My musings yesterday seemed to have stirred up a lot of comment and it's worth reading the contributions if you're interested in the problems and opportunities affecting the British book trade.

What I find interesting in all this (and from private emails I receive not for publication) is how publishers are blamed by absolutely everyone. Independent booksellers complain because we give too much discount to everyone. Supermarkets complain because we don't give enough to their intermediaries who regularly go bust as a result. Chain booksellers complain because we don't give enough to support their marketing efforts. Authors and agents complain that discounts are too high and this affects their royalty earnings. Illustrators, translators, indexers, copy-editors complain that they aren't paid enough and don't get enough recognition. Printers complain that publishers don't pay them enough. Readers think books are too expensive and blame publishers. Libraries think they should receive bigger discounts. Google thinks information (if supplied by them) should be free. Everyone thinks books should be produced to higher standards. Everyone wants better levels of service.

Meanwhile we have price deflation, higher author costs, higher energy costs, higher technology and innovation costs, shorter print runs, more competitive media for spend and leisure time.

Something has to give.

But in spite of everything the business continues and let's celebrate Macmillan having two of the five shortlisted titles for the James Tait Black Memorial prize for biography:

Max Egremont's Siegfried Sassoon and Nigel Farndale's Haw-Haw, The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce.

This blog has been running for four months (plus a bit of experimenting in December). We set it up with three objectives:

To communicate to Macmillan staff worldwide without clogging up our servers;

To generate debate about specific publishing issues as our trade grapples with what can only be described as the digital revolution (forgive the cliché);

To help me understand the power (or otherwise) of blogging and learn a few technotips on the way.

Objective one seems to be working OK although there are still places where the blog's existence is unknow. Time will sort this.

Number two is a disappointment. The principal debate has been around discounts that UK publishers grant to supermarkets, chains, Amazon etc. I can understand why small independent booksellers feel that their businesses are threatened when they see massive discounts being granted by supermarkets on, for instance, Harry Potter but that is out of the hands of publishers. The discounts we publishers grant are as low as feasible in a highly competitive market. But the real disappointment is that this argument is as old as the hills and incapable of resolution or new thinking. Surely the opportunities and challenges of the Internet are more relevant.

Number three is more positive. I've learned how to hypertext, how to spell words with accents and how to check out the blog statistics.

Visitors in January were 9036, in February 8492, in March 18724, and in April a record 19257. The highest day was 900 visitors. I'm working on crossing the 1000 barrier. The audience is genuinely global. The biggest uptick on a single day was when we ran a story about the whale being stranded in the Thames. This is a fairly typical page of the searchers people undertook to reach this blog:

If you celebrate May Day in your country, have a good one. If not, still have a good one.

I have been described as many things in my career. I either agree, disagree or don't care. Only occasionally, as today, have I had to resort to reference works to check out what the description means.

Robert McCrum's regular feature on the world of books in the Observer newspaper adds colour to Sunday mornings. Today he is reviewing the development of a new publishing company, the Friday Project, which Macmillan helps to sell and distribute and which I personally have tried to support. Its aim is to turn concepts and brands on the Internet into world-class books. Anyway they've just hired an excellent new director, Scott Pack. According to Robert McCrum, this guy makes me look like Marcus Aurelius. Should I be flattered or offended?

I've checked out Wikipedia and the Columbia Encyclopedia gave me:

 ' Devoted to his duty and humanitarian in his conception of it, Marcus Aurelius was concerned with improving living conditions for the poor, particularly minors. He was always lenient with political criminals and tried to decrease the brutality at gladiatorial shows. He did, however, persecute the Christians, whom he regarded as natural enemies of the empire.'

And Chambers Biographical Dictionary:

'He was retrospectively idealized as the model of the perfect emperor, whose reign and style of rule contrasted with the disastrous period that began with the accession of his son Commodus, the disturbed age of the Severan emperors, and the imperial anarchy that followed in the 3rd century.'

I'm still not sure but one thing is for certain. I couldn't have done this research as quickly and effectively without great reference works brought together through the Internet by xrefer - the very opposite of the Friday Project concept, but none the worse for that.

