The British Government Home Office has issued a consultation paper. The purpose is to generate a debate about the issue of whether criminals should be able to profit from their crimes by selling their memoirs or similar. Macmillan has been involved in at least two books where this issue was raised. In 1999 we published Gitta Sereny's Cries Unheard, the story of the child murderer Mary Bell. There was outrage that Mary Bell might have received financial support from the author. More recently we published Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diary where the author donated the income from newspaper serialisation to a range of charities.
The publishing industry has been invited to comment on the proposals and Macmillan will be responding in detail by the deadline in February. I don't believe there is any attempt here to gag authors:
'The proposals are targeted only at the profit made by criminals from publications about their crimes. They are not targeted at anyone else's profits from such publications or at publishers and are not intended to prevent publications relating to serious crimes.'
However, there are bound to be varied responses to the proposals and it would be helpful to have people's views both from within Macmillan and elsewhere. I suppose Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom was written in prison and he earned money from it. Some people would regard George Bush's invasion of Iraq as criminal. Should he be banned from selling his memoirs? I sense an interesting debate in the offing.
Two scientific events today. I'm chairing a workshop this afternoon on the future of scientific research publishing. We have an opportunity to debate the direction of this vital industry with the benefit of a mass of hard data rather than soft prejudices.
Then to the other end of scientific publishing for the launch of Giant Leaps at the Science Museum in collaboration with The Sun newspaper. The marketing Director for this book, Tony Blair (who, incidentally, I've never met), has given us the following quote:
“I know better than most people how vitally important science is for our future, prosperity and quality of life. And it is getting more important by the day. So I wish I had paid more attention to science subjects at school. I have been trying to catch up since. I also wish there had been a book like this to awaken my interest in science and make me want to find out more.”