Remembering my first real boss, publishing industry leader and author advocate, Judith Appelbaum

Usually on LinkedIn, we talk about trends and news—what’s happening in the current world. Today, I want to focus a bit on the importance of the past.

Technically, my first boss was Wynton Marsalis—I was an intern for him at Jazz at Lincoln Center—but let’s be honest: My job consisted mostly of office drudgery, organizing CDs, hanging out with other musicians, and typing up last-minute lyric changes backstage. My first “real" boss who paid me in actual money and life lessons was Judith Appelbaum.

The recent The New York Times obituary of Judy published in the print edition at the end of July was lovely and written by a woman who not only owned Judy’s bestselling book, How to Get Happily Published, but attended one of her early publishing seminars. Judy’s book, which went through five editions and sold over 500,000 copies, has been widely dogeared and admired. For nearly 60 years, Judy was an integral part of the publishing industry community, championing authors and authors’ rights. She held numerous positions at noteworthy publications -- from Publishers’ Weekly to New York Times Book Review and Harper’s — and won industry awards, including the Publishers Marketing (now the Independent Book Publishers) Association Lifetime Achievement Award and the Book Industry Study Group Lifetime Service Award.

I worked for Judy and her partner, Florence Janovic, at Sensible Solutions, their NYC book marketing firm back when some people still called the Web “the information superhighway” (I kid you not). I was their sole employee for four years and I could not have asked for a better first job. Sure, I had to do filing and fix the computers, but luckily I was also good at target marketing and technology and I figured out that Amazon and AOL were worth paying attention to. They gave me tremendous independence — I was able to convince them that we should focus on online marketing for our clients and we started including it as part of our marketing plans. I even worked on the fifth edition of Judy’s book. It was an incredible learning experience.

Judy took a chance on me and I would not be where I am today without her. I was an American Culture grad from Vassar College, Judy’s alma mater. I’m sure that played a part in my getting hired, but I had no prior marketing or publishing experience. Without this first opportunity, I would not have been able to have a successful career in digital commerce that has spanned multiple industries and a variety of interesting roles from head of commerce and marketing at A&E Television Networks and Musician’s Friend to EVP of digital at PennySaver to my current commerce product strategy role at Oracle. I got in early and I have Judy and Florence to thank. 

Over the years, even well after I had left the firm, we kept in touch and had yearly lunches. Judy was an amazing mentor and she would often send me encouraging advice. She was also politically minded and she would send me notes with her thoughts on what was going on in the world, especially in the last couple of years. Last Summer, she sent me an email with a list of political actions to take with the comment that "some days, I marvel at how it just keeps getting worse, and the rest of the time I marvel at how it keeps getting worse than that...but that lots of us will find ways to make it better than it threatens to be.” And that was Judy. 

Judy lived her convictions. She was a realist, but also an optimist, who believed strongly in being active, determining your own success, and working to make things better. She was a progressive, no-nonsense New Yorker, and Judy didn’t shy away from standing up for what she believed in (she even believed in firing clients — before her, I’d never heard of such a thing!). More than anything else, I learned from her the importance of having integrity in business. 

She was a publishing industry giant, an author’s author, a champion of the little guy and we and the entire publishing community will miss her greatly.

Take a moment and think about the people who have gotten you to where you are today. Contact your first boss if you can, even if it’s been a while, or send a note to a person you're mentoring. I bet she (or he) would love to hear from you. Connecting with one another and building our collective knowledge, even in small ways, can make such a difference in people's lives, sometimes more than we realize.

Judy’s memorial service is tomorrow. If you knew her or want to pay respects in some way, please let me know.