Talking through my hat
Business & Economics Podcasts
This podcast explores bookish businesses and the fantastic people who create them, looking at why business are started, how they keep going and where we can take them in the future. I'm John Pettigrew - a hat wearer, a recovering editor and the creator of Futureproofs, and you can subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on Twitter as @john_pettigrew. The podcast is on hiatus for a few months from Easter 2019 but we'll be back later in the year with more great people!
Location:
United Kingdom
Description:
This podcast explores bookish businesses and the fantastic people who create them, looking at why business are started, how they keep going and where we can take them in the future. I'm John Pettigrew - a hat wearer, a recovering editor and the creator of Futureproofs, and you can subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on Twitter as @john_pettigrew. The podcast is on hiatus for a few months from Easter 2019 but we'll be back later in the year with more great people!
Twitter:
@john_pettigrew
Language:
English
Episodes
52: Publishing people: build teams and careers in 2020
10/20/2020
This year has shown once again how important our teams and business relationships are - and that our needs can change in a heartbeat. Join our panel to discuss questions like:
The panel discussion was streamed on YouTube, followed by a live Q&A on Twitter under the event hashtag #TalkingThroughMyHat.
The panel
Nancy Roberts
Nancy is the founder of Umbrella, who use data and technology to overcome corporate bias and provide equality of opportunity at work. She also leads the Technology...
Duration:00:55:11
51: Publishing innovation: how do we manage change?
10/14/2020
This year has proved, more than ever, that it's impossible to predict the future. But given change is inevitable, how do we manage and prepare for change? Our panel discusses questions like:
The panel discussion was streamed live on YouTube, followed by a live Q&A on Twitter under the event hashtag #TalkingThroughMyHat.
The panel
Bec Evans
Bec Evans is a writer, speaker and business founder. While working in publishing she turned her side hustle Prolifiko - a writing productivity coach -...
Duration:00:56:18
50: Why start a publishing business? (Best Bits)
4/16/2019
For episode 50, I've looked back at the past year of interviews and put together a compilation of some of the best bits - or, at least, some memorable ones for me! In this episode, I look back at why people set up a publishing business, whether it's a small publisher, a tech business or something else. Reasons range from being made redundant, through frustration with how the industry works, to a simple passion for doing something else.
This episode features extracts from interviews with...
Duration:00:24:37
48: Follow your customer (Miral Sattar interview)
4/2/2019
Miral Sattar is CEO and Founder of LearnSelfPublishingFast and of Bibliocrunch, an award-winning marketplace that connects authors with vetted editors, designers, marketers and more. She's worked in the media industries for 11 years, including launching several digital initiatives at Time. She's written for and been featured in Time, Forbes, Consumer Reports, CNN, and New York Daily News. She's also launching another new business, Bearily Bear, selling cuddly toys that read audiobooks to...
Duration:00:29:36
47: Readers, users and scale (Emmanuel Kolade interview)
3/26/2019
Emmanuel Kolade is the founder of Shulph, a book-technology company focussed on multi-format reading experiences. He comes from technology industry where he has spent the last 17 years specialising in human-centred design to build digital products. Before founding Shulph, Emmanuel led PricewaterhouseCoopers digital experience practice to deliver digital transformation programmes for some of the UK and world's leading brands. He's also worked for a wide range of large and small businesses...
Duration:00:31:37
46: From German Literature to blockchain (Sebastian Posth interview)
3/19/2019
Sebastian Posth is a serial entrepreneur and consultant for the publishing industry, with a focus on digital publishing and innovation. His interests always feature the hot topics, currently including data analytics and blockchain technologies. Sebastian has been working for 15 years in a variety of roles to transform these new technologies into useful products, services or tools for the publishing industry, with the aim of supporting media companies to develop and implement a digital...
Duration:00:29:00
45: Access to ideas and nature (Helen Bagnall interview)
3/12/2019
Helen Bagnall is co-founder of Salon London, co-founder of the Transmission Prize for artists who promote bold, beautiful ideas, and also Director of the Also Festival of ideas. Before all that, she worked as a writer for Sony Pictures Entertainment, looking after characters across a range of platforms.
In this episode, she talks about how Salon London helps people to spend time with new ideas, and how the Also Festival gives even more space for this, because you need time to properly learn...
Duration:00:30:17
44: Keeping a broad focus (Lorraine Shanley interview)
3/5/2019
Lorraine Shanley is co-founder and President of Market Partners International, who are consultants for the changing environment of publishing. Before MPI, Lorraine worked at Barnes & Noble, Book of the Month Club and HarperCollins, and now also serves on the Advisory Board of New York University’s Publishing Program, and for five years chaired the Launch Kids Media conference at Digital Book World. In her spare time she writes articles on publishing, technology and social media, and...
Duration:00:29:22
43: Following the river (Richard Nash interview)
2/26/2019
Richard Nash is a coach, strategist, and serial entrepreneur in new and traditional media. He led partnerships and content at the culture discovery start-up Small Demons and the new media app Byliner, and ran the publisher Soft Skull Press, for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers' Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. Utne Reader named him one of Fifty Visionaries Changing Your World and in 2013 the Frankfurt Book Fair picked him as one of the...
