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THE BIBLIO FILE is a podcast about "the book," and an inquiry into the wider world of book culture. Hosted by Nigel Beale it features wide ranging, long-form conversations with best practitioners inside the book trade and out - from writer to reader. Why listen? The hope is that it will help you to read, write, publish, edit, design, and collect better, and improve how you communicate serious, big, necessary, new, good ideas and stories...

Feedback or suggestions? Please email notabenebeale@gmail.com 

Mar 4, 2022

John  Sargent is an American book publisher; until recently he was the CEO of Macmillan Publishers USA, and Executive Vice President of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group where he oversaw global trade operations; he was also responsible for Macmillan Learning, the company’s US-based higher education business.
 
We talk via Zoom about his career in publishing, not about libraries; about being sales reps, and doing cold calls; Columbia Business School, complex balance sheets and P & Ls; his grandfather Effendi (F.N. Doubleday); publishing great saleable books; supporting Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham; agents; movies selling books; advances; intuition and good taste; managing and motivating people and having fun; honesty; embracing and appreciating authors; sharing your enthusiasm for what you do; getting out of your silo; the unreplicable experience of reading, and producing movies in your own head; Frederick Forsyth; autobiography; self-publishing and gate keepers; hyperbole and blurbs, noise and signals; Bill O'Reilly, and more.