Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan Publishers: Reaching Modern Readers and Leading in a Changing Publishing Landscape

This week on Culture Leaders, I sat down with John Yegid, CEO of McMillan Publishing, and a leader who understands the power of stories, both on the page and inside an organization. John is a leader that focuses on creating the right conditions for people to do their best work, and in this conversation, he shares how that mindset shows up in publishing and in culture and the way he leads through change. We talk about balancing creativity with performance, and why curiosity is one of the most important traits that a leader can have. It's a sharp and thoughtful look at leadership from someone who spent his career surrounded by ideas and knows how to turn them into impact. Please welcome to the podcast, John Yegid. John, thank you so much for being here, so tell us what is your why. Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you today, and my why is impact. I want to have an impact. I want to have an impact on our employees. I want to make sure that we're an exciting place for them to work, that we help them develop, and that we retain them. I want to make sure that we have an impact on our authors and create an environment in which they can do their best work. And in my personal life, I want to have an impact on the people I touch, particularly my daughter who's just starting her first or finished her first semester at college. Oh, really? Where is she going? Smith College, and she's, she's loving it. Yeah, that's great. Are you in New York? Yep. Okay. Yeah, it's a very New York. A lot of people that I went to high school with went to Smith College. I went to field, STEM high school, and we had a lot of Smith people go over there. I ended up going to Wisconsin, so I said, bye, bye, New York. I'm out of here. So, I'm good friend of mine. Impact on the readership. You didn't mention impact of the readership, which surprises me. No, I was supposed to, and I forgot to. I have impact of the readership is something that I think we're going to talk about a lot today because reading is at a point where we need to make sure kids are reading more because if the kids don't read more, they're not going to turn into, you know, adult readership. Reading is an incredibly great way to develop analytical skills, it's an incredibly great way to develop critical thinking skills. So, impact on the readers was absolutely something I left out and I fully intended to talk about. And I'm sure we're going to have plenty more time to talk about it during this conversation. It's definitely interesting because, I mean, people would argue that books are a dying breed, right? That we're moving digitally. I mean, I had some person, one person, when I had my baby shower, you know, they do these games and one of the games was what's one piece of advice that you would give to a new mom. And she said, never get a Kindle. Always read books on paper because your child will see that you're reading and will, it will send a message to your child that they don't get if you're just reading something on your phone. Even though you're reading, it's sending a different message, which it must be very interesting to be a book publisher in this day and age. It is. And, you know, from a publishing point of view, I don't really care if someone reads physical, if they read ebook, if they listen to audio books. As a parent and a someone wanting to encourage reading, yes, you want to model that behavior, you want to see you. If you're looking at your phone, the kid doesn't know if you're playing a game, or if you're reading a book. So actually reading a physical book is a great way to model a good reading behavior. But from where we stand, it's been a good time for publishing. The pandemic at the beginning of the pandemic, book sales were a little, we were worried about it. And then people started reading more. They were looking to get away from screens. They were looking to get away from video. They started listening more. At first, we're like, oh, what's going to happen to audio books? People started listening more. We've been in an audio boom sense. So we've been selling more books in the last five years and any time in the history of the world. So it's been a good time for reading. Is that true? We've been selling more books in the last five years in the history of the world. Yeah. Yeah. We've hit our peak in sales multiple times, not just from McMillan, but also for for the industry. We've been ups and downs during that period. So it's a pretty good time. The challenges the younger folks aren't reading as much. Right. And that is something we have to change. Well, and I was just seeing something online yet last night about there was a massive change in the mental health of young people and teens in that began in 2010. And it just escalated globally in Australia, in the US, in Europe, all of the different mental health measurements that different government entities across the globe take show that there was a drastic sharp increase in self-harm and anxiety disorders and all of those things. In 2010 and what happened in 2010, it was the mobile phone that we began looking down at our phones, looking at the camera that faces yourself, the selfies, the social media, all of that has now declined our mental health. So we are really in a crisis at this time if we can't get the kids to be reading right now. I completely agree. And I've heard those same stats. I've read stories about that. And it's critical. We're also seeing a lot of anxiety in kids and not just kids, but in adults. So I think reading is a great escape. You can go anywhere in the world while you're sitting in your own living room when you're reading a book. But again, I want to reiterate that developing critical thinking skills, developing analytical skills, particularly in a world where content and news and entertainment are meshing, you have to have the ability to discern what is fact, what is fiction. They're both good, but we need to know which is which and reading helps. And we have to encourage the young kids. I mean, there's tons of data out there that talks about if kids don't read at grade level by the time they're third, fourth grade, the chances are they won't. And the kids that do read at grade level by that fourth grade level, their chances on success in life are so much greater than those that don't. And we want to make sure that we give our young folks the best chance they have to succeed. It's interesting. I was also just talking this morning