Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Richardson died this month at the good age of 94. I attended his funeral at St John’s College, Oxford. Naturally there were many from his days at OUP who were there, and I was able to persuade Nigel Portwood, the current CEO, to take the photo above of nine survivors of those days. “We all worked in different roles in different divisions of Oxford University Press, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see some commonalities. All white. All male.” Richard Charkin I was certain I wanted to publish his book. Richard, who is an instinctive dealmaker, immediately went into negotiation mode. How much I paid for his manuscript will remain a tightly guarded secret. When it comes to negotiation, I am no rival to my author! This means Charkin has closer relationships with his authors than he had in posts at Bloomsbury and Oxford University Press, for example, and is always at the end of the phone when needed. “Because there isn’t anyone else to talk to,” he says, laughing. “Which is why I restrict the number of titles that I publish. So, I have a one-on-one relationship with every author.” Oxford University Press. (2023). History of the OED. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved January 29, 2023, from https://public.oed.com/history/ This will be reversed and will become a digital course supplemented by a teacher and the very occasional printed textbook.
Richard Charkin, Author at Publishing Perspectives Richard Charkin, Author at Publishing Perspectives
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. 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.” What an amazing career. I can’t think of anyone else who has been active in such a wide range of sorts of publishing. I should think there will be a host of people who know you through the sector of publishing that they are in but will be interested in your experience of all the other sectors that they don’t know about." Andrew L Schuller, Publishing Consultant, Formerly Editorial Director Humanities and Social Sciences OUP I found it fascinating and full of interest....Your early years in the business are particularly riveting to somebody who joined much later on." Antony Topping, Managing Director, Greene & Heaton Literary AgencyAnother shift covered in the book covers is the growing diversity in publishing and the benefits this brings – though the industry still has a long way to go. Charkin told the Citizen: “We suddenly had 60,000 words. People say Tom has really captured my voice which is great. We ended up being very selective and tried to get into the social changes as well as the business changes.
My mum thought I’d be sent to jail’: Hackney author’s new ‘My mum thought I’d be sent to jail’: Hackney author’s new
Just take a look at this range of covers to see how we have failed to establish a genre for Mensch. Can anyone imagine any learning environment without a significant digital dimension? From the library to the lecture theater or classroom, the buzzword in educational publishing for schools and colleges has been “blended learning”–essentially a teacher, a book, and some digital supplements. I mean we really were a bunch of amateurs,” he said. “Today people are more professional at their expertise. For example, the publicity people are now publicity professionals, not like before. But very few people are all-rounders in publishing.” If you were perfect, you’d be disgusting. Absolutely ghastly. So, we do our best to be upstanding, but we don’t always succeed.” What’s it like publishing a fellow professional? If all publisher/author relationships worked like this, our lives would be much easier than my experience tells me they are.My resolution for 2022 is to get out my tape measure and use it on an as many variables as I can. The idea will be to measure everything possible and to interpret and implement the results. 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. Scientific journal publishers have been doing much of this for decades and I wouldn’t mind enjoying their margins. Another of Charkin’s editorial accomplishments had an even bigger cultural effect. He is proud of the colossal task of digitalising the Oxford English Dictionary in 1988, which involved blending 10 editions from the early 1900s and later supplementary additions.
Richard Charkin: Brexit Ushers British Publishing Into New Richard Charkin: Brexit Ushers British Publishing Into New
I can’t claim to have proved definitively that you can do it. But we’re still in business. And there’s slightly more cash in the bank than when we started.” 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 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.
A fascinating personal assessment of the rise and growth of publishing by someone whose lived through it and whose experience, knowledge and wisdom is second to none." Delia Smith Amazingly—to me, at least—it has worked really well. Any skepticism I harbored about whether people would really work as hard and as well in a domestic environment has been shattered. Surely this will continue with benefits to family life, avoidance of commuting stress, the economics of publishing, and trust and empowerment of publishing employees Charkin could have used his own name, of course, but considered that “too self-serving” in the context of a publishing company. “Also, when eventually you sell it on, what does your name mean? It means nothing.” A riveting account of the last fifty years of publishing by one of the industry’s most successful - and boisterous - characters." Alexandra Pringle
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