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Against the Grain is your key to the latest news about libraries, publishers, book jobbers, and subscription agents. Our goal is to link publishers, vendors, and librarians by reporting on the issues, literature, and people that impact the world of books and journals.

Against The Grain Journal

Charleston Library Conference 

Dec 13, 2021

Today's episode features a conversation with Scott Williams, Vice President for Technology and Platform, De Gruyter. The interview was conducted by Matthew Ismail, Editor in chief of the Charleston Briefings and Conference Director at the Charleston Conference. 

Scott is currently in his third year of working in academic publishing at De Gruyter.  His background is in startups, digital transformation, technology, product, commercial data, and included working at Google for four years in the UK.

Scott and Matthew discuss his time working at Google with technology projects such as launching the “cost per click” model, learning to hire at scale, meeting customers and consulting with them to help build and improve as well as culture management and change.  When Google acquired YouTube, Scott went to LA and sold one of the first ads that appeared on YouTube, which was for the Simpsons movie.  Now at De Gruyter, Scott says that he is working to improve the publishing experience for authors and to generate more traffic for De Gruyter to increase revenue.  He says to figure out what needs to happen and then work out how to do it.

I hope that you enjoy this episode and that you will join us again next week when we’ll feature an interview with Lauren Kane. After next week’s episode, ATG The Podcast will take a holiday break and resume on January 10. As always, thanks for listening!