Posted by Maleeha Mir on 2 May 2025, in Event reports, News
Photos by Lisa Gee, Words by Chris Russell
You can listen to the complete audio recording of this event via this link.
On one of the warmest days of the year so far, Byte The Book followed sunset drinks on the Century Club rooftop with a three-person panel on how authors can best build a business around their books. Byte’s Justine Solomons was joined by Rachel Mills, director and founder of the Rachel Mills Literary Agency, Richard Charkin, publisher at Mensch Publishing and author of My Back Pages, and Georgia Kirke, founder of ClioBooks.ai and Write Business Results.
Our panel from left to right: Justine Solomons, Richard Charkin, Georgia Kirke, and Rachel Mills.
To begin, the panellists gave some background on their personal origin stories, leading to a summary from Richard on how he ended up writing My Back Pages, a memoir documenting his five decades in corporate publishing. Looking back at how much the business has changed since his salad days, he observed that the most notable development wasn’t technology, or the dissemination of a once London-centric industry, but the impact of the female workforce. “Without a doubt, the biggest change has been women,” he explained, to nods from the audience. “The emergence of female leaders across the industry has been a game-changer, and there’s no downside”. He did add, however, that in today’s heavily saturated industry, we have a new – and rather pivotal – problem to grapple with. “There are more writers than readers, which is a fundamental problem of economics. How do we serve this growing author community, when there aren’t enough people reading the books?”.
Richard Charkin sharing how publishing has changed and developed since he began working in the industry.
Next, the discussion moved to specific examples of how writers can build businesses around their work. Rachel, who as a literary agent represents authors from across the genre spectrum, pointed to two main camps that her writers slot into – those whose careers gave rise to their books, and those who books gave rise to their careers. Her client Catherine Gray, for instance, author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, found success by pre-empting the now inescapable trend of aspirational sobriety. When she wrote the book over a decade ago, it was widely rejected, as most publishers couldn’t see an audience for it. Eventually, however, Hachette took on the project for a small advance and the book proceeded to sell 750,000 copies. Catherine had been way ahead of the curve, which meant she was ideally placed to capitalise on the trend when it eventually emerged, and she now runs an in-demand speaking business and a thriving Instagram feed, both of which create significant revenue. On the other hand, Rachel’s clients Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis began their journey by building a successful coaching company, only writing a book when they were approached by Penguin to do so. The release, The Squiggly Career, became a bestseller, and today it allows them to extend their reach as coaches to people they might not otherwise have time to meet face-to-face.
Rachel Mills discussing the different ways her authors have successfully built businesses around their books.
Georgia picked up the thread by pointing out that, in her experience, entrepreneurs like Catherine, Helen and Sarah often feel that they simply don’t have enough time to write a book, even if they can clearly see the value that it would bring to their business – and this is where ClioBooks.ai comes in. Clio is an AI ghostwriter and editor that helps guide writers through the complex process of researching, developing and drafting their books, allowing them to create drafts faster than ever before. “For many of these people, the idea of sitting down at a desk for a year in order to write is unthinkable … but Clio provides them with a list of questions, a process, to help them get their expertise down in words. They can log in anywhere and simply speak their content into the engine, based on its prompts”. Assuaging any concerns about intellectual property, Georgia was quick to confirm that the results remain entirely the author’s own work, but with the very modern benefit of being produced quickly, efficiently and accurately. “My job,” she said, “in a nutshell, is to make life easier for busy people in the world of books. And we’ve now got users creating sixty-thousand-word drafts in just a few days”.
Georgia Kirke detailing how ClioBooks.ai is revolutionsing how authors navigate the writing process.
To close the discussion, Justine asked what threats or opportunities the panellists saw coming over the horizon from AI, or technology in general. Georgia addressed the elephant in the room and expressed the fact that she’s not overly worried about the phenomenon of generative AI ‘writing’ books. “Focusing on AI’s ability to spawn huge amounts of content at great speed is missing the point,” she argued. “People aren’t just reading to absorb knowledge or facts; they can use Google for that. No – when they pick up a book, they’re looking for a lightbulb moment that could change their life”. Richard, equally, was keen for his industry to embrace the benefits of technology rather than cowering before perceived dangers. “What’s really pathetic about publishing is that an author writes a book, it’s accepted for publication, and then it won’t be published for nearly a year. How bleeding ridiculous is that?”. He advocated for removing the people in the middle, and getting more books into the hands of more customers. “The technology is there, and at the end of the day, publishing is about authors and readers. Everyone else is a mediator”.
Our attendees enjoying networking on the sunny rooftop of the Century Club.
Finally, Rachel harked back to the distant past by noting that this isn’t the first time the book business has been rattled by world-altering technology. “Since the invention of the printing press,” she reflected, “every technological advancement has frightened the publishing industry. The eBook was supposed to destroy the paperback, etc. But the fact that very dull and plagiaristic content can be written by a robot simply means that we will learn to value human content even more highly. The AI conversation is making us ask ourselves what it means to be human. And books,” she concluded, poetically, “reflect humanity”.
Thank you to ClioBooks.ai for sponsoring our event and to the Century Club for hosting us!
You can see more photos from this event from our online album 'Wise Words – How to Build a Business Around Your Book' here!
If you're not already a member of Byte The Book you can join us from £30 a month here.
