Talking through my hat

Talking Through My Hat 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. To avoid missing anything, why not subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on Twitter? The podcast is on hiatus from Easter 2019 for a few months, but we'll be back with more great interviews later in the year!

Christmas holidays!

Dec 19, 2018

Thanks to you all for listening to the podcast this year. It's been so interesting for me to talk to so many fantastic people from our industry - and even more so to share those conversations with you.

I'm going to take a little break from posting new episodes over the Christmas period, but I'll be back from the 8th of...

35: Technology, process and people (Bill Rosenblatt interview)

Dec 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...

34: Climbing a new ladder (Joanna Penn interview)

Dec 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....

33: Flexibility and community (Georgina Atwell interview)

Dec 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...

32: Metadata and markets (Laura Dawson interview)

Nov 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...