Duration:00:34:37
42: Finding new voices (Kevin Duffy interview)
2/19/2019
Kevin Duffy is co-founder of Bluemoose Books. Having been in publishing for 20 years back in 2006, he and his wife mortgaged their house to start Bluemoose, with the aim of publishing new and exciting voices. Since then, their books have been sold in 82 countries, and had rights sold to British TV and Hollywood. He also founded the Northern Fiction Alliance, and is an author in his own right.
In this episode, Kevin talks about how Bluemoose arose from his bile and anger with the big...
Duration:00:35:53
41: Growing open literature (Sean Preston interview)
2/12/2019
Sean Preston is the founder and editor of short-fiction platform Open Pen, whose self-titled magazine has been described as “More like a shot of absinthe than a boring pint of lager,” and is making its first forays into book production. He's a proud East Londoner, an ex-pro wrestler, a full-time thing-maker at a South London record label, and an occasional short fiction writer.
We talk about the deliberately analogue, hard-copy, zine approach that Sean took and the motivations behind that,...
Duration:00:33:32
40: From personal plaything to book business (Jens Tröger interview)
2/5/2019
Jens Tröger, the founder of Bookalope is an experienced software engineer and computer science researcher with over two decades of industry experience including Microsoft Xbox, Intel Labs and Oracle Research. He is also a book lover, typophile and book designer for print and e-publishing. Bookalope weds his two passions (computer science and book design) in a set of intelligent tools that automate analysis, clean up, and conversion to and from various formats.
In this episode, we talk about...
Duration:00:32:22
39: Learn by building (Ron Martinez interview)
1/29/2019
Ron Martinez is the Founder and Principal of design and product-innovation firm Invention Arts, and also a prolific inventor with >60 US patents and many more worldwide in the fields of media, mobile and social technologies, and commerce. He's worked in Intellectual Property Innovation for Yahoo!, and enjoyed a long and successful career designing, producing, and coding consumer software products, including pioneering interactive fiction, entertainment and educational software, massively...
Duration:00:32:07
38: Building a grammar for augmented reality (Michael Kowalski interview)
1/22/2019
Michael Kowalski is the founder of Storienteer, which is exploring augmented-reality, as well as the programme director of the Confluence conference this February. Before all that, he worked as a software developer at the Guardian and was Head of Publishing for a digital initiative at News International, as well as founding two other businesses, Kitsite and Contentment.
In this episode, we talk about what augmented reality, or mixed reality, actually is and what it could mean, as well as...
Duration:00:27:47
37: Just-in-time learning (Ryan Morison interview)
1/15/2019
Ryan Morison is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience across two continents developing and commercialising digital publishing solutions, from a digital reading ecosystem, through a multichannel content-management solution to an award-winning direct-sales platform. He's even run a successful crowdfunding campaign for a subscription-based website! Now, he runs publishing-technology company Erudition and direct-to-consumer music publisher Informance.
In this week's episode, we...
Duration:00:29:08
36: Curation as marketing (Gary Price interview)
1/8/2019
Gary Price is a librarian, author and co-founder of infoDocket (on the web and Twitter), now part of the Library Journal. Before that, he co-founded ResourceShelf and Docuticker, which he edited and ran for ten years. In addition, he's worked as a librarian at George Washington University and as Director of Online Information Resources at Ask.com.
In this week's episode, we talk about the importance of curation in an information-rich environment, and how being that curator helps establish...
Duration:00:34:08
35: Technology, process and people (Bill Rosenblatt interview)
12/18/2018
Bill Rosenblatt is a media-industry commentator on intellectual property and technology, President of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, and programme chair of the Copyright and Technology Conferences. In addition, he's spoken at the Davos summit, written a book about the business and practice of DRM, and come up through publishing from an IT background.
In this episode, we talk about what it's like to work in publishing and media when you come from an IT background, and what it was...
Duration:00:33:23
34: Climbing a new ladder (Joanna Penn interview)
12/11/2018
Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She spent more than a decade as an IT consultant, but is now much better known as a writer and independent publisher of thrillers and dark fantasy novels, an award-winning entrepreneur, a publishing commentator, and a podcaster and YouTuber. Her long-running blog, The Creative Penn, shares what she's learned and helps give authors the information and inspiration they need to get published.
In this episode, we talk about...
Duration:00:32:52
33: Flexibility and community (Georgina Atwell interview)
12/4/2018
Georgina Atwell is the founder of Toppsta, a community for reading, reviewing and discovering great children's books. Before that, she worked at Penguin UK, and also for Apple's iBooks team, which all gives her a unique perspective!
In this episode, we talk about the importance of flexibility to a small business, how best to use Facebook and social media (and when to own your own customer relationships), and how writing and reading reviews gives a better experience than algorithms.
Duration:00:33:25
32: Metadata and markets (Laura Dawson interview)
11/27/2018
Laura Dawson is a metadata expert for the media, entertainment and publishing industries, and the Founder/CEO of Numerical Gurus. After years working in and around publishing, she got involved with the International Standard Name Identifier. And, on the side, she ran The Solitary Chef, a book and website platform for people who live alone.
In this week's episode, we talk about the ISNI and why musician and actress Lady Gaga has two while Brian May (Queen guitarist and astrophysicist) has...
Duration:00:30:43