Publishing as an industry has more than its fair share of extraordinary people, but there are few to rival Richard Charkin. Over his 50-year career he's worked in almost every area of publishing from children's book to scientific journals, and has not just witnessed but been instrumental in steering the industry from its gentleman's club background to the hi-tech, diverse, commercially competitive sector it is today.
But after decades of senior leadership in major publishing houses, he's just taken on his greatest challenges: launching a start-up publishing company and writing a book himself. I asked him how that's going, and why he decided against an index...