The snow didn't reach Eastbourne, the sun came out, all but two of the Pan Macmillan sales conference guests arrived, the hotel was great, speakers were entertaining and on schedule, the food was edible and Andrew Marr reminded us what an extraordinarily interesting history the British have lived since the end of World War II and how lucky we've been - but will the luck hold? We British is published in May alongside a BBC TV series. Keep an eye out for it. It could be the most important history book for a very long time.

But the bulk of the morning session was dedicated not to books being published by us but by other publishers who have chosen to use our sales and distribution operations rather than build their own.

There are two schools of thought about this. When I worked at Reed International Books the view was that if we were good at something (e.g. logistics) the last thing to do would be to share that expertise with a competitor or potential competitor. At Macmillan we take the opposite view. If we do something well we should offer that service to others in order to build more scale and to allow us to invest to ensure we are always one step ahead. An additional benefit is that having outside clients who are free to walk away encourages all our service divisions to adopt a customer-friendly approach to their business for internal as well as outside clients.

We've had enormous sucess in India with information processing, fulfilment and software development, in China with our print sourcing and distribution services, at Macmillan Distribution in the UK and elsewhere. We are now positively developing sales support for client publishers using the highly-regarded Pan Macmillan team. And here are some of the publishers who are innovating, investing and creating great books without having to build their own sales operation. An additional benefit for us is that all this brings us into contact with some of the best people in the industry without our having to hire them.

Spy Publishing - the best reference works for boutique and luxury hotels.

The Friday Project - the best of the web into the best of books - and more.

CAMRA - beer is the new wine and the Campaign for Real Ale is out to ensure improving standards of beer and pubs.

Think Books - linked to magazines published for not-for-profit organisations such as the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

Rodale - the number one health and fitness publisher.

Tokyopop - the market leader in the mushrooming Manga market.

Viz books - related closely or not to the perennial Viz magazine.