Fiona Mackenzie of Macmillan English Campus has been filling me in about the new MEC language CD-ROM which is published tomorrow:

"We wanted 'real' games created by real gamers not 'educational' games - we wanted people to play the games because they were fun and to use their English because they needed it in order to win. We didn't know what we were getting into. Games developers brainstorm ideas then they make the games up as they go along. We ELT editors and authors brainstorm then plan and organize - word sets, sentence structures, suitable language for different language levels. The gamers were helpful. If our words were too long, they changed them for shorter ones. If a sentence didn't fit, it was cut to fit. If there wasn't enough text they added more words ... any words. The alpha versions of the games were exciting. We never quite knew what text was going to emerge, explode, ooze or bounce on to the screen. We explained it wasn't quite that simple. They did listen. There was a game with past tenses of verbs: 'dry', 'cry' and 'try' have three red stars in the Macmillan English Dictionary - they are high frequency words for language learners. Imagine the pride of the ex-teacher mingled with the despair of the ELT editor as the joyfully apt and wondrously inappropriate 'beatify' slid into view.
 
We cracked it though - when a developer suddenly said, 'I know - we need to treat the English like we do the text for a website in French. We don't touch a thing.'
 
And when an ELT editor understands that the 'stickiness' of a game depends on the sensuous satisfaction of drawing an 'elastic band' round words as opposed to the tedium of clicking on dozens of individual letters and a gamer halts a discussion with the words, 'Pedagogically, this isn't right for our learners ... ', you're know you're on to something special.
 
Language Games CDROM is published by Macmillan English Campus on April 7th. It features over 150 English language games - about 54 hours of game-play for the average language learner. Combining real language practice with a sophisticated level of gaming challenge, it is great value at only £19.95 for the single user. For schools and institutions, a network edition is also available for 1-25 users.
 
To buy Language Games please visit the Macmillan English Campus website.

A very good friend of mine in the publishing business has always described himself as a science publisher rather than a publisher. This means he won't be harrassed by dinner party acquaintances into reading their new novel or discussing the latest novel from a Guatemalan genius. The idea of discussing science publishing nearly always moves the conversation on to soccer or supermodels immediately.

However, science publishing is probably the most vibrant part of the modern world of information dissemination and is a hugely successful British industry. At Macmillan we are blessed by being the publisher of a wide range of scientific journals with Nature at its head. By investing in quality and in technology we have been able to grow this business in partnership with learned societies, scientists, advertisers and subscribers. The business is global of course but there is a local dimension too and we are announcing today the formation of new operations in India, Latin America and Spain.

This is yet another investment in what we do best and we have hired the best people to help us do it.

Libraries are part of global culture, as British as fish and chips, as American as apple pie and as Jewish as chopped liver. I've known Tim Coates from the time he was Managing Director of the then up-market, fiercely independent and anarchic up-and-coming Waterstone's bookshop chain. He is currently involved in a highly personal campaign to encourage the British Government and local authorities to spend library budgets on books - a simple, obvious but difficult objective. Not everyone agrees with Tim's in-your-face approach to campaigning but at the very least he has made the topic unignorable. I asked him to write a guest blog for me and here it is:

"Half the management in this country is public sector. The rules are different: income does not depend on judgment, efficiency or perfomance; cash is available; there is no such thing as bankruptcy and nor are there the disciplines, anxieties, skills and systems which are used to avoid it. Employment is secure and very well paid. Projects thrive on persuasive plans but rarely on actual outcomes. To a private sector manager, the regime is unfamiliar.

We have become used to the idea that only a small portion of charitable donations reach their intended recipients; we should get used to the idea that the great part of the money we thought was for public service  will never reach any public beneficiary. We live in an economy which is the travelling equivalent of a crowded roundabout. Huge amounts of public funds travel on a journey which goes nowhere in an unpleasant and wasteful manner.

