Be Yourself: Interview with Judy Piatkus, Founder of Piatkus Books

I recently went one on one with Judy Piatkus. Judy is the founder of the global publishing house Piatkus Books and the author of the new book Ahead of Her Time.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, challenges have been the most instrumental to your growth?

Judy: I grew up in London, England. My father was a director of a small building firm and my mother was a housewife. My parents programmed me to believe I should have a career and always be able to earn my own living even though they hadn’t encouraged me to go to university. I was therefore always on the lookout for an opportunity to make something of myself. I started my first publishing company with a business partner in my early 20s. With no outside capital and only our savings and a small amount of family money, we launched a business selling reprints of out-of-print books specially for libraries.

My eldest daughter was born when I was 26. She has cerebral palsy and has spent her life in a wheelchair, unable to walk or to verbalize. She has been my greatest teacher, enabling me to learn at a very young age what is truly important in life.

When I was 28 I sold my half-share of the business to my partner for a reasonable sum of money. We hadn’t been getting on well and as we owned the business 50/50, walking away from everything I’d built felt at that time like the best decision for me. After a period of introspection, I launched my own publishing company, Piatkus Books. This time I was on my own and determined to enjoy myself.

Over the next few years, my husband and I had two more children and then our marriage came to an end. During my 30s I was a single mother of three, needing to earn money to pay the bills and at the same time trying to grow a great company. I had to work to keep both my family and the business financially afloat.  

I had no personal financial security, but I managed to save enough money from company profits for a deposit on a small office building in London’s West End. As property prices grew, so did the size of the loan the bank allowed me and this was how we managed to finance the growth of the company.

What I learned from my experience with my first company was that I wanted to be happy coming to work, so with my second company I tried to create an environment where everyone else would be happy, too. While I didn’t always get it right, people enjoyed working in the company, staff retention was high and gradually we built a fantastic team.

Over 25 years the company became highly respected throughout the global book publishing industry. We published many wonderful books and were pioneers in mind, body, spirit, and personal growth publishing in the UK and in our export markets. We also published wonderful fiction, including bestselling authors such as Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Linda Howard, Julia Quin (Bridgerton) and many more. Owning the building allowed us to stay independent and several people worked with the company for more than 20 years. However, I had always known I would like to sell when I was in my 50s. We were doing well and eventually we completed a successful exit, selling the company to Hachette, at the time the largest UK publishers. The sale was completed just before the book industry was thrown into chaos by the arrival of ebooks and the financial meltdown of 2007. 

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea and know it was worth pursuing? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test business ideas?

Judy: My business partner had worked in a similar company so we understood the market. Always get to know your market as thoroughly as you can before launching your company. If you’re breaking new ground, do your market research and try to test out your product or service at an early stage and as professionally as you can. In that way, you will know if you have a successful idea that you can build on and you will understand your customers’ needs before you have invested too much time or money.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others to take their business to the next level?

Judy: Pay attention to what is going on in your marketplace and what your competitors are doing, not in order to copy them but so you can create something new and original which gives your company its USP. What’s developing in society around you? How can your company capitalize on rapid market changes? We have seen many examples of this in so many industries since the pandemic began. Regularly try out new ideas in a small way. Doing this as frequently as you can afford while carefully evaluating the risks involved will keep your company fresh and alert. Not every new idea will be successful. You cannot always tell in advance what your customers will really love – it won’t necessarily be what you love. Always be flexible and test, test, test. You will gain new strengths and understanding of what you and your team are good at and will see where your next profits could come from. 

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?

Judy: The best sales and marketing people are energetic, focused and very persistent in a pleasant way. They care about what they are selling and they care about their customers. They are self-starters who set themselves goals and aim to achieve them. They work to build the best possible relationships with their customers so that they can learn from them and keep going back until they get the sales and marketing successes they are aiming for. They very rarely give up. If you have one of these amazing people working on your team, make sure you look after them. The best sales and marketing people are difficult to find because there are never enough of them.

Adam: What are your best tips for authors and aspiring authors?

Judy: Firstly, if you want to write, you have to set aside time and a place to do so, and you have to commit to doing the work of writing. However much you love the idea of being creative, writing is physical, mental and sometimes very emotional work. Research and understand your market if you’re aiming to get published. Every publishing company and literary agent will have clear guidelines on their website about what they want to see from you and there is a mass of information on the internet about every aspect of writing and getting published, along with many chat forums and helpful communities. Many people have unfinished books in their drawers at home. If you truly want to be published, you need commitment, focus, determination and, of course, skill. However, the more writing you do, the more your writing will improve and you will find the work is becoming easier. When you do find the right home for your writing, take the advice of the professionals if they ask you to make changes. Don’t think that you know best. It is extremely difficult to judge your own work objectively and to understand the subtleties of positioning it in the marketplace.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership to the next level?

Judy: There are leaders all around us; we don’t always recognize them. No matter what their background or what they look like, they are attracting followers – whether in politics, business, religion, the community or the local school playground. There can be many different qualities in their personalities which encourage people to follow them but all of them will stand for something that attracts people to want to be around them. 

Some people are born leaders, but leadership can also be learned. Good leadership requires courage, self-belief, focus, determination, integrity. It also requires the ability to take decisions, some of them unpopular, and to act on them. Leaders are the people who make things happen and they have to be able to live with the discomfort of being slightly apart from the crowd. In society now we are moving from a time of hierarchical leadership to a period where complexity and technology is forcing all leaders to engage in collaborative leadership, which requires a very different skillset. The best leaders of the future will understand the benefits of working collaboratively and how to create the essential trust that will be needed to operate effectively in the new world which the many changes caused by the pandemic are forcing upon us. Softer skills such a listening, understanding, making connections, being curious and other aspects of emotional intelligence are key for leaders of the future. 

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Judy: Firstly, I believe in treating everyone with respect. Treat everyone as you would like to be treated, no matter what their position in the workplace or in society. The leader of an organization sets the tone for everyone else to follow. 

Secondly, I believe that leaders with integrity must lead from the front. The culture in every organization comes from the top and the leader is constantly under observation by everyone who comes into contact with them, whether they are inside or outside the organization. Everything they do is noted, whether consciously or unconsciously. The leader’s persona and how they conduct themselves will express the values of that organization.

Thirdly, leadership confers power. Beware of coming from your ego if you want to make the best decisions. Don’t be arrogant. Always be humble and flexible and ready to learn new things. No one gets it right all the time. Be prepared to be in service to your organization and to those you are leading. With all power comes responsibility.

Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book? 

Judy: Throughout my life, while I was running a company and after I sold it, women would frequently ask me how I managed to grow a successful global business and bring up a family at the same time. I wanted to answer those questions in the book and I wanted to share some of the things that I learned as an entrepreneur over the years which I hope will be helpful to others. I wrote the book in 2019, before the pandemic. A Gallup poll from that time indicated that only 15% of people were happy in their place of work. When you have the right people in the right places doing the right things, a company can punch hugely above its weight and achieve the most amazing things. I wanted to share how we achieved that at Piatkus Books before I sold it. And, as I was also a publisher of good fiction, even though my book is a business memoir, I wanted it to be an enjoyable, interesting read.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have received?

Judy: Be yourself.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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