Making the leap from working on presidential campaigns for Senator Bill Bradley and Governor John Kerry to executive roles at Random House and Penguin make Allison Dobson a unique figure in the book industry. We discuss the original “Swift Boat” book, the challenges of merging company cultures, and much more.

This is the Open Book podcast, a behind the scenes look at the world of books and publishing through conversations with leaders in the field, hosted by David Steinberger, the CEO of Open Road Integrated Media, and chairman of the National Book Foundation, and now your host, David Steinberger.

Today we're talking with Alison Dobson, president of the Penguin Publishing Group. Alison started her career in politics working on the presidential campaigns of Senator Bill Bradley and Governor John Kerry. We'll cover her journey from politics to publishing her perspective on the largest merger in publishing history between Penguin and Random House, and the critical role of books in our politics, in our culture. I hope you'll enjoy today's conversation with Allison. I know that you grew up in Buffalo, New York, right? That's right. I've always been fascinated.

Buffalo Bills. Yeah, go Bills. I actually just bought my son Bill's sheets. Good. So literally arrived yesterday, so it, it's just bills all year long.

What was it like growing up in Buffalo?

Oh, it was great. You'll never get me to say a bad thing about Buffalo. Everyone trashes it, but that's fine because we'll keep it to ourselves. It's a great place with great people. I admit it's sometimes a little chilly, but the warm hearts make up for it. It's a great place. I have a younger brother and my mom is still there and lots of family is still there.

So did you think you're going to be running some of the biggest publishing company in the world when you were a little kid? Did you

Have that idea? Never. I mean, and honestly, I probably didn't know it 10 years ago. I think when I grew up, I was a big reader and I was always interested in books and I read all the time, but I publishing no one in Buffalo works in publishing. That's just not a job people have. I mean, maybe some people have, but very few. And I never met them. I was a good reader, but I was never really a writer or into that side of it. And so it just never entered my consciousness until much, much later in life. You love

To read though.

Oh yes. Always.

So can you remember a book or two

Back then? I mean, I loved Beverly Cleary. I mean all those books I loved. I remember there was an author named Johanna Hurwitz who I loved. I remember I wrote to her in fourth grade and she wrote back. She did, yes. And I have such a strong memory of that other, part of the sort of growing up lore of me is that part of my family, my mom's family is from p Satani Pennsylvania, so I come both from Buffalo and puns, Satani, Pennsylvania, and so the pun, Satani crew had a big Catholic family. They were always very big into Notre Dame, and my father went to Notre Dame. My mother went to the school called St. Mary's, which is across the street from Notre Dame. So I also ended up going to Notre

Dame. So what was going to Notre Dame? It was

Great. It was great. It was a good experience. It was a lot of fun. At that time I was kind of academically and even as a student, I was sort of very politically active and very interested in politics and that was sort of where I oriented myself at that time in my life.

And you did end up going into government or politics, right? Yes, I did. Right after college,

Right after college. So I had my senior year at Notre Dame, I had Bill Bradley as a professor. He was teaching this little seminar. He ended up later that year running for president. And so when I left school, I was kind of aimless as some of us are, and I decided to just drive out to Iowa and volunteer for him. And so I went out there and I was doing field organizing in South Central Iowa and they eventually offered me a job. And so I stayed

There in the

Bradley campaign, in the Bradley campaign. And then I worked for

Bill.

So what year is that? That was 1999. That's when he went and he did a couple different schools. I don't think ND was just one of the ones that he had done a corset and then he ran for president against Al Gore after the Clinton years.

Right, right.

He ran in the primary against Al Gore.

So we published Bill Bradley when I was at SIUs. Yeah, it was great. And he wrote kind of a kind of let's find common ground kind of book. That was his message. That's

Right. And that's really still his message. He's such a nice man. When I got this job, he was one of the first people to call me. I mean, of all those people in that campaign, he's such a sweet man and I have such good memories of that campaigning of him. So

What happened next?

Along the way, then I had just met people on that campaign. I had met different people, including the person who had become my next boss, which was a man named Senator Paul Wellstone, who was a senator from Minnesota.

Go Vikings. Yeah,

That's right. A couple of weeks later, basically I got a job working for him on the hill, then I left the hill. What happens oftentimes as people in these Capitol Hill offices, they take leave and then they go work on the campaign, which I did work on his campaign as well. And then he passed away in 2002 in a plane crash during that campaign. But along the way, I had met my next boss who was Tom Harkin.

Right. Also a senator.

Also a senator, worked in his hill office

Senate. He's from the Midwest.

He was from Iowa. Iowa. He was from Iowa, also another wonderful person who I stay in touch with for sure. And then in 2004, I took a leave from his office and went to work for John Kerry in his presidential campaign.

So you're deep into this at this point. Point.

I was pretty deep

Into it. So you're working on a presidential campaign, John Kerry. So this is John Kerry against George W. Bush reelection

George W. Bush reelection. That's right. Four.

What were you doing for Kerry?

