrase that I keep coming back to just in terms of guiding, really all of my publishing activities.

Mike: At first it was something that I thought about. As an editor, um, but as my role began to expand and I began to look after more things and have a stake in more different areas of our business, I, I realized this actually is just kind of like my fundamental principle. I, I think we have to meet readers where they are.

Yeah. 

Mike: And And I think that's actually one reason why I would find it very challenging to publish literary fiction. For me, a part of doing something like a cookbook is trying to figure out what people are actively interested in now, or trying to predict where people's interests are going to be shortly.

Mike: The needs that they have, what the currents in the culture are, how they're going to deliver people ideas in the future, and then to be able to respond to that. Creatively and generously to that, but it always seems to me that like An incredible love story, say. Like nobody knows that they're interested in that particular one yet.

Mike: You've got to, you've got to convince somebody to be interested rather than saying, Oh, you've got a preexisting interest. Let me tell you how my project is going to work out. Um, connect to you on it. 

Deborah: And I think that's really hard too because book publishing for those who, in the audience, it takes like a year.

Deborah: So like Mike is probably working on books, what, what, what's, what, where are we, October. So I know like at Milk Street, we're already coming up with ideas because we, we have contacts with you for a while, but I know we're coming up the next idea and it takes like a year. 

Mike: Yeah, if, if, if we were having a prospective author meeting right now, and I was the publisher and you were the author, we'd probably be saying like, Oh, okay, well, how soon can you deliver?

Mike: You might have. Since it would be nonfiction, you might have given me a proposal that might have been 30 pages, maybe something like that, where you're saying, here's all the great stuff I'm going to do, and then I'm going to need six months, 12 months, 18 months, something like that to go out and develop the recipes or report the story, you know, spend time in the library, interview the people.

Mike: And then the actual writing of the thing. Then you deliver it to the editor. Then there's that editorial process. And then it's often a year of production time with the copy editing and so on. But that's also not just, I mean, you can make a book much, much quicker. 

Yeah. 

Mike: It's also time that everybody else in the publishing company is starting to do their jobs.

Mike: The publicist, the marketers, the salespeople, the art director, the production editor, the manufacturing person. You have to get paper to be bought. You have to make sure that the, um, the longshoremen aren't on strike, which thankfully they've got a working agreement now. Um, it is so long. So you're trying to 

Deborah: almost guess what 

Mike: you're placing a bet on something.

Mike: When, you know, the cards aren't going to get turned over on the table until potentially three years. Right. I want to say 

Deborah: Mike and I are laughing because we had a big book. Was it vegetables? It 

Mike: was Milk Street Vegetables. Fantastic book. It's a fantastic 

Deborah: book that did quite well. Um, we were very excited about it, all of us.

Deborah: And it was during COVID and during the the port problems. And one of the, ships went down, A load of Milk Street vegetables are in the sea. 

Mike: Well, but even before that, this is a double whammy. We, uh, we were off the coast of Vancouver. Oh, 

Deborah: yeah. 

Mike: And we had learned that there had been, uh, a fire on this large container ship, or there had been some, uh, , chemicals used in mining, some kind, anyway, spontaneously combusted, destroyed half of the inventory on this ship.

Mike: Luckily, that was at, like, the, the bow, and we were at the stern, or whatever, whatever it was, different part of the ship. Um, so we were just hanging out off the coast of, uh, Vancouver while, while the insurance investigators are coming in. Meanwhile, we're like, we need to ship these books out to people. And then there was a storm.

Mike: And our containers just slid right off. 

Deborah: I mean, honestly, we at Milk Street still kid about that. Like nothing could have been. But we did it and we, you know, we did and talk about pivoting. We pivoted the whole campaign, right? 

Mike: Yes, we did. We did. And do you know what? I, I do think that so you can have something like that, which You I think it's probably the very definition of the act of God that contracts contemplate.

Mike: Right, and we don't want that 

Deborah: to happen again. 

Mike: But, but That was a damn good 

Deborah: book. It really was a good book. And it is a good book. Yeah, 

Mike: it is and and I think that What I find is that when in the past not to say that I do this frequently But you know sometimes as a publisher you think okay, we're gonna toss a flyer out there, right?

