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April 20, 2006
Richard Charkin
The idea for starting this site came from Richard Charkin. Richard is the head of Macmillan publishers and he invited me a few weeks ago to guest a blog on his site. He is at Richard Charkin.
As Richard very generously said we have known each other for a long time through the years when book chains emerged from being the cause of sleepless nights for a few of us to the dominating presence in book selling that they are now all over the world. If you believe, as I firmly do, that for all the problems and questions that still arise, on balance the public is better served by having lots of bookshops in lots of towns competing to carry excellent stock and provide brilliant service then those endeavours have been worthwhile. Reading and the tradition of giving books as gifts have grown in this country as a result of all that hard work and investment. Where 40% of the population in 1980 had read or bought a book in the past 3 months, that figure is now over 60%.
In order for those changes to take place there had to be a number of extremely enlightened and brave publishers who shared the risks and the anxieties. These were the people who supported the movement and made it not just possible but demanded that it be done properly. Richard was one of the most important of all those who played that role; I am sure that he still is.
Libraries should buy copies of Richard's new edition of Wisden, not only in the famous traditional format but also in the new Large Print format that he has introduced this year.
Posted by Tim Coates at April 20, 2006 9:42 AM