Annual Bar 13 Event

Join Your YPG Friends at the Annual

Pre-Summer-Hours Kick Off Event

Bar 13
35 East 13th

www.bar13.com

Thursday May 17th

5:30-8:00 Happy Hour
2 for 1 drinks

April Brown Bag Lunch

Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30- Somethings Can't Get Ahead

Friday, April 20th, 2007 from 12:30-1:30PM

Random House, 1745 Broadway between 55th and 56th Streets, 12:30-1:30 pm in the 14th Floor Louis L'Amour Room

Come learn more about the economic problems facing people in our age group in this day and age, and the consequences of our actions and those of policy makers. Can something be done to change the direction in which we are headed? Attend on April 20th and find out.

Do you have a question for Tamara? Email Christina Rodriguez [crodriguez@publishers.org] what you want to know and we'll make sure to pass it along before the lunch!

You can RSVP to ypglunchreservations@hotmail.com. And if you know someone who wants to join YPG, tell them to email ypgmembership@hotmail.com or bring them along as your guest and they can sign up at the event!

March 2007 Brown Bag Lunch

Sara Nelson, Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly
Friday, March 23rd from 12:30-1:30PM

Random House, 1745 Broadway between 55th and 56th Streets, 12:30-1:30 pm in the 14th Floor Louis L'Amour Room

You can RSVP to ypglunchreservations@hotmail.com. And if you know someone who wants to join YPG, tell them to email ypgmembership@hotmail.com or bring them along as your guest and they can sign up at the event!

February BBL

Emily Gould of Gawker.com

Wednesday, February 21st

Random House, 1745 Broadway between 55th and 56th Streets, 12:30-1:30 pm in the 14th Floor Louis L'Amour Room

Emily Gould is the co-editor of Gawker.com. Previously, she was an associate editor at Hyperion Books. She is the co-author of Hex Education, a YA novel co-written with Hyperion editor Zareen Jaffery, which will be published by Penguin Razorbill in May.

You can RSVP to ypglunchreservations@hotmail.com until Tuesday, January 16th. And if you know someone who wants to join YPG, tell them to email ypgmembership@hotmail.com or bring them along as your guest and they can sign up at the event!

6th Annual YPG Wine and Cheese Birthday Party

You are cordially invited to the 6th Annual YPG Wine and Cheese Birthday Party

February 13th, 6:30-8:30PM German Book Office (Goethe-Institut) 1014 5th Ave., 2nd floor, NY, NY 10028 (between E. 82nd and E. 83rd St.)

Over the past six years the YPG has grown to see more than 1000 members pass through its monthly Brown Bag Lunches and social events, participate in Little Big Mouth mailings and the mentor program, and read the seasonal newsletter. As we continue to grow and change, come help us celebrate our history!

~$12 prepay (MUST be received by Friday, February 10) Please send via PayPal or mailed check/cash) ~$15 at the door

RSVP and Payment instructions:

1) By Paypal: please send money to JackSallay@nyc.rr.com via your personal account at www.paypal.com

2) By Check or Cash: please RSVP to Jack.Sallay@simonandschuster.com and make your check payable to Jack Sallay. The check should be sent to his attention at Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 14th Floor, New York, NY 10020. Checks or cash must be delivered by Friday, February 10th

January Brown Bag Lunch

Annual January Round Table Event
Wednesday, January 17th
Random House, 1745 Broadway between 55th and 56th Streets,
12:30-1:30 pm in the 14th Floor Louis L'Amour Room

As has become the custom for the January BBL, we will not feature an industry speaker, rather, we will host a Roundtable Event, and the speakers will be YOU. Your Planning Committee will be on hand to create small groups of YPGers so that you can all make the most of the hour, during which you will learn about each other's companies, departments, specific jobs, career histories, thoughts on publishing, and more!

The Brown Bag Roundtable is a great opportunity for you to get to put names to all those vaguely familiar faces you see every month, and network with colleagues from different departments and houses.

You can RSVP to ypglunchreservations@hotmail.com until Tuesday, January 16th. And if you know someone who wants to join YPG, tell them to email ypgmembership@hotmail.com or bring them along as your guest and they can sign up at the event!