Mike: You know, maybe this is something that could work and I don't want to say that we ever publish cynically But we sometimes publish opportunistically. Yeah And sometimes, you know, you miss the opportunity and you think, wow, okay, we spent all that time and energy on something and it's just not clicking.

Mike: When you're working with something that has a high degree of integrity and quality, there always is going to be that thing that you can pivot 

to. It's 

Mike: like, oh, well, carrots aren't that, you know, aren't where people are, what people are interested in. Thank God we've got zucchini to talk about. 

Deborah: Well, it's true.

Deborah: And then, and again, speaking of like the history of publishing, when I was a young publicist, It was a known fact that publishers kill books right in meetings because you could only do, you could only publicize and do marketing so much. And if a book did not have, you know, kind of, if the sales people weren't getting good advances, et cetera, they would, cause I worked for major publishers when I was younger and they would actually kill the book in the meeting.

Deborah: They still get it out. But it would no longer be like on the A list, so to speak. I want to say too that, um, just to give it a little heads up to, uh, Milk Street's next book that Mike is publishing after our baking book, and talk about a fast turnaround. So um, Milk Street is all about travel, and then, uh, Chris Kimball and J.

Deborah: M. Hirsch, couple of other people, they go and learn and cook with people all over the country. All over the world. And so we have this, I don't even, I'm not even sure what it's called. Milk Street, Italy. What is it called? 

Mike: Backroads, Italy. Backroads, Italy. There we go. This book is a success. 

Deborah: We can have 

Mike: Backroads, Mexico.

Mike: That's exactly right. Backroads, Portugal. Backroads, Turkmenistan. 

Deborah: Right. That's what I was talking about with, uh, J. M. the other day , but he just came back from Tbilisi, um, doing recipes, but , He spent , six weeks in Italy researching this book that's coming out next spring, right?

Mike: Yep, in mid April. 

Deborah: In mid April. And then Chris Kimball spent another few weeks there. So then what they do is they bring what they've learned back to our kitchen, who then You know, fiddles around with it and make sure it's good for the American cook. So this, that type of project was, is a fast turnaround for you though, right?

Mike: Yes. I mean, on some level with, with Milk Street, the ideas that we're talking about are often percolating for a long time. Maybe we don't have the specific method, but on some level, I think that the idea for Backroads Italy began. When we were thinking about doing an extension of our really successful book, Tuesday Nights, which is great weeknight cooking.

Mike: It's the second, book in the Milk Street. program, Pantheon, um, legendary publishing program with more than a million and a half copies in print. Um, and we thought, okay, you know, Tuesday nights, where else should we go? What should we do with this? And ultimately we landed on a Mediterranean concept, um, so that People are always looking, uh, for flavors from that part of the world, but also the health benefits of being associated with the Mediterranean diet.

Mike: But we started thinking about, my gosh, we've got all of this Italian content and Milk Street as a food media company is thinking I think the only place that I know of that sends its editorial director and its publisher around the world in order to get these stories. We have 

Deborah: a lot of insurance on both of them.

Deborah: Seriously, too. We just renewed their insurance. 

Mike: We need to keep them around. 

Deborah: Yes, right. Um, 

Mike: but, but I think that that began to think, well, what could go wrong? Does the world really need another Italian cookbook? It's sometimes where we'll think, does the world need X, Y, or Z? What is the Milk Street spin?

Mike: What's uniquely Milk Street? What's our offering that's going to be a little bit different and deliver somebody, something that's going to be really, really useful. I mean, these are hardworking books that, that. People can rely on. 

Deborah: They're like curated. 

Mike: Yes. 

Deborah: Yeah, 

Mike: and and then also be something that feels fresh and gives you right And 

Deborah: that's what that's kind of what's fun about doing these type of things because speaking of curated a Milk Street has now these culinary tours They're curated and they're actually taking like 12 or 15 people to cook with these people. And I think the curated part. Um, and then of course all the cooks in, at Milk Street are, you know, graduates of culinary school. Um, and then for me it's fun because all the books are different and, I mean, it's all cooking.