with my cousin about this because her son may have some kind of learning disability as probably too early to actually tell. But my dad, for example, had a learning disability. He was dyslexic and couldn't read. But he was a voracious audiobook listener. And he was always consuming knowledge in the form of an audiobook. And that, does it have, do you have any idea? I mean, you're not a scientist, but do you have any idea about the impact on those analytical skills and creativity what you were talking about if you're listening to audiobooks versus reading on paper? I don't. I mean, I've read some things that talk about the brain works differently when you're reading on paper or reading on a screen or listening to an audiobook. So I'm sure there's probably some difference. As a publisher, you know, when you engage with our books, engage with our content, I think it's good for you to do it in any way that you want to do it. I mean, going back to the kids for a second, when people, I started in children's publishing and people would always ask me and still do what what book should I give my kid to read or what's a good book, you know, for kids to read. I go any book they like. You know, that's that to develop that love of reading. And the same thing as throughout your life, consume the books the way that you enjoy consuming. Sometimes I read physical, sometimes I read E, I listen a bunch to whatever, whatever feels right is what I'm happy when people do it. Dan, the children's book market, it feels so saturated. And yet I still see all these new children books coming out. And I just think, are people really buying all those books? I mean, how, how is it not overly saturated or is it? What is the dynamic there? I don't think it's overly saturated. I mean, there's a lot of books that we publish way more adult books than we do children's books every year. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is the adult market saturated? Some people might say it is, you know, we're growing our market share. So from where I sit, we're doing okay. But there's a lot of books published every year. And some people think there's too many. You know, we're doing all right. Well, so what's interesting is you said that we're selling more books than ever before. But like, so I have a book coming out actually by the time this episode comes out, it will have come out on January 27th. We have as of this morning, I just select we have 11,800 pre-orders, which is like, we're very excited about. And we've been told you can actually correct me if I'm wrong. That puts us in the in the mix for potentially in New York Times best sellers. And then it used to be a much higher number. Is that right? Am I getting my hopes up unnecessarily? I think the New York Times bestseller list varies from week to week. I think at 11,000 pre-orders, you're looking really good. And you're probably looking good to be able to, you know, decent to be high on that list too. So, you know, don't want to get your hopes up. But, you know, keep, I don't, I don't, you're not, we don't publish you. But, you know, for your sake, keep doing what you're doing and keep pushing the book all the way through pub. Okay. So, but in the past, was that number much higher? I heard that in the past, you needed to sell like 25,000 to be on the New York Times bestseller list and that it's lower now. I mean, the list has varied throughout the years. I mean, there's some weeks where 25,000 will get you number one. There's some weeks where 25,000. You won't be in the top five. It's been that way for a very long time. Okay. So, it depends what else is coming out? Algorithic back black box. Oh, yeah. And it depends on what else is coming out, right? If you've got, like, if you're going up against a real housewife of Salt Lake City's new book, I mean, then you got no shot. I'm sure. Depends. Depends. Okay. So, let's talk about the culture. What is, you talked first about the impact that you're making on your employees was the number one thing that you, so tell me about the culture. What is the culture like at a, how old is the company 175 years old? Little older now. Yep. Wow. I mean, that's remarkable. I mean, already, let's just start there, let alone being a publisher. What is it like to run 175 year old company? It's responsibility. And I think, you know, we are a value based organization. So that helps with the culture. And by having those values, it enables us to live up to the legacy that we had. And we're a very different company than we were before. McMillan has changed over the years. It actually was bought and sold during that almost two century history several times. And we're sort of the re-engaging of what the original McMillan was in a lot of ways. And we have a lot of inference. We have eight different publishing divisions that have an inference that are within them. And they all have their different personalities. And that helps with the culture as well. And it's one of the things that I think gives us a competitive advantage at McMillan, where if you publish a book with St. Martin's Press, that book will be really different. And if you published it with Henry Hold or Flatiron or so, one of our other, one of our other inference or FSG. And sometimes they go for the same books. And I find it really interesting to see the pitch that they each give me when I have to approve the acquisition. And that different personality, that different culture within all those imprints, I think gives us an advantage in the marketplace. So yes, we have the McMillan culture, but we also have the culture of each of our different imprints too. So that's something that I think helps us sustain over all these years. That's interesting. So you have diversity of culture intentionally within the company to keep that sort of uniqueness or what value do you see in that diversity of culture? Well, every author, their agents, they have a different point of view on their books. So if all of our different imprints, which are historically different companies, which have been consolidated over the years to acquisition, if they didn't have different personalities, why would you go to one versus the other? And I hear from agents that in other places, there's more homogeneity. So when they come to us, you don't know what's going to, you're going to have a conversation. You're an author, you want, you know, you're giving your baby, you've worked, you've created this book, and you're giving your baby over to someone to help shepherd through the publication process. You want to make that personal connection. But I say