Don't forget about the upcoming wine and cheese party to celebrate YPG's 'birthday'! ~More details to follow~

December Brown Bag Lunch

Living Legend: Esther Margolis
President and Founder of NewMarket Press
Thursday, December 14, 2006 from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
RANDOM HOUSE: 2nd Floor1745 Broadway b/w 55th and 56th st., New York, NY

Esther Margolis, founded the New York City-based company in 1981, after 17 years at Bantam Books where she originated Bantam’s publicity operation, ultimately becoming senior vice president of the company and Bantam’s first division head for marketing, publicity and communications worldwide, working with such authors as E. L. Doctorow, William Goldman, Louis L’Amour, Maya Angelou, Gail Sheehy, and E.L. Doctorow. One of the few mainstream, independent trade publishing houses in NYC, Newmarket publishes about 30 mainly nonfiction books a year in the areas of film, performing arts, parenting, health, personal finance, business and biography. Successes include the bestselling What’s Happening To My Body? series by Lynda Madaras; Suze Orman’s You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It®; the first biography of Condoleezza Rice, Stuart Gold’s Ping: A Frog in Search of a New Pond, The Big Book of Su Doku series, and more than 100 titles on film and filmmaking, on such films as Dreamgirls, Little Miss Sunshine, Hotel Rwanda, Sideways, Dances with Wolves, and Gandhi. Born and raised in Detroit, she is an alumna of the University of Michigan.

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Space is limited and reserved on a first-come-first serve basis. Because of increased security measures, you must RSVP by Monday, November 20th in order to be admitted. Anyone arriving after 12:40 will not be admitted to the lunch.R.S.V.P. to YPGLunchReservations@hotmail.com

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Diversify the spines on your bookshelf—swap books with a fellow ypger! BOOK SWAP RULES – “BRING 2 TAKE 2” ONLY

November Brown Bag Lunch

The Many Adventures of Book Packaging
Featuring Sara Shandler and Josh Bank of Alloy Entertainment
Tuesday, November 21, 2006 from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
RANDOM HOUSE: 14th Floor1745 Broadway b/w 55th and 56th st., New York, NY

The Ins and Outs of Book Packaging with Alloy Entertainment
At this November’s Brown Bag Lunch, the YPG was thrilled to have Josh Bank and Sara Shindler of Alloy Entertainment come to speak about book packaging.

With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Alloy Entertainment is a creative think tank that develops entertainment properties, including books, television series and feature films. They partner with publishers, television networks and movies studios to produce and to distribute those works. In a given year Alloy will package 35-40 books, of which 10-15 will be completely new titles/series. In 2005, 17 of Alloy’s books reached The New York Times bestseller list.

While most book packagers focus on non-fiction titles, almost all of the properties that Alloy produces are works of fiction, primarily geared to appeal to teens, tweens, young adults and families. Their best known series are Sweet Valley High and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Although there are a number of similarities between book packagers and traditional book publishers, there are a few key differences. One of them has to do with the number of cooks in the creative kitchen.

For starters, a book packager’s work begins with development meetings where a concept is presented. For example: what would Desperate Housewives look like if it were targeted toward the teen market? These meetings begin as group brainstorming sessions during which the original concept is developed into a single idea page that they then present to an author, asking her to make it her own. Alloy will then work with the author on a partial outline. After they’re satisfied with the outline, the writer will then pen a synopsis and 75-100 pages of the story, which will be presented to Alloy for revision. Alloy then submits it to a publishing house. Throughout this entire initial process, the Alloy staff racks it s collective brain to boil the book’s concept down to one solid sentence, a clear and salable vision, and if that cannot be accomplished, they have been known to scrap the project.

While Alloy may scrap a project that didn’t come together quite right, once a property is sold they—and any book packager for that matter—will follow the property throughout the entire production, marketing and sales of the book. Sara admits that they can be a little pushier than a typical editor, often presenting cover ideas with the initial pitch and negotiating a budget to shoot and produce their own jackets. When it comes to distribution rights, they want full control. Since they are working with film and television in mind, their goals may not always be wholly compatible with those of the publishing world.

