The Biggest Geoffs in Publishing: Geoff Kloske and Geoff Shandler on What It Takes to Make It Big in Books

This past Wednesday brought together the biggest Geoffs in publishing: Geoff Kloske, Vice President & Publisher of Riverhead Books, and Geoff Shandler, Editor-In-Chief, Little Brown & Company. Sponsored by the AAP and ABA Emerging Leaders, the panel, entitled “How to Get a Job Like Ours (…in 63 Easy Steps),” was moderated by Publishers Weekly Staff Writer Edward Nawotka.

What knowledge was gleamed from their meeting at the Marriott Hotel at Brooklyn Bridge (the BEA home of the “Emerging Leaders” group of young booksellers)?

Well, for one: work hard at what you do. Both Geoffs both urged young editorial assistants to take on extra projects if possible and demonstrate to their bosses that they are capable of balancing it all and handling whatever comes their way. *

A big hit doesn’t hurt, either, and they both agreed it is a crucial component to moving up. Shandler admitted his work with Robert McNamara on his now-iconic In Retrospect helped launched his career into overdrive, though a certain agent that he called after this book still refused him flat out when he asked to take her to lunch. Kloske, after much modest reluctance and encouragement by Shandler, admitted that his discovery was David Sedaris.

Yes, that David Sedaris.

After a throwaway question on the salary struggles that people in publishing face (familiar territory to the young publishing professionals and booksellers assembled in the audience), Nawotka moved on to address the state of publishing, asking the ubiquitous question on the lips of panel moderators everywhere: where are we going?

Kloske came well prepared, reading from a list of quotes from different eras, the oldest written over 100 years ago, the newest written mere months ago. They all spread messages of gloom and doom, lamenting the glory days of publishing as a thing of the past.

But what defines “glory?” Shandler recalls his days at Pantheon (then known as PublicAffairs), inhabiting a small office comprised of desks and a Nordic Track, as some of the most fun he’s had in publishing.

We are young. We love books. Some of us will undoubtedly drop out to become lawyers, to join the Peace Corps, to become writers ourselves. But Geoff and Geoff believe that all of their peers that rose through the ranks with them and made it to the upper echelons of this insular industry made it because they knew that publishing was where they needed to be to be happy.

The banks may have been bailed out, but if you really love books, there is no reason to bail just yet.

To prove that the great traditions of publishing are far from dead, the panel was followed by an open bar at Last Exit on Atlantic Avenue, where “Emerging Leaders” and “ Young to Publishing Group” members mingled in the bar’s indoor and outdoor space.

Panelists Geoff Shandler, Geoff Kloske, and Edward Nawotka joined the next generation of publishers and booksellers at the bar. Also in the mix was the ever-friendly Lance Fensterman, Vice President of Reed Exhibitions, Philip Gelatt and Rick Lacy, the author and illustrator, respectively, of the graphic novel Labor Days (I got my copy for free, but you can pick yours up here) and Peter Terzian, editor of Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on Albums that Changed Their Lives.

 *In a later conversation with Geoff Shandler, he said he wished he had also dispensed the following advice to the group: “Agree with everything your boss says for the first two years. That way, they’ll think you are really smart.” Words of wisdom.

Geoff Kloske is Vice President and Pubisher of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA. He has worked in book publishing for 18 years as editor and publisher. He has worked with a list of authors that included Khaled Hosseini, Junot Diaz, Nick Hornby, Bob Dylan, David Sedaris, Dave Eggers, Thomas Berger, James McBride, Sarah Vowell, and Mark Kurlansky.

Geoff Shandler is the Editor-in-Chief of Little, Brown and Company. He abandoned his native New Mexico for college and grad school in New Haven and Cambridge, and then “stumbled” to New York in order to work in book publishing. His first job, in 1993, was as an editorial assistant at Random House. At Little, Brown, he oversees a team of nine editors and their assistants, helping to determine which books the company will publish. Among the many distinguished Little, Brown authors he has been fortunate to personally edit are John le Carre, Malcolm Gladwell, Jonathan Safran Foer, William Least Heat-Moon, Luis Alberto Urrea, Leonard Susskind, Robert Dallek, Jake Tapper, Sir Harold Evans and Robert Wright.

Tags: BEA, Emerging Leaderes, Geoff Kloske, Geoff Shandler, Lance Fensterman, Little Brown, Riverhead, YPG

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Literary Events, State of the Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.