it might be different than what you say. Having those different perspectives in our organization in different spots, I think gives us more chances to get the book and then publish it well. So it's something that I, it's developed in a lot of ways organically, but it's something that I fully encourage. How would the, how would your team describe you as a leader do you think? Some of the things that I've heard over the years are people say you model the behavior you want to see in others and that I feel that's a great compliment. And then from the publishers in particular, one of the great compliment I get from them is, hey, you walked in our shoes, let me bounce this off you. So when you have the people that work for you wanting to use you as a sounding board, not being required to use you as a sounding board, I think that's a big win. And that starts with trust. And I think that's the most important thing in an organization. You have to establish trust. When the employees trust me and I trust the employees, anything can happen. And if I have a bad day, if I say something silly, if I, if I make a misstep and they know that then they trust me, I go back to, hey, I was out of line there, sorry about that. We move on and it's like it never happened. If there wasn't trust, they'd always be thinking, what was he trying to do? Was he trying to send a message? So I try to be very transparent. I also hear that I'm very authentic when I speak. That's something that I feel good about. And those are values that matter, I think, today more than ever. And it gives you a lot of flexibility to try new things as well. Yeah. And you know, you also, you described when you have trust, you can go back and say, I had a bad day, but I also think that act is the building of the trust as well. Because we all had days where we say something we wish we hadn't said. And then you're going back and you've created a negative experience maybe in that moment, but what you're describing is going back and interpreting that experience for them so that they can understand. And you're, and with humility, right? Saying, I shouldn't have said that. Here's what was going on with me. You know, let's move on. And that's, that is how you build the trust. The trust building as well as useful to do once you've had trust already built, right? Yeah. Some years ago, we had a relatively new employee. Maybe she was with us for a year or so. And it was me, her and her boss having a meeting. And I was, I was hot that day. And later on, the, you know, her boss came back to me. He was like, Hey, you know, you were real rough. I said, I know I'll go, I'll go talk to her later. He said, you know, I asked her about it. She said, Oh, no, I trust John. We've talked about this a lot. I know you said he was just having a bad day. I didn't even have to say it. Of course, go back and say something to her, but you know, that doesn't happen that often. But to have them give you your line back, that's, that's pretty good. A person who shows up late every week a couple times a week and then they're late and they say, I got in a car accident. No one really believes them. But when the person who's never late is late and they say, I got in a car accident, everyone freaks out because it also is about taking accountability and showing up and consistency, you know, which is probably probably a deeply ingrained value within the company culture is that consistency, you know, given the nature of the business, right? Yeah, we call it, you know, one of our values is respect and I think consistency and respect sort of go hand in hand. Yeah, totally. So one of the things I wanted to ask you about is this is book banning because this has happened. I mean, we are, we have started to see more book bands happen. And I would imagine this is something that you've touched upon or been involved with at some point. Can you share your perspective with us on that? Absolutely. It's something that's sort of near and dear to my heart. It's something that I think that has no place in a democracy and it's something I sort of taken on a personal, you know, mission to shed light on what's going on out there. And it's been great that the whole team here at McMillan loves the fact that we're doing it. And they're jumping on it too. They have a whole group called the yours to read committee and they fight book bands every day. And I try to do as much as I can to get out there and do media and we sign on when there's letters and protesting bands in different states. We've actually signed on and complained us in a bunch of lawsuits fighting book bands across the country. You know, in a time when kids aren't reading, at a time when we want to develop critical thinking skills, we're stigmatizing reading in books by banning them. It makes absolutely no sense. And where does it come from? I mean, so how does this happen? I mean, where does the energy come from around one book in particular or is it a coordinated attack? It's a coordinated effort. And from all the research and all the surveys that have been done, it's coming from organized, public interest groups and politicians. It's not even coming from the community. A lot of times people say, "Oh, it's the parents. Oh, it's the community." The overwhelming majority of book bands come from outside the community by public interest groups and by politicians with ideological agendas. And that's what it is. And it's really no place in a democracy for that. But it's so interesting because I mean, doesn't it? I mean, I remember hearing the careless people. Remember that book about meta that was like the hit piece. We published it. You published careless people. We're gonna love that book. Okay. I got a text from the author as I was coming in to talk to you. Oh, my God. Please tell her that I absolutely loved her book because, and thank you for publishing it because it was so interesting. And for anyone listening, you absolutely must go read that book. So I don't know if you're even allowed to talk about it. But I think the lawsuit, Meta, sued her, right? You obviously know much more about this. And I do. Meta sued her and said, you, you know, I don't know what the claim was. It was defamatory or it was breaking the NDA. Or whatever. And the court ruled she can still publish the book, but she can't market it. Is that right? It was an arbitration and it's still going on. Okay. And it's, but that's a digestive it. The arbitrator did not allow her to market the book. They couldn't stop us from publishing it. They tried to and that was thrown out pretty quickly. And it was dealt