Another difference between packagers and publishers is that when working with packagers the publisher’s contract is not with a writer but with the packager. Seems obvious, but there are some interesting ramifications. The packager holds the rights, and acts as a middleman of sorts. While publishing houses and writers often have close ties, the actual work (manuscripts, jackets, outlines, revisions, etc.) is always funneled through the book packager, which is particularly noticeable during the editorial process or jacket design.

Given the proven success that Alloy has had with their hands-on philosophy, it makes one wonder why packagers wouldn’t just eliminate the other middleman—the publisher—and directly distribute their books. Well, Alloy has actually tried this, and continues to discuss the pros and cons, but they have come to the conclusion that they simply aren’t publishers. What they enjoy the most is the creative aspect of publishing, and that also happens to be what they’re best at. The various publishers with whom they work with are much more successful at leveraging their infrastructure to sell and distribute the books. In other words, packagers and publishers work the best when they are allowed the freedom and opportunity to focus on their respective strengths, while utilizing the talents of one another.

October Brown Bag Lunch

The Role of the Book Reviewer: Panel Discussion
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Louis L’Amour Room at Random House

This October the YPG learned about the role of the book reviewer with three guests from very diverse publications. The YPG welcomed Ben Dickinson of Elle, Boris Kachka of New York Magazine, and Mickey Rapkin of GQ. (For more information, please see more detailed bios below). Jack Sallay of the YPG moderated the panel with questions provided in advance by the group.

Editorial Mission
When asked about their magazines’ editorial missions, the reviewers had answers that while, different, had similar fundamentals. American Elle tries to differentiate its brand from that of French Elle, a very culturally aware magazine, by focusing on more intellectually aware goals. Ben has to plan his editorial calendar approximately 2-4 months in advance, and chooses titles 6-8 months ahead of their publication dates, stating that it makes his particular job exciting, as he cannot look to book lists and other publications to determine what should be reviewed. He contacts different houses, marks catalogs, and maintains shelves of galleys by publication month. Ben remarked that he looks at about 75-100 galleys for possible review each month. He tries to maintain a balance between literary fiction and general-interest nonfiction, and generally uses excerpts from nonfiction that deal with women’s or social issues. He referred to their credo as ‘intellectual hedonism,’ defining it as the mentality of a reader who wishes to be aware of literary culture, even if they cannot read all reviewed books. Boris noted that the locality of his publication does have influence—they generally consider what they believe New Yorkers are or should be talking about. He also noted the recent attention to nonfiction, and stated that they try to integrate culture into their pages by utilizing a mix of well-known topics with those that his reviewers feel are of import. He plans his calendar seasonally, 2-4 weeks ahead of time. Mickey feels, like Ben, that he should know about a book before a publicist calls to tell him about it. They run about 5 short reviews per month, with a goal that the average GQ reader will buy 3 books each month. Excerpts are usually from memoirs.

Industry Trends
Because of the huge advertising cuts that magazines suffered as a result of the economic depression that followed 9/11, Elle’s book pages were cut in half, although the content stayed the same. As time has passed they have added more content to those same pages, which has made each piece shorter. Ben likes the current format, but finds it harder to freelance out work, since they have little space to offer. Boris and his team still run longer reviews, adhering to the idea that each reviewer must have room to explore their ideas. He finds it most important that their content is idea-generated, and also looks to freelancers because bigger names tend to give weight to a review. However, Boris also said that the sudden loss of interest in fiction makes it difficult to convince even the editors that a certain book is worth reviewing.

When asked if GQ publishes negative reviews, Mickey answered that to do so would be a waste in an already very limited given space. Ben also tries to cover books in new and interesting ways, outside of the typical review format, as well as find other ways to fit book-related content into the magazine.

The Marketplace
Ben noted that memoirs are booming, while literary fiction is still in a struggle. They try to choose fiction titles that they feel have real merit and recommend them to readers, and also use their Reader’s Prize, which awards books to 15 readers 3 times a month. Ben noted that it has been a great way to get feedback. Boris told the group that it is important to show genuine enthusiasm for recommendations, noticing that publishers are trying to start a successful trend in literary fiction. Mickey answered that big names are everywhere right now because of the fall season, but that they like to try and fit in smaller, lesser known writers as well.

