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Totally Booked with Zibby

John Sargent, TURNING PAGES: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4602 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Zibby interviews forty-year publishing veteran John Sargent about his addictively entertaining and profoundly moving new memoir, TURNING PAGES: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher. John talks about the inspiration behind this memoir (it involves a great-grandfather who wrote a very similar book) and his initial hesitation to infuse personal details into the narrative. He and Zibby also discuss the unpredictability of the publishing industry, the impact of trends and publicity, and the unsolvable mystery of why some books become bestsellers while others don’t. John reflects on the current state of the industry, expressing his confidence in the resilience of books.


Purchase on Bookshop: https://bit.ly/3TBfFbl


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

0:06.7

This 30-minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days a year, for about 30 minutes.

0:14.9

I am also the publisher for Zibi Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir.

0:21.9

Our books are already out now.

0:23.5

You can check it out on ZippyBooks.com.

0:25.6

And we have a magazine called Zibby Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle

0:31.2

features.

0:31.8

That's at Zibbymag.com.

0:33.1

We have classes at Zippy Classes.com.

0:35.4

And I recently opened a bookstore in L.a called zibby's bookshop

0:40.3

at one one one three montana avenue at 11th street in san monica i hope that you are able to

0:47.0

enjoy some of our other offerings but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in

0:53.3

2018 and no matter what i do this is basically my of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically

0:56.5

my favorite thing. Enjoy. John Sargent is the author of Turning Pages, the adventures and

1:06.7

misadventures of a publisher. I loved this book, by the way. John worked at three different

1:11.8

publishers before going to Simon & Schuster to run the children's book division at the age of 29.

1:17.0

He spent six years there, followed by three years as the CEO of D.K. Publishing. In 1996,

1:22.2

he went to work as the CEO of St. Martin's Press. Three years later, he was put in charge

1:26.5

of Holt Springs U.S. publishers

1:27.9

and was responsible for forming the company that is today's McMillan. He worked there as CEO

1:32.9

until the end of 2020. His new book Turning Pages is all about his life and publishing and stretches

1:38.0

back to his upbringing on a Wyoming ranch. Welcome, John. Thank you so much for coming on

...

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