with her contractual agreements with Meta. So she couldn't market it, but it made headlines that this book was in arbitration, I suppose. And that's how I heard about it. And immediately I went and bought the book and read it and it is fabulous. I mean, she's such a great author and the stories, it's not just fabulous because of what she's talking about with Meta, which is very interesting in and of itself, because you see the emperor has no clothes, but it's also just really great storytelling. And she's very interesting in her personal stories that she brings into it are just so captivating. So I love it and highly recommend it. But that, did that, was that already? That isn't probably the catalyst for your interest in book banning. You were probably dealing with this before, right? Absolutely. And we were dealing with it years before. Okay. So the book bans almost highlight these books in a way. Doesn't it become counterproductive to this ideological agenda that they have? You know, they really don't. They don't. The the the careless people is a very separate situation where you have a big company exerting undue influence on someone who's just trying to speak the truth. And a lot of the book bans we're talking about is government action or school district action to take books off the shelves. And every once in a while, maybe a book will get a pop, but you're talking about last year, Penn America has identified nearly 7,000 books that were banned for public schools. Those 7,000 books aren't getting a pop. Yeah. And what you're also seeing is they're off the shelf. That kids can't even get access to them. And this has been happening now. We've had an elevated level of book banning for the last five years or so. I mean, like I said, 7,000, you know, 7,000 books last year. If you go back to 2015, it would have been 200. Really? So we're talking orders of magnitude higher book bans. And it's it's not a positive thing for for a book. And then over time, these books are off the shelves. They're not even they don't even have to ban them anymore because they don't exist on the shelves. Right? I've essentially banned forever until we can get them back. Are these in my head? These book bans. are coming from the right, typically. Does the left approach book bands in a similar way? Or is it not even a movement? We haven't seen that. We've seen it. We've seen it. There are book bands in every state, whether you're a red state or a blue state, there's bands in every state, but historically, the bands have been coming from more of the right. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So can you tell when a book is going to get banned? I mean, do you have as you're analyzing which books you allow through? Do you ever think about that beforehand? No. I mean, we might think hey, this book might get banned, but it's not going to stop our decision to publish the book. Basically, these days, any book that deals with any type of BIPOC author, BIPOC themes, LGBTQIA plus themes, those are pretty much, you know, getting banned somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And so expanding it beyond the book ban idea, I mean, how do you pick what books you publish? I mean, what is the secret formula sauce that you have? How many percentage of the applications are you actually allowing through? And how are you making those decisions? You know, I couldn't even tell you how many books we get submitted this year every year. We were a 5% market share company. We publish about 1200 new books a year. So think about that, right? We're only, that's your, you're talking about over 20,000 books a year getting, getting published. If I had the crystal ball, I would have used it a long time ago. The starting point is you hire really good people and you'll let them do what they're going to do. And we, of course, we look at, you know, past author history, we look at similar books, we call them Comf, right? How did a similar book perform in the marketplace? And then you do a great job publishing them. And sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. The books that you think you're going to be winners turn out not always to be the case. And there's a bunch of surprises. And that's what keeps publishing to be great. I mean, we had a one book that we published last year that's continuing to sell and probably well this year or the wedding people. That was a book that we thought we did really, you know, do a great job. And now, you know, over a million copies later, we're like, wow, we're doing pretty good with that one. And that was really happy. You know, we thought it would be good, but, you know, not that good, right? You know, we hope that we'd be that good. But, you know, you can't plan for that kind of success. Right. So what about the advent of chat GPT? And just AI generally and how many authors are actually writing their books or is the application getting sloppy or the pool? I mean, how does that fit into this whole dynamic? I mean, I'm not seeing that so far. And I haven't heard any of the editors talking about it. I mean, AI can be a tool, particularly for nonfiction, I think, to help do some research. But authors write is they have to write. And there is something about them. You know, you know, creative people, the creative part of their world is something that's inherent in their being. You know, there's people that write that have never gotten their book published or never gotten their song made or, you know, you're going down the list because they feel they need to do it. So it's not a burden to write. And chat GPT is, you know, maybe a tool in some cases, but they have to write because it's who they are. Yeah. And so what is your favorite book? You know, you can't ask a publisher that question. Yeah. No, I didn't know that. We published 1200 books a year. I can't I can't pick my is like picking your favorite kid, right? I'll tell you one of one of my favorite books that we've published over the years and it's a kids book and it's a picture book and I love picture book is a sick day for Amos McGay. It's a book we published many years ago and it has a great story behind it. It has been in wife did the book together and they were super young. In fact, it was the first book that the that the wife illustrated ever and she was an illustrator that had stopped, stopped illustrating and she was, you know, never published the book and she's like, I'm just not going to do it anymore. And and you know, she, her name's Aaron and Aaron was working on the, you know, sort of just doing her life and Phil or husband was writing