Books in the Media
When asked what other books pages the reviewers look to, Ben answered that he typically reads the New York Times, but with general trepidation that he missed a great book that the Times did not, because planning reviews so far ahead leaves them ‘blind’ to the future. Boris reads Atlantic Monthly and Book Forum, and Mickey told that group that he reads Elle, but then noted that he tries to distance himself from other review pages, especially because there are so many out there.

How to Contact Reviewers
The YPG then posed their most burning question of how often the reviewers are contacted by publicists, and how they would respectively prefer to be contacted. After a general consensus that they all get a daily barrage of emails, Ben remarked that he tends to feel a low-level guilt over the fact that he cannot respond to all of them, and hopes that publicists don’t resent him. He says that publicists he most likes working with are those who can telegraph 3-4 books per season about which they genuinely feel strongly. Too often, he has to spend much time trying to divine where a publicist’s genuine enthusiasm lies, and often looks to galley letters for background information and clues as to whether or not they truly believe in the book. While Boris can’t manage to read every email sent to him, he doesn’t want them to stop flooding his inbox. Like Ben, he tries to ascertain where a publicist’s true enthusiasm lies, and likes to hear from them early on—in general he finds that they do have their favorites, and will be forthright about them. Mickey is the exception to the panel’s rule in this case—he reads every email received and any galley letter that accompanies a book. He also doesn’t mind receiving phone calls.


Panelists Bios
Boris Kachka, as Contributing Editor at New York Magazine, helps determine and writes much of the coverage of books and theater in the Culture Pages. Kachka writes and edits features and various other elements of the pages, as well as Q&As and profiles of authors, actors, playwrights, and theater directors. Writing book reviews and news items he has also contributed to Salon and is currently working on a project for Conde Nast Traveler. He has been at New York magazine since graduating from the Columbia Journalism School.

Mickey Rapkin, 28, is a senior editor at GQ where he covers pop culture. His recent stories include a profile of Kevin Federline, a piece on the new James Bond film and a Q&A with the creators of "South Park." He also edited the fall books package. Rapkin was previously a staff writer at Details, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly. He lives in New York City.

Ben Dickinson of Elle started out in magazines (after a severely prolonged adolescence) as an editorial assistant at Esquire, working primarily on its “Man at His Best” section. Following a stint at the late, lamented Civilization magazine, first as book review editor and later as executive editor, he has been a senior features editor and point man for the publishing industry at Elle for the past six years.

September Brown Bag Lunch

Christina A. Harcar, Vice President and Director of Subsidiary Rights at St. Martin's Press on Subrights
Thursday, September 21st at 12:30, at Random House

This September, the Young to Publishing Group tackled subsidiary rights with Christina Harcar, Vice President, Director of Subsidiary Rights at St. Martin's Press. Prior to joining St. Martin's, Ms. Harcar was the Editorial Director of Random House Audio Publishers, and prior to that she was the Director of International Rights for Sanford J. Greenburger Agency and Nicholas Ellison, Inc. Given the range of her experience acquiring and selling rights at publishing houses and agencies, Ms. Harcar covered subsidiary rights from all angles.

To understand subsidiary rights, it helps to have a crash course on the evolution of publishing over the past 30 years. Vertical integration, or the process by which a number of companies (usually within the same industry) are grouped together under one owner in order to create synergy and maximize profits, has been the general trend within publishing. One of the most obvious examples of vertical integration would be the combination of hardcover and paperback houses under the same ownership. In the 1970s, some of the largest deals a subsidiary rights department would negotiate were made between hardcover and paperback houses. They created a lot of buzz and profits. Hitting seven figures was hardly rare, and the larger houses regularly did multiple deals of this size a week.

As paperback and hardcover houses were brought under the same ownership and houses moved toward integration in a variety of other ways-audio and large print publishers are also good examples-there were fewer places to buy and sell rights. So what about those multimillion dollar deals? They certainly weren't lost. Rather than make the profits up front with the sale of rights, they are now made on the back end with sales of books.

Getting an edge in an industry with a relatively low number of companies that have similar access to market data is always difficult, but subsidiary rights are first and foremost about relationships. When a particular outlet is brought under a corporate umbrella, they simply seek out another one. Library markets and foreign publishers are a couple places where sub rights departments have recently sought such relationships.

