Judy Piatkus is a British publisher, entrepreneur and author who founded Piatkus Books in 1979.
Career
Piatkus founded
Piatkus Books
Little, Brown Book Group is a UK publishing company created in 1992, with multiple predecessors. Since 2006 Little, Brown Book Group has been owned by Hachette UK, a subsidiary of Hachette Livre. It was acquired in 2006 from Time Warner of New ...
from the bedroom of her home in
Loughton, Essex, in 1979.
The publishing house published bestselling authors
Nora Roberts,
Danielle Steel
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel (born August 14, 1947) is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling author alive and the fourth-bestselling fiction author of all time, with over 800 million ...
, and
Virginia Andrews and grew to be a successful romance publisher in the UK, and a pioneer in publishing books on personal development and lifestyle.
Piatkus published a wide range of titles, from cookbooks by
Mary Berry to fiction by
Nora Roberts. Piatkus Books became known in the area of personal growth and lifestyle when it published mindfulness titles by
Jon Kabat-Zinn, alongside business books such as
David Allen's ''
Getting Things Done''. Piatkus explored a wide range of subjects such as
feng shui, spirituality, alternative health, the mind-body connection, detoxing, and other topics that were relatively unknown in the UK at that time. Many leaders in their fields of expertise such as
Seth Godin
Seth W. Godin is an American author and former dot com business executive.
Background
After leaving Spinnaker in 1986, he used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions, primarily a book packaging business, out of a studio apartment in ...
and Dr
Irvin Yalom
Irvin is both a given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include:
Given name
* Irvin J. Borowsky (1924-2014), American publisher
* Irvin Cobb (1876–1944), American author
*Irvin Dorfman (1924–2006), American tennis player
*Irvin ...
were on the Piatkus list.
As a publisher, Judy Piatkus was regarded as a risk-taker within the publishing industry, being described as "never afraid to take a chance on an unknown whose work she believed in."
In 2007, Piatkus completed a successful exit sale to
Little, Brown, who have continued to publish books under the Piatkus imprint.
In April 2021, Piatkus published her first book, ''Ahead of Her Time'', a memoir and story of female entrepreneurship, values-led management, and the rise of personal development publishing.
Recognition
In December 2005, Piatkus was awarded the
Women in Publishing
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...
Pandora Award. In February 2009, she received a lifetime achievement award from the
Romantic Novelists' Association.
''Ahead of Her Time'' was the winner of a 2022 UK Business Book Award in the Business Journey category. It was also selected by Soul and Spirit Magazine as the Most Empowering Book of 2021.
Piatkus continued her interest in leadership and entrepreneurship working as a coach and mentor to start-ups and SMEs. During her years as a publisher, Piatkus achieved a diploma in
psychodynamic psychotherapy and counselling, and worked in the
NHS in the evening after work. In 2016, she went to university for the first time as a mature student and was awarded an MA degree in Creative Leadership.
In 2011, Piatkus founded the global non-profit organisation ConsciousCafe, which connects people around the world with regular local groups and events that focus on conscious conversations, raising self-awareness, exploring new ideas, and current issues.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Piatkus, Judy
British publishers (people)
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people