books and he's like, look, an illustrator. He's an illustrator too. He's like, I'm sort of stumped on this one. Can you help me come up with ideas for illustrating? And he scammed her, right? And he did it because he wrote a book that he knew she'd be created illustrating and they published it in one of the called the car is the highest, the highest, the, the called the car metal or the highest honor we have in children's publishing for illustrated books in the US. So that's one of my favorite stories and it's a great, great book. And you have a child? I do. She's 18 now. Yeah. Okay. So she's now reading children's books anymore. But would you bring them home? I mean, hell, you've been there what 10 years now? I've been in McMillan nearly January. I'll be 15 years. I've been CEO for the last three. Okay. I ran the, I ran the children's division for the first 10. And we ran the flat iron building when I started and I only lived a few blocks away. So my daughter would come by a lot and just hang out, sit at my desk and just pull books off the shelf. And she's, and her mom, you know, my partner, Catherine, she's, she was a children's book author and editor. We met at another company years ago and, and my daughter's name is Una and Una has been surrounded by books her whole life. She's an avid reader. So it's, it was a lot of fun to, to, you know, let her watch her pull something off the shelf and just start reading it. That's great. She'd be your little judge. Would she tell you I like this? I don't like this. Lots of thoughts. Lots of thoughts. Yeah. She, what was really one, another great story. This is a good publishing story too is we were in a bookstore around, around the corner from where I live and she pulled a book off the shelf. And I don't know. She was probably like three or four. She was super young and she, she wanted me to buy it. It was a book that we published. And I'm like, baby, I'll just get you on tomorrow when I go to the office. She's like, no, I want it now. And the, and the, the, I knew the owner of the bookstore. He's like, John, just take the book and you can bring me another coffee tomorrow. And no, I bought the book and that was it. And it was, it was really, it was pretty hysterical. Yeah. That's adorable. That's very cute. Okay. So tell me about, do you have more acquisitions in your future? I mean, what do you see for the future of the business? Well, we, we just purchased a catalog for, you know, a wellness, a wellness company was called Sounds True. So we're going to be publishing all those books under the McMillan Sounds True imprint going forward. And that's been a great thing for us. We're going to sort of double our market share in the mind body spirit space. It's an area that I think is growing and it's an area that we were under indexing. We did some of it. So I'm incredibly excited about that. And that deal closed in October. So that's something that we're going to be looking to do. A few years ago, we started Bramble, which was a Romandicee imprint at the beginning of the, the crazed Romandicee. And that's been a great growth initiative. We started Saturday books, which is a spin off of Wednesday books, which is sort of new adult, which is coming from one of our, our other imprinted St. Martin's publishing group. So that's an area where we'll sort of get transitioning from the YA young adult readers into the new adult category. So it's just a few areas that we're looking to grow and develop. We're expanding our graphic novel of business. A first second has been a award-winning graphic novel and print focusing mostly on children's and teen. We're now 23rd Street will be about a graphic novel for adults. You know, we got to give them something to read as they as they age up. So we have a lot of things going on. And I'm incredibly optimistic about what the future has not just for publishing in general, but particularly for McMillan. You're so optimistic because I generally, I'm, I think I bring pessimism to a lot of just situations in life. Like with AI, I'm very pessimistic about AI. And I'm pessimistic about the, I don't know, the book industry. I haven't thought about it that much, but generally, I just imagine the kids that are so glued to their phones, you know. And it's interesting that you mentioned graphic novels because I'm finding it difficult to even get my daughter to read, we read Harry Potter every night. And we're, you know, on book four now and we're going through that. And there were these illustrated Harry Potter books that were created and not all of them are right, but that it's like every other page has some kind of drawing on that. And they only did three books. And then the fourth book they didn't release it yet. And Ellie would not, my daughter would not allow us to keep reading without the illustration in it. So now I realize the, the visual, in the visual nature of the reading is compelling to her still even though she's eight and she can read. She's, she's still, so I've been leaning into graphic novels and comics even. And she's loving that and that is making her want to read more and more. So I get worried about if, if it's going to stick with these kids who are so inundated with audio, visual media, you know. And do you, you're still not, you're, you're optimistic about that. Well, I am scared about the, the kids not reading me. If you ask me the one thing that keeps me up and night, it's children not reading. And it's beyond just the business side of it. It's, it's what it means for society, right? But I am optimistic that books are in during format. They're in during form of storytelling. And so our job is as parents and as adults to make sure we share that love of reading and, and get kids to read. And I think it's key what you're saying. If your daughter likes the books with pictures, get the book with the pictures, right? And I know this side out yet, but I, but the, a lot of folks think, Oh, no, it's a graphic novel. It doesn't count. It sure does. And it's, I was a very stereotypical boy re-lucked in reader when I was young and I came to reading a lot later in life as for, for, for fun. And I had a friend of a friend who just started giving me books because he knew what I liked. And then I just started finding them on my own. And that's what we got to do with kids. I'm a librarian, a teacher, a family friend, a trusted source, whoever it might be that can get that kid interested in reading. And believe me, graphic novels absolutely do count as reading. And there's actually multiple forms of storytelling in a graphic novel. You have the text, you