Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Stephen Riggio - CEO of Barnes & Noble | The Art of Storytelling

Transcript

Stephen Riggio - CEO of Barnes & Noble | The Art of Storytelling · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Steven Riggio spent nearly three decades shaping the success story of Barnes and Noble.
• 0:04
  He played pivotal roles in merchandising, operations, and strategy before becoming CEO in 2002.
• 0:09
  Known for his intellect and reserve leadership style, Riggio was instrumental in launching the
• 0:14
  company's digital footprint, Barnes and Noble.com, in a bid to compete with Amazon.
• 0:18
  Very early on in my life I was a reader and when I decided to make a career of it it seemed
• 0:24
  like a very natural extension. When I retired doing something audacious was kind of in the cards.
• 0:29
  Beginning of this project was born in a tragic event. 2008 we lost our daughter Melissa.
• 0:36
  After that I was searching for a way to move ahead. I came up with the idea one day of why not
• 0:42
  study tie-in language. So I declare I'm gonna do it and that was the audacious thing. It took
• 0:48
  three years and we're here now with the two volumes being published. His efforts extended beyond
• 0:53
  books with contributions to the National Book Foundation and advocacy for inclusivity through
• 0:58
  organizations like the National Down Syndrome Society. Riggio's journey is a testament to
• 1:02
  steady leadership and innovation in the face of evolving industries. Books serve an informational
• 1:07
  purpose if you want to learn something. Don't worry about regrets. Just live for the day. If you follow
• 1:13
  your moral compass you can all work out. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary.
• 1:21
  The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot not only supports the show
• 1:26
  but they support entrepreneurs. That's why it's such a huge fan of HubSpot and I'm very
• 1:29
  grateful for HubSpot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs and as a fellow entrepreneur
• 1:34
  I know it takes a lot to grow your business. A lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot
• 1:40
  of marketing, a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of
• 1:45
  long days, late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way but there is with
• 1:49
  breeze. This is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers,
• 1:54
  for entrepreneurs to attract audiences to increase leads to score customers and to close deals fast
• 2:00
  which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers
• 2:06
  to learn more.
• 2:16
  To see it, I'm excited to do this. Thank you for coming on. This is going to be a lot of fun.
• 2:20
  I wanted to start here. So Barnes & Noble's mission was to make bookstores less intimidating
• 2:28
  for working class New Yorkers. But what you're doing right now is you're taking historical
• 2:34
  Italian literature and you're making it accessible to English readers. So I see a little bit
• 2:40
  of a through line but do you see a common thread in your work now compared to what you used to do?
• 2:46
  Well it's interesting because after close to 40 years of selling other people's books,
• 2:53
  I'm finally selling one of my own and I'm looking at a different side of the coin so to speak.
• 3:00
  It's been very gratifying to do it. I felt that my career as a bookseller was one of tremendous
• 3:13
  accomplishment. We always considered Barnes & Noble to be a purpose-driven company
• 3:20
  and bringing books to places that had previously been, let's call them, books for deserts
• 3:28
  in some way, was a very, very important thing for us. We used to say,
• 3:37
  we do important work as booksellers and when I would interview people that would come to work
• 3:43
  for the company, they would say, well, you know, I'm thinking of this company or another company
• 3:51
  and I would say, well, would you rather sell books or office supplies? And that usually got them.
• 3:58
  Because it's attractive, it's a great place to work, being surrounded by books,
• 4:05
  it's dealing with writers and authors and working in a bookstore is an education in itself.
• 4:15
  And we love the idea of hiring people that would learn on the job. You know, just the practice
• 4:24
  of touching a book and putting it on the shelf and looking at the other books that are on the shelf
• 4:32
  introduces you to a world that you may have not known before.
• 4:38
  Because booksellers carry so many different topics. You know, you may be given the task of
• 4:47
  putting some books away in a section. You never thought of reading about Italian history
• 4:56
  or about the Civil War or reading Virginia Woolf or something and you touch the book and you say,
• 5:03
  wow, you know, it's in your hand, it becomes real. And that's what's great about working in a bookstore.
• 5:11
  And of course, you talk to the customers and the employees and writers who come into visit.
• 5:17
  Yeah, I think that it's all about like I look at what the work that you've done in your life
• 5:23
  and it's all about making things accessible. That's really what it's all been about. And even the
• 5:29
  way that you my goodness, like even the way that you just framed the feeling of being in a bookstore,
• 5:35
  like it actually like it makes me want to go to like a bookstore right now. Like it's it's it's
• 5:42
  it is a different experience and it's a different it's a different way of consuming knowledge.
• 5:48
  I mean, talk to me about let's talk about even your life and your journey. Because I think that's
• 5:53
  very important. Obviously, people know the brand Barnes and Noble and we don't have to do like a
• 6:00
  full history on on everything. We can go into it as much or as little as you'd like, but maybe tee up
• 6:07
  even some inflection point in your life that pushed you down the path that brought you into the
• 6:15
  book world. Because what brought you into the book world, I'm assuming was what led you to
• 6:20
  eventually come to this portion of your life or this season of your life or you're translating
• 6:25
  putting your own book out into the world. So there's there's a there's a path between all of it.