I spent the last couple of days in Mumbai at board meetings of our various Indian businesses. We now have more than 3000 people in Macmillan India spread over I don't know how many offices and operations (well over fifty anyway). Our first quarter closed with sales 30% ahead of the previous year and there is plenty more growth to come - from local publishing, from imports of books from all round the world which feed the intellectual curiosity of a rapidly growing educated middle class, from services developed to help other publishers benefit from the high-quality labour force available, and from innovation. Such a welcome change from the problems facing the UK book trade as it grapples with a mature market, increasing regulation, resistance to change in some quarters and overcomplexity.

While on the subject of innovation we were all very pleased to read this about Nature. Just in case you can't be bothered to follow the link, this is the last paragraph of the article:

'In a market where a few large companies control access to much of the critical information, Nature is a shining star for their flexibility, their willingness to test new technologies and their efforts to keep the “community” in scientific community.  Nature and NPG are clearly one of the 50 Content Companies that Matter.'

You can imagine what we thought of this accolade, but enough of that self-congratulation, back to work and a further plug for Susan Hill's blog. The thing about her blog is that it's written by a real writer - and the difference, to my embarrassment, shows.

I'm delighted that Carrie Tiffany's first novel has been shortlisted for the Orange prize. She is competing with some well established authors such as Sara Waters and Hilary Mantel but it's marvellous that a debutante author can make it on to the list. Carrie's own story is worth reading as is this interview.

Here is a quote from a review in the Times Literary Supplement:

The blog has come up in German this morning as I'm in Stuttgart - hence the title.

But back to Britain and the significant coverage for Tim Waterstone's attempt to buy back the bookshop chain he founded. I mentioned it briefly yesterday and it resulted in a debate between two highly articulate correspondents. The debate brings out the arguments for both 'sides'. I just wish that the bookselling corporate deals could be over and we can all get back to focussing on selling more good books and investing in authors and marketing rather than lawyers and merchant banks.

On a more prosaic level I have also been wondering why the majority of bestseller lists exclude manuals, reference books etc. Aren't bestseller lists there to indicate which books sell best notwithstanding their subject matter? This musing was stimulated by the absence from bestseller lists of one of the bestselling titles of last week - my favourite Wisden Cricketers' Almanack which (in spite of Clive Keble`s tirade against Amazon for selling it at a heavy discount) is selling better than ever through independent and chain booksellers alike.

Tim Waterstone, the founder of the eponymous British bookshop chain, has today made a £280m offer to buy it back from its prsent owners, HMV. Who knows what the outcome of this will be although it certainly adds another chapter to the roller coaster of British bookselling over the last year. Anyone wishing to predict or to bet money on the outcome would be well advised to check out Tim's book Swimming against the stream for clues. One thing is clear - Tim is not a quitter.

I spent Friday as a guest of La bibliothèque nationale de France. Every day one learns something and today I have learned how to type an e with a grave accent.

The bibliothèque is an extraordinary series of interlinked buildings housing not just books but a wholly Gallic philosophy of culture. Whilst it clearly shares many aims, objectives and practices with the British Library there is equally clearly a peculiarly French tinge to everything - and thank goodness for that. During the course of the visit I was able to see the manuscript of Samuel Beckett's  En attendant Godot. For some reason the French guide didn't seem very interested in the fact that Beckett is the only Nobel prize winner ever to have appeared in Wisden - strange these French. Well worth following the Wisden link for details of the great man's prowess with bat and ball.

One strange thing is that researchers have to pay to use the bibliothèque. It seems perfectly sensible to me but I am certain that, if adopted in Britain, there would be an outcry about abandonment of cultural values, open access etc. The French who are as committed (some would say much more so) to the preservation of culture, language, scholarship, freedom of information have absolutely no problem with the idea of paying for a cultural service - and nor should we in Britain.

And finally on French matters, if you can get to Paris this Spring do try to visit Les lumières exhibition. Apart from fascinating Voltaire and Rousseau materials there is a wonderful collection of Hogarth cartoons - well worth it.