Publishing veteran Bob Miller is trading in his position of CEO of Phaidon Press to start Bookswork Press, an independent book and creative development company serving authors and publishers.
Miller told PW he had created Bookswork after leaving Flatiron and before he accepted the job at Phaidon in December 2024. Miller said he enjoyed his time at Phaidon, but realized he missed being directly involved in the book creation process, something that Phaidon had many talented people deeply familiar with developing illustrated books to do.
His goal at Bookswork is to “gather people around one goal” to do “deep dives” around different book projects and then bring those projects to agents or publishers. Miller said that as corporate publishing has evolved, it has become increasingly difficult to devote the time and attention to new ideas, which is what he hopes to do at Bookswork.
Miller said he has reached back to his past to discuss projects with bestselling author Brad Meltzer, who he worked with at Flatiron, and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who Miller knows from his days at Hyperion. While some projects may move beyond books, Miller stressed that books will always be be at the heart of every endeavor.
“I’ve always loved discovering what the DNA of every book is and how to translate that, whether that be in the book’s structure or what cover lines work best,” he said. “I want to develop ideas into great books.”