I was doing press or publicity, which we would call it in the book industry, but press basically. And I worked in the headquarters in Washington and then I moved on to the plane, and so I traveled with him on the plane. So

Were you with him when the Swift Boat book dropped? Yes. Yeah. Yes. That must've been some experience.

Yeah, I

Was so Carrie doing very well. I thought generally doing well in the campaign. And somewhere in the middle of this campaign, there was this book that appeared the Swift Boat book where people attacked him. He was someone who served in Vietnam, had medals and had been wounded, but there was this book that went right after his military record that was a really pivotal moment in the campaign.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think it took the campaign by surprise maybe how seriously people took it because he had been so respected as a military hero for so long. And looking back, I think everyone was a little slow to respond because I think the initial response was to dismiss it. It seemed like it was something that was very personal and something he just didn't feel justified, a response. And then by the time he did, it seemed to have sunk in, I guess.

So he doesn't win the election. A lot of people very disappointed. So what were you thinking then? I'm going to the next campaign. Had one person die in a campaign, yet other, this is a rough business

You're in. It's a rough business. And I'll tell you, I'm not cynical about politics or certainly wasn't then if I've developed a little bit now. I love that time. I felt very passionately about it, but it was an enormous commitment of time and especially traveling. You're traveling six months, you may never see your house, your bed. There was a moment on the carry campaign toward the end we were flying, it was late at night, it was maybe 11 o'clock at night, and I was just exhausted. I mean just beyond walking into walls. And I just happened to look up and I saw my boss was there and she was about 10 years older than me, maybe not quite so much, but almost. And then another person who was senior in the campaign, not necessarily my boss, but someone who was there and he was 10 years older than her, and I was like, oh, I get it. I'm going to be here for 20 more years. This is not the thing you do. And then it's moves on. It's like this is the career, this is the job, this is what I'll be doing in 20 years. And I just sort of made the decision that I needed to think about what might be next. Even though I did love it, but I just knew that if I took the next thing and it was five more years or 10 more years, then probably that's where I was going to stick around for a while.

So you decided not to do that?

Not to do that.

You went to business school? I did. And so you went to Harvard Business School. I've heard of that school. Did you assume you're going to go to Wall Street or you're going to be hedge fund manager or something like that? Is that,

I mean, I hope the admissions department isn't listening. I had no idea what I was doing. I really was like, what is the furthest thing possible from what I'm doing right now and let's just explore the furthest thing possible. And that was Harvard Business School. And then I saw this rotational program with Bertlesman and it felt like, okay, this is something I could do, but my biggest fear was getting in a chair I didn't want to be in because I wasn't totally sure what that thing would be. This rotational program was super attractive. I could try different things and see what fit really well in practice. And so I took that, worked for Pete McCarthy at Random House then, which was so great. And that was my first rotation, my first exposure to publishing. And I have to say, when I first walked into Random House, I remember this feeling of meeting people and just being like, oh, these are my people. This is sort of the deal. And it was just in a way politics in that people were super passionate about what they were doing. They were really putting it all out there. And in this case, it was art, it was creativity, it was literature, it was things that I cared a lot about and they cared a lot about. And I thought, well, working with people who are this passionate about something that is important to me is really the greatest entry point in it. It has

Been. Bertlesman is the parent of Random House and now of Penguin Random House. Those were two different companies at that point. Different ownership, right? Yeah, that's right. Okay, so this rotation and so you end up staying at Random House.

I ended up staying at Random House.

You're kind of on the business side of things,

Is that right? Yes, yes. At first I was really kind of in a very corporate space at Random House, so working with Pete in corporate marketing and then eventually working on backlist, digital rights issues for them, kind of looking at rights, looking at production, that kind of stuff. And then that is when I met Madeline McIntosh. And so I worked on a team reporting into her and some other wonderful people, Nina von moca and a number of others. And then I moved into the Random House group working for Gina.

So Gina Centr was a very important publisher. She was the publisher of what's called Little Random, which is the books that have Random House on the spine and associated imprints like that. So you worked directly with Gina?

I worked with G. I did digital first publishing in genre fiction, romance and mystery and science fiction. Worked on that for a little while working for her. And then I worked on the Penguin Random House merger,

Then buys

Penguin Penguin

And puts the companies together, which is how we get Penguin Random House. That's

Right on that. That's 2013. Worked on that. And then Madeline went to basically take the job I have now at Penguin to run the Penguin group. So

She was in charge of all the Penguin publishing and she took you with her? And she took me with her. Okay, so you got to work with her over there. And one of the things that's just for me is always curious is when you try to bring companies together, what happens? Because that's a very challenging thing to do. We talk a lot about culture here and try to have a very defined culture. So you live this kind of combination of two very proud, significant organizations that had to come together, and then you actually had to be in a way, a bridge between them because you came from the random house side and ultimately you became the leader on the penguin side. Yeah. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, sure. It is really significant. I think that group, even today, they're still very different culturally, the Penguin Group versus, say the Random House Group or the Crown Group, they are very different. That seems so funny because they're the same company and they have been the same company for almost 11 years. But it is true that the cultures are different. I think when I first came over, there was a lot of skepticism for sure, because I was kind of a random house person coming over to the penguin side. I was not viewed super favorably, but I won them over with my tremendous charm. Companies like this come together. Of course there are redundancies as they say, and people unfortunately lose their jobs. So it takes a little time to build up that trust. And over time, I hope I did. I think I did. I think today at the Penguin Group, I think they very much still feel, if you ask people where they work, well, they'll say Penguin Random House, but they would identify very strongly with the Penguin.

