There is a newish tradition at this time of year of CEOs emailing all staff reviewing the year just closing. Peter Olson at Random House is probably the star performer. Jack Romanos ('utterly charming, handsome and delightful') at Simon and Schuster has issued something similar and also Gail Rebuck. I'm never quite sure whether these letters are meant just for staff or for general consumption. Extracts always seem to make their way into the trade press anyway and so I suppose they are not confidential. The theme is usually the same (and I can be equally guilty). I offer this, copyright free, to all CEOs for use in any circumstances.

It's been a great year for us in spite of a number of market difficulties. Underlying sales and profits are at record highs (allowing for exchange differences, changes in GAAP, varying retail distribution criteria, enhanced accounting practices for advances and stock, intercompany tax movements,etc). Our competitors are struggling with the market conditions but we've managed to find solutions while maintaining our commitment to the highest standards of integrity and caring. All our authors are truly wonderful both creatively and as human beings. Incidentally, we also support environmental action, the developing world, inclusiveness, positive discrimination (where legally required) and fair treatment for all our stakeholders. India and China are really important places with many people and we are investing since our successful presidential visit. Next year will be even tougher but, thanks to the foresight of the senior management team, we'll probably survive. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart and have a wonderful holiday season with your friends and family. I loook forward to working with you to achieve our 2007 goals together when I return from (enter holiday destination) towards the end of January.

I decided not to put out such a letter this year. Instead here are a few milestones with round numbers. I'd be grateful if anyone from Macmillan would let me know of other statistics which should be included here to make the list more comprehensive.

Macmillan India processed over 1 million pages of text for publishers worldwide. We now employ more than 3,000 people.

Nature Publishing Group had 40,000 papers submitted - they accepted 3000. Nature itself rejected 11,000 of the 12,000 papers it received. The electronic version is now available on 10 million desktops and we've recorded 1.5 million podcast downloads.

Gill and Macmillan managed a 10% profit on general books in a market less than half the size of London.

College Press in Zimbabwe sold 500,000 books in spite of the dreadful conditions in that country.

Our co-venture with the leading Chinese educational publishers FLTRP sold 50 million copies of New Standard English in the year, taking the total to 150 million.

Macmillan Spain supplied 600,000 users with their new Bugs course.

More statistics to come in due course.