• 6:29
  So what was that inflection point that brought you into the book world in your life outside of
• 6:33
  we know your brother and purchased Barnes and Noble, but there was other things that put you
• 6:37
  down this path. Well, let's start with the fact that my brother when did found the company and
• 6:45
  he was in the business for the late 60s and he bought Barnes and Noble, which at that time was
• 6:51
  a bankrupt company in 1971. But when he entered the book business, he was the first person to
• 6:59
  actually put books in my hand. And I remember one of the first books he gave me. I think I was 10
• 7:08
  years old at the time. It was a brave new world by Alda Suxley. Now talk about
• 7:14
  expanding the mind of a 10-year-old, you know, having a book like that. And then he gave me a
• 7:22
  Kurt Vonnegut to read and Franz Kafka. So very early on in my life, I was a reader and a heavy reader.
• 7:32
  And when I decided to make a career of it, it seemed like a very natural extension.
• 7:38
  And it was a business about serving people. You know, retail is about service.
• 7:44
  And I was very attracted to that idea. Now the bookstores that you know that exist today,
• 7:50
  the Barnes and Noble stores, didn't come out of thin air. We spent the better part of the 70s and 80s
• 7:59
  testing different type of format stores in different locations. And it wasn't until the early
• 8:06
  to mid 90s where we came up with this idea, and they called them book superstores,
• 8:12
  of a large store, with a lot of comfortable space, with a cafe, a way to be the third place,
• 8:24
  if you will, homework, the bookstore, where you would spend leisure time. The idea of bookstore is
• 8:32
  being quite resilient in the face of so many other forms of media being available for people.
• 8:40
  And although I retired 10 years ago, Barnes and Noble has almost as many stores now as it did then,
• 8:51
  and the company is doing quite well. So that's good news for readers and writers
• 9:02
  to know that bookstories have such widely available. And you have other formats now.
• 9:09
  Now, my book is available in paperback, in digital ebook, and in audio book. So it's great to see
• 9:20
  the book business thriving. When you look at all these technological
• 9:26
  evolutions of media, so now we have podcasts, and we have YouTube, and we have just as many
• 9:33
  video games and TV stations as we had, 10X or 100X more. Why do you think reading and books
• 9:44
  have such staying power, especially in the era of new media when people can listen to a podcast,
• 9:51
  even from the author? I guess I'm biased, because for me, there's nothing like getting lost in
• 9:57
  a good book. And of course, books serve an informational purpose if you want to learn something.
• 10:05
  We always considered bookstores to be places of aspiration for learning, for people to come and
• 10:15
  explore things that they want to get interested in. I'll never forget one of the first large stores
• 10:25
  we opened up outside of New York City. It was in Minnesota, a suburb of Minnesota.
• 10:33
  It was one of the first large format stores that we had opened. We weren't sure if it was going to be
• 10:40
  successful. And I remember vividly the opening night. The doors opened, the places packed,
• 10:49
  and I see a guy who, okay, you might look at him and say, well, he's not a reader,
• 10:58
  but he had an awful of books. One was on the Civil War, one was on Buddhism, he had a cookbook,
• 11:07
  and I think he had a novel by Faulkner. And I looked at him and I say, this is why books
• 11:16
  stores are important. We do important work. This is going to work because I saw the acceptance of it.
• 11:26
  So bookstores serve a need, of course, for information, for people to learn. They also serve
• 11:34
  books as entertainment, you know, getting lost in a big novel like Sicilian Avengers.
• 11:44
  There's nothing like it. You know, there's nothing like it. You could watch a movie,
• 11:50
  they come and go. I'm a big fan of movies, but there's nothing that could replace the experience
• 11:58
  of getting lost in a book. And I think that's why the business has been so resilient.
• 12:06
  And you have thousands of years of books to go to, right? I mean, you could read Greek and Roman
• 12:12
  classics, which you're still as captivating as they ever were. And you could read contemporary novels.
• 12:24
  I try to be as up to date on reading as I can, but there are more books that I would like to read
• 12:35
  than I have time left. You know, it's everyone has their own, say, bucket list. And I often just pick
• 12:44
  up a classic and say, I've never read this before. Gosh, why haven't I read, you know,
• 12:54
  Tolstoy is more in peace and it's right there for you.
• 12:57
  You know, I like about books stores and physical books is in the age of social media and call it
• 13:04
  new media for lack of a better term. Algorithms always have agendas and algorithms feed you content
• 13:10
  that it thinks you like. But when you walk into a bookstore, there is no agenda. You just let your
• 13:15
  curiosity guide you. And I think that it opens up your mind a lot more because you like kind of
• 13:21
  that gentleman you're talking about on that opening night. He's picking up books that if you
• 13:26
  was sitting in front of a computer, he would never go into those subjects and care about those
• 13:31
  topics more more likely than not, right? And I think that's a beautiful thing. Like if you even look
• 13:36
  at the type of work that you put out. So the the work that you actually put out after years of
• 13:41
  selling books is you translated Sicilian Avengers from Italian to English. This is the work that you've
• 13:48
  put out into the world. I mean, there's there's there's so much nuance to you bringing out a piece of
• 13:57
  work and putting it on a shelf and somebody going exploring and finding it. Like Candle, if you
• 14:02
  didn't do this, nobody would ever know this story. A very few people in the US would ever know this
• 14:07
  story, ever, right? They're not going to find this on YouTube is not going to serve Sicilian
• 14:12
  Avengers, which is a beautiful story in a in a in a in the algorithm on your feed. It'll never
• 14:19
  happen. So you miss out on all of these works. And of course, there's fiction. There's nonfiction.
