I have worked in publishing for most of my adult career (30+ years), but all on the editorial side and never gave much thought to the business side.

My Back Pages review The Bookseller - Comment - My Back Pages review

I’ve known Charkin since the early 1990s, when he was the chief executive of Reed Consumer Books and I was publishing director of the Australian business. It’s the only dictionary in any language of anything with this comprehensiveness and authority,” he said. However, you might also like to look back at a Publishing Perspectives column from October 2018 on what I consider to be the real measure of a publishing company’s commercial value.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. In our 30s, we were each given responsibility and freedom to act way above that justified by our experience. 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?

Meet the menschiest man in publishing - The Jewish Chronicle

Leaving the second-largest publishing market in the world outside the tent would have meant fewer opportunities to foster the adoption of international publishing standards. In My Back Pages, Richard Charkin charts his journey from editing by candlelight in the 1970s to senior roles at industry giants Bloomsbury and MacMillan, to later starting his own publishing house, Mensch. Straight out of university, Charkin entered through the tradesman’s entrance expressly designated for employees as assistant science editor at Harraps. He serves on the International Advisory Board of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Editorial Board of Logos [3] as well as teaching on the publishing courses at University College London, City University of London, and University of the Arts London. 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.This kind of thing is usually written by editors whose vanity has for years been frustrated by the enforced anonymity of their position. Readers might have welcomed some anecdotes about authors’ foibles, but like most publishers Charkin is discreet. Fortunately I had the good fortune to identify a dozen “referees” to read the manuscript from their points of view and with their critical eyes. 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. 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.

MY BACK PAGES: An undeniably personal history of publis…

There are, of course, exceptions but I have to admit failure, really, in this field, although that could change significantly with the release of audio publisher Bolinda‘s audiobook edition of Delia Smith’s You Matter: The Human Solution (coming march 3). Had I not had that stroke of luck, I’d have had to beat the undergrowth of the publishing industry for a willing partner, having decided that it would be inappropriate and inefficient to publish it myself. He credits his involvement in higher education and senior executive positions to his demanding upbringing, one that taught him to never be idle for too long and to always aspire for more. Yet, at the end of his tenure, OUP had been transformed and has been able not only to publish some of the best books in the humanities, science, medicine, education, reference, music, and more, but also to contribute financially to the university’s well-being.More coverage of his work from Publishing Perspectives is here and more from us on industry statistics is here. By 1983, Charkin secured a deal with both IBM and ICC to get the necessary equipment and assistance for the computerization of the Dictionary. In 1992, this was made a reality, thanks to the efforts of Charkin, alongside John Simpson, Ed Weiner, the Tim Benbow, Julia Swanell and more. I look forward to receiving some royalty income, some rights income, many speaking events—some overseas, all expenses paid, I hope—some brickbats, some sarcasm, and plenty of relief that my worst fears have not been realized. The book was printed and distributed by the brilliant team at IngramSpark, but until you hold a book in your hands, you simply don’t know.