One of the most unique aspects of subsidiary rights is that it can actually generate profits before there is a final product. The importance of these early sales of rights cannot be overstated. With an eye on the bottom line, sub rights departments can recoup some, if not all or even more, of a house's initial lay down for a work by selling it into other markets and formats. Not only do these sales put money in the publisher's hand, they also build a house's and the industry's confidence in a book, thus paving the way for its successful introduction into domestic markets.

August Brown Bag Lunch

Steve Wasserman: The Role of the Literary Agent
Thursday, August 22nd

Steve Wasserman spoke at our August Brown Bag Lunch and gave a retrospective of his remarkable career as an editor, reviewer and agent. Before his cross-coast move to take on the role of director of Kneerim & Williams, Wasserman served as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review for nine years. He has also worked with such companies as New Republic Books, Hill & Wang, and the Noonday Press. He has had vast experience in both the book publishing and journalism industries, and now applies such experience in his role as a literary agent.

For him, the biggest question that publishing faces today is the challenge of cutting through the avalanche of noise created by a busy culture and new media to draw attention to books. Potential readers only have so much time in their day, and many times they choose to do other things rather than read. Moreover, bombarded by other forms of entertainment many readers, used to hour or half hour television segments, have also lost the stamina to withstand longer narratives.

But not all hope is lost. Wasserman spoke of his surprise to find so many foreign investors involved in American publishing. While it seems that many American companies have given up on the printed word, Wasserman suggested that these foreign investors might have a longer world view. Publishing may indeed be falling to other media forms, but Rome did not fall in a single day; it took 800 years. And really, the printed word, the book, will never disappear.

The Trials and Tribulations of Google Book Search

By Tracy Kaufman

A full library’s worth of books, at one’s disposal through a simple Google search, sounds like a lazy researcher’s dream come true. However, Google is a corporation, not a library.

In October, the behemoth search engine found itself pummeled by lawsuits, first by the Author’s Guild and second by the Association of American Publishers, after months of talks fell through concerning the Google Print Library Project, now up and running as Google Book Search. In late 2004, the company visualized millions of published books, scanned and made available as a searchable online database. Understandably, the general public would find such a venture extremely helpful. Meanwhile, equally understandably, authors and publishers have their copyrights at stake.

The issue is that collections from the libraries of Stanford University, Harvard University, and University of Michigan, including works still under copyright, are being scanned for use in the project, but permission was never obtained from the books’ authors and publishers. Google claims that only excerpts of works will be available for online viewing, but still the full texts are copied and retained by Google in its own database.

Publishers recognize that the search engine’s efforts could be innovative and beneficial to all involved, but have requested that the plans be modified in order to respect the rights of everyone. AAP President Pat Schroeder stated that though Google Book Search “could help many authors get more exposure and maybe even sell more books, authors and publishers should not be asked to waive their long-held rights so that Google can profit from this venture.”[1]

If a solitary person or a small company were to attempt to copy and distribute copyrighted materials on this massive scale without permission, they would most certainly find themselves in serious trouble with the law. Many feel that Google, as a large corporation, considers itself above the laws that apply to others, and that a bad precedent would be set if the company is allowed to pursue their project unchecked. Google claims that publishers can choose to opt individual books out of the program, but as Sally Morris of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers counters, “Publishers should be asked to opt in to the project and not to opt out.”[2] During earlier talks, AAP proposed that Google utilize ISBNs to seek out which particular books were under copyright, so that permission could be sought appropriately. Google rejected that plan.