• 14:25
  But the thing is I I'm a big fan. Whether or not it's fiction or nonfiction, if you just open
• 14:31
  up your mind and expand it and read, I find that it feeds your creativity. I find that it feeds your
• 14:36
  worldview so that it's more holistic and not as myopic. I think there's just a net positive to
• 14:42
  expanding yourself to different types of information and formats that are not the YouTube video
• 14:49
  talking about solving the exact problem that you're dealing with right now in your life. Yes,
• 14:53
  you have to go watch that too. But I think that there's a lot more that can make up a person.
• 14:58
  I think that because we don't read as much and we don't open ourselves up to as many new ideas
• 15:03
  and concepts, whether or not it's just like leisure or it's more serious, I think that we have this
• 15:11
  tunnel vision when it comes to information. And I think it actually creates a lot of anxiety
• 15:14
  and stress in our lives. And I think that this is where books leisure, expanding your thought is a
• 15:19
  beautiful thing and people should do more of it. But I mean, you saw this firsthand. You probably
• 15:23
  have opinions about how people consume content now versus how they did 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
• 15:31
  Well, you used the word serendipity before and I remember writing the brief
• 15:36
  for our new concept book superstar, if you will. And I used the word serendipity. I wanted the
• 15:44
  store design to be almost organized in a way, but also a type of environment where you could get lost.
• 15:55
  And you might bump into something that you had no plan to when you walked into the store. So
• 16:01
  serendipity is really at the heart of a good book store. And of course, the great thing about
• 16:10
  America and about the stores that we opened is the Barnes and Noble stores
• 16:20
  do look alike and they share certain design characteristics, but they're all different.
• 16:27
  And a successful bookstore is the one that is very, very tailored to the community it serves. So
• 16:33
  our managers had tremendous discretion in terms of what books were on the shelf, you know,
• 16:41
  what books were displayed. You know, when they would order the books that they thought their
• 16:47
  customers were interested in. And that's what made the difference. You know, you can go to a bookstore,
• 16:53
  two Barnes and Noble's just a few miles apart. And they would have different selections.
• 16:59
  Of course, that the core of someone comes in and wants to buy a classic or something.
• 17:06
  Of course, all those books are there, but it's a very local business. Talk to me about,
• 17:12
  you know, your journey as a CEO and then as you as you exited sort of figuring out like the next
• 17:18
  chapter of your life because you mentioned that this work and what you're working on now with
• 17:22
  Celine Avengers Avengers, excuse me, it all ties into it all ties into you your family sort of
• 17:28
  your career journey. I looked at much of what we did in growing Barnes and Noble to be audacious,
• 17:38
  to do things that people doubted that wouldn't work, especially the idea of not just large format
• 17:48
  stores, but large format stores in mid-sized communities, mid-sized towns.
• 17:56
  Our most successful stores were often in places that had never had a bookstore before,
• 18:05
  because people came to it. It was a book selling desert. So when I retired,
• 18:13
  doing something audacious was kind of in the cards. Now, the beginning of this project
• 18:24
  was born in a tragic event. In 2008, we lost our daughter Melissa, who was 20 years old at the time,
• 18:32
  to leukemia. She had a brave year-long struggle and unfortunately it took her life.
• 18:43
  After that, I was searching for a way, my wife Laura and I, to move ahead with our lives,
• 18:53
  to chart a new path, if you will, too. I came up with the idea one day of
• 19:05
  why not study something together and how about the Italian language.
• 19:12
  I had studied her earlier in life, but never kept pace with it. My grandparents were
• 19:19
  Sicilian, which I can get to. So we began taking lessons together. It was fantastic. It was
• 19:28
  wonderful thing to do something like that with your wife. A few years into the lessons
• 19:36
  our teacher gave us this Italian novel, which was a thousand pages. It was kind of strange looking.
• 19:45
  It was really thick, two thick volumes. We started reading it and fell in love with the story.
• 19:58
  It's a great historical novel. It's full of adventure, swashbuckling scenes. It immediately
• 20:06
  captivated me because when I was a kid, I used to read Alexander Dumas, the three musketeers,
• 20:13
  the Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books. So it really grabbed us
• 20:21
  and midway through. I decided, well, let me get an English copy of this. I wanted to see if our
• 20:28
  translating was good. I wanted to compare it and I discovered the book had never been translated
• 20:36
  before into English. So I declare I'm going to do it. And that was the audacious thing.
• 20:47
  It took three years. It's a thousand pages, so that's in itself was one of the primary challenges.
• 20:56
  But it was gratifying. It was a learning experience. It was full of new twists and turns in the language.
• 21:05
  Learning how to translate it, not word for word, which it translated does not do,
• 21:14
  but to get to the meaning of the words and the phrases and the sentences and to ultimately make it
• 21:21
  enjoyable for the English reader. It took three years and we're here now with the two volumes
• 21:30
  being published. What makes it's fascinating when you even even the project that you took on,
• 21:38
  it's fascinating, but it's also, I don't know if depressing is the right word. What I mean is
• 21:44
  it's sad to think how much wisdom and knowledge is just not available just because
• 21:51
  whether we don't know it exists, it's been written in a different language, we don't research it,
• 21:55
  we don't like there's like the beautiful story that you sort of stumbled upon.
