If you follow this link you will be able to read an exchange of broadsides between Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB)and our very own Nature. Nature published some material suggesting that in some areas of science Wikipedia entries can compete with those in the magisterial Encyclopaedia. I trust the guys in Nature totally and I am sure their assessment was both objective and correct but even if they were being unfair the last thing I'd do at EB would be to publicise the affair. This can only damage EB's reputation and that would be really unjust. Nowt so queer as folks.

As Timo says in his blog, judge for yourselves.

Yesterday saw me chairing my last Publishers Association Council meeting. The next one will be chaired by my successor, Stephen Page. Phew!!!

The thing about trade associations is that they were established as a means of protecting businesses. Frequently their aim was to ensure 'fair' ie 'high' prices. They were effectively legal cartels rather like OPEC. But times have changed. And the PA has changed with the times.

The key role of our trade association today is to help our members navigate through the complexities of the new digital world. This means revisiting business models, relationships with authors and distributors, established technologies and ways of working.

The strength of British publishing is in its diversity - large, small, general, specialist, domestic, global. The PA can help all its members to find their position in the digital world and ensure that authors are both protected and rewarded. I'll continue to do my best to help but am relieved I can now concentrate even more on steering Macmillan. At some moments in the last year it has been running automagically. Now we are back on full manual steering.

Here's a guest blog from Ronnie Williams, Chief Executive of the Publishers' Association. It's about the new 'Love Libraries' campaign being launched by the government, and I believe it needs no further introduction....

I went to the launch of the "Love Libraries" campaign by David Lammy, Minister of Culture on 22 March. It is a first initiative by The Future Libraries Partnership in which nine major UK publishers are involved, together with the government department (DCMS), the Society of Chief Librarians, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, and the Reading Agency. There is also support from authors.

The atmosphere was very positive and reflected  clearly how strongly people feel about the future of libraries and the clear priority that books are the very core of the library service. Although Lammy stuck to his constitutional position that the actual management of libraries, and specifically the balance of book stocks and new acquisitions, depends on decisions at the local level, there was a very strong message from the floor that these issues are central to the public's perception and therefore use of the library service.

The initiative is rather modest insofar as it focusses on the "transformation" of  three libraries only, but the stated intention is that these should provide a replicable template for libraries all over the country. Representatives of these "showcase" libraries emphasised that in addition to refurbishment, they would review book stocks and acquisitions to ensure a good range of new best-selling titles as well as an extensive backlist. They would be looking to publishing "marketing mentors" to advise them on this balance. The publishers are also closely engaged with the Reading Agency in developing "live events" and authors' tours to liven up the library experience and involve consumers in book related activities.

It remains to be seen whether this small beginning can be developed into a more ambitious programme and whether these related initiatives can be harnessed into a practical and forward looking plan. While librarians were admitting to an image problem, a lot of practical marketing expertise is going to be needed. The  three "showcases" are promoted as a start, but if the decline which many people perceive is to be reversed, then reforms must reach a very much wider library constituency and a more ambitious programme will need to follow. The words at the launch offered comfort, but it is what is actually done across the larger scale which will determine whether this is the first real step on what may be a long journey !

RW

Mike Barnard, publisher of Macmillan’s almost equally derided and applauded ‘first novels’ imprint, Macmillan New Writing has written and published a book about the genesis of the imprint. ‘Transparent Imprint’ tells the story of ‘how a publisher’s decision to tell the truth to authors stirred up a storm’. The choice of cover quote given by Jonny Geller of literary agent Curtis Brown says it all: “I don’t think there’s a hope in hell of this succeeding.” When the imprint was launched there were stories that authors would have to pay for their own editing, the books would only be printed on demand, and bookshops would not touch them. A year on, bookshops are taking stock, libraries are buying them and the initiative is gathering momentum and press coverage. The book’s publication coincides with the launch of MNW’s first titles. You can purchase a copy for £10 direct from the MNW website or, if you work at Macmillan, you can download a PDF version from the company intranet .

And perhaps some of MNW's detractors would like to follow this piece by Michael Fuchs to read what one of the authors thinks of us.

