Writing a book is an extremely complicated job.
It isn't just one sits down at a computer
and just lets it rip.
That could be a very good first draft, for example.
In fact David Ebershoff, one of our great editors
at Random House, has always said
that writing is all about rewriting.
And so that is one of the functions
that our editors help an author do,
in order to make an author’s work
as clear as it can be.
Every author is different and every author wants to work in a different way.
Some authors want to go away in a cave somewhere and write a hundred thousand words
and then come back with a hundred thousand words and not be disturbed
while they do that.
Other writers need to have every page
literally checked over, read, and
sort of assessed so they can move forward.
And so the first thing I do is try to work out a system that will work for both of us.
As an editor you're reading things constantly and I love it because every day you start a manuscript
and it’s, like, maybe this is the one.
Every once in a while your heart rate goes up, and you find yourself flipping the pages,
and you lose track of time, and you just know “I have to publish this,
we know how to do this,” and that's the most gratifying thing about being an editor.
Every writer works differently with an editor.
But I find the relationships that I have
are intense, they’re really intense,
and they're really close.
A lot of writers that I work with
become some of your best friends,
because it's very intimate work,
and I think you develop sort of a dependency on one another.
You know, I love working with these people,
and hopefully they like working with me as well.
We do not have a house style; we do not tell our authors how to write their books.
Our job is to hear their voice,
to take their prose, and over the course of the copyediting
and proofreading process to
just make every author’s book be
the best possible version of itself that it can be.
One of the most important parts of an editor's job is spreading the word about
a new book in-house and we have lots of opportunities to do that,
from the first editorial meeting, to our pre-launch, to our launch, to marketing meetings.
And then I also make a point to call different sales reps who I have a relationship with,
who I think would really enjoy the book.
I make sure to reach out to someone in marketing if I think yeah that's the person who's gonna love this book.
When I'm looking to acquire,
what I need to find is someone who has a true voice for children,
who really writes naturally from a child’s point of view
in a plain direct way. It really is a rare talent.
The best kind of story has a great character that you can bond with
right from the beginning even if they're a bad guy.
You could still find them irresistible because then you’ll root for them
throughout the whole story.
The actual making of the jacket is a very private process in a way,
much the way reading a book is a private process. I read the manuscript
and then I design something, at which point I will show it
to the editor in question.
I try to make jackets that are smart and if you look at them long enough
you'll understand that the jacket
represents the narrative in a deeper way.
But the first job really is to get someone's attention. Often I’ll have long and fruitful
conversations both with authors and editors about their books.
It’s frankly my favorite part of the job. I mean I like talking about books.
One of the first things we do is
meet with our authors to decide
what the visual program is going to be,
the thing that's going to complement their text,
the thing that's going to set the style for the book.
We set the tone for what the
brand of that book is going to be.
Quite often we have the text and then we also have the pictures that come much later.
We spend a lot of time perfecting the text and then
it’s only after we think that the text is just perfect that we start trying
to find illustrators who we think are right for the story.
It's really our job to make sure that the illustrator brings
whatever they bring to it,
but keeping in mind the voice of that author.
There's always been an emphasis at Random House
for fine book-making.
There's a great deal of
energy and care that goes into the manufacture of every single book.
Random House has always been very amenable to
using the latest technology, using the latest manufacturing techniques.
As far as optical reproduction, that is going to be unmatched in the industry.
We're working very closely
with all of the platform developers and their R&D teams to figure out
what is the best use of that and what is the best use as they are
developing new technologies.
The one thing that they can always be certain about is that we will
be doing whatever is cutting edge at the time that the book is released.
The particular media outlet that can really
drive that book, and help break it out, and find a very broad audience
will range from book to book.
It may be that daily review in the New York Times that makes all the difference.
It may be an interview on NPR. It may, oddly enough, be a blogger tour
or a chatter that begins in the online space among bloggers, that takes on a viral life of its own.
We spend a lot of time continuing to
maintain our existing relationships with the mainstream media.
From literary fiction to politics, and from cooking to craft,
we've developed extensive networks of book bloggers that we are in touch with
every day on behalf of our authors.
A big part of the publicist-author relationship is just sort of
being there for them and answering any questions that they have,
and hand-holding to a certain extent,
and just being there for them when they need it most.
We believe that we can help create some of the conversation about books online,
so we've developed several of these websites in order to create the
dialogue, or the story behind the story, about many of our books and authors.
We can potentially syndicate this information out and have these
stories appear in other places on the web.
We try to write really interesting stories, really compelling storylines
that people can share, share virally, potentially in their own social media
that we can amplify our authors’ audience and their message.
In our marketing department we really look at what we provide
as a suite of services to an author.
So we have experts in social media,
we have experts in traditional advertising, we have experts in word-of-mouth.
So in the life of the book,
after we’ve read it, after we’ve come together
and we’ve discussed the themes
that we think will resonate with the different audiences,
when it comes time to actually create the marketing campaign,
we draw from the experts that we have on the team.
We have a lot of fun author chats where readers will have the opportunity
to ask questions and the author will answer in real time,
really get a dialogue going about who has inspired them along the way in their writing,
some of their favorite authors, some of their tips to aspiring writers.
So it’s a really wonderful way for them to connect directly with people
that are reading their books,
and people that, of course, want to be writers someday too.
We start early and really focus
on the content of the book.
We figure out who the audience for the book is at any given account
because that’s really where it has to start.
Every person at every account has their own reading tastes.
I think the strength of our force is in knowing those and realizing the
importance to learning those.
We have two warehouses in our United States distribution network.
One facility is located in Crawfordsville, Indiana
and the other is in Westminster, Maryland.
These two facilities comprise one point eight million square feet,
which is roughly forty football fields.
We ship over one million books per day out of these two facilities combined.
What we do at Random House International Sales and Marketing
is promote and sell our books globally.
We are responsible for selling
and managing the marketing of all of our titles outside of the US and Canada,
and we promote those books
physically and digitally around the world.
We are in
fifteen thousand
physical book outlets
and our books are available digitally
on every possible multinational online store.
I spend most of my days working with independent bookstores
talking to the buyers at those stores
who do the ordering and decide which books will
work in those particular stores.
Now what is really great about Random House is that we have such great relationships with
those bookstore owners and staff
and we know those stores’ customers.
We have email relationships with them and we have email newsletters.
We’re on Twitter and Facebook with those people.
We have a lot of creditability.
It's really this deep ingrained love of a book
and of reading, and of that process
of falling into somebody else's imagination.
This company really supports writers and talent.
That's our goal.