• 22:02
  Nobody would have ever known that exists. And I'm so curious how much wisdom out there is lost
• 22:10
  because we don't have people like you that are finding all these works all over the world and
• 22:15
  translate it because I'm a firm believer that I'm a firm believer that most wisdom is not new,
• 22:22
  nothing's that new. Everything's been discovered and figured out in some way or another.
• 22:26
  It's just a matter of tapping into those resources and you did that to a degree.
• 22:32
  You know, when you think about taking on this project,
• 22:37
  you've seen so many books over here. You're probably more than many, many people who have
• 22:44
  ever been alive have seen just because of the work that you've done. What makes an incredible book
• 22:49
  or an incredible story? Like what made this one stand out to you in particular?
• 22:54
  I've always been attracted to big books, big novels, 500 pages, 600 pages, 700 pages,
• 23:06
  something that you could get lost in. And as my wife, Laura, says, this book has something for
• 23:15
  everyone. It's a historical novel. It's an adventure novel. There's scenes of swash buckling
• 23:23
  sword fights in the book. There's a love story. And at the heart of it, there's a story of justice.
• 23:35
  The book is about a secret sect called the Beatty Powell, which was the name of the Italian novel.
• 23:47
  I don't think that could work in English. That comes to the defense of the commoners who are
• 23:58
  preyed upon by the aristocracy, by the landowners, by the barons, and often by the church.
• 24:09
  Because at that time, Sicily was still a feudal society. And the inquisition
• 24:17
  was in full force. And people were accused of heresy. They were jailed and tortured and executed.
• 24:24
  So, it's about justice in the sense of, you know, where do people turn to
• 24:36
  when they've been unjustly accused of something, when they've been persecuted,
• 24:42
  when they have nowhere to go? And this secret sect, which is somewhat based in history and
• 24:49
  somewhat based in myth, steps in. And that's the main plot of the book. And they come to the
• 25:00
  defense of one of the main characters. And if you think about, if you think about like that,
• 25:09
  that sort of scene you just described, is that, because I've heard terms of like heroes journey
• 25:17
  and all these other like story arcs, is this something that is almost like what's the literary
• 25:27
  mechanism that makes this compelling? Because I think this is like a theme that you see in a lot
• 25:32
  of very popular books. Well, it's a story of Revenge in Betrayal. Underneath all of this,
• 25:40
  there are friendships and rivalries. It's a multi-layered story. Why I think it's attractive,
• 25:47
  because the characters are in the book, most of them affectionate, but some are not.
• 25:54
  So it's rooted in real history. Oh, you can pull pieces from, from my history.
• 26:00
  There's a succession plot at the heart of the story, which for people who have seen HBO's
• 26:07
  succession, maybe that may grab them. And there's a love story. There's a love story.
• 26:14
  But there's all these, yeah, the laws are going to say there's all these elements. Yeah, there's
• 26:17
  a love story because there's, I don't want to reveal too much, but there's two women in the book
• 26:23
  that are competing for the love of the same man. And there's another rival in there. So that's
• 26:30
  that's why I think it's appeal. Now, the sect that's at the heart of the book
• 26:36
  have been considered to be four runners of the Sicilian mafia. Now, American readers and Americans
• 26:45
  have been fascinated with the mafia for so long, and not just because of the Godfather movies and
• 26:53
  book, but there's some element of that. It is a fact that some 20th century Mafiosi people that
• 27:08
  were in the Sicilian mafia claim that they are descendants from this secret society. I think
• 27:15
  there's more myth to that than truth. In reality, I would look at this secret sect and was book
• 27:24
  as more of a Robin Hood type game than as Malm. And whether you root for them or not,
• 27:35
  I can't weigh in on that. They certainly come across and you know, this book in Sicily is very,
• 27:45
  very well known. Even though it's a hundred years old, never before been published in America and
• 27:51
  English is very, very well known in Sicily. I just returned there in fact from there. And
• 28:00
  this sect, they were considered as heroes because they came to the defense of the week.
• 28:10
  You know, you look today in people's mistrust of institutions, whether it be the courts,
• 28:17
  the media, or the government, you know, has never been at a low all time. It's been at an
• 28:23
  old time low. And you know, here you have the appeal, the appeal of the outlaw, who's going to come
• 28:33
  and rescue you from being unjustly persecuted. And that's where the attraction,
• 28:44
  that's the heartbeat of the story will justice be done here. And you have to read the book to find
• 28:52
  out. When you think about, I mean, you've gone on this journey now, obviously three years
• 29:00
  is a significant amount of time. Behind sites 2020, when you think about the options of
• 29:08
  creating a book, whether or not it was translating or writing from scratch, can you just give
• 29:15
  some advice for even authors in the audience? The benefits and the negatives to one or the other,
• 29:21
  because you've gone on this journey now, but you've also been exposed to so many writers. I mean,
• 29:24
  you have insights on writing something that has never been done before as well. So talk to me about
• 29:32
  both ways to take a book to market, the best way to put it. Well, my wife and my daughters
• 29:37
  always encourage me to encouraging me to write a book. Translating a book is quite different.
• 29:45
  You're not working with a blank page. I think I have, even though I've
• 29:54
  did in the book selling business so long, doing this has given me such appreciation
• 30:02
  for what a writer does with a blank page, with a blank page.
• 30:08
  I was working from something that was already written and make no doubt these are my words,
• 30:20
  but I did have to work from, let's call it a brief, and I had to take each word, each sentence,
• 30:28
  each paragraph and shape them into something that I thought would be appealing and enjoyable
• 30:36
  for the English reader. But I do have a newfound, let's say, appreciation for the work that writers do.
