1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,160 In 2008, Judy Piatkis walked into Daunt Books in London. 2 00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:09,240 She picked up a book from the display table. 3 00:00:09,240 --> 00:00:15,540 Financial markets were melting down the world over, and she couldn't help smiling. 4 00:00:15,540 --> 00:00:22,180 She smiled not because of the financial tumult, but because the year before, she had commissioned 5 00:00:22,180 --> 00:00:26,540 the very book that she held in her hand, The Great Crash. 6 00:00:26,540 --> 00:00:32,080 That book demonstrated for her both her own and her company's hard work over the last 7 00:00:32,080 --> 00:00:35,680 28 years, and her good fortune. 8 00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:41,840 Even more than the book, seeing it reminded her that she had sold her company at just 9 00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:45,800 the right time. 10 00:00:45,800 --> 00:00:53,440 Hello listeners, my name is Will Jokey, and welcome to I'll Probably Delete This, the 11 00:00:53,440 --> 00:00:58,980 show where we tell the story of people who bet their livelihoods on telling great stories 12 00:00:58,980 --> 00:01:01,020 and publishing books. 13 00:01:01,020 --> 00:01:06,380 Today we cover the journey of a woman who bootstrapped her way into creating two successful 14 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:11,940 London publishing companies. 15 00:01:11,940 --> 00:01:19,220 We will use as our guide Judy Piatkis' 2021 memoir called Ahead of Her Time. 16 00:01:19,220 --> 00:01:21,660 Let's start with the book blurb. 17 00:01:21,660 --> 00:01:27,760 Judy Piatkis launched Piatkis Books at a time when women were not expected to be entrepreneurs. 18 00:01:27,760 --> 00:01:34,060 With no university degree, professional qualifications, or financial backing, she taught herself how 19 00:01:34,060 --> 00:01:39,040 to be a publisher while also looking after her young family that included a child with 20 00:01:39,040 --> 00:01:41,300 severe cerebral palsy. 21 00:01:41,300 --> 00:01:46,700 This is the story of how Judy and her team built Piatkis from a startup operating out 22 00:01:46,700 --> 00:01:50,440 of her spare room into a self-help empire. 23 00:01:50,440 --> 00:01:55,540 She founded Piatkis Books when she was in her twenties and grew the company to become 24 00:01:55,540 --> 00:02:01,680 an internationally recognized brand before selling it in 2007, just before the global 25 00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:03,640 financial crisis. 26 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:06,400 So that was from the blurb on the back of the book. 27 00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:12,640 Join me now as we hear how she went from teenage typist and failed literary agent to then build 28 00:02:12,640 --> 00:02:19,200 one company focused on selling backlist titles to libraries and then another, a publishing 29 00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:21,360 house that she put her name on. 30 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:26,900 Piatkis Books did it all from building an international brand to publishing perennial 31 00:02:26,900 --> 00:02:31,360 bestseller Nora Roberts. 32 00:02:31,360 --> 00:02:37,760 For our story, we are very much going to focus on how Judy got started in her career and 33 00:02:37,760 --> 00:02:41,760 kind of the early days of her founding a publishing house. 34 00:02:41,760 --> 00:02:46,440 We'll talk about some of her successes and struggles after that, but I really want to 35 00:02:46,440 --> 00:02:52,440 focus on the early years and her start because oftentimes we see people and we think of them 36 00:02:52,440 --> 00:02:56,960 as a finished product or they've always been this way and that's never the case. 37 00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:58,760 They always started somewhere. 38 00:02:58,760 --> 00:03:00,360 They always had struggles. 39 00:03:00,360 --> 00:03:03,040 Judy Piatkis is certainly no different. 40 00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:06,280 Let's start just really briefly then with school. 41 00:03:06,280 --> 00:03:11,860 If you've studied entrepreneurs, you've probably seen that many successful founders struggle 42 00:03:11,860 --> 00:03:15,440 in school or are uninterested. 43 00:03:15,440 --> 00:03:21,940 They are ambitious and want to get inventing or building or earning or exploring. 44 00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:24,640 They are driven to do things in the world. 45 00:03:24,640 --> 00:03:26,200 Judy had some of that. 46 00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:31,640 When she was young, she was identified as smart enough to skip a grade and got a scholarship 47 00:03:31,640 --> 00:03:38,960 to a private school, but she didn't do enough in high school in her A levels to attend university, 48 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:43,680 partly because she was too interested in partying to get good grades. 