And talking of innovative new imprints, BBC4’s drama ‘The Chatterley Affair’ broadcast on Monday evening was an interesting interpretation of the 1960 obscenity trial over the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a great reminder of the origins of the Penguin imprint. It used a fictional love affair between two jurors on the trial to illuminate the subtle moral arguments and the social impact of this great English novel. The two jurors in question, a beautiful upper class young woman and a working class clerk, play out the book as they embark on their own love affair, which, crudely interpreted, could just prove the prosecution’s case … but a colourful array of witnesses for the defence including bishops, professors and new graduates, argue the case for the novel’s literary merits and ethical standpoint. Particularly enjoyable was the moment when Penguin’s founder stands up in the witness box to state that he is willing to go to prison if the book is banned, as he ‘believes it was right to publish this book,’ proving that publishers have always been a contrary and ideological bunch.. And the subtle layers of hypocrisy are played out beautifully as two conservative male jurors deride the book as ‘dirty’ whilst simultaneously leering jealously over the affair of the two young lovers.   

On Sunday I attended the memorial service for a long-time Macmillan (and various other publishing company) employee, John Watson. Ian Taylor's obituary in the Guardian says it all. Apart from the budget-saving orders he managed to extract I'll always remember him as being the gentlest off-spin bowler I have ever faced - and he still got me out. In work too the combination of his huge size and his rather Nigerian pace of life still resulted in enough energy to succeed thus proving that E really does equal mc squared.

The turn-out at the service in Oxford and the warmth of the addresses were indicators of his friends' and colleagues' respect and affection for him. It also reminded me how lucky we are to be in an industry which cherishes people like John who break most of the corporate rules. Thank God.

It is of course trite to say the French are different. If there is another way of doing things they'll discover it and probably make it work. it wasn't until I started typing this that I realized that a French keyboard layout is almost entirely different to an Anglo-Saxon one and entirely non-intuitive to an Anglo-Saxon person (qwerty becomes azerty, full stop is on shift and the rest of the punctuation marks are scattered randomly). One more blow for globalization and American hegemony. Ah well, please forgive the typos.

I am here in Paris on behalf of British publishers to defend our authors' copyrights from the threat of digital kleptomania (Quelles modalités d'accès aux textes numériques sous droits?). Digital technologies offer the greatest opportunities for centuries for publishers but only if we can ensure our authors a proper income from the distribution of their works and develop business models which genuinely work for the reader and user of information.

Scientific and legal publishers have invested heavily in digital infrastructure which has enabled them to offer their authors faster and more enhanced publication; their readers lower cost, better designed and more universal access; and their owners enough cash to continue to invest. These publishers work closely with the new digital giants (Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon etc) and their aims seem to be aligned.

On the contrary typical book publishers have yet to create the necessary platforms and the new 'players' see that as an opportunity to move into the book business and a moral justification for turning a blind eye to the niceties of copyright.

Book publishers need to fight vigorously to maintain strong copyright protection for their authors. Copyright not only rewards authors for their creativity and labour, it also is a protector of freedom of speech.

But book publishers must do more than simply fight on principle and by turning to lawyers. They must show that they are willing to invest money as well. They must build digital warehouses which can protect the copyrights. They must build digital delivery systems which can work with search engines to present and sell their authors' work to new markets in new forms. They must be willing to take investment risk. They must work with authors and distributors to help build new and better business models.

All this and continue to sell books too. Bonne journée.

Our print sourcing operation in Hong Kong (Macmillan Production Asia Ltd) received an order this morning for 2000 deckchairs. As everything we do requires a standard book number in order to satisfy our computer requirements, these will probably be the first literary deckchairs in history.

Which reminds me of an early lesson in interpreting publishers' stock systems. During my first week at the Octopus Publishing Group I was checking the list of overstocks (all publishers have them) and came across 10,000 unsold copies of 'Chinese Food the Wok Way' (or similar) which had been written down to zero value. "Crazy!" I screamed. "It must be possible to remainder them and get some price however small". "No!" the distribution director screamed back: "the beansprouts have germinated". It was a food pack for Marks and Spencer masquerading as a book and brought a new meaning to old stock.

