August 18, 2009...1:52 pm

Jane Friedman: It takes too long to make a book…

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videoLast week, we blogged about a great interview with Publishing titans Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum.  Click on the video to the right to watch it…

There were a lot of great comments and discussions about the publishing world in this interview, but we especially liked the discussion about  how long it takes to make a book.  Larry had a good line.  He said:

“Publishers have built up a system and it’s slow, it’s clunky.  You turn a manuscript in today and it might be a year before it’s published.”

Jane added that the process of making a book is “like a birthing process…but longer.

She then told a great story about publishing Lou Gerstner’s book (former CEO of IBM) and how business writers like Lou COULDN’T FATHOM how long it took to make his book.  Lou told Jane:

“I could build an atomic reactor faster than you can produce a book.  There’s something wrong with that.”

Great quote, great insight.  And we agree — there’s something wrong with that.

This was one our motivations when we set out to build Appingo.  We wanted to eliminate a lot of the administrative plaque that clogs up the book-making process.  And this is one area in which we’ve really succeed.  Books built on Appingo get built faster.

We love that…and so would Lou Gerstner!

Derek

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