Here's an interesting promotional experiment. My friends at Exact Editions have worked with the US reference book company, Berkshire Publishing to make available their huge Encyclopedia of World History free online for a limited period of time. This has happened before with journals - and Nature uses the technique quite frequently but I'm not sure I've heard of its being used for books in any significant way. It will be interesting to see whether this helps or hinders sales. It's even got a mention in Open Access News although the first comment about monographs selling better when made available free permanently seems a bit off the wall to me.
Last week I mentioned the death of Trevor Glover. There have been some excellent obituaries in Publishing News and in The Times.
Got back late from Germany (again) last night. The plane was meant to leave Stuttgart at 7.00pm and arrive in London at 7.50pm. It left at 9.00pm and arrived at 10.00pm. Home by 11.00pm. The crew couldn't understand that the passengers were more interested in getting home for the evening than in the fact that we were terribly lucky to be flying a brand new Airbus. 'It still had the plastic wrapping on the seats' they told us excitedly. That was British Airways. This morning I'll be testing the other great British transport success, South-West Trains to Basingstoke. Will it be on time? Will it be a brand new train? Can't wait to find out.