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

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All this points to a sea change in trade book publishing, a change which has been signaled for decades but has been obstructed by squabbles such as EU exclusive rights and the short-term-ism of hunting the biggest possible advance as opposed to the best possible deal. Old-fashioned offices and structures will not survive to be replaced by more employee-friendly work spaces and work practices.

Title Detail: My Back Pages by Richard Charkin

My challenge began some years ago when a handful of people asked me if I was ever going to write my memoirs. I said no for many reasons. In spite of the media coverage of growth in the audiobook market it turns out that only a very few audio titles really perform well and even then the financial return after the digital retail distributors have taken their cut is disappointingly small. 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). Cons and Pros The publishing world will continue and thrive, as it always has, by creatively pushing water uphill. Of course there are stories about well-known personalities he has encountered - 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. In today’s world this would, of course, be utterly unacceptable, but then it was the norm in many British institutions, particularly those close to establishments such as Oxford University.

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Richardson was appointed by the University of Oxford to take charge of its sprawling, unprofitable, arrogant, and inward-looking publishing, printing, and papermaking operation at a time of hyperinflation, economic recession, and overbearing trade union power. He had no significant experience of management, publishing, or business. He made no grand statements nor speeches to “rally the troops.” 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 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 Reading between the lines Charkin is aware that he was not great as a trade publisher, although it is clear that Reed the real problem was the corporate culture. Charkin’s boss at Reed, Ian Irvine raved about how the profits of consumer book publishing added up to “the square root of bugger all”, but never questioned the extraordinary extravagance of Reed at the holding company level. Irvine had a chauffeur-driven Bentley to take him to work and indeed so many other executives enjoyed similar perks that there was a drivers’ waiting room at Reed HQ to house them all.

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

Charkin’s time as both head of reference and managing director at Oxford University Press was incredibly influential to the evolution of the Oxford English Dictionary. 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. In 1982, he pitched the idea of abandoning manual editing/publication for a more efficient, computerized editing/publishing system. By 1983, Charkin secured a deal with both IBM and ICC to get the necessary equipment and assistance for the computerization of the Dictionary. By 1984, Oxford University had approved Charkin and co.’s project, which confirmed the digitized future of the OED. Many members of the Press wondered if Charkin’s successful ruminations would lead to the end of the Print, worrying that the introduction of the “New OED” project would far exceed the popularity of the original edition. For the next five years, Charkin and co. worked tirelessly to merge the Supplements with the OED in preparation for the 1989 release of the Second Edition. Charkin and the University Press agreed that, after this Edition, they could finally begin expanding upon the long-awaited distribution of CD-ROMs containing OED text. 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. The Internet was still not a public tool at this point, making CD availability a big deal for readers and editors alike. This was achieved through the project team’s painstaking effort of manually inputting the whole text of the OED, a personal choice that was made to honour the traditional print-based method. Charkin’s willingness to push the Press in a bigger and bolder direction gave the team confidence to see the digitization project through, an accomplishment that evolved the art of lexicography and paved the way for the future of online publication. 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.” Richard Charkin’s experience as a publisher is unique among his generation. Over the past half century he has been a scientific and medical publisher, a journal publisher, a digital publisher and a general publisher. He has worked for family-owned companies, public companies and start-ups. In this memoir he uses his unrivalled experience to illustrate the profound changes that have affected the identity and practices but not the purpose of publishing.When Richardson was appointed CEO, I suspect the university thought that he would bring good academic economic thinking to business. As he describes in a paper here in his elegant and thoughtful prose, it worked out somewhat differently.

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

So my resolutions this year relate to improving publishing by measuring things other than those I’ve mentioned above. The 2022 Audit Wish List And then last year, a longtime family friend and Bloomsbury author, Tom Campbell, offered to become my Dr. Boswell. We agreed to meet a few times to see if my incoherent memories might form the basis of notes which could become sentences and paragraphs and which in turn might come together as a highly informal history of the book business in the last exciting 50 years.Editor’s note: As we publish Richard Charkin’s June column today (June 7), the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center in its 6:33 p.m. ET (2233 GMT) update shows the United Kingdom as fourth in the world for COVID-19 caseloads behind the United States, Brazil, and Russia. The UK is confirmed with 287,621 cases and 40,625 deaths. In fatalities, this puts the market second in the world, behind the USA’s 110,425 total. BBC News’ rolling updates report Scotland showing no deaths in 24 hours for the first time since the pandemic’s onset. Of course he includes stories about authors and books he has published and people he has worked with. But this prime purpose is to tell us through the lens of his own extraordinary experience the story of the dramatic changes of the past fifty years that have transformed the publishing industry. If you were perfect, you’d be disgusting. Absolutely ghastly. So, we do our best to be upstanding, but we don’t always succeed.” His experiences of phenomena such as Harry Potter will no doubt be of great interest, but his knowledge of the social and technological shifts in the industry also make this one for writers, insiders and anyone considering a career in publishing.

Richard Charkin with Tom Campbell. 2023. My Back Pages—An

I’m not a complete illiterate, but I do find handling pictures, PDFs, and spreadsheets harder than I should, and I have nobody to turn to apart from the occasional good Samaritan This book spans 50 years of British publishing, and makes them all interesting. Richard Charkin never minded stirring the pot, and clearly he is still at it. He offers a tour of the publishers where he worked, of the industry, and of the many colorful characters he came across. From Lord Archer to Harry Potter, all the stories are here, and they are told with flair in Richard's signature voice. I loved it!" John Sargent, former CEO of Macmillan USA Charkin, R. (2022, January 28). Richard Charkin: A 2022 Publishing Resolution. Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/01/richard-charkin-a-2022-publishing-resolution-covid19/ And the United Kingdom’s Publishers Association kindly lent me their offices for a place to thank friends and family for all their support. 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.So they don’t want the rest. But, nonetheless, a huge number of extremely good books are being written by extremely good people, desperate to see the light of day.”