• 30:45
  I have lots of friends that are writers, and just think about some writers, many writers that are
• 30:51
  publishing books every year. They come out with one a year. James Patterson comes out with more
• 31:00
  than one a year. So I have tremendous admiration and respect for that kind of
• 31:08
  its creativity and its discipline. You have to think about the discipline that it comes
• 31:16
  sitting down with a blank page and creating something that other people would be fascinated by,
• 31:23
  and that will become fans of yours year after year after year, read every book that you publish.
• 31:29
  I think John Grisham, who I'm a very big fan of, he just came out with actually a nonfiction book,
• 31:36
  but he tends to weave stories anew every time he comes out with a new book, and their each has
• 31:47
  similar to but very different from each other, because he's kind of perfected his approach to that
• 31:54
  kind of novel. And he's a great writer, he's a fabulous writer, yeah. I just want to take a quick break
• 32:01
  and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years. Now,
• 32:05
  the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now. If you
• 32:10
  aren't entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions,
• 32:14
  you have to listen to my first million. It's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting.
• 32:18
  It's hosted by Sam Parr, Sean Perry. This is a HubSpot podcast network original. It brings you
• 32:24
  unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it. If you
• 32:29
  want to learn how Alex from Mozi built his fitness empire or how Sophia Amaruso turned nasty
• 32:34
  girl into a fashion phenomenon, these aren't just success stories. They're the blueprints for your
• 32:38
  own journey to the top. Each episode breaks down the exact strategies and hidden opportunities
• 32:43
  that you can use right now. Don't just dream about your first million. Learn how to make it.
• 32:47
  Listen to my first million wherever you get your podcasts when you look at a project like this.
• 32:55
  So it's very different from starting from a blank page. So you do have this brief to work with,
• 33:01
  but still you have to understand how to take that. I'm also curious about even like the business or
• 33:07
  the mechanics behind taking something that's written in a language and then translating it into
• 33:13
  English and then actually selling it and marketing it and because there's a whole thing there.
• 33:19
  So maybe speak about that for a second, but then I'm also curious about
• 33:24
  not only the business behind it and all the things you probably had to figure out and discover how
• 33:28
  to do this properly and successfully, but also then how do you tailor that brief
• 33:36
  to make sure that it will be received well in the US. Because like you said, you can't just
• 33:42
  translate a word for word. So yeah, let's talk about the business of how to do this.
• 33:49
  Because I have no idea how to even start. If I was going to look at a book in another language,
• 33:53
  do you need to get rights for it? Do you have to pay royalties to somebody? Like what's the
• 33:59
  business of translating a book and selling it? Well, this particular book is in the public domain.
• 34:06
  It was published in installments. They call them serial novels,
• 34:13
  kind of like what Charles Dickens did in the 19th century. And it was published in installments
• 34:20
  over 239 episodes over a couple of years, a two year period. So it's in the public domain.
• 34:30
  So I didn't have to acquire the rights, you know, to the book. When I thought about translating it,
• 34:39
  I said, okay, what is this going to take? I said to myself, so I said, let me try this.
• 34:48
  Let me do the first page. Let me translate the first page.
• 34:54
  Look at it. I gave it to my Italian teacher. And I asked how does this look?
• 35:07
  And she immediately made a lot of corrections to it. But encouraged me to keep on.
• 35:14
  So I proceeded to do that. I wrote it out longhand. I have a wall of dictionaries behind me.
• 35:24
  And I had some assistance, quite a lot of assistance with one of the teachers at the school
• 35:34
  that we attend. We take lessons. So you start out with
• 35:44
  quickly realizing that any word for word translation is not going to work because the language is
• 35:50
  so different. The syntax is different. The pronouns are different. So I very quickly
• 35:57
  had to get used to making it readable for the English reader. And I would say the book went through
• 36:07
  two or three substantial first drafts in a drafts. Then when I had found our publisher, my publisher,
• 36:17
  we had an editor look at the English translation from an English point of view. And that helped
• 36:26
  the great deal. She did a great job because I think most writers will tell you
• 36:34
  good editors can really help you because it's another voice looking at it with fresh eyes.
• 36:43
  So I'd say anybody looking to publish their own book or who's working with a publisher,
• 36:49
  you have to embrace the idea of criticism and getting help. Not just for grammatical reasons,
• 36:58
  but for clarity reasons, alternative ways of saying things. And so that itself was a learning
• 37:06
  experience. How do you get a publisher to believe in the concept when
• 37:14
  I mean, so the concept I guess is already proven to a degree because it's a very successful book
• 37:19
  just in another language, another part of the world. But I would assume that the publisher would
• 37:24
  still wonder, okay, this is going to be technically your first time author. So how do we know this
• 37:31
  is going to be successful? How do we know if we put some time and energy and even money into it
• 37:35
  that it's going to be well received by the US in 2024? Well, I was very fortunate to find someone
• 37:42
  at the publisher that was a champion for the book. So they believed in it. You never know what's
• 37:49
  going to happen. I don't any creative pursuit, whether you're writing a book, you're putting out
• 37:57
  music or film, you never know until it's in the hands of the audience. In this case, the readers.