49 00:03:43,680 --> 00:03:48,820 She also later credits skipping a grade with part of the reason that she never particularly 50 00:03:48,820 --> 00:03:50,360 excelled at math. 51 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:55,880 She never really filled in all of the deficit that she missed when she skipped a year of 52 00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:56,880 math. 53 00:03:56,880 --> 00:03:59,640 Instead of university, she started working. 54 00:03:59,640 --> 00:04:05,880 More through happenstance, she started working as a typist for a publishing house and probably 55 00:04:05,880 --> 00:04:10,680 not a particularly good typist either. 56 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:16,440 In those first few years out of school, she cycled through a number of entry-level jobs 57 00:04:16,440 --> 00:04:18,160 in publishing. 58 00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:24,840 At 21, she worked in publicity at publishing house Robert Hale and got to wine and dine 59 00:04:24,840 --> 00:04:26,720 literary editors. 60 00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:31,840 From the editor's perspective, presumably talking to an energetic young woman over lunch 61 00:04:31,840 --> 00:04:35,000 was an upgrade on what they had been doing before. 62 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,800 To earn more money, she also offered to read manuscripts at night and on weekends, but 63 00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:46,800 she found that her tastes in books were more commercial than kind of the highbrow literary 64 00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:50,180 fiction that Robert Hale was publishing. 65 00:04:50,180 --> 00:04:55,640 While there, she also opened a literary agency on the side, but when a book editor reached 66 00:04:55,640 --> 00:05:01,760 out inquiring what clients she had, she and her partner agreed that they didn't have enough 67 00:05:01,760 --> 00:05:03,680 experience to actually make a go of it. 68 00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:09,080 That sort of the gig was up and they ended up shutting down this agency before it had 69 00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:11,360 done any real business. 70 00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:16,240 After that, she realized it was time for her to get more experience and so she moved and 71 00:05:16,240 --> 00:05:20,240 continued cycling through different jobs in publishing. 72 00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:25,160 One of her next jobs was this time at a literary agency. 73 00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:31,600 While at the agency, a brand new book publisher reached out to ask the agency if it had any 74 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:37,280 out of print titles that this new publishing company could re-release. 75 00:05:37,280 --> 00:05:38,560 Piatkus raised her hand. 76 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:44,380 She volunteered to go through the back catalog to identify possible books. 77 00:05:44,380 --> 00:05:49,960 She identified several in the agency's back catalog that might be appealing to the publishing 78 00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:51,720 company to print. 79 00:05:51,720 --> 00:05:57,040 The company did take a number of them from that list and re-release them. 80 00:05:57,200 --> 00:06:03,440 What this did is it grew revenue for the agency, grew profits, and also brought more revenue 81 00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:07,680 and more money to the authors that were selected. 82 00:06:07,680 --> 00:06:12,220 Another thing she did is she reached out to a newspaper advice columnist. 83 00:06:12,220 --> 00:06:16,800 One of the things I learned in reading the book is that in British phrasing, they talk 84 00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:20,640 about advice columnists as agony ants. 85 00:06:20,640 --> 00:06:25,820 She reached out to an agony ant about whether she was interested in writing a book. 86 00:06:25,820 --> 00:06:28,900 She commissioned her, she signed her to the agency. 87 00:06:28,900 --> 00:06:33,460 Both of those things, kind of looking through the back catalog and reaching out and proactively 88 00:06:33,460 --> 00:06:42,060 finding an author, brought in new revenue to the agency and earned her a raise. 89 00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:51,980 Now Judy is 24 years old, it is 1974, and she and a partner, Edwin Buchhalter, co-found 90 00:06:51,980 --> 00:06:55,580 a new publishing house, Severn House. 91 00:06:55,580 --> 00:06:59,940 By this time, Judy had been working in publishing for five years. 92 00:06:59,940 --> 00:07:05,260 Her partner was the son of a London bookseller, so he had exposure to the business. 