Getting it right is as much about many small things as grand strategies. I probably irritate the hell out of colleagues with messages about apparently trivial matters.

A little while ago I did a presentation on the technological changes which have affected the dictionary business - relational databases, XML, on-line and CD delivery, voive recognition, corpus searching etc. I had picked up a small Langenscheidt dictionary as a prop and realised that the single most important advance from a casual user point of view was none of these things. It was the rounding of the corners of the plastic cover so that you didn't suffer cuts from the sharp edges. A small matter in some ways but a significant publishing decision.

One of the most important devices which has enabled the web to develop is the stapler. Imagine the chaos if we didn't staple documents printed from the web.

Similarly I've just been given a brilliant new cookbook, A year in my kitchen by Skye Gingell who is head chef at Petersham Nurseries. You can find some recipes from the book here but you might also buy the book. I have yet to test the recipes myself but I assume they all work. The design of the book is great as one would expect from Quadrille Publishing. But what really struck me was that the book has three silk bookmarks so that one can index three recipes (starter, main, dessert presumably) simultaneously. Clever.

And finally a novelist who is steadily moving up the charts - C.J.Sansom. Winter in Madrid is just out in paperback - start there and then work your way back through the rest of his historical novels. The 'small thing' here is that his success has been achieved by long-term editorial commitment and attention to to every detail of his publication. The 'big thing' of course is that C.J. can write and entertain.