Description
Book SynopsisRichard Charkin’s experience as a publisher is unique among his generation. Over the past half century he has been (at different times) a scientific and medical publisher, a journal publisher, a digital publisher and a general publisher. He has worked for family-owned, publicly-owned, university-owned 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. 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. This is an insider’s account of the last fifty years of the publishing industry: the essential guide for writers, readers, students of publishing, and book industry professionals including librarians, booksellers, literary agents, printers, copyright lawyers, digital experts.
Table of ContentsPreamble; 1. Starting Out; Working Life of a Young Editor; Family Ownership and Management; Fast Forward Fifty Years: Last Day at the Bloomsbury Office. 2. The Brave New World of Scientific Publishing; Publishing and the Life Sciences; Leaving Pergamon in Abrupt Circumstances; The Not so Brave New World of Oxford University Press; Decision-Making at Oxford University Press: A Beginner’s Guide. 3. A Time of Crisis; Cost-cutting, Upheavals and Outsourcing; First Encounters with Computers; The Transformation of Printing ; The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition; Trying to Leave Oxford University Press. 4. Things Speed Up; The World of Trade Publishing; Bad Behaviour in the Roaring 80s; Academic vs Trade Publishing; The Perils of Literary Publishing; Distinctly Non-Literary Bestsellers. 5. Consolidation, Change and Controversies; The ‘Big Bang’ of Trade Publishing; The Changing Retail Landscape; The Demise of Book Clubs; The Decline of Theological Publishing; The End of the Net Book Agreement; Reed Elsevier: The Anti-Book Publisher. 6. The Start-up Years; The Art of the Publishing Deal; Multimedia CD-ROMs; Innovation and Adding Value;The Rise and Rise of Journal Publishing. 7. A Global Family Business; Nurturing Nature; Open Access takes on Journal Publishing; Do No Evil: Going to Battle against a Tech Giant; Macmillan India: an Imperial Legacy; Children’s Publishing Grows Up; Accidental Successes; Managerial Diversions. 8. Making Bloomsbury Less Magical; Wisden – a Long-running Love Affair; Becoming a Digital Publisher in a Digital World; Public Library Online: Trying to Modernise Library Services; The Culture of Bloomsbury and Industry Progress; Design, Marketing and Sales. 9. British Publishing: An International Bestseller; The Growth of ELT Publishing; The Dominance of the English Language; Adventures in the Gulf; International Diplomacy. 10. Being a Mensch; Publicity and Sales in a Digital World; Publishing by Numbers; Coming to Terms with Agents; Print on Demand and the Curse of Book Returns; How Do you Value a Publishing Company?; The Ever-Changing Geography of London Publishing; An International Publisher in a Post-Brexit World. Afterword; Reasons to be Cheerful, or Why 2022 might be Better than 1972; Publishing People; Companies; Technology; Marketplace; Authors. And Finally…Post-amble
