Ulp. This makes three posts in a day. That's all wrong...
But, if you haven't heard already, Richard Charkin, the CEO of Macmillan (and a big supporter of the Macmillan New Writing concept from the start), has moved to a job as Executive Director at Bloomsbury. (Mike Barnard, MNW's founder, will be emerging from retirement to take up the job of Deputy Chairman for the moment.)
I haven't any idea what this means to Macmillan, Bloomsbury, or publishing in general. But what it clearly means is the end of the Charkin Blog, one of the more prolific blogs on the web, and one of my favorites (despite the disproportionate number of posts on cricket). Without warning, Mr Charkin filed his brief farewell post today.
If you never visited the Charkin Blog, you've missed out on a lot of good information, as well as some rather snippy controversy and a whole lot of fun. Perhaps the finest moment was the occasion on which, to prove a point about intellectual property rights, Mr Charkin and a partner in crime stole two computers from Google at Book Expo America.
In any case, good luck to Richard Charkin--and I hope that Bloomsbury will devote at least a few of their Harry-Potter bucks to establishing another Charkin Blog over there.
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4 comments:
Hi David
Will miss the Charkin blog too. Very funny, and loved the Google-caper.
Still, it's good to see Mike Barnard returning to Macmillan.
I won't pretend to understand the whole publishing business, but I wonder what Richard Charkin would have done with the whole Harry Potter debacle.
I'm still stunned by the suggestion that booksellers everywhere made bugger all from the last HP book.
For an event like that, sounds like Bloomsbury messed up. Maybe Macmillan's ex-CEO will shake things up for the better?
Completely un-Charkin-related, Shock and Awe finally spotted in Oxford Street. I performed my usual trick of moving the copies to front of shop.
Hi Matt--
Maybe he'll change things around (Bloomsbury New Writing?). My main concern is that he be pressured to start blogging again.
Hey, thanks, Neil!
(Can you also scribble my name inside and slap a few "Signed by Author" stikers on them...?)
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