Episode 471 - AI in publishing with George Walkley
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
' This technology isn't going to go away. We need to figure out what role it has.' George Walkley is a legend in the publishing world. Over the last three decades, and particularly at Hachette, he has not only witnessed but helped shape the digital transformation of the industry, and these days he's focused on how publishers respond to the challenges and opportunities of AI. While the book itself has proved remarkably resilient as a technology, technology has transformed the ways in which they are written, discovered, read and published. What are the ethical and practical...
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Episode 470 - The emotional labour of writing a book
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
When we talk about writing business books, we usually focus on concepts, models, clarity, structure, impact. But alongside the head work is a whole invisible heap of emotional labour: behind every sentence lies a secret history of fear, doubt, frustration and occasionally joy. In this Best Bits episode, we're bringing that emotional undercurrent front and centre. Because writing a business book, just like starting a business, isn’t simply an intellectual exercise. There's a profound inner journey behind every book, from the creative spark of the idea, so often born of frustration, through...
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Episode 469 - Rebrand Right with Rachel Fairley & Sarah Robb
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'If you haven't diagnosed where the problem lies in the first place, how do you know which lever to pull?' If your idea of a rebrand is a new colour palette and an updated logo, think again. Too often, superficial design changes don't just fail to deliver growth, they actively damage the brands they were intended to bolster. Rachel Fairley and Sarah Robb have helped some of the world's biggest companies refresh their brands from the inside out. They argue that rebranding is more a strategic undertaking than a design project, and it's definitely NOT something that should be driven by a...
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Episode 468 - Another Door with Eleanor Tweddell
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
’That's all we've got as well in this age of AI… we have to put heart and soul into what we create.’ When someone cheerfully tells you that when one door closes another door opens in the midst of the rawness of redundancy, you’d be forgiven for wanting to punch them. Eleanor Tweddell certainly did. But then she made a conscious decision to ‘lean in’ to the idea of another door. It turns out that opportunity is often disguised as messy chaos – it’s all about how you choose to view it. Eleanor shares how her ‘Another Door’ blog, podcast and book came about – the idea...
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Episode 467 - Smart Conflict with Alice Driscoll & Louise van Haarst
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'The absence of healthy conflict is a large part of why people will leave jobs, because it's not where the growth happens.' How do you feel about hard conversations at work? Our approaches to conflict are often less than smart. Whether your tendency is towards avoidance or aggression, unless you're actively rejecting 'enforced harmony' for an environment in which people are able to disagree well, you're not getting the best out of your individuals or your organization. (Plus, given that most people are so bad at it, mastering hard conversations is the ultimate leadership edge.) Alice...
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Episode 466 - Behind the scenes at the Frankfurt Book Fair
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
Fresh (if you can call it that) from the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025, I'm here this week with a candid look at what we and other publishers were talking about over those three hectic days - global sales, routes to market, Amazon and its new algorithm, AI, digital library platforms, translation rights and the evolution of metadata - and what all of that means for authors. Plus why I HAD to go and have a good time each night - publishing runs on ideas, caffeine and relationships, and the Frankfurt Book Fair delivers all of these in spades.
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Episode 465 - Don't Be Yourself with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'At some point, the right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins.' 'Just be yourself.' It's the most uncontroversial advice in the world, right? Wrong, says Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. He's a man who likes to pick fights with universally accepted truths, because of course they're almost always more nuanced than we like to think. In his new book Don't Be Yourself, he points out that unfiltered authenticity is a privilege reserved for the powerful, and it's not just selfish and a terrible career move for the rest of us but also limits our potential - because we grow by...
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Episode 464 - Writing and community with Parul Bavishi
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'At the lowest end of what a business book could be is, yes, it's a calling card... [But] what if your book was transformational?' Parul Bavishi - editor, former literary scout, co-founder of the London Writers' Salon and host of the Writers' Hour podcast - knows something about the realities of writing and the power of creative community. Writing can be a lonely business, but in the LWS's regular 'Writers' Hour' Parul has seen the extraordinary power of 'body doubling' - simply watching others write can be all the encouragement and support a writer needs to get unstuck. And there are even...
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Ep 463 - Getting booked as a speaker with Maria Franzoni
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
' Nobody cares about you until you show that you understand their problem, their situation, and you care about them.' As a former international speaker bureau owner, Maria Franzoni knows exactly what it takes to become a highly sought-after (and well-paid) speaker. In this week’s conversation, she reveals what speaker bookers are really looking for, and you might be surprised to discover that how well you speak is only one factor in her brilliant Bookability Formula. We talk about the interplay and overlap between being a speaker and being an author, and the way in which books support...
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Episode 462 - Perfecting your pitch with James Spackman
The Extraordinary Business Book Club
'You need to kind of kick off this persuasive chain reaction and enlist people to the cause of your book.' In the book trade, James Spackman is known as 'The Pitch Doctor'. From an illustrious start to his career in the post room at Bloomsbury to sales, marketing and agency roles at Hachette, Osprey and now The bks Agency, his passion has always been to communicate a passion for books. As he explains, the success of a book depends in large part of a 'chain of enthusiasm' that has to begin with the author and ultimately - hopefully - reaches the reader through a complex ecosystem of...
info_outline'[Olympia's] gorgeous vaulted glass roof feels kind of like a metaphor for the fair itself. Rooted in history, but always looking upwards and outwards.'
Something a bit different today: join me for a deep dive into a publisher's experience of London Book Fair 2025. I have been to a LOT of book fairs, but this one was a little different. I'm exploring the issues faced by publishers of all sizes today, navigating challenges such as AI’s disruptive potential to the demands of new EU regulations and the current geopolitical chaos, and reflecting on the opportunities they present.
Whether you’re in the business or simply curious about the world of books, this episode is a behind-the-scenes look at an industry perpetually on the brink of transformation as well as a very personal reflection on how it feels to be part of it.