93 00:07:05,260 --> 00:07:10,020 That wasn't true for her, she was the daughter of a homemaker, her father was a businessman 94 00:07:10,020 --> 00:07:13,900 doing building construction, he was in the building trade. 95 00:07:13,900 --> 00:07:18,300 She and Edwin then start a new business, Severn House. 96 00:07:18,300 --> 00:07:25,300 They agreed to put forward £5,000 in capital and that each of them would bring half, so 97 00:07:25,300 --> 00:07:28,220 each had to come up with £2,500. 98 00:07:28,220 --> 00:07:34,180 She was pretty frugal and could come up with £2,000 on her own, but she had to borrow 99 00:07:34,180 --> 00:07:37,380 £500 from her parents to cover her half. 100 00:07:37,380 --> 00:07:43,380 And the two of them, Edward and Judy, split the business ownership 50-50. 101 00:07:43,380 --> 00:07:50,060 The business of Severn House was to start in a niche, and their niche was to sell to 102 00:07:50,060 --> 00:07:51,780 libraries. 103 00:07:51,780 --> 00:07:57,780 Specifically to start, they wanted to find out-of-print books from popular authors who 104 00:07:57,780 --> 00:08:02,020 were popular now, but maybe their early books hadn't been. 105 00:08:02,020 --> 00:08:07,300 And often this would be early career overlooked books that people may be interested in now 106 00:08:07,300 --> 00:08:09,780 that the author was popular. 107 00:08:09,780 --> 00:08:14,680 The other niche was, or the other thing they were looking for, is books that had previously 108 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:19,220 sold well and been popular, but were now out of print. 109 00:08:19,220 --> 00:08:24,060 There are a couple things to know from this, is their niche is very narrow. 110 00:08:24,060 --> 00:08:27,940 They're selling to libraries, so they're selling hardback books. 111 00:08:27,940 --> 00:08:33,440 And notably, Severn didn't have to provide the books and didn't provide the books directly 112 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:38,700 to the library, because each library often had its own requirements related to covers 113 00:08:38,700 --> 00:08:40,540 and to binding. 114 00:08:40,540 --> 00:08:48,160 So Severn House went through middlemen wholesalers, and the wholesalers were Severn's customers. 115 00:08:48,160 --> 00:08:52,260 One of the things the model reminds me of is a little bit like Ingram's book depository 116 00:08:52,260 --> 00:08:53,720 business. 117 00:08:53,720 --> 00:09:00,500 The libraries were steady customers, the wholesalers ordered early, they were dependable, they 118 00:09:00,500 --> 00:09:02,560 paid on time. 119 00:09:02,560 --> 00:09:06,700 Similar to what Ingram had in the book depository business when it started. 120 00:09:06,700 --> 00:09:12,400 And obviously there was also public money involved, so for Ingram it was school systems, 121 00:09:12,400 --> 00:09:16,500 for here it's libraries. 122 00:09:16,500 --> 00:09:22,400 To keep expenses down, the two of them were the company's only employees, and they both 123 00:09:22,400 --> 00:09:24,200 worked from their homes. 124 00:09:24,200 --> 00:09:27,840 So no corporate offices, no employees. 125 00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:30,360 The model proved successful. 126 00:09:30,360 --> 00:09:36,300 They published a couple of books every month, libraries grew to trust them and liked the 127 00:09:36,300 --> 00:09:38,260 books that they offered. 128 00:09:38,260 --> 00:09:44,040 The company grew, as they grew they added office space and employees. 129 00:09:44,060 --> 00:09:49,540 But as they grew after a couple years, and now they're working in the same space, there 130 00:09:49,540 --> 00:09:53,800 was increasing tension between Judy and her co-founder. 131 00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:58,340 And Judy found that the work and the environment had become less fun. 132 00:09:58,340 --> 00:10:05,620 Finally, Judy approaches Buckhalter and tells him, it's time for you to buy me out. 133 00:10:05,620 --> 00:10:12,060 It's 1978, and Edwin Buckhalter agreed to buy Judy's half of the business. 134 00:10:12,060 --> 00:10:19,600 They have an outside party, value the firm, and they settle on £50,000 to be paid over 135 00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:22,600 the course of 24 months. 136 00:10:22,600 --> 00:10:29,840 To receive £50,000 after four years of founding and running the company was a really fantastic 137 00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:35,520 return on her initial investment of £2,500 just the four years before. 138 00:10:35,520 --> 00:10:39,680 She increased her investment 20x. 139 00:10:39,680 --> 00:10:46,540 But much of her profit was eaten up in taxes, particularly at the time in the late 70s. 140 00:10:46,540 --> 00:10:51,380 Even after taxes though, she now had money and some time to think and decide what she 141 00:10:51,380 --> 00:10:55,500 wanted to do next. 142 00:10:55,500 --> 00:11:02,060 As a condition of the sale of her ownership in Severn House, she was free to start a new 143 00:11:02,060 --> 00:11:08,140 publishing house as long as she didn't try to take any of the authors that Severn had. 144 00:11:08,140 --> 00:11:11,620 She couldn't try to poach anybody from their roster. 