And I think that's actually okay if in a really big organization, I think that individual smaller subcultures, especially in a creative industry build up because you need them to be super passionate about what they're doing in their space, and they need to be hyper-focused on that. I admit that sometimes this causes, some of our colleagues in one place of the company may be slightly uncomfortable with books at other places or in the group that other people are publishing, but I think my message is always the same, which is, first of all, we're here to do a book for every reader. We are literally as a country screaming at each other in 280 characters, and our job is to allow people to have their full thought at 413 pages, completely told and all of their points be made. And if that's made well, then maybe people will be able to listen to it.

If it's not made well, it may cause more questions for that writer. And I think all of that's okay because this is what we're here to do. We're here to try to have a better conversation as a culture, as a country, as a population. And I feel very, very strongly that we allow these different views, even controversial views, even opposing political views to be told. That's something that we do differently than really all other media books are the last place, or these ideas are told in their full and for good or for ill, for criticism or for compliment, and I think that's the way that we,

Congratulations on all the progress with them because I know that's a big challenge that you undertook. So let's talk about some of the books that you've been involved in publishing. I know we were talking earlier about this book by Jonathan Height. That's gotten so much attention.

The anxious generation has done very, very well. I think it's really hit a nerve, I think right now, especially with a lot of parents, mostly educators and communities which are seeing the effects of social media use and really technology overuse by kids and teens and how that affects their mental health and how that affects their ability to form social relationships.

Right, very controversial. Basically, he says you got to take the phones away from kids in schools, for

Example. That's right. He has kind of a four point plan among them is no phones until high school, no social media until 16, phone free schools and not just, you can't have phones in class, no phone in the school at all. Also, this part which has actually really struck with me, which is kids need a lot of unsupervised play basically outside in the world, which is really, really interesting. I was telling somebody else, I have a 6-year-old son, about to be seven, and I have an 8-year-old daughter. My son went to his friend's house the other week and the kids are so scheduled now. They live kind of in this woods area, and all these neighbor boys were over, and I went to pick him up a couple hours and the kid is head to toe mud and they have just been outside doing all this stuff and just playing. And I was like, did you have a great time? And he's like, I had a blast. It was so good for him to just be out there doing this stuff.

And what else do we have right now?

We also have Casey means who has good energy on the Avery list. We have Emily Henry with her new book is called Funny Story, and actually her backlist also sort of every time she has a new book, her backlist kind of goes bananas.

So number one bestsellers all over the place. We've

Had a good start to the year, that's for sure.

Yeah. How do you manage all this Sounds like the scale and the scope and the diversity. How do you think about your role?

My role is a snowplow. My role is to get everything out of the way so everybody just does their best publishing and that's it. I actually do encourage these imprints. It's okay for them to have very unique cultures. They have their own marketing and publicity teams along with editorial and all our imprints, and my job is to help them navigate the big company and to fix problems and to get things out of their way and to allow them to be as creative as possible. To me, that's what makes Penguin successful, that they're able to do their thing without any hindrances, basically.

Anything special you're thinking about in terms of what's coming?

Oh man. We have some great books coming for sure. One that I'm really excited about that comes out, but we have of course, Dr. Anthony FCIs memoir coming out in a couple of weeks. We have a great novel, which I'm really excited about, called God of the Woods, which is a Riverhead book. I think it's going to be terrific. I really enjoyed it. Author is Liz Moore, and so I'm excited about that one. This fall we have Al Pacino's memoir.

Great. Very, very excited about that.

I hope you enjoyed today's conversation with Allison. A final thought before we go. Allison spoke of the connection between politics and publishing. She found in her publishing colleagues the same kind of passion that had first strong her of politics and in a time of polarization. She takes pride in publishing works, reflecting a broad range of ideas. Finally, perhaps most importantly, in a world of social media and soundbites, only books provide and have always provided the space for knowledgeable, passionate people to make a complete argument. Whether the author does a good or bad job of it, that is up to the reader to decide. But the role of books in helping us understand our world has never been more indispensable than right now. Okay. Thanks for listening and more importantly, keep reading.

Thanks for listening to Open book with David Steinberger. This episode was produced by Rick Joyce, directed by Hannah Mosley and engineered by Bren Russell. Our theme music is written and performed by Eric Friedlander. And I'm Emma Chapnick. For more episodes and links to the books mentioned, visit our website at open road integrated media.com/podcast.