How Was Lunch Today?

The literary lunch is legendary. We’ve all heard of, and perhaps even partaken in, those long, meandering 3-martini events, filled partly with professional chat and partly with gossip, and cemented together with the sort of unstructured, casual banter that frequently leads to the next great book, story or idea. Lunch is often the place where the real business of publishing is conducted.

Today we’re introducing a new Pub Buzz feature called Lit Lunch, where we’ll check in with you, our readers, and find out about the business you’re conducting over the more informal lunchtime conference table. We’ll find out where you’re dining and, more importantly, with whom, what you’re eating and, of even greater essence, what you’re discussing au table.

For our lunch today, we, the Publishing Business Today team, discovered (thanks to our colleague Alex Schwartz) a great Mexican food truck around the corner from our offices, on 17th Street on the Community College of Philadelphia campus. It’s beautiful weather in Philadelphia today, and perfect for a lunchtime stroll, although I did take my delicious veggie burrito back to my desk, where I amconsuming it as I write these words.

You can see some of this colorful lunch truck behind us in the photo on the right. Let me introduce us. On the left is Mike Cooper, National Accounts Manager. That’s me to the right of Mike. Next to me is Brian Howard, Book Business Editor-in-Chief, and the tall gentleman on the right is Jim Sturdivant, Managing Editor of Publishing Executive. Mike has already tweeted his picture of our lunchtime jaunt; you can follow Mike @Mike_Cooper.

At lunch Jim and I compared notes about our recent positive experience visiting the Yale Publishing Course. And then I shared with the group my idea to run this Lit Lunch feature. I told them I was going to post the photo of us in front of the truck in this newsletter today and write about our lunch. They didn’t believe me.