have the images, and then you have the space between the images where you're mine has to fill fill in those gaps. So it's, it's incredibly exciting form of storytelling. And I fully encourage folks to embrace it. Yeah, me too. When I was younger, here are two things my mother did. One, she gave, I was really, and she noticed that I was into Archie Kong. And she ended up buying me archie comics every day. So there was always, 'cause even though it wasn't a book, I was reading. And the second thing she did is, if any time I ever wanted a book, I could get it. So, you know, I would always ask for presents or toys or clothes, and it was always no-no-no. But if it was a book, the answer was absolutely all pay for it. And she did that into my late 20s, actually. So once I was a young adult, and I could probably have afforded books, but it wasn't that, you know, it was pretty broke in my mid-20s. I probably wouldn't have spent money on books, because I would rather spend it on, you know, having dinner out or something. And so my mom continued buying me books until I was able to then afford it whenever I wanted when I got older and started making more money. Those are some good, too good tricks, I think. I love that story. I'm gonna start using that as a trick for folks. Say, you know, just say no to everything but books. Yeah, that's what I do with my daughter. And like, you never have to say, can I have a book? And then she comes home with those elastic things. And she circles the ones that she wants and what I've noticed is that she always circles the ones that come with a toy. It's like, this one has a little pen attached to it. And this one has a little stuffy with it. And I'm like, you're only picking the toy ones. This doesn't count. We're going to Barnes and Noble or whatever. That song she's reading. Yeah, as long as she's reading. So tell us about becoming the CEO after being at the organization for so long, and then you get promoted and re-uined competition for that job with other people who ended up reporting into you or how did that work? I don't think I was in competition with other people that ended up reporting into me. But it's coming up through an organization. I've done it a couple times. I was at Disney for inter-publishing division for 10 years. Well, I was at Disney for 10 years and I was mostly in the publishing division. But I moved around a little bit there. And I got eventually became publisher. I got promoted to promoters. So again, coming up from within an organization. And it is interesting because people that are once your peers are now reporting to you. So that's something that is a different dynamic. And that's where you really double down on the trust. You establish those personal relationships. You make those personal connections. And you also, I think now it's not just when you get promoted from within. But it's I think in general as a leader, you have to realize that it's incumbent upon us to make sure that our message or our what we're trying to say is understood by the listener. It's not their job to figure out what we're trying to say. And I think that's maybe different than when I started coming up. When I started coming up, the boss would say something and you had to figure out what it meant. And there was a culture around that. It doesn't, that's not the way it works anymore. And you also have to morph a little bit, right? You have to realize what does the organization need me to be today? And you sort of change your style a little bit. So there's I don't do anything. I don't believe in for first of all. So that's but I will maybe adjust my message because I need to get the results that I want. And the team appreciates that. So once I was coming up from within, people saw that and they all knew I was a publisher to help with the publishing side to begin with. And listen, we have accounting, we have HR, we have all those shared services, folks. So they. I don't know. They, they sort of like what are the new boss, right? In some ways, but at the same time, I made connections with them. I made sure that they knew what I stood for. They made sure that I have one of the things I did very early on as I did AMAs. I did ask me anything with every single group in small group sessions. It's one thing to get in front of a whole organization and say something. It's a thousand people, you know, that everyone's not going to and it's virtual these days, right? So everyone's not going to feel like they can maybe raise their hand and ask a question. But if you're a group of 20 or 50 or even 100 people and they're all your, you know, you know, your group that you know, and you work with, you probably feel a little bit more comfortable to ask a question. So I went around, it did those AMAs to every single group in small sessions. So they got to see me as who I am and ask me questions and, you know, people a little reluctant at first. But then they start asking questions and they see who you are. So it's, that's just one of the tactics that I used and it made, it enabled me to get to know the organization and enable them to get no me, even though I was already here for a dozen years at the time. Yeah, that's an interesting approach. What were some of the more surprising questions that you were asked during that AMA tour? I mean, first of all, I do those AMAs every two years now. So I kept it as something that I do. So I did it right when I got promoted out of the kids group to first be president and then I was CEO. So I've done this twice now and I think it's a good way because you know, people change. We have, you know, the team changes. So it's a great way for people to get to meet you. There were, the questions were all over the board. There were as simple as, you know, what's your favorite book or what books you excited about this year to more about what are you going to do about the coffee, you know, in the cafe. So it was really across the board. What was interesting is I went down to the warehouse because we have a warehouse in Virginia where all the books go. And a great question that came from the warehouse was, you know, everyone says we're number five of the big five. When are you going to get to number four? I love that question, right? And I said we're working real hard on it. So it's, we're going to continue to start new initiatives. And that was before we started a bunch of the things I mentioned earlier. But I love that question and coming from the warehouse too. So that was, that was super fun. I can't think of any super surprising question that I was asked. They were all pretty