145 00:11:11,620 --> 00:11:17,700 In 1978, after some thought and some time off, and time with her family and her kids, 146 00:11:17,700 --> 00:11:24,000 Judy was in her late 20s, but now had 10 years of experience in publishing. 147 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:28,560 And so she started a new company, and she names it this time, she names it after herself, 148 00:11:28,560 --> 00:11:30,440 Piatkas Books. 149 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:37,080 She started it again in the same niche, selling backlist books to libraries. 150 00:11:37,080 --> 00:11:39,360 Then she's running the same playbook. 151 00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:46,400 She worked out of her home, she kept costs low, initially she took no salary, and was 152 00:11:46,400 --> 00:11:48,480 very slow to hire. 153 00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:52,240 Her goal was to publish four books each month. 154 00:11:52,240 --> 00:11:57,080 She started in the same niche, but over time she expanded. 155 00:11:57,080 --> 00:12:03,600 She expanded beyond that initial niche, and little by little, built Piatkas Books into 156 00:12:03,600 --> 00:12:06,860 a full service publishing house. 157 00:12:06,860 --> 00:12:11,620 Part of what we'll cover is sort of the story of how step by step she gets there. 158 00:12:11,620 --> 00:12:15,100 And the first expansion comes pretty early. 159 00:12:15,100 --> 00:12:21,680 Her first expansion in the niche was, there was a new wave that she found for the publishing 160 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:27,680 company to ride, and that wave was mass market paperbacks. 161 00:12:27,680 --> 00:12:33,460 If you know the history of publishing in the 70s and the 80s, many genre publishers think 162 00:12:33,460 --> 00:12:39,460 mystery or science fiction or romance publishers were publishing straight to paperback without 163 00:12:39,460 --> 00:12:41,740 first publishing a hardback book. 164 00:12:41,740 --> 00:12:47,120 Traditionally, there would be a hardback first, and then maybe a paperback would follow. 165 00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:51,280 And they were skipping the hardback and trying to hit a different price point and appeal 166 00:12:51,280 --> 00:12:52,980 to different readers. 167 00:12:52,980 --> 00:12:57,240 And these paperbacks were called mass market paperbacks. 168 00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:04,720 Piatkas contacted those publishers and offered to publish their books in hardback for libraries. 169 00:13:04,720 --> 00:13:08,920 This would open up a new market for these genre publishers. 170 00:13:08,920 --> 00:13:14,640 Very early, she was able to get a number of bestselling American authors, including V.C. 171 00:13:14,640 --> 00:13:19,920 Andrews and the perennial bestseller, even now, Danielle Steele. 172 00:13:19,920 --> 00:13:25,920 Notably in the contracts, Piatkas got the right to sell books not just to libraries, 173 00:13:25,920 --> 00:13:27,880 but also to book clubs. 174 00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:31,560 So that's sort of the one piece of initial expansion. 175 00:13:31,560 --> 00:13:36,560 A big benefit of this niche of publishing, kind of publishing the hardback version of 176 00:13:36,560 --> 00:13:42,840 a popular mass market paperback, is that Piatkas Books didn't need to do any marketing of the 177 00:13:42,840 --> 00:13:44,480 books it published. 178 00:13:44,480 --> 00:13:50,160 Instead, they could just ride on the coattails of the marketing and promotion that the genre 179 00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:54,520 publishers were already doing for the paperbacks. 180 00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:59,600 Libraries and book clubs knew about the books and were happy to order them in hardback from 181 00:13:59,600 --> 00:14:05,240 Piatkas because they knew that their customers or their patrons would be interested. 182 00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:10,660 Book clubs became a valuable tool for her publishing house, even though selling to them 183 00:14:10,660 --> 00:14:13,480 meant selling at a big discount. 184 00:14:13,480 --> 00:14:19,480 The benefit was that selling to book clubs meant that Piatkas could do larger initial 185 00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:21,200 print runs. 186 00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:27,160 Larger print runs meant lower cost to print, meant better unit economics, and hopefully 187 00:14:27,160 --> 00:14:28,640 a better margin. 