Child facing expulsion from football club after parent 'refused to let him play against Jewish team' Of course there are stories about well-known personalities he has encountered in his career - Madonna, Jeffrey Archer, Robert Maxwell, Paul Hamlyn, Mohammed Al-Fayed and many more. But his primary purpose is to provide an insider's account of the social, technological, commercial and geographical developments as seen through the eyes of a gifted all-round publisher who has made a very significant contribution to the profession. And the United Kingdom’s Publishers Association kindly lent me their offices for a place to thank friends and family for all their support. I read this last week and couldn’t put it down! It so mirrors what was happening in libraries and publishing in the 70s, 80s. 90s, my lifetime, etc! In fact I am going to read it again! A wonderfully personal history! Katina Strauch But I think probably everyone would have gulped today at just that title. It probably would have got through anyway, but maybe by the skin of its teeth. I’m sure there are other ones that we would think twice or three times or 20 times before doing.”

MY BACK PAGES: An undeniably personal history of publishing

In parallel, book production has become global and will become more so as our industry tries to reduce its carbon footprint and thus print closer to market rather than closer to publishing headquarters. This has been happening in Australia for quite a while but there’s logic to applying the same logistics around the world. Print on demand technology, availability, and price will accelerate this, too.Can anyone imagine any learning environment without a significant digital dimension? From the library to the lecture theater or classroom, the buzzword in educational publishing for schools and colleges has been “blended learning”–essentially a teacher, a book, and some digital supplements.

Richard Charkin: Notes From a Small London Publisher Richard Charkin: Notes From a Small London Publisher

Who might publish it? It might seem strange that a publisher would embark on such a project without a contract or at least an idea of who might publish it. I was relieved of any decision-making by one of my “referees,” Francis Bennett of Marble Hill Publishers, who—rather than critiquing the book—offered to publish it. The only editorial rule I set was not to publish any fiction (which usually requires either a large and experienced publisher or an author self-publishing) but I broke that rule when I could not resist The Accidental Collector by Guy Kennaway, who has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2021. Contracts and Some Distinctions We’ve published 14 titles, the bulk of them having been supported admirably by Bloomsbury’s sales, rights, and production teams and MDL’s distribution. Four have been published using IngramSpark’s self-publishing platform. I’ve managed to run the business with no full-time staff but a wonderful freelance team of editors, designers, and publicists. This means Charkin has closer relationships with his authors than he had in posts at Bloomsbury and Oxford University Press, for example, and is always at the end of the phone when needed. “Because there isn’t anyone else to talk to,” he says, laughing. “Which is why I restrict the number of titles that I publish. So, I have a one-on-one relationship with every author.”

Meet the menschiest man in publishing

Old-fashioned offices and structures will not survive to be replaced by more employee-friendly work spaces and work practices. I once published a book called The Genetics of the Jews, which was a very powerful scientific thing saying, ‘Actually, Jews aren’t that genetically different.’ The meetings took place in various unprepossessing cafés and bars around Newington Green in North London, halfway between our homes—the beginning of an entirely 50-50 relationship. The process turned out to be enormous fun, with Tom guiding me and quietly cajoling me to dig out whatever interesting stuff might be hiding deep in the recesses of my faltering brain. Absolutely,” he says emphatically. “I think it is really dangerous.” There could have been “a little bit of that” in the Smith book saga, he says.

My back pages - Marble Hill Publishers

What’s puzzling me is the French title, Dix Pour Cent. How come actors typically pay their agents 10 percent while authors typically pay their agents 15 percent? And how did literary agents manage to increase their share of the cake by 50 percent without any apparent resistance? You have to admire their skill. This will be reversed and will become a digital course supplemented by a teacher and the very occasional printed textbook. It will still be blended learning but as in any blend everything depends on the proportions of the ingredients. In education, these proportions will never be the same again. Charkin puts this down to the reduced role of public libraries compared to the 70s, when it was common for kids to visit once a week to borrow or return books. Charkin told the Citizen: “We suddenly had 60,000 words. People say Tom has really captured my voice which is great. We ended up being very selective and tried to get into the social changes as well as the business changes.I owe my career to Ron Hawkins, the interviewer and my first boss. I also owe a lot to the Harrap family, which owned the business—Mr. Paull, Mr. Ian, and Mr. Olaf—for allowing me a paid apprenticeship and bearing the losses I inevitably incurred through my inexperience. This is the first lesson for a young publisher coming out of Charkin’s book. Look at who is running the business you work for. Some of them have been in more or less the same position for more than 30 years. Do you trust them with your career? If not you must agitate for change The book brings to life various phases of the publishing industry, with early chapters describing a time when people knew much less what they were doing – Charkin recalls being hired “purely on the basis that I had a science degree, and was young and thus inexpensive” – drank a lot more, and had ruthless editors.