In addition, there have been fears that Google would place lucrative advertisements on search results pages, thereby generating considerable revenue from the venture. The issue of “fair use” of copyrighted materials gives leeway in educational or nonprofit use, but does not apply to large commercial organizations. Says Schroeder, “The bottom line is that under its current plan Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers.”[3] Paul Aiken of the Author’s Guild has echoed concerns that Google’s Book Search is a commercial project, and has also expressed worries about security, speculating that full copyrighted works, not just the promised excerpts, could be made available to users if the Google servers are hacked.[4]

Google maintains that its practices are lawful, and defends that they fall under fair use. "Creating an easy to use index of books is fair use under copyright law and supports the purpose of copyright: to increase the awareness and sales of books directly benefiting copyright holders,” they stated. When AAP’s lawsuit was initially filed, Google’s David Drummond said in an online statement:

We think you should be able to search through every word of every book ever written, and come away with a list of relevant books to buy or find at your local library. We aim to make that happen, but to do so we'll need to build and maintain an index containing all this information.It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time. The history of technology is replete with advances that first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along.[5]

Indeed, Google’s plan, regardless of its opposition from publishers and authors, has met plenty of support from the public, and is recognized as an incredibly useful innovation. On the resource’s Press Mentions site, a list of media quotations praising Google fills the page.[6] Still, Drummond’s statement above is quite provocative. Is he implying that copyright laws as they now stand are becoming outdated? Does he suggest that publishers should adapt their business models to the new technology, rather than defend them against such dramatic change?

The more examination that goes into the question of Google Book Search, the more questions arise, and the bigger those questions get. Currently, neither publisher nor internet juggernaut shows signs of backing down from their respective positions. How the struggle will end is still anyone’s guess.

[1] http://publishers.org/press/releases.cfm?PressReleaseArticleID=292
[2] http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2141154/google-backtracks-print
[3] http://internetweek.cmp.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172302562
[4] http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2005/20051024.asp
[5] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/why-we-believe-in-google-print.html
[6] http://books.google.com/googlebooks/press.html

The Production Point of View

By Shirley Chan

My job as Production Coordinator for Penguin reprints is both rewarding and challenging. The reward comes from working with books that I (and the public) love to read, and the challenge is in keeping up with demand for these beloved books.

At no other time is the duality of my job more apparent than when an author wins a prestigious award! This past November, William T. Vollmann won the National Book Award for Fiction for Europe Central. The next morning, both my Outlook inbox and my voicemail were full of frantic messages before I’d even gotten to the office.

Problem #1: We needed to produce tens of thousands of books to meet the new demand for Europe Central, and we needed to do it quickly. All other reprints had to be prioritized to make room, which was no easy feat considering I handle over 100 reprints per month. Imagine setting up a row of Dominoes when you suddenly need to insert an extra Domino without knocking all the pieces down. (And there are 20 people calling while you’re doing it to ask if you are in fact doing it.)

Problem #2: We needed to change the cover to proclaim Vollmann’s status as a National Book Award winner, and we needed to do it before producing those tens of thousands of books. Cover changes are not as easy as pressing a button on a computer. The changes go through stages of approval with the Editorial and Art departments before being sent out to a cover printer. The printer produces a proof that must again go through all the stages of approval before the covers can finally be printed. Imagine a game of Telephone where you run from person to person trying to get everyone to agree on one thing. (And everyone speaks a different language.)

Problem #3: We needed to meet increased demand for Vollmann’s backlist titles, but had to avoid printing too many. We needed to keep books in stock, while still updating covers and author biographies. Reprint quantities kept fluctuating, and changes kept coming in until the moment when everything had to be finalized or else we wouldn't get books. Imagine a juggling act run amok. (And people keep tossing in more things to juggle.)

Production is a tough place. Everyone, from the Sales department to the Publisher, looks to us to make the books happen. That’s the challenge. For me, the reward lies not only in the exceptional titles that I work on, but also in the extraordinary effort that other people, either within my company or at an outside vendor, make to facilitate this whole crazy process.

So consider joining the circus, and apply for a Production position today!

June Brown Bag Lunch Wrap Up

JUNE: Book Selling & Book Buying with Michael Burkin
Tuesday, June 27th

On June 27th, Michael Burkin spoke at our Sales Brown Bag Luncheon. Michael drew from over 15 years of publishing experience to give YPG members an overview of the Sales department's various responsibilities such as communicating with national vs. independent accounts, launching paperback originals and dealing with a returnable product. He also spoke about emerging trends like the ever-growing used book market and the issues surrounding e-books. YPG members were so engrossed in Michael's speech that the lunch hour seemed too short!

If you attended this BBL and had further questions for Michael, please contact him at mburkin@nyc.rr.com.

