MY BACK PAGES (MY BACK PAGES: An undeniably personal history of publishing 1972-2022)

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He once told me that he was a lousy manager because, as an academic, he had never had anyone reporting to him and he never reported to anyone. One lesson that may have been learned from this—and indeed from the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic—is the importance of collecting and analyzing data, and then interpreting that data in a meaningful way.

Richard Charkin: Brexit Ushers British Publishing Into New Richard Charkin: Brexit Ushers British Publishing Into New

I suspect my hair length will go back to pre-COVID-19 days and I’ll have to get used to shaving daily again. Richard Charkin’s personal history illuminates the changes in publishing and mixes in some vital themes, such as the role of women and structural developments in how the trade operates. Known as “the Shark” around Oxford, Charkin cemented himself as an assertive and confident figure looking to improve both the functional and international purposes of the Press. Apart from this, Charkin has had a number of senior executive positions at several publishing companies such as Reed International, Macmillan Publishers, and Oxford University Press. The takeaway from this period of Charkin’s career is the need for corporate values other than profits.This excludes all the overhead costs of editing, producing, cataloging, selling, marketing, accounting, etc. My friends and I have a tradition of giving a “mensch rating” to the partners that our various children bring home. Acquiring all rights from authors requires Mensch to do everything possible to use those rights–by arranging translations, doing serialization deals, and creating ebooks and other digital texts, as well as audiobooks.

Richard Charkin: A 2022 Publishing Resolution Richard Charkin: A 2022 Publishing Resolution

This is a publishing memoir unlike any I have read - indeed, I can find no comparison among my collection of books on publishing. Sir Tom Waterstone, founder of Waterstones, said: “Charkin’s opinionated anecdotes and reflections provide intriguing colour and pace, and are sometimes very funny, but it is his technical overview of the market over these five decades of constant technical revolution that is so absorbing, so clear-minded, so wide-flung, so instructive. I’m sure that still holds true for larger publishers, but small ones have to be opportunistic and Mensch’s range of titles shows absolutely no evidence of focus whatsoever. This will be reversed and will become a digital course supplemented by a teacher and the very occasional printed textbook.From Lord Archer to Harry Potter, all the stories are here, and they are told with flair in Richard's signature voice. In 1982, he pitched the idea of abandoning manual editing/publication for a more efficient, computerized editing/publishing system. Despite our longevity, he and I continue to publish with our own small presses because it is what we know and love. Smoking was de rigueur, women relegated to the typing pool, luncheon vouchers provided, letters carbon copied, and tea ladies omnipresent. The most immediately familiar name is Delia Smith, whose book You Matter landed at Mensch after being rejected by six other publishers.

Richard Charkin, Author at Publishing Perspectives Richard Charkin, Author at Publishing Perspectives

He has held executive positions at Pergamon Press, Oxford University Press, Reed International/ Reed Elsevier and Current Science Group, and is the former Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Executive Director of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. There’s a balance to be reached between maximal distribution and minimal wastage and we have yet to establish that point of balance. It will still be blended learning but as in any blend everything depends on the proportions of the ingredients. After a degree in politics and economics at Oxford University, he worked as a financial journalist at The Bookseller and investment banker, before acquiring Global Water Intelligence in 2002. Read My Back Pages, take notes, be willing to work long hours for modest remuneration, and hold fast to the hope of discovering a new author who might just, with your guiding hand, become a success.So my resolutions this year relate to improving publishing by measuring things other than those I’ve mentioned above. Attending crowded meeting rooms in real life is exhausting and unsatisfying—as much as is staring at a screen full of talking heads for hours on end. My Back Pages: An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing, 1972-2022 was published on April 17 by Marble Hill Publishers.

Richard Charkin: In Praise Of a Quiet Publishing Leader Richard Charkin: In Praise Of a Quiet Publishing Leader

Just because an editor is a good judge of literary fiction doesn’t make that editor a good judge of history or cooking or politics. 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.Whether we like it or not, our tastes are becoming more homogenous, an undeniable trend but fortunately mitigated by a huge growth in numbers and choice of titles by virtue of self-publishing and technology. It would be good if others in the book business—particularly the larger firms where the size of data makes results more reliable—did the same. He has no time for office politics, for executives exercised by the size of their competitors’ offices or car-parking privileges. How can senior executives justify large offices for themselves and battery-hen cubicles for lower-level staffers?