188 00:14:28,640 --> 00:14:33,840 And this is something that comes up in the Harvard Business Review case study that we 189 00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:38,080 talked about in the James Patterson episode. 190 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:43,540 And running this playbook, sort of starting with this model, shows early signs of success. 191 00:14:43,660 --> 00:14:52,860 In its first full year, so kind of 1980, Piatkas Books brought in 180,000 pounds in revenue 192 00:14:52,860 --> 00:14:55,660 and was able to turn a profit. 193 00:14:55,660 --> 00:14:59,380 As the company grew, she continued to be very frugal. 194 00:14:59,380 --> 00:15:05,820 So instead of office space, with each new hire, she added a new desk to her house. 195 00:15:05,820 --> 00:15:08,740 Everybody worked out of her house or they worked remotely. 196 00:15:09,100 --> 00:15:14,140 It's kind of notable to me that in the early 1980s, she was essentially doing telework 197 00:15:14,140 --> 00:15:18,020 without email or teleconferencing. 198 00:15:18,020 --> 00:15:19,620 Eventually she started to run out of space. 199 00:15:19,620 --> 00:15:27,340 I think at last count she had six desks crammed into a room in her house. 200 00:15:27,340 --> 00:15:33,020 Within five years of launching, Piatkas had revenue of one million pounds. 201 00:15:33,020 --> 00:15:38,700 Six years after launching, she bought a townhouse to serve as the office building for the company. 202 00:15:39,700 --> 00:15:45,780 Owning three floors on Windmill Street in London, very near the British Museum. 203 00:15:45,780 --> 00:15:53,220 It gave the company 2,800 square feet and she paid 118,000 pounds for the building. 204 00:15:53,220 --> 00:15:58,020 They were at that time still publishing four novels each month. 205 00:15:58,020 --> 00:16:03,340 Before we wrap, I want to cover a few more things about Piatkas Books expanding their 206 00:16:03,340 --> 00:16:05,580 various niches. 207 00:16:05,580 --> 00:16:08,840 So we talked about book clubs already. 208 00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:16,020 Their next big venture was they tackled original nonfiction and then from there they moved 209 00:16:16,020 --> 00:16:21,280 to originating original fiction in the UK market. 210 00:16:21,280 --> 00:16:28,540 They also expanded to other English language markets covering Ireland, New Zealand, Australia 211 00:16:28,540 --> 00:16:30,820 and South Africa. 212 00:16:30,820 --> 00:16:36,380 And each time they made an expansion, they tried to use the experience in a related line 213 00:16:36,380 --> 00:16:40,940 of publishing to help them as they moved into a new one. 214 00:16:40,940 --> 00:16:45,340 In terms of nonfiction, they published a lot of cookbooks. 215 00:16:45,340 --> 00:16:51,460 Notable maybe to American audiences is they published a number of cookbooks by Mary Berry 216 00:16:51,460 --> 00:16:55,020 who you might know from the Great British Bake Off. 217 00:16:55,020 --> 00:16:57,180 They did lots of cookbooks. 218 00:16:57,220 --> 00:17:03,620 They began to specialize in down market fiction targeted at women. 219 00:17:03,620 --> 00:17:07,060 Women's lit, sometimes it was called chick lit that actually became a term of art in 220 00:17:07,060 --> 00:17:08,720 publishing. 221 00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:13,620 They did a number of books on kind of Jewish heritage books and then as I already said 222 00:17:13,620 --> 00:17:15,100 cookbooks. 223 00:17:15,100 --> 00:17:21,660 They also began to expand into self-help and new age books, which from the biography or 224 00:17:21,660 --> 00:17:26,180 the memoir Judy found particularly interesting and timely and compelling. 225 00:17:26,180 --> 00:17:30,380 I did check her Twitter recently and that's much of what she was posting about as sort 226 00:17:30,380 --> 00:17:35,340 of books related to kind of astrology and other things like that. 227 00:17:35,340 --> 00:17:40,220 I did want to include a really interesting story or one that I found interesting. 228 00:17:40,220 --> 00:17:45,460 Is that they wanted to move, so initially their focus had been hardback books and particularly 229 00:17:45,460 --> 00:17:48,660 hardback books being sold to libraries. 230 00:17:48,660 --> 00:17:54,980 And they were in their effort to expand to be kind of a full service publishing house. 231 00:17:54,980 --> 00:17:58,140 They wanted to expand from hardback to paperback. 232 00:17:58,140 --> 00:18:01,980 They wanted to be a fiction paperback publisher. 233 00:18:01,980 --> 00:18:07,900 And what they did is they developed a cover design for the various books and they wanted 234 00:18:07,900 --> 00:18:10,140 it to be eye catching. 235 00:18:10,140 --> 00:18:14,100 Their cover had yellow and pink stripes. 236 00:18:14,100 --> 00:18:20,220 And Judy thought rightly that the most important piece of marketing is the cover. 237 00:18:20,220 --> 00:18:24,920 And so they wanted a cover that would really get people's attention. 