YPG Bitchbox Article

By Tracy Kaufman

According to The Bug Clinic, a company that teaches you how to cast a suspicious stinkeye on every corner of your home, bedbugs are “an ancient insect whose roots are thought to go back to the times of the cave dwellers.” They are tiny and red, courtesy of YOUR blood, and they live a comfortable existence, courtesy of YOUR mattress, bed frame, baseboards, and moldings. Thanks, moldings. Thanks for giving an apartment Old World ambiance and a mammoth colony of bugs.

When I think of bedbugs, I think of families living in Victorian squalor. Twelve children, their heads shaved to keep lice away, wearing barrels held up by suspenders, all sharing one twin-sized mattress stuffed with cotton balls, with only their old slumbering hound Ralph to use as a blanket. I do not think of my modern-day Brooklyn apartment, expertly Swiffered weekly by myself and my roommate. But alas, this is the dark secret of New York. When they cleaned up Times Square, plopped Chanel and Burberry in the middle of Soho, and turned all the Hell’s Kitchen peep shows into Olive Gardens, the seedy underbelly had to pop up somewhere, somehow, to express the true spirit of the city. And that medium appears to be bedbugs, who are not content to ravage only the occasional seedy block or dark alley! Oh, most certainly not – they are on the Upper East Side! And the Upper West Side, and the East Village, and the West Village, and in Queens, and in Brooklyn! It’s true, they are everywhere, including my poor suffering home and my poor suffering walls.

It wasn’t until halfway through the summer that I began to notice itchy red bumps all over my ankles. I assumed they were mosquito bites, since I admittedly live in a terrible neighborhood where the sidewalks are encroached upon by tall weeds on all sides during the hot weather. So I assumed that once the fall hit, the bug bites would go away. But they didn’t! And then one day I looked upward at the skylightesque feature at the top of my wall for what may have been the first time ever (due to my short stature), and recoiled with a scream at what I saw crawling around up there. I ran, I fell, I stumbled through the living room in search of the bug spray. Clutching it in my teeth and running back to the bedroom, I climbed up on the bed, reached up as close to the ceiling as I could get, and sprayed with everything I had. “Demons!” I called out into the night. “Heinous beasts! You’ll rue the day you ever came to this cursed town!”

Where did they come from? I do not know. How long were they really there before they were discovered? It is one of the great mysteries of our time. All I know is that from that moment on, my and my roommate’s lives have been governed by misery and paranoia. O rebels of gentrification, must you prey upon the innocents? One of our weekend guests left covered in red welts after her visit!

When the exterminator came, we had to have all of our clothing, towels, and sheets stored in plastic bags, and had to clear out of the apartment for four hours after he sprayed. The next morning, I bought a new mattress just in case the old one was housing any suspects. But as we moved furniture around the room, my moving companion announced that his foot was itching. When we looked, it was a brand new bedbug bite. What had that exterminator been doing during his four-hour visit? Watching Gilmore Girls DVDs? Reading our old issues of Entertainment Weekly? He certainly wasn’t killing bedbugs, that’s for sure!

Now, whenever we feel an itch, we become convinced that it’s a bedbug bite. We even experience phantom bites, in which we’re itchy all over inside the apartment, but are magically cured as soon as we go outside. When we see a piece of lint, we’re absolutely positive that it’s a bug until after we’ve sprayed it with a whole can of Raid. All of our friends have been candidates for the gallows after we’ve accused each and every one of them of bringing the bugs into the apartment. And what of the other apartments in our building? Could bedbugs have spread from any of them?

It’s true; we now live a life of fear and of witch hunts. While most of the bugs seem to be gone now, I still occasionally glimpse a lone outlaw crawling up the living room wall, daring me to commit a brutal slaughter. The exterminator will return for a second spraying, and this time he’s not leaving until every bug is dead, even if it means he has to patrol the apartment all night with a flashlight and a can of pesticide. Even if it means he has to circle the neighborhood with a cannon full of bug powder. Even if it means he must scour every street and home of New York, day in, day out, armed with only a wheelbarrow full of DDT and a vision for an insect-free world.

Volunteer to be a YPG Mentor!

Been in publishing for two years or more?
Have some advice to share? Want to help other newbies in the industry?

