About

Richard began his career at Croom Helm Ltd in London, as a desk editor in the production department, in 1982. No computers were involved! He then became a travelling sales representative for Croom Helm, then a general commissioning editor.

In 1986 Richard moved to Open University Press to be commissioning editor in life sciences (the idea being to actually use his degree in human physiology). He then went on to start a list in health studies, which can now be seen under the McGraw Hill/Open University Press imprint. After the privatisation of Open University Press he became a member of the executive management group, with the title editorial director. Ironically, one of the first tasks he had as editorial director was to negotiate the sale of the science list to Wiley, which later led to him being recruited by Wiley.

In 1992 Richard moved to Wiley to be publisher in the new Professional Division, starting up a new list in economics and finance (books and journals) and also managing the publishing team (editorial and marketing) in management, psychology and (later) architecture. He became part of the team developing Wiley’s first online journals system ‘Wiley InterScience’ and was made director of journals development.

In 1999 Richard was approached by Princeton University Press with the offer to set-up and run their first overseas office, in the UK. This was started in August 1999, in Woodstock near Oxford. He wrote and delivered a successful five-year business plan. He was responsible for managing the business, recruiting editorial and marketing staff and commissioning books. By 2010 PUP had become a major player in the social sciences and humanities in the UK for scholarly monographs and academic trade books. Sales of books originating from the UK office grew from zero to over £2.0 million in ten years, and UK-commissioned books were the Press’s biggest revenue-earners in financial years 2003 (Triumph of the Optimists), 2005 (On Bullshit) and 2009 (The Princeton Companion to Mathematics). While at PUP, Richard gained an MBA with the Open University.

Richard left Princeton University Press in 2010 and decided to train to be a school science teacher (an attempt to get back to his degree subject). He did this until 2013 before finally realising that he wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. Also in 2010 he set up London Publishing Partnership Ltd (with Sam Clark and Jon Wainwright): a publishing services firm that later became a publisher in its own right.

Keen to get back into publishing after teaching, Richard was lucky enough to be taken on as publishing manager by the German psychometric test publishing firm Hogrefe, working in their Oxford office. This was a steep learning curve for a non-psychologist, with no knowledge of psychometric tests! Despite this handicap, he became general manager of the Oxford office before leaving in 2017 to take up an offer to open McGill-Queen’s University Press’s first overseas office (a return to something like the role he enjoyed with Princeton University Press).

At MQUP Richard built a list in politics and history, with books winning major prizes and garnering reviews in The Financial Times, The Economist, Nature, The TLS, The Wall Street Journal and International Affairs. Six new book series were commissioned. 

London Publishing Partnership had by this time become much more than a part-time affair, and at the end of 2023 Richard left MQUP to focus his time on this and to start, in parallel, this consulting business. In this role, since April 2024 he has been Interim Manager for University of Westminster Press.