Last year at Book Expo America there was, apparently (I wasn't there), a high-octane debate about European territorial rights as described here. It was acrimonious and achieved nothing except to indicate that publishers were typically more excited by the internal carving up of their markets than expanding and developing the overall size of the market for books and writing.

Being a traditional industry we therefore decided to repeat the exercise and had a session last Friday which I did attend. I wanted to link you to a news story about it and was delighted when Google News proffered Turf Wars: How to grow your lawn the organic way as the lead story on the subject.

British publishers stayed away from the event in droves - nothing to gain, nothing to say - and I don't blame them. However, Kim McArthur, one of the panellists, leant on me to attend to back her plea for a bit of common sense on the subject and so I did.

I think I am neither a British patriot, nor hypersensitive, nor particularly petulant but the presenters I listened to were so  one-eyed, anecdotal and insulting that I walked out of the meeting rather than hear more. I've never done that before. I quickly regained my composure and returned to support Kim and the legitimacy of British publishers to protect their and their authors' commercial position on legally-acquired rights.

I'm not wedded to the concept of 'splitting' the world between American and British editions and I think the future will ultimately belong to global marketing of a single edition. However, where territorial rights have been acquired and paid for, they should be protected and without European exclusivity, the UK market exclusivity is under threat, particularly in a digital age.

The idea that this is a ruse to protect British imperial machinations is complete nonsense. And it seems to come from those who think for instance that the Commonwealth either does not exist (it does and it is growing) or that it is a proxy for the British Raj (which it definitely is not). When such prejudice colours people's arguments there is little hope for rational debate.

I won't be going next year.

Off to our Chennai meetings now. They start after a puja at our printing plant. I am not sure whether this is a religiously appropriate image but it is very Hindu and I'll change it if people will send me better ones.