Literary prizes always generate a pile of back-biting among the gliterati of the book world. Whilst biting and scratching backs we often forget to say thank you. So here it is - THANK YOU ORANGE FOR SUPPORTING WOMEN'S FICTION.

We at Macmillan were disappointed that Carrie Tiffany did not win. This disappointment was soon moderated by the pleasure of Zadie Smith deservedly winning with On Beauty. But general book publishing is strange and complicated. The German edition of On Beauty will be published in August by one of our sister companies in Germany - Kiepenheuer & Witsch. White Teeth and the Autograph Man were also published in German by a sister company, Droemer Knaur. So hooray for Zadie.

People say that publishers must be optimists. Searching for good news like this is a symptom of that optimism.

I talk a lot about innovation in publishing. It's very hard to define but you know it when you see it. Take a look at the Think Publishing website and see if you agree.

And finally another piece of innovation, Nature Network Boston, an example of how scientific publishing is moving away from a content-supply business towards becoming a facilitator of communications for scientists.