straightforward. But there were a lot of really good insightful questions about the business. Like do you think audio is going to continue to grow? Where's ebooks going to be? What is print going to mean for us in the future? Do we care if we sell a print book versus an ebook or an audio book? And those are just really insightful questions that are always funded to get. People asking questions about the P and L and the dynamics of how that work. So I love answering those questions. What was the most challenging element of transitioning to a CEO? I mean, from the publisher role to the CEO role, was anything surprising there? There were a lot of things that were surprising. The thing that was, was what I thought would be my biggest challenge. I'm not sure it turned out to be, but how do I scale to a thousand people? And really 1500 because I also oversee the warehouse in the UK. So between all the whole entire organization, you have roughly a thousand people up here in the UK. Around 3, 350 in Virginia and other couple hundred to 50 in the UK. How do you scale to those people? Because the groups I've run before, while there was a lot of revenue, they were smaller, you know, a couple hundred people. And again, that's part of the reason I wanted to do the AMA. I wanted to let people know who I was, see my style, but that's where you have to start relying on your team. And you have to, but good people in place in your organization that can spread your voice. You know, spread your message and be consistent with how you're approaching thing. Again, with the publishers, while keeping their special, their individual identity, but use those proxies to get your message across. And I thought that was going to be harder than it was, but it seemed, you know, it seems to come, you know, pretty quickly and, you know, okay. So that's, that was my biggest, maybe fear or challenge and it turned out not to be. Was there a learning curve for you? There always is. I mean, you know, I was running businesses and I have this, my background is interesting for publishing person. I started out, I went to college and I wanted to be in business. Why? My dad was in business. I didn't even know what it meant. I was a finance, I was right. You just do, you know, you go to college and I was a finance major and I came out and, well, even before I came out, while I was in school, I started promoting concerts on campus through the school, wound up working with a local concert promoter. My grandfather was a professional jazz musician, so I had music in my background. I'm like, I'm going to be a music guy. I'm going to do something to music business. I went up working for that local concert promoter when I graduated. So anyone from Washington, DC, I was a manager of the 930 club. I was the business manager. I ran all the books, but I worked a couple nights as well. The club is still there and it's a different location. It's a really cool place. So I did that and then I'm like, I want to be a music lawyer. So I was going to go back and I actually did a bit of law school and I became a lawyer and I worked as a, as I did film, I did television, I did music, I did visual arts licensing, I did book publishing. And that's where I sort of got bit by the book bug. This background is not typical for a publishing executive. So, and that's, so with that kind of background, I felt that pretty confident on the business side of things. And then I had a lot of good people at Disney that helped educate me on the book business. I had a, she wasn't even my boss. She ran the publishing division, the books part of the publishing division. We had books. We had magazines and we had these continuity projects at Disney. She ran the book business and sort of took me under her wing and showed me a lot about books. There's a couple of women that worked for us today. I worked with them at Disney. They left. I left. And now a year or so ago, they came to work for McMillan. And they taught me a lot about about the book publishing business too. So I got that part. So I felt confident about my ability to run a business, but again, it's bigger and it's scale. So there are, you know, you do have some doubts and you do have some learning curve about, again, managing 1500 people in three different locations. But it's gone okay. And I trusted the team. I really did. And, and they trusted me and it helps me to come from within. Because people know who you are, even if they don't know you well, they know you well enough. And then you really start reinforcing those relationships. Like keep coming back to that relationship thing. And it matters. It really does. And so, yeah, I mean, there was learning curve, but it was nothing that was nothing that was incredibly difficult. Yeah. I'm also curious just because I'm asking every CEO that I interviewed this lately about AI within the business. Are you using it to improve efficiency? Have you actually started implementing anything yet? Where are you at with that? We're, we're, we've done a bunch of little things. We, some of the areas that we focused on is like pricing. We can use AI to assess price in the marketplace and see if our books are priced competitively. That's one area that we've used it. We used it for demand forecasting. How many books should we print? One of the biggest issues with our businesses, either have too many or too few books. If you don't have enough, you can't get them into the stores. If you have too many, it's the destroyer. It's not great for the environment and it's not great for your PNL either. Using AI for demand forecasting has been a great thing. Those are the two areas that we've been focusing on. One of the internal teams here was use AI to create indexes. No one likes creating indexes. We were able to use AI to create indexes and then prove those indexes to make sure they're right. Just a few areas that we're looking at. We're using a little bit from metadata for books. Make sure that our metadata isn't tuned to what's happening in the world so that will help with marketing and positioning books as well. Yeah, interesting. Can you tell us the difference between, because my first book I wrote was with Wiley and then my second book now is with Amplify, which is like a hybrid publisher. Tell us about the difference between these worlds, like traditional publishing and then this hybrid publishing. I know self-publishing is this whole other world, but the hybrid is somewhere a little bit in between. Can you just explain to a lay person what that difference is? I mean, the self-publishing, as you know, like you said, is