Last December I wrote about an experiment we were undertaking in classified advertising and I was asked to keep readers abreast of progress. The idea was to allow recruiters to place job advertisements on Nature Publishig Group websites free of charge and thus become the number one site for scientists seeking a job. Yesterday we achieved that objective when for the first time Nature carried more jobs than its principal competitor - 2872 jobs are showing at this moment, just four more than Science but commercial competitions (and cricket matches - see yesterday's triumph for England) are often won by very narrow margins.

I've come back from our Eastbourne sales conference very buoyed up by the quality of the Pan Macmillan publishing programme and by the tremendous energy and imagination of the team. General book publishing in the UK and elsewhere has never been easy but I suspect it's never been more difficult. Retail consolidation, price deflation, royalty advance inflation, territorial and other copyright abuses, library budget constraint, and competition from other media are very real threats. However, there are opportunities and great books to be written, edited, sold and enjoyed. It feels as if our team has more than its fair share this year.

This year we are celebrating Pan's 60th anniversary although if you've clicked on that link it appears we should have celebrated two years ago! I think this was the first Pan paperback cover.

And here was the record of its tenth birthday celebrations.

Pan went on to challenge Penguin and to build its reputation as a highly commercial mass-market publisher with strengths across the board but particularly in popular fiction. That was achieved by teamwork, hard work and a nose for a book. During the 1980s I think it's fair to say that Pan's mantle was challenged successfully by a resurgent Corgi Books under the inspired leadership of Paul Scherer, Mark Barty-King and Patrick Janson-Smith.

All the signs are that Pan is the fastest growing paperback imprint of the moment and that the mix of established bestsellers and new arrivals is making its impact on retailers, literary agents, translating publishers and, most importantly, authors. It's great being a 'destination' publisher for popular novelists, even if it's only by a very narrow margin. Congratulations to everyone at Pan for this fantastic achievement. Here are a just a few of our recent and sure-fire future successes.

And if you'd like to hear Gerry (G.M.Ford) go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ and scroll down to 8.30 a.m. and the chilling interview with Angus Stickler about the Peckham murder of a teenage boy.