• 38:04
  So my publisher was totally supportive of this. And they asked me at the beginning,
• 38:12
  what are you looking for here? What are your expectations? And I said, look, I've worked on this
• 38:20
  for three years. I just want to get it out there. I want to see it in the hands of people. And
• 38:30
  if it succeeds and if it develops an audience, whatever size that may be, I'll be happy. Of course,
• 38:38
  I want to sell as many copies as I can, but I'm very happy to be here and having done it. And we'll
• 38:48
  let the readers decide, you know, people would often ask me over the years, what makes a book sell,
• 38:56
  Mr. Grigio? Could you tell me what makes a book sell? My answer would always be, well, if I knew that,
• 39:06
  I would be like one of the most powerful people in the world to give you a recipe for that.
• 39:13
  The truth is is that you don't know. So many factors come into play. I think the principal one,
• 39:22
  and this is true, especially for fiction, would be word of mouth. People telling each other,
• 39:30
  recommending the book to each other. And these days, social media has played,
• 39:38
  is playing a big part in that. People have online book clubs, book videos, there's book talk,
• 39:49
  on TikTok. So it's a new world in that sense. And I think that's only good for writers and readers,
• 39:56
  because before all you would be able to do is put an advertising, put an ad in a newspaper.
• 40:04
  And, you know, that wasn't often, that wasn't anything you could measure. So word of mouth is
• 40:16
  really what it's about, I think. And book reviews, you know, those type of things. Book reviews,
• 40:23
  if you have a good book, you're going to get book reviews. I think that you have to have the
• 40:27
  good product. That's the goal, right? If you have a good product, then a lot of the marketing does
• 40:32
  take care of itself. But if you think about all the other things that go into the book. So to
• 40:37
  assume that the book is incredible, the authors put out this incredible piece of work,
• 40:45
  how even, even getting it into a Barnes and Noble, for example, is there a strategy to do that?
• 40:55
  I mean, I think you probably have like a, like a fast pass end, because you kind of
• 41:01
  run it at some point. But for the average author, even getting it into a Barnes and Noble is
• 41:05
  a huge accomplishment. So what would be a, a bit of advice or recommendation for somebody that
• 41:10
  wants to get their book into Barnes and Noble? You know, I wish I could, I could give you the answer
• 41:15
  to that. Today, as you know, self-publishing is, is has exploded. Now, most bookstores in America,
• 41:27
  or maybe two or three thousand square feet in size, they can only hold so many books. There are
• 41:41
  probably a million books in print. So in order for you to get your book into a store,
• 41:51
  means that store has to take something off the shelf in order to make room for yours. So it's,
• 41:59
  it's not as easy as it sounds. Well, I wrote this book. It should be in the front of every Barnes
• 42:04
  and Noble nationwide. It doesn't work like that. You know, bookstores, the good bookstores
• 42:12
  respond to their customers. So if I do a good job promoting this book, going out there talking
• 42:23
  about it, people hear about it, they will go into the bookstores and ask for the book. And that
• 42:31
  will put the book there. So I would say in today's marketplace, the author has to rely on their
• 42:39
  own initiative to get the word out about books. Some people have more talent at that than others.
• 42:53
  They have more followers, they have more social media presence, they have more media savvy.
• 42:59
  In my case, I hired my own publicist because of my years of experience in the book business.
• 43:06
  You know, I saw how effective that could or could not be depending on how it was executed.
• 43:14
  Even years ago, before social media, when writers would ask me, give me one piece of advice,
• 43:21
  I would say hire your own publicist, independent of the publisher as an adjunct to write on the
• 43:29
  co-tails of whatever the publisher would do. And I think that holds true today. And if you look at
• 43:36
  even like what your publisher publicist is focusing on right now for the author who's up
• 43:43
  incoming, they don't have a track record. Kind of like yourself, you are a new author. I mean,
• 43:50
  he's saying, I keep saying like the up incoming author, but this is your sort of first foray into writing.
• 43:55
  Is the strategy outside of just having a great product getting word of mouth? I see a lot of people
• 44:02
  come on podcasts. Is that kind of the strategy right now? Is that the medium that people respond
• 44:08
  to the best for new authors for new ideas? I think so. I'm hearing that podcasts are being
• 44:14
  becoming very important to a book promotion. Instagram podcasts, YouTube, these are probably more
• 44:22
  important and more effective in promoting books than anything that I remember from my prior life,
• 44:31
  you know, no doubt, no doubt. When you look back at sort of your life and your career and,
• 44:38
  you know, your season as CEO and then your season as a writer, how important was this project
• 44:48
  to your development post CEO? Well, translating the book, we began visiting Sicily and it was the
• 45:01
  first time, even though my paternal grandparents were born in Sicily, they never much talked about
• 45:10
  my grandfather died before it was born, but we didn't have much in the way of family archives or
• 45:22
  even oral history. So I was the first family member, believe it or not, to go back there. My grandparents
• 45:32
  had seven children, none of them ever went back. So going to Sicily while translating this book,
• 45:41
  reading the book and translating it was a kind of watershed moment for me in
• 45:49
  becoming aware of my past and my ancestry. I discovered that my grandfather, which I had never
• 46:02
  known was an orphan. The main character in Sicilian Avengers is an orphan. So there was some
• 46:11
  destiny there for me to connect to and I traced my family back ultimately over 400 years. So it was a
• 46:22
  rewarding thing to get connected to my Sicilian roots. And in the course of all this, we discovered
• 46:33
  distant relatives in Sicily, who we have become close to. They don't speak a word of English, which
• 46:42
  is good for my Italian. I have to go there and be on all the time. And my wife speaks Italian as well.