For seven years I have studied the public library service in both central and local government where most of the operation is managed. This is a £1.2bn pa operation which has no accounts, no boards of directors, no planning or budgeting, no measurement of performance and no management of the kind a garage mechanic would recognise. It is a disaster from the tip of its branches to the lengths of it ancient roots. Use of the service has fallen to half its rather successful level of twenty years ago and no one can even agree whether that is a good thing or a bad one. No junior manager learns the basic skills of "yes" or "no" from his senior- because he, or she  never learned those skills either. The operation is a national disgrace and nobody even knows.

We have an extremely and potentially devastating problem of the economy in this country and it is the management of public sector activities. We worry about political incompetence, global warming and the management of our soccer team. We should be sensible and start worrying about the management of public services. That really is frightening."

As March comes to an end we've seen the Nibbies, an annual publishing event of acquired taste and little import (although I'm told it is at the heart of our industry which worries me rather), come and go; India squeeze a one-day victory over England at cricket, and the UK Competition Commission give provisional clearance for the takeover of the Ottakar's bookshop chain by HMV.

April kicks off with a literary question. Are there more people who want to write a book than who want to read one? There is a a three-hour debate at the London College of Communications which looks like it will be quite lively. If you have a moment I'd recommend you look in. You can find more details here.

PS Back to the Nibbies, it is clearly excellent getting TV coverage for books and authors and this must sell books. My back of an envelope calculation suggests the industry has to sell an additional two million books to cover the costs of the televised dinner. Hmmmm?

‘Blogs are the new phone in modern society’, according to online coffee retailer Boca Java. In a report issued by the company it states that there are now around 50 million blogs on the Web – with the blogging community expanding by around 65,000 a day. So significant a group is this new breed that the company has decided to target bloggers as a consumer market with a new line of coffee called Blogger’s Blends. They're holding a contest where bloggers get to design and name a new blend of coffee. The climax of the contest is a prize - a  free year of coffee. Certainly some form of energy-giving drug is required to keep up a blog, but my efforts pale into insignificance when compared to those of the anonymous Iraqi woman whose blog, Baghdad Burning, has been nominated for a literary prize. The blog, started in 2003, recounts how the Iraq war has affected the daily lives of ordinary citizens and has been nominated for the most valuable award for non-fiction – the Samuel Johnson Prize. Baghdad Burning is being published by the independent publishers Marion Boyars and is among 19 candidates for the award. Other contenders include Untold Stories by Alan Bennett, After The Victorians by AN Wilson, and a biography of Mrs Beeton by Kathryn Hughes.

Some things serve to cheer me up. A few blogs ago I wrote that Mike Barnard had written a book, Transparent Imprint, about the fun and games he had setting up Macmillan New Writing to the derision of many in the literary world. Well, the first review has come out on the Grumpy Old Bookman blog and its a humdinger. So congratulations Mike and two fingers to the detractors. And to see the novels themselves go to the MNW website.

Dinner last night with the managing directors of our businesses in Greece, Brazil and Argentina.

What do the businesses have in common apart from all being run by exceptionally talented women? There is a deep desire to learn English. In spite of Chirac's histrionics last week when he walked out of a EU Council meeting because a fellow Frenchman addressed him in English, most people recognise that English is the language of business and essential in the modern world. The books used in schools differ significantly because of local curricula and culture but they are all demanding higher and higher standards of pedagogical and production quality and better value for money. They are all challenged by local piracy and illegal photocopying. The businesses are all growing their market share by working closely with teachers to make better teaching materials.

I was going to follow this with a description of the differences - the apostilas in Brazil, the Israeli competitors in Greece, Britsh English in Argentina - but realised that knowing the differences is what sets Macmillan apart from its competitors and I want us to remain apart.

So I'll end with a publishing quandary. We all know that elephants never forget. We also know that if publishers remembered all the times a book failed to live up to expectations nobody would ever publish anything new again. Additionally, we often try to remember a slight or a piece of betrayal. Perhaps Arthur Balfour got it right: 'I never forgive. I always forget.'

And from the source of quotations a truth from Auberon Waugh: ' Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish goes into politics and the shits into law.' I suppose publishing lies somewhere between journalism and business. I hope so.

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