And I should mention to readers that MPA can and will source almost anything from China for you - from cherry blossom to shampoo bottles - as long as the quantities and your credit rating are good.

The Nature Publishing Group recognizes that in today's digital environment it must constantly strive to provide more than well-filtered information; it must also provide valuable digital services for scientists and clinicians that help them to communicate with one another more effectively. I asked Timo Hannay, NPG's Director of Web Publishing, to guest on the blog as he can describe the group's latest web initiative much better than I can:

"One of the most important roles of a publisher is to help readers to find writers with something interesting and relevant to say. The arrival of the web means that we are no longer limited to doing this by the traditional means of filtering and editing content by hand (though that will remain an essential part of the process for a long time to come). Increasingly we can also help readers to help themseleves — and each other — when in search of information or entertainment.

One important experiment we've been conducting in this area is Connotea, Nature's free social bookmarking service for scientists and clinicians. For the last year-and-a-half or so, it has allowed users to post web links of interest and to 'tag' them with one or more keywords in order to make them easy to retrieve later. (For example, you might choose to save a bookmark to this blog entry under the tags "social bookmarking", "Connotea" and "Macmillan"). Also, by storing everyone's links on a central server, it can generate recommendations based on people's overlapping interests, which is where the 'social' part of 'social boomarking' comes in.

With usage growing daily, it's clear that a lot of people already find Connotea a valuable service. But we've only scratched the surface of its potential. In particular, we're keen to make the underlying data useful to other sites. That's why, with generous funding from the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), we have just released software that adds Connotea functionality to EPrints, an institutional repository platform developed at the University of Southampton. By installing this software on their own repositories, administrators can allow their users to bookmark and tag content in Connotea, and to browse Connotea's recommendations, all without leaving the repository website. This adds useful new functionality to the repository, makes the content held there easier to discover, and makes Connotea more useful to everyone by adding more information to its data pool. For further details see this blog post by Ben Lund, who runs Connotea.

Where will all this lead?  Frankly, we're not sure.  But the use of communal data such as shared bookmarks and tags (and the collective taxonomies, or 'folksonomies', that arise from them) is already attracting a lot of interest among clever researchers who are developing ways to manage information in this era of over-abundance.  We at Nature think that collaborative services like Connotea will become an important part of the answer, and when that happens we want to have a role to play.  That's how publishers can stay relevant even as the world around us passes through its most disruptive period since our industry came into being.

Marcel Proust's multi-volume work was once described in a book club catalogue as the Great French work of comic genius. And I remember OUP once published Humour in the Works of Proust but that's not the point of this blog.

My past was brought back to me by a flurry of articles and books about a close friend of my young adulthood, Nick Drake. Over the years his music has grown in popularity and he now appears to be up there with the other 60s and 70s dead pop icons.Do try out his music if you haven't yet. It has stood the test of time. 

And just recently I tripped over a website dedicated to another dead friend from that era, Julian Allen. We travelled together across the USA in an open-top Ford Mustang and thought we were really cool. Julian was really cool and his art only tells half the story. He was a professional illustrator working to deadlines and for money but I think he's captured the spirit of the times better than anyone.

Predictably, the Observer's silly list of powerful people in the UK book trade has generated a fair degree of comment, debate and enhanced the traffic to this blog. I have been sent two alternative lists (top ten only, most people don't have the leisure time to dream up fifty). I wonder how many people can without reference name the jobs of each of the people in this first list but I reckon it is a lot closer to the truth than the Observer one.

1. Sir Crispin Davis

2. Dame Marjorie Scardino

3. Richard Harrington

4. Professor Sir Ron Cooke

5. Kate Swann

6. Arnaud Nourry

7. Peter Olson

8. Peter Rigby

9. James Purnell

10. Kit van Tulleken

And the second is more literary but again more realistic than the Observer:

1. Scott Pack

2. Amanda Ross

3. Nigel Newton

4. Victoria Barnsley

5. Gail Rebuck

6. Richard Charkin

7. The bookbuyer at WHS whoever that is

8. Jamie Byng

9. Caroline Gascoigne

10. Martin Goff - still!