• 46:55
  So we enjoy our visits there. And we love Sicily now. What I hope, I don't know if we mentioned this
• 47:05
  before, but Italian Americans, the Italian American community, the Sicilian American community,
• 47:16
  has often been the victim of such stereotypical portrayals in the media, in books, in films,
• 47:26
  in TV series, you know, often tied to connections to criminals in mafia. And I think that's a tragedy.
• 47:36
  People talk about America as a nation of immigrants of New York City as a melting pot.
• 47:45
  Sicily is that amplified. For 2000 years, Sicily was invaded, conquered, settled by Greeks,
• 47:57
  Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Normans, Byzantines, and the Spanish. Interestingly,
• 48:09
  in each case, the Sicilian people seem to have absorbed those cultures rather than, of course,
• 48:19
  they were dominated by them. There's no question about that. And if you read the book, you can see
• 48:27
  the extent to which Sicily has been dominated by other cultures. And if you go forward in Sicilian
• 48:37
  history to the Spanish bourbons who were detested for their brutal repression of the Sicilian people,
• 48:47
  but when you walk the streets of Palermo, you could look at the result of civilizations
• 49:00
  in the monuments and the churches and the buildings. A Greek temple
• 49:12
  superseded by a Roman temple, by a Christian church, by an Arab mosque, by a Norman church,
• 49:20
  in the same building. There were periods of Sicilian history that were
• 49:30
  now looking at it with a distant lens, the most tolerant places on earth.
• 49:37
  You know, when the Normans conquered Sicily, they kept the Arabs who they conquered
• 49:44
  in their own administration. The king of Sicily spoke fluent Arabic.
• 49:50
  So, I view Sicily as such a warm, welcoming place, and I hope that people that read the book
• 50:02
  will close the last page and buy a plane ticket to Sicily, to explore it because, you know,
• 50:10
  you read the book, the streets, the churches, the monuments, the buildings, so many of them exist.
• 50:17
  You could visit them. In fact, the name of the secret sect in the book is called the Biyati Pauly,
• 50:26
  and you can go on Biyati Pauly walking tours in Sicily, in Palermo. So, it's almost like a guide
• 50:38
  to Sicily, to end to Palermo especially. I think that it's actually very unfortunate that
• 50:46
  Sicilians have been sort of portrayed a certain way in US media. So, this is nice. So, this is
• 50:54
  actually, you know, it's an unintended positive side effect of your journey. You know, it's interesting
• 51:02
  because this whole journey you went on came from a very dark time in your life, but
• 51:11
  not to diminish that, but the outcome of that is a very beautiful thing. So, I think that that's,
• 51:17
  I think that if any positive could come of that situation, that's very, very, very dark. I
• 51:22
  think this is probably the best outcome for you, for your family, for even like the culture that
• 51:27
  you're sort of bringing into the spotlight. I say in the back of the book and the acknowledgement
• 51:32
  section, my deepest wish is that this book never came to be, but that our daughter's presence in it
• 51:43
  is undeniable. So, it's something that was born out of a tragedy, but that yielded something
• 51:53
  that my wife and I hold very dear, and she was with me the whole way. It wasn't an easy thing to do.
• 52:02
  I think you can imagine that, it's a thousand pages, and I struggled with it mightily in many cases,
• 52:08
  but it's something that is part of us now, and it's part of my family in a way because
• 52:21
  I have lots of cousins, I sent them all copies, they all have a copy now, and some of them didn't
• 52:29
  know that I was up to this little mischief, and they're very happy and proud of it.
• 52:38
  I want you to give one piece of, actually, I have a question for you first, because,
• 52:45
  because tragedies like what happened to your daughter is sometimes I see them break up marriages
• 52:52
  and break up families. There's all these residual effects. So, you went on this journey together,
• 52:58
  you learned the language together, your wife was supporting you. Out of the very rocky years that
• 53:07
  you've gone through with your daughter and then dealing with that tragedy, what are some words
• 53:12
  of wisdom on maintaining strong relationships, maintaining a good marriage when
• 53:21
  in the best of times, but also in the worst of times, because I know that she had a major impact,
• 53:26
  your daughter and your wife, I know both of them had a major impact on your life. So,
• 53:29
  what are some words of wisdom for people listening that sort of you've realized?
• 53:34
  I was fortunate enough to be able to retire. So, my wife, Lauren, I had the time
• 53:43
  to, let me put it another way, I would say that to paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy families
• 53:52
  or alike, and all grieving families, grieving their own wet, we found a way forward by doing this
• 54:01
  together and translating the book, or reading the book together, taking lessons together,
• 54:11
  was a way for us to open a new door. I think that would be some piece of advice. You know, you spend,
• 54:23
  no, in the matter of how many years you spend married, you know, I had a career, my wife,
• 54:32
  Laura was a teacher, she taught three year olds, which I maintain is the most important job in the
• 54:40
  world. And we were fortunate enough to be able to open a new door that both of us could go through.
• 54:54
  A writer friend of mine wrote me a note saying, Steve, my gosh, she said, when men retire,
• 55:03
  they take up golf. You know, what did you do? This is next level. So, I guess my answer is,
• 55:14
  find a new door. Do something that both of you had never done before and do it together.