If so, then please volunteer to be a YPG mentor! We accept new mentors year-round... this especially helps fill the gaps when people leave the YPG due to new jobs or a change in circumstance. (We often have a surplus of mentees and a shortage of mentors... so we can always use more of the latter!)

We'll match you up with another, more junior YPG member interested in your field. The extent of the mentor/mentee relationship is up to the both of you... you can meet as often or as little as your schedules and time allow. There are two or three YPG-organized events throughout the year so mentors and mentees can bond and get to know each other, but the real value of these relationships is in the more frequent correspondence between each matched pair.

Publishing is an industry where networking and relationship-building is paramount. And participating in the YPG Mentoring Program is just another way to develop those all-important relationships!

E-mail ypgmentorprogram@hotmail.com for more information or to volunteer.

** A YPG Mentor/Mentee Happy Hour and Reading is planned for Monday, June 12th from 6:00pm–8:30pm. If interested in attending, please e-mail ypgmentorprogram@hotmail.com for more details. Include your name, affiliation, and whether you'd like to be a mentor. New people are welcome! **

May Brown Bag Lunch Wrap Up

Living Legend Phyllis Grann
Tuesday, May 16th

Phyllis Grann has been in the business for almost 50 years. Beginning in 1958 as Nelson Doubleday’s secretary she rose to become CEO and President of Penguin Putnam, Inc. from 1996 through 2001. She has now returned to the editorial foundations from whence she sprung, and is currently working as a Senior Editor at Doubleday.

Here's a wrap up of the event from Patty Park, a Publicist at Random House:

“What a throwback to a by-gone era! “Living Legend” Phyllis Grann embodied the glamorous book publishing type I have always romanticized. Her talk coupled savvy business stats with a realistic picture of the future of publishing, sprinkled with dishy—but tasteful—gossip. Ms. Grann’s talk made me realize how much ground women of her generation had covered, in order for women of my generation to get to where they are now. Thank you, YPG, for hosting yet another successful Living Legend lunch.”

YPG Summer Kick-Off Celebration

Come join the YPG for our annual Summer Kick-Off Celebration

(Hopefully the drinks will tide us over the two days until summer Fridays officially begin)

Wednesday, May 24th

Bar 13
35 East 13th Street, at University Place, just south of Union Square

2 for 1 Drinks

6:00 p.m. -- 9:00 p.m.

Please RSVP to YPG_RSVP@hotmail.com

The YPG Rockin’ Chair

By Katherine Tiernan

Every year the YPG’s birthday party wine and cheese is my favorite event, and not only because wine and cheese are two of my favorite things. It’s a relaxed event in a gorgeous setting where young publishers can come together to meet colleagues and peers. Sometimes between the rush to get in and out of Brown Bag Lunches within an hour and a half, receiving free books, or trying to have a conversation in a noisy bar, it’s easy to forgot why we do this and why we attend events.

The people I was able to talk to and the excellent response to our January Roundtable lunch gave me a chance to remember why the YPG was created – to foster community and build relationships with our peers in the publishing industry. Your planning task force works hard all year long in order to give you the opportunity to connect with someone from a different house, be inspired by a speaker or a topic, or take some time to figure out what role you truly want to fill at your house. A journey no one understands better than me.

In the past 2 ½ years I have worked in managing editorial, as an editorial assistant and now as a marketing assistant at HarperMedia. Each of these positions has introduced me to intelligent, passionate people and exposed me to different facets of publishing. In preparing for each transition I have found that the friends I’ve made through the YPG and publishing have been the most amazing cheerleaders, support group, source of information, and empathetic listeners.

I encourage all of you to utilize the YPG for what it was intending…networking and community. I hope we continue to be a welcoming group where people never fear attending an event alone.

As always, please feel free to email me with questions, concerns, suggestions or any desire to become more involved. My email is Katherine.Tiernan@harpercollins.com.

I look forward to meeting more of you and continuing to build the YPG.

YPG Birthday Party

Here are some photos from the Thrid Annual Young to Publishing Group Birthday Party, held at the German Book Office on Thursday, February 2nd. Recognize anyone? If you do send an email to tkaufman@publishers.org and we'll post the name!