Richard Charkin on Lessons Learned from 50 Years in Book Publishing

The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Richard Charkin has held senior posts at many major, and some minor, publishing houses in the U.K. over the past 50 years, including: Harrap, OUP, Pergamon Press, Reed Elsevier, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, and Mensch Publishing. He is former President of The Book Society, the International Publishers Association and the UK Publishers Association.

His book My Back Pages, An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing 1972-2022 came out in 2023. The book has sold more than 3,000 copies, and is being translated into four languages. It took me a year to figure out what questions to ask him.

Just so you know, Richard has been very good to The Biblio File podcast over the years. Thanks to him I've landed all sorts of great publishing guests. And John Banville! I’m grateful to him for this, and for his being so generous with his time and knowledge, sharing them as he has with me on multiple occasions during episodes that have dealt with, among other things, great publishers, the challenges facing the book business, and how to set up a small publishing house.

I wrote this about him a while back:

Richard does what all great publishers do. He pays attention to what's going on both in the world, and in the world of books. He pays attention to what people are doing and reaches out to them to learn more. He takes an interest. It’s pretty simple. And pretty important. He also lets people know what he's up to. I got to know him through his blog. It gave me a wonderful glimpse into the daily life of a high-powered publisher - the workings of business, but also the workings of his mind, and occasionally his emotions…

His writing invited and welcomed a human response.

I'm happy to have been able to re-connect with Richard again recently, this time via Zoom, to talk about the changes he’s seen, and lessons he's learned, over more than 50 years in the book publishing business, something, more than incidentally, that he's been rewarded for recently in the form of an OBE.

It’s good to see that his exemplary work in, and on behalf of, the publishing business - his “service to literature,” has been recognized.