• 55:29
  And that worked for us. That did work for us. And we still studied language together.
• 55:36
  And the good news, or maybe the bad news for me is that this book was a thousand pages,
• 55:44
  the sequel is 1700 pages. And we're now reading that. And Laura says to me, well,
• 55:52
  you're going to translate it because you have to read the whole thing and finish it before you
• 55:58
  start because you know, you have to know where the story goes. So I'll be busy for a few years.
• 56:06
  Maybe the answer to this question is going to be the same or similar, but the follow-up was not
• 56:12
  just how you build a great marriage. It sort of lasts a test of time, which I love this.
• 56:19
  It was how to find purpose after you retire. Would it be a similar answer or would you say
• 56:25
  something different? How to find purpose after you retire? It's interesting you use that word because
• 56:32
  when I used to, you know, high interview people for positions at Barnes & Noble,
• 56:37
  they would ask me to describe the company. And I would say, always, that we were a purpose-driven
• 56:46
  company. You know, our mission was very, very clear. And in my retirement, I think it was important
• 56:56
  for me to have purpose. Now we have two grandchildren. So that's another purpose to be a good
• 57:08
  good grandparents, but I think it was very important to find something that you were passionate
• 57:20
  about. Not everybody is fortunate enough in their career to do something that they're passionate
• 57:25
  about. And sometimes I think the best advice or the worst advice, career advice you can give
• 57:33
  someone is do something you're passionate about because if you're passionate about something
• 57:40
  but not good at it, you know, that you're not going to be able to make a living. But if you're
• 57:49
  fortunate enough to retire at any age, then I would say follow your passion. And I think that's
• 57:59
  what I'm doing. The Italian language is, like I said before, it's opened the door to me, not just
• 58:08
  to the language and not just to this book, but to other books written by Italians, both in English
• 58:18
  and in Italian. The great Italian novels, there are many and I would encourage people to
• 58:32
  seek those out. The two great ones that I know are the leopard by a lampadoosa and the betrothed
• 58:44
  by Manzone. These are works of epic, epic stories that stand up there with anything out of Dickens
• 58:56
  or Tolstoy, the great writers of the 19th or the 20th century. Well, my hope would be, my hope
• 59:04
  would be is that I want people to pick up your book and we're going to link it in the show notes
• 59:12
  so that people know where to get it. I'm sure Manzone and everywhere else you get books, but
• 59:16
  we'll link it in the show notes and somebody picks up the book and reads it and exposes themselves
• 59:22
  to, first of all, if you are not, if you are not somebody who reads books regularly, hopefully this
• 59:29
  will encourage you to go do that because I think that of course we can get lost in new media and
• 59:35
  YouTube and podcasts and I think that if you are not an avid reader and again, it can be an audio
• 59:42
  book, it can be a digital ebook, Kindle, whatever, it could be a physical hard copy. I mean, I love
• 59:47
  I love hard copies too, but I think the goal is especially with Sicilian Avengers as you go, you
• 59:54
  expose yourself to the story that has been around for a hundred years and you've never been
• 1:00:01
  exposed to before, but then use this as as the gateway to exploring other pieces of work and
• 1:00:09
  literature from outside the US and globally. And I think that's a beautiful thing about it.
• 1:00:14
  I think works in translation of becoming increasingly popular. I think American publishers
• 1:00:19
  are finding that there's a market for works in translation and I hope my book, my translation
• 1:00:28
  opens that door even more and instills in publishers a little impetus to seek out similar works.
• 1:00:40
  Because there's so much there's so much beautiful wisdom and thought and story that's already out
• 1:00:44
  there and I think that I wish more people would go discover it. If people want to connect with you
• 1:00:53
  or I know I'll put links in the show notes for the actual book, but if people want to connect with
• 1:00:58
  you, is there a website or social? I know you're not as active on social as some authors, so I'm
• 1:01:04
  sure that's going to be a I'm sure you're going to go down that rabbit hole too with your public
• 1:01:08
  sets. I have no doubt, but is there somewhere a certain social that you want to send people to
• 1:01:13
  in particular? If you go to SicilianAvengers.com, I have a website for the book. There's a contact
• 1:01:20
  email from me so people can reach out for me. I love to correspond with people and hear their views
• 1:01:27
  and exchange ideas about the book and questions. I like to ask one last question, but before I go,
• 1:01:34
  there was there anything that I should have asked that I wouldn't have known to ask that you
• 1:01:39
  thought would be a good piece of wisdom or advice for the audience? I think this is one of the best
• 1:01:44
  interviews I've ever done. You're fantastic. Thank you. No, you steered it in a way that enabled me to
• 1:01:51
  speak about things, you know, that have been germinating in my mind, so it's been great.
• 1:01:59
  I'll take the testimonial. That's final. So the last question I like to ask everybody,
• 1:02:06
  you've had incredible career and incredible life if you could look back and tell your 20-year-old
• 1:02:11
  self one thing what would it be? Oh gosh. You can only experience something for the first time once.
• 1:02:22
  So at every opportunity, try to be as deeply observant of things as you can be.
• 1:02:33
  And I think particularly with important life events, you never want to, you always want to hold
• 1:02:46
  the ear, the events of your life. I don't look back upon, I think everyone has regrets.
• 1:02:58
  I would say, don't worry about regrets. You know, you're going to have regrets.
• 1:03:03
  Just live for the day. And if you follow your moral compass, it'll all work out.