very straightforward. Then writes a book and they figure out a way to get out there using usually some services from Amazon. The hybrid is really, I mean, I don't think there's much difference between the hybrid and the traditional publishing, right? You have some resources. They're someone's giving you support. If you came to a traditional publisher, we'd give you an advance. We'd have a contract to pay you royalties on your books with sold and we'd work together to come up with a marketing publicity plan that would have us doing a bunch of stuff and you doing a bunch of stuff. We get the books out there in the marketplace, both through physical and digital means. We use the might that we have as in the industry to help position your book the best way possible. That experience, that influence, that connection, we hope puts your book in the best place to succeed. Not everyone that wants to get a book, you asked a question earlier, I don't even have the answer. How many books do we not publish that we get submitted? It's a enormous number, right? It's an enormous number. That's where the other forms of publishing come in. You know what? Some years ago, we realized that we were passing on books that we shouldn't have. We were trying to figure out ways to augment that. We came up with some models. They didn't tend to work, but we're quite aware that sometimes we miss some good stuff out there. Yeah. How do you do that analysis? Are there college kids reading everything? I mean, is it high-level people? Can you put it through AI? Does every application actually get read? Well, every submission gets read, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's just full manuscripts. Is that someone's job to just read all day long and be like, yes, no, yes, no? Not all day long, but yeah, the editor is that's what they do. They read the books and it might not resonate with them. That's the other thing. What I like, you might not like. So, that's why the folks that are submitting books tend to miss so many people because they need to get them out there. The agent's pre-screen, essentially. That's what's going on. Almost every book that we publish comes through an agent. So the agent is pre-screening it and they're polishing it up and packaging it up so we can look at it and help make the decision and they know what we look for as well. That's interesting. So almost everything you publish comes through an agent. So you don't have non-represented authors that you publish very often. Very, very, very few. Very few. Yeah. What are the exceptions? Someone that knows someone. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So it's a whole kind of subculture that you have to get involved in, I suppose. So it's interesting that it's the editors. I would have thought there was like a first line of defense. Some other, you know, kind of because of the enormous number of submissions you probably get. There would be some kind of screening before it gets to the editors. It's the editorial team. So a lot of times the assistants will read about their editorial assistants. It's the whole editorial team reviewing the submissions and seeing what should get raised up. It is such a challenging. I got to imagine it's so challenging because books are so personal, right? I mean, my favorite book is Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran for, you know, I love that book. I just think it's so well written. I gave it to my mom to read and she couldn't get past the first sentence because of the way that it was written, which was intentionally strange. But, you know, she, like, who, if we were the two editors, we would have very different reactions. So it is hard. I can imagine that it's challenging to kind of find what will resonate with the most amount of people, especially as tastes change. Have you noticed differences in what people are buying and what's resonating with the public? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole concept of romanticity wasn't a thing a few years ago. I mean, there was paranormal and then there was romance and now you're sort of mixing them together and there was always romance aspects and so many, particularly YA books. But now, everyone's just going all in on it, you know? And so that's something that I don't know. If you would have asked me 10 years ago, would we be in the Romantic world? I wouldn't have seen that comment. Right. Is that because of like, Twilight? So it gets popular in one dynamic and then suddenly everyone's looking for more like that. I mean, there was a Twilight phase and then we sort of like went away from it and then we sort of started coming back a little bit and not all romanticity is paranormal and, you know, so it's all, it's a lot of it's fantastical, right? Because it's it's romantic to see. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting. Okay. Well, this has been such an awesome conversation. I could talk to you for hours, but I have one last question, which is my favorite one, which is, what is something that you don't get asked very often that you wish you were asked more often when you get these kind of interviews? Yeah. And this is a good one. And when I talk a little bit about my background, since it's atypical, the question that I'm surprised that people don't ask me often is, why books? Why did you choose to stay in books? And the, and I left some parts of my history out. I actually worked at a bank trading interest rate derivatives for a little for a year and I worked at an early, an early, was a finance major, right? I had to try it. I'm not a bank, I'm not a banker. And then I worked at an early stage social media marketing company and I left that. So the answer to the question is, it's the people. The people in publishing are smart, they're fun, they're committed, they're altruistic. And every time I've deviated from the publishing business, I miss the people. And coming back, and I love the, there's an altruistic nature of books. We talked about impact at the beginning. So the people in the impact really tie it together to me. So that's the question that I'm surprised people don't ask. And I absolutely love the people in publisher. Well, I'm glad that you asked it and that you answered it. Thank you so much for joining us today. I learned a lot. I hope that the listeners will go read more books, especially in front of your children and make sure that your kids are reading because it's such an important message and the impact is really profound, I think. So thank you again for joining us today. Oh, thanks so much for having me. [MUSIC]