Buz Teacher

When I was 11, I began working in my parents' independent bookstore in Washington, D.C. I had the good fortune to attend some of the early American Booksellers Association annual conventions and be exposed to interesting folks on both sides of publishing and bookselling. After graduating night school from the University of Pennsylvania, I attended the graduate program at the Wharton School's Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law while at the same time helping my brother Larry launch Running Press Book Publishers In 1972. Publishing was much more fun, so I left school and with a bit of luck and a creative, hard-working staff we slowly became one of the larger independent book publishers with offices in Philadelphia, New York, and London. Running Press was known for innovative projects, many conceived in-house, ranging from some of the first popular books on alternative energy to collaborations with Lucas Arts, Saturday Night Live and Disney. Authors included George Carlin, Fred Rogers [Mister Rogers], Malachy McCourt, Marlo Thomas, Stanley Crouch, John Lithgow and Nobel laureate James D. Watson. Other Running Press titles acquired while I was publisher include fun how-to books and book-plus for children, an extensive series of art technique books, award-winning cookbooks, nonfiction and illustrated coffee-table volumes on art, gardening and popular culture. I am currently an advisor in the book publishing industry. From 2013 to 2016 we were publishers of Burgess Lea Press, a philanthropic cookbook publishing company now owned by The Quarto Group.