David R. Godine will share stories from five decades in the publishing business at Jaffrey Civic Center’s “Stories to Share” at 5 p.m. on May 2 at 40 Main St. in Jaffrey. 

The event is free and open to the public. Godine’s talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Godine will focus on his personal experiences with some of northern New England’s most-celebrated authors, and his presentation will be accompanied by a slideshow of book covers, letterpress, illustrations and art. 

“It’s a list of books from all over the map. I’ll do poetry, fiction, photography, children’s books, and I’ll talk about these books and why these books were important,” Godine said from his home in Dublin last week.

Godine will also bring a copy of each of the books he will cover in the talk. 

“It’s important to really touch and see and feel these books to understand why they are all special,” he said. 

Godine, who founded David R. Godine Publishing as a letterpress printer in 1970, has long been considered one of the most-important independent publishers in America. The company has published hundreds of authors and illustrators, including two Nobel Prize winners. 

Godine will talk about his experiences with some of  northern New England’s most-celebrated authors,  including poet Donald Hall,  essayist Noel Perrin and novelist Howard Frank Mosher. 

Mosher, who wrote a series of bestselling books about northern Vermont, was one of Godine’s all-time favorites. 

“Mosher was a great guy. We published ‘Disapperances,’ which was probably his best book,” Godine said. “We also did the Richard Brown photography book, ‘Life in the Kingdom,’ which is photographs of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.” 

Godine will touch on some of his firm’s most well-known books about New England, including “The Hand of the Small Town Builder,” by W. Tad Peffer;  “The Grand Resort Hotels of the White Mountains: A Vanishing Architectural Legacy,” by Bryant Franklin Tolles; and local bestseller  “Monadnock Summer: the Architectural Legacy of Dublin, NH,”  by William Morgan.

The talk will also include some of Godine’s favorite but lesser-known books, such as “Suspended Worlds: Theater Curtains in Northern New England,” by Christine Hadsel. 

“That was an ambitious book,” Godine said. “It had many color plates, difficult design and large landscape format. It was a quirky, ambitious and challenging book, but it won Historic New England’s award as the best book of the year, and Christine did a great job of promoting it.”

One of Godine’s favorite illustrators is Hancock artist Kim Webster Cunningham, who illustrated books with her father, Dennis Webster, including the poetry collection “Absolutely Wild.”  Godine sought out Webster and Cunningham after seeing their art at an exhibit in Peterborough. 

“One of the great things about publishing is you just never know what is going to be a a big hit. After a while, you just stop pretending that you know, because you never know,” Godine said. 

In recent years, Godine has seen the publishing industry upended by the onset of digital publishing and the internet. 

“The quality of on-demand book publishing has really improved. It used to be you could tell them immediately from a trade book, but that line of distinction is really disappearing, and that is a real change,” Godine said.

Godine said the heyday of publishing was probably in the 1980s and 1990s. 

“It used to be we could publish a book of terrible poems, and it would sell 500 copies,” he said. 

Asked if he believes it is true that people read less, Godine said he couldn’t say. 

“Judging by the number of books published, who knows? When we started, there were 40,000 titles published in a year. Now, there are half a million,” he said. “That is a lot for a market to absorb if people aren’t reading. On the other hand, publishers can publish fewer copies and just kind of test the waters.”

Godine believes AI will be a “huge challenge” for publishers.

“I think you will see books coming out from authors who died years ago suddenly appear out of nowhere,” he said. “I never would have foreseen that four years ago when I left the industry.” 

In 2021, Godine published “Godine at Fifty: A Retrospective of Five Decades in the Life of an Independent Publisher,” which looks back on five decades in the business.

“It’s been a wonderful ride,” he said.