I blogged a little while ago that a team from Nature was attending and helping to organise a foo camp along with O'Reilly and Google. In spite of transatlantic flight problems and delays it happened. Timo Hannay, our director responsible for this project (andmany others of course) has his own blog, Nascent, where he reported on the meeting and has promised further updates. This is one of many examples of the 'good' Google can do. If only they'd lay off their attack on copyright.

The 2006 Beijing Book Fair has just closed. I wasn't able to attend - a strategy conference in Europe - but Macmillan had a good presence. It was, apparently bigger and better than ever. Th emost feted foreign publisher was Jane Friedman of HarperCollins. I don't suppose this has anything to do with HC's refusal to publish Chris Patten's East and West but I imagine it did little harm.

We launched Picador Asia, our new company for publishing the very best of Chinese writing in English (and other languages) for the rest of the world. Meanwhile our existing publishing such as New Standard English continue to grow at rates and in volumes which dwarf almost all other activities. However prices are very low and it will be some time before our sales in China exceed the UK.