Deborah: Luckily, you Luckily, media and people in general like cookbooks, um, so that, that's, that's a nice thing to publicize, because even though, like, for example, I'm a huge literary fiction reader, I, I don't work on those books, because who wants to publicize those? I mean, that's, those are really books that really need book reviews.

Mike: Yeah, that's a, I mean, this is a whole other episode of this program. Exactly. 

Deborah: And that's very different. And for a publicist, that's really, you don't have as much leeway there. And you can't be as creative. It really, like a New York Times rave, really can make a literary. So, through my whole long career, I've almost never worked on a literary fiction book by choice.

Deborah: Right. Yeah. I wanted to ask you one thing just for our listeners. So if you don't have an agent. Can you get through to an editor?

Mike: It's kind of a complicated question. There's some legal things around presenting unsolicited projects to publishers, and some publishers don't accept things over the transom, just from people who happen to get an email. I will say, Most of the people who email me directly haven't done their research.

Mike: They're sending me a novel, they're telling me that they're the second coming of Christ. There's something that doesn't seem quite fully there. That said, there are so many people that In my own in outreach trying to find somebody who Has the expertise to do the book that I think the market needs So often we reach out to people who don't have agents and then it's their option to figure out if they want to work with A literary agent or not.

Mike: I do generally think that it's a good thing. Yeah 

Yes, 

Mike: yeah, I mean my company's a We're the, I think, the second largest worldwide publisher, the third or fourth or something in the United States. Um, we're a, you know, we're all really wonderful people. And I should say, Deb, you've called out my team so many times, like, the Voracious and Spark teams at Little Brown are the best in the business.

Mike: They are all ballers. It's like a little 

Deborah: family. 

Mike: Yeah. We have a fantastic team. We're not going to take advantage of anybody, but An agent helps triangulate challenges. So an agent will help you as an author maximize the market value of your project when you're trying to find a home for it with a publisher.

Mike: And that sometimes means the most money you'll get paid. Sometimes that's just finding the right fit of people who will understand the book. But there are countless points of creative friction that are inherent to the process. And I would say essential to the process, and managing those in ways that can make the book stronger is really important.

Mike: And having a third party in the mix whose only interest is in trying to help the book sell the best way that it possibly can and develop the author's career is often really important in helping get through those creative, um, friction points. So it is possible for authors who don't have agents to , you know, send the Hail Mary kind of message in a bottle to an editor and have it be picked up.

Mike: But really your best bet, I think, is to find an agent for all kinds of reasons. Now, a 

Deborah: follow up question on this. Now, have you personally ever published a self published article? , like, Colleen Hoover, you know, is like the big person that did her own books and are now, you know, now making a zillion dollars with 

Mike: publishers.

Mike: We, um, I know that my parent company has, and I know that I've offered on that trying to pick up somebody who started making a name for themselves, um, and then was looking for that next step of higher level of distribution, sales input, marketing, publicity, and so on. Um, but I don't think that I've actually taken one to completion.

Deborah: Yeah. I mean, I've never worked on a self published book, I've always kind of stayed away from that because it's like it's a no win situation. 

Mike: Well, but I'll say like since we were talking about the fragmentation and the complexity of like how how do you reach people?

Mike: One thing that is a positive, I think, about how the publishing world is changing is that there are many more paths to get noticed. True. So, there isn't the one path which sometimes makes our job harder. Right. But it also means that there's a lot more access to, um, finding an audience and creating an audience for yourself for people who, you know, May have been traditionally overlooked in this business and sometimes those books can be Fantastic.

Mike: I mean anybody who looks at the top rankings You know at online retailers or even at local bookshops There's there's often something stand out that somebody hasn't found yet. And right that's an exciting thing to me 

Deborah: Yeah, believe me, Watchung booksellers is not paying me to say this, but one of the things that local bookstores do, including Watchung, every Friday they have the Friday picks from the booksellers, and it goes out on social media, and I was, and I, you know, I know these books because I'm in the book publishing world, and I, But if a bookseller likes it and it seems like my type of thing, it will make me go in and get it.

