This blog started as an in-house newsletter on email. The IT department complained that it was causing too many people to hold large amounts of data in their in-boxes thus slowing down the system. Then someone suggested I do it as a blog. Then the question as to whether it should be internal to Macmillan or open to the world. We decided to go public on the grounds that if I wrote anything of interest someone would forward it to the trade press anyway!

Having decided to go this route I then tried to justify it post hoc as a means of learning about modern communication. So what have I learned?

How to type letters with accents. Café olé.

How to hyperlink.

How a social network operates.

How to respond to a comment.

How to upset people.

And a few other things I dare not mention.

Today is business plan day for Latin America - so head down to scrutinise the numbers.

For an amazing collection of various schools and types of art do go to Thyssen Bornemisza Museum. We went there for a reception and dinner last night and shivered over tapas outside - I thought Madrid was meant to be hot hot hot.

As I write Brazil have just scored against Australia. Up to that point Australia looked the equal of the might Brazilians and my prediction of an unlikely Australia England world cup football final a little more likely - but now?

I seem to have upset my good friend Anne from the Federation of European Publishers with yesterday's remarks about EU commissioners. Sorry, Anne, I can't help disliking centralism of any sort.

Dateline 17 June... staying at the formidable Westin Palace Hotel for the annual Georg von Holtzbrinck management meeting. Last year was in Trier where we were treated to EU propaganda from a European commissioner for information and culture. What I remember best was that the reason given for France and Netherlands voting against the proposed European Constitution was the ignorance of the electorate. And that the EU was intending to remedy this by setting up marketing offices throughout the Community. What an excellent way of spending citizens´taxes.

Restaurant tip - go try Botin de Madrid if you´re into black pudding, pigs´trotters, baby lamb and peppers. Fantastic.

As we´re in Madrid we´ve taken the opportunity of showcasing our Spanish and Latin-American operations which have been growing at a startling rate.

Off to work now...

My friends at Wisden have forged a brilliant partnership with which you can read about here. They have acquired Hawk-Eye which is the computer simulation that tennis and cricket followers have been enjoying for several years and which is now extending to other sports.

I never dreamt when I first joined the Board of Wisden some ten years ago that we would be measuring our market in the hundreds of millions worldwide and would have extended to other sports and other media. Even had I foreseen that I would then not have believed that the original Wisden Cricketers almanack would not only be thriving (2006 has been a record sales year) but that its editorial standards have never been higher.

It can be done. Merging innovation, technology, good business practice, vision, strategy with traditional literary, scholarly and editorial values. Hooray.

Some censorship is evil. Some is downright silly. Here's a piece of wonderful silliness courtesy of the BBC. I guess Alice inWonderland will also have to be banned in case anyone notices the similarities between it and the actions of some politicians.

This afternoon England play Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup Football tournament. The major trade union in the publishing world (and in many other worlds), Amicus, has got into trouble for allegedly giving out information on how to 'throw a sickie'. This would allow employees to watch the match while still being paid. A major supermarket chain, Asda, has apparently offered staff two weeks unpaid leave on the grounds that they won't be working anyway. I'm in two minds on all this. On the one hand winning would cheer the country up. But early elimination might well be good for the economy. Losing to T&T would be a national humiliation but the British do have a reputation for enjoying a touch of masochism.

Whatever else the Cup seems to have killed off High Street book sales except that there are three soccer books in the top five non-fiction bestseller list - Gazza, Pele and our very own Match World Cup book.

A strange thing happened yesterday. I attended a meeting along with several other publishing colleagues with a major Internet company. We were discussing a number of issues. In particular how publishers need to protect their authors' intellectual property rights while making the most of the opportunities of the web etc.

The strange thing was that there were two highly articulate and clever senior representatives of the company but accompanied by two 'communications consultants' who no doubt were intelligent and knowledgeable (not to mention well paid) but who said little apart from commenting on the time schedule.

Presumably somebody felt that we were more likely to agree if the message we received was suitably communicated. It is possible, however, that the knowledge that we were being 'spun' might make us just a tad more resistant to the arguments. It confirms my view that big corporations rarely show any degree of common sense or human understanding.

Fortunately, and in spite of the lack of expensive advisers on our side, the Publishers Association held firmly to the position that copyright law is not to be amended and distorted simply to suit the aspirations of a very big Internet company which claims to do no evil.

I was waiting for it - and it has happened. Nature has a special section on the science of football. Enjoy!

A wonderful article in Slate about how journalists have fun telling the truth about book sales through Book Scan as opposed to the hype is worth reading if only for the last pastiche Bob Dylan line. The article explains why writers pick on enemies not friends when revealing abysmally poor sales figures because 'the scanner now will later be scanned'.

This article also coincides with Joel Rickett explaining in the Guardian about the new independent booksellers' bestseller chart. The point is that sales of mass-market books through supermarkets in the first couple of weeks after publication are a function of where the supermarket chooses to display rather than whether the book has really caught the imagination of the reading public. This can sound like an elitist argument but it is a genuine concern. The new chart reflects what is selling in 'real' bookshops and is almost certainly a better indication. All strength to the new chart and I hope it is taken up by national newspapers.