One of Picador's best writers, Charlotte Mendelson, also works as an editor for one of Picador's principal competitors, Headline Review, part of Hachette Livre. Two of Sphere's - also part of Hachette Livre - potential best selling writers, Jon Butler and Bruno Vincent, work for Pan Macmillan in editorial. Their new book has the very serious and tasteful title, Do ants have arseholes?, and will doubtless sell tens of thousands of copies. Never let it be said that I only mention Macmillan titles but I do expect a pourboire from the Sphere marketing department.

Last Friday's blog has amassed 38 comments so far (which is a pretty good bag by my standards) but my favourite comes from Vladimir in Kazakhstan:

'Dear Prime Minister (we remember Christine Keeler was your friendly girl - even news in our country). Is not a race with Borat in November December. So kindly what about it?'

I'd be happy to respond but I'm not quite sure what the question is. Can anyone help?

For crossword fiends here is a link to a clever marketing idea to promote the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. I'm delighted to see that they've taken absolutely no notice of my strictures on the use of the word 'unabridged' when applied to a 'shorter' dictionary: 'Each entry offers everything you would expect from a leading unabridged dictionary...' except that it is abridged!

And finally, I've found myself wondering whether Alan Greenspan's warnings about the impact of the credit squeeze might equally be applied to author advances which have risen faster even than London house price inflation...