Deborah: And I think that the, you know, whether it's a library or a bookseller, they also have a big role now because media is so contracted, um, of how to get the word out. Um, yeah. 

Mike: Well, what's the last thing that you read? 

Deborah: I am reading a book right now, which I love. It's called the Hebrew Teacher. Um, it's published by Vessel. Um, they do have it at Ong Booksellers. Um, it is three novellas by a Israeli author that I had never heard of. This is her first book published here, and it's kind of a day in the life type of three novellas.

Deborah: Kind of nothing groundbreaking, but just great stories. Um, I really, really like it. I'm almost done with it, but I, it's a joke at Watchung Booksville is they know I'll be there on Tuesdays because that's when all the books come out, the new books. 

Mike: First in line. 

Deborah: Yeah. And I, and my next book will be, . Um, the new Irish, the Irish writer. 

Mike: Oh, the new Sally Rooney. Sally Rooney. Intermezzo. Yes, 

Deborah: Intermezzo. So that's my, although I do have to say, I was not huge fans of her other books, but this one everyone says is much better.

Mike: All right, the third time's the. 

Deborah: Yeah, yeah, but I, yes, and then when I, when I go to, um, London in a couple weeks. I then go to Foils, which is my favorite bookstore in London, and ship them home because some of them never get published here. 

Mike: That's true. And the covers are so different. 

Deborah: So some of them are not so great, right?

Mike: Well, I'll tell you just briefly about one of the books that I'm really excited about. It's on the Little Brown List. I had nothing to do with this except to read it when it came in on submission and read it when it was in a galley and just think it's so wonderful.

Mike: One of those books that, um, It touches every emotion, um, as you read it. It's a memoir from a writer, comedian, named Youngmi Mayer. It's called, um, I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying. That's 

Deborah: a great title. And 

Mike: she was, uh, it actually, um, it came in on proposal as hairy butthole, which is what her mom used to say, um, you know, if you laugh when you cry, That's what makes hair grow on your, you know, what she has a podcast herself, but, um, she grew up in South Korea and then came to the United States and, um, uh, became connected.

Mike: Uh, her ex husband is Danny Bowen, the, um, mission Chinese food chef and, uh, not doing it justice, but this was just one of the most. startlingly impressive, um, debut memoir voices that I've, I've read in a long time. And, um, if you read Crying in H Mart, another kind of food adjacent memoir, um, you'll be blown away by this one.

Deborah: Crying in H Mart had like a whole, it almost sold itself. I mean, that was definitely also a word of mouth type of thing too, even though it got good reviews, but everybody was recommending it. Yeah. Right. 

Yeah. 

Deborah: And that's also nice to see because that doesn't happen as often as it used to in the book publishing world.

Mike: Well, I mean to your point about what Watchung does and other local booksellers that you actually get that handsell. You know, you you get to talk to somebody in the store who's actually read it, who has an understanding and is really interested in trying to find the right book for you. Yeah. And I think that's another way to cut through this noise that we've been talking about.

Mike: So, Deb, thank you so much for taking this time to chat with 

Deborah: me. Thank you. It was really fun. , and thanks to Watchung Booksellers. And I guess we'll see you guys in the bookstore.

Mike: All right. Thank you. 

Deborah: Thank you.

Marni: Thank you, Deb and Mike! We look forward to today's release of Milk Street Bakes and all your other books coming out soon. Listeners, you can find all the books they talked about in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com.

Kathryn: Next week, we've got two great events in the store. Tuesday, we host acclaimed photographer, George Steinmetz, sharing his beautiful new book, Feed the Planet, which documents the awesome global effort that puts food on our tables and transforms the surface of the Earth. And on Wednesday, journalist and former guest, Jonathan Alter, discusses American Reckoning,

Kathryn: where he shares his eyewitness account of the historic first criminal trial of a president.

Marni: And don't forget to bring your little ones to our annual Halloween parade on Saturday, October 26, in Watchung Plaza. Activities begin at 11 o'clock and happen rain or shine. 

Kathryn: We've got something for everyone this fall, so please check out all of our events in our newsletter, show notes, or at watchungbooksellers.

Kathryn: com.