“I keep an eye on absolutely everything. I’m discovering things that I never, never knew about how the nuts and bolts of the business work.”
Interview with Richard Charkin, founder, Mensch Publishing
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As an entrepreneur in publishing, Richard Charkin had checked none of the usual boxes when he began his new venture – no business plan, no strategy, no list of authors and book titles committed to the venture. What Charkin had going for him, nevertheless, is a record of success in the book business over nearly half a century.
The former executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing and past president of the International Publishers Association, Charkin has boasted that his new company, Mensch Publishing, is “a house with no mission statement and no stated editorial strategy.” What matters is that the imprint only live up to its name – to do business with honor and integrity.
“As I approach 70 and look back on an unbelievably enjoyable, rewarding, challenging, stimulating, fun career, I realized that the one thing I hadn’t done was to spend my own money and do things the way I really wanted to do them on behalf of authors and readers,” he recently told CCC’s Chris Kenneally.
“How much does it change things, Richard, that you’re now spending your own money, rather than someone else’s money?” Kenneally inquires.
“It changes everything,” says Charkin. “I’ve started delivering proofs by hand to save the postage. Not sure many major publishers do that. I keep an eye on absolutely everything. I’m discovering things that I never, never knew about how the nuts and bolts of the business work. In fact, one of my duties is to let my previous and current employer, Bloomsbury, know where they might be able to save money if they behaved like an independent spending your own money. It makes all the difference in the world.”
The first title from Mensch, Time to Go by Guy Kennaway, was published earlier this month.
