I spent the last couple of days in Mumbai at board meetings of our various Indian businesses. We now have more than 3000 people in Macmillan India spread over I don't know how many offices and operations (well over fifty anyway). Our first quarter closed with sales 30% ahead of the previous year and there is plenty more growth to come - from local publishing, from imports of books from all round the world which feed the intellectual curiosity of a rapidly growing educated middle class, from services developed to help other publishers benefit from the high-quality labour force available, and from innovation. Such a welcome change from the problems facing the UK book trade as it grapples with a mature market, increasing regulation, resistance to change in some quarters and overcomplexity.

While on the subject of innovation we were all very pleased to read this about Nature. Just in case you can't be bothered to follow the link, this is the last paragraph of the article:

'In a market where a few large companies control access to much of the critical information, Nature is a shining star for their flexibility, their willingness to test new technologies and their efforts to keep the “community” in scientific community.  Nature and NPG are clearly one of the 50 Content Companies that Matter.'

You can imagine what we thought of this accolade, but enough of that self-congratulation, back to work and a further plug for Susan Hill's blog. The thing about her blog is that it's written by a real writer - and the difference, to my embarrassment, shows.