238 00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:29,380 A number of stores who they had partnered with ordered the paperbacks and the initial 239 00:18:29,380 --> 00:18:33,300 response from the stores was really positive. 240 00:18:33,300 --> 00:18:35,700 But the books didn't sell. 241 00:18:35,700 --> 00:18:41,500 The bookstores had ordered the paperbacks because they liked the company and wanted 242 00:18:41,500 --> 00:18:43,700 to be supportive. 243 00:18:43,700 --> 00:18:49,000 And one of Judy's takeaways is that they could have saved themselves from the costly 244 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:50,840 mistake that it was. 245 00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:54,880 And it was costly because most of the paperback books that they had ordered ended up being 246 00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:58,900 returned to them because people weren't interested in buying them. 247 00:18:58,900 --> 00:19:02,860 Her takeaway is that they could have saved themselves much of the headache and the loss 248 00:19:02,860 --> 00:19:07,440 simply by asking the store representatives what they thought of the covers before they 249 00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:09,760 ended up printing them and shipping them. 250 00:19:09,760 --> 00:19:15,160 So early on, early feedback would have helped and likely save them from the very costly 251 00:19:15,160 --> 00:19:19,600 failure that they had. 252 00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:25,600 In terms of books, one of the notable authors that Piatkus publishes is Nora Roberts and 253 00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:28,100 her pseudonym JD Robb. 254 00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:30,240 And Nora Roberts is a perennial bestseller. 255 00:19:30,240 --> 00:19:35,380 In some ways she mirrors kind of James Patterson in just the number of books that she gets 256 00:19:35,380 --> 00:19:36,380 out every year. 257 00:19:36,380 --> 00:19:40,680 And they're almost always guaranteed to be on the bestsellers list. 258 00:19:41,120 --> 00:19:45,440 Nora Roberts' agent had reached out because Nora Roberts had been unhappy with her sales 259 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:51,500 in the United Kingdom and kind of English-speaking countries outside of the U.S. 260 00:19:51,500 --> 00:19:56,280 And by this point in the 2000s, they did a lot to market the books. 261 00:19:56,280 --> 00:20:00,960 They did advertisements on the subway station on the Tube. 262 00:20:00,960 --> 00:20:04,280 They did ads in women's magazines. 263 00:20:04,280 --> 00:20:11,920 They made a deal with the Evening Standard newspaper to provide 20,000 copies of JD Robb 264 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:15,240 books to hand out to London commuters. 265 00:20:15,240 --> 00:20:17,480 So really a full court press. 266 00:20:17,480 --> 00:20:22,380 And over time, they're able to increase sales from where they had been and increase her 267 00:20:22,380 --> 00:20:25,080 notoriety within the market. 268 00:20:25,080 --> 00:20:32,320 They're able to reach number one, I think, in New Zealand, in Australia, in South Africa, 269 00:20:32,320 --> 00:20:35,960 but they were never quite able to do it in the United Kingdom. 270 00:20:35,960 --> 00:20:40,400 One of the reasons to spend a little bit of time mentioning Nora Roberts and JD Robb is 271 00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:46,540 they became a very significant part of the Piatkas business. 272 00:20:46,540 --> 00:20:53,200 In a given year, anywhere between one and two million pounds of revenue was from JD 273 00:20:53,200 --> 00:20:54,200 Robb. 274 00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:59,160 So that's between 10 and 20 percent of the total revenue for the company is coming from 275 00:20:59,160 --> 00:21:02,200 one author and her books. 276 00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:07,760 And that did create risk for the company, because if Roberts ever terminated her relationship 277 00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:12,580 and moved those books, or at least future books, to a new publisher, they'd have to 278 00:21:12,580 --> 00:21:17,480 find a way to replace that revenue. 279 00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:22,400 In the early 2000s, Judy did sit down and think about, what do I want to be doing with 280 00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:24,920 the company and with my future? 281 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:29,760 And realized that in 10 years, she didn't want to be doing this anymore. 282 00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:34,420 She had been working in publishing, running a company on her own, without a whole lot 283 00:21:34,420 --> 00:21:39,660 of training or guidance, and was ready to move on to other things. 284 00:21:39,660 --> 00:21:44,280 But in order to sell, she really wanted to push the company to be in a good place. 285 00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:49,480 So make sure all the books were in order, make sure that they were sort of doing all 286 00:21:49,480 --> 00:21:56,180 they could to make the company as successful as profitable before they go to a sale. 287 00:21:56,180 --> 00:22:01,140 And so she set the target at 10 million pounds in revenue for the year. 288 00:22:01,140 --> 00:22:03,320 And that's what they wanted to shoot for. 289 00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:08,900 She had a five-year plan to get there and created a board of directors to help advise 290 00:22:08,900 --> 00:22:13,580 and really worked on pushing the company to hit that target. 291 00:22:13,580 --> 00:22:18,180 She in fact was able to do it, sort of to the surprise of some of the people she worked 292 00:22:18,180 --> 00:22:23,720 with and maybe even her own, but set that really aggressive target and was able to hit it. 293 00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:29,680 And then she hires an outside firm to help advise on the sale and create a package to 294 00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:32,800 pitch to larger publishing companies. 295 00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:37,960 And one of the things that's going on, particularly in the 80s and the 90s, but continuing into 296 00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:43,240 the 2000s, is significant consolidation in the publishing industry. 297 00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:49,960 Now there are sort of five major publishing companies, and she was going to pitch to sell. 298 00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:55,340 And publishing companies wanted to conglomerate and thought that there were real economies 299 00:22:55,340 --> 00:22:59,560 of scale in getting more publishers under one roof. 300 00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:02,000 So she's able to successfully do that. 301 00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:09,520 And it times it very well, as I alluded to in the cold open, is she is able to sell in 302 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:17,200 kind of mid to late 2007, right before Northern Rock collapses. 303 00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:23,520 And there are lines of people queuing up to get their deposits out of the bank in the 304 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:29,060 United Kingdom before really the financial system seems like it's melting down. 305 00:23:29,060 --> 00:23:33,480 She was able to sell and sell out and really to her benefit. 306 00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:37,840 And her timing was excellent, which I alluded to in that snippet about the book, The Great 307 00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:41,560 Crash. 308 00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:46,160 Our bibliography for this one obviously is the book that we've been talking about. 309 00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:51,800 So that book is The Memoir Ahead of Her Time by Judy Pietkus. 310 00:23:51,800 --> 00:23:56,720 It was published in 2021 by Watkins Publishing. 311 00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:02,760 Note, I focused on the business and professional side of her story and really only touched 312 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:06,580 on sort of the early parts of most of that. 313 00:24:06,580 --> 00:24:13,320 But many of her efforts in the book talk about her balancing family and a demanding professional 314 00:24:13,360 --> 00:24:14,360 career. 315 00:24:14,360 --> 00:24:18,240 And that part may be more compelling to a lot of readers. 316 00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:23,160 She had a daughter with severe cerebral palsy and two other kids. 317 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:27,700 She worked from home with a live in nanny and set up a company with telework in a world 318 00:24:27,700 --> 00:24:31,120 before email and long before video conferencing. 319 00:24:31,120 --> 00:24:35,980 She went through a divorce, found a husband, and she also talks a decent bit about kind 320 00:24:35,980 --> 00:24:41,280 of the wisdom or appeal she found in many of the books she was publishing, sort of these 321 00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:46,720 new age type books. 322 00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:52,480 Join me next time for another episode of I'll Probably Delete This, where we'll explore 323 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:58,160 more stories of authors, storytellers, great books, and publishing. 324 00:24:58,160 --> 00:24:59,160 Happy reading. 325 00:24:59,160 --> 00:24:59,840 Thanks, everybody.