Further to the short mention I gave to Second Life (SL) the other day, Sara Lloyd, Pan's new Head of Digital Publishing, felt inspired to email me this guest entry on her impressions of the SL revolution….

“Second Life is (IMHO) one of the most fascinating, inspiring – and somewhat terrifying – social, cultural and technological phenomenons of Web 2.0. If people ask me where it’s at right now, this is one of the first examples I give.

Second Life is a virtual world. Membership is free. ‘Subscription models suck’, as Cory Ondrejka, head of Linden Labs, creators of SL, commented when he visited us the other day. Instead, the payment model is based on buying ‘property’ or ‘land’ in the world, on which you can build… whatever you like. It is explicitly NOT a game. Second Life has 350,000+ users, a number that is rising at about 15% per month. Of these users, about two thirds are actually ‘building stuff’ on a regular basis. i.e. the proportion of active - or engaged - users to users who just pass through, is *very* high. Only about 0.1% of Wikipedia users actually write stuff. And it’s a lot more complicated to build something in SL than it is to post a Wikipedia entry. SL users are seriously committed. And some of them are making a pretty serious living entirely through this virtual world. (See article from Business Week)  SL has its own currency, Linden dollars, which are exchangeable in the real world for real currency. Hundreds of thousands of ‘real life’ dollars of business are conducted through SL every week. Perhaps more interestingly, the profile of users is not as geeky as you would think: the user base is around 50/50 male to female in terms of hours of use; the average age is 33; older users and women tend to continue to use Second Life – perhaps because they are able to get more out of it; the majority of users do not apparently consider themselves to be ‘game players.’

SL is inspiring because its creators, like so many other successful Web 2.0 businesses, developed a space where people could do interesting stuff, provided the tools for them to do it, then just waited to see what cool things happened and responded to developments. It is also a little frightening because of this. No one, including its creators, really knows what the full potential (or even full repercussions) of SL might be. But hey, it sounds like a great place to conduct some edgy experiments for individuals or businesses with the creativity and willingness to invest (time and money) in it.

For publishers, some of the thought-provoking things that are already happening on SL are: virtual book signings (authors like Cory Doctorow have done this in SL); the development of virtual libraries; the use of virtual communities to test real life business concepts or products before ‘real life’ launch; the presence of publishing companies such as John Battelle’s Federated Media Publishing – which has set up an office in the virtual world; the fact that the BBC have broadcast SL versions of their shows; the idea that students can now do a university course entirely virtually through one of the sixteen or so US universities running virtual classes…. I could go on. Check it out for yourself.

A few blog entries ago I posted a comment in response to some pertinent remarks that Peter Collingridge made about what dinosaurs publishers can be when it comes to web site development: “Some very basic things need to be addressed in order to move general publishing businesses from Web 1.0 companies to Web 2.0 companies and beyond. First of all, we need to educate our own staff to be more ‘e’-savvy, effect cultural and process change internally and change our thinking about some of the qualities we look for when hiring new staff; then we need to get the basic ‘building blocks’ right – develop a digital platform for delivery of our e-content, work out how to budget and resource for new ‘strategic’ web developments which do not deliver traditional cash flows, develop leaner, swifter decision-making processes…and that’s all before we do anything creative or ‘blue sky’ with our content or services”, and I wondered aloud, “How on earth do we move away from some of the bricks and mortar, historically-inherited constraints that prevent us moving fast enough for the pace required in this new digital age?” SL is one of those web developments that make these concerns sound like massive understatements. Whilst we are still at the stage of wondering whether we should hire some more web developers maybe we should really be wondering how many ‘avatar reps’ we need on SL..."

N.B. For more info, Timo Hannay, NPG's Web Publishing Director, has also blogged his notes of Cory Ondrejka's talk on Monday here.

In contrast to the problems associated with adult non-fiction publishing, children's books are flourishing. At Macmillan we are still celebrating with Emily Gravett her winning the Kate Greenaway medal for Wolves.

This was closely followed by this press release suggesting that even more good things are on the way. It's really great working with the professional authors, illustrators, designers and editors who seem to proliferate in children's publishing and the results speak for themselves.

A new transatlantic partnership

Macmillan Children’s Books UK teams up with US publisher Jean Feiwel in her new role at Holtzbrinck Children’s

Macmillan Children’s Books UK will be teaming up with Jean Feiwel, recently appointed Senior Vice President and Publisher of children’s books at

Holtzbrinck USA, to acquire jointly and to co-publish select titles.  In particular, books acquired by Macmillan Children’s Books will play a role in Feiwel’s new imprint, Feiwel & Friends; and Feiwel’s projects are already starting to cross the Atlantic to MCB.

Macmillan Children’s Books’ big Spring 2007 title THE BLACK BOOK OF SECRETS by F.E. Higgins will be on the Feiwel & Friends Fall 2007 launch list, and Kate Saunders’ THE LITTLE SECRET will be published in Spring 2008. From Feiwel’s list Macmillan Children’s Books will be publishing a new series by bestselling Australian author Andy Griffiths, as well as Lily Archer’s debut novel THE POISON APPLES.

Sarah Davies, Publishing Director of Macmillan Children’s Books, said: ‘It’s great to have the opportunity to forge stronger links with our Holtzbrinck sister companies and – when the occasion’s right for us both – to have the potential to acquire rights together. The arrangement is entirely flexible, but there are times when standing together will make us even stronger.  Jean Feiwel is a dynamic publisher with a stellar track record and it’s very exciting to work with her.’

Jean Feiwel said:  “My mandate coming to Holtzbrinck has been to make the whole even stronger than the sum of our parts.  I believe it is in the best interests of our authors, our books, our company to work together in a way that allows us to accomplish a global reach, using the best ideas and talents from both countries. Sarah and I immediately connected on commercially like-minded projects.  I am very excited to be working with her and the entire MCB team.’

Macmillan Children’s Books, a division of Pan Macmillan UK and part of the Holtzbrinck group, is a leading children’s publisher in Britain.  It publishes fiction and non-fiction, picture books and novelty books, and the leading preschool imprint, Campbell Books. It has had both commercial and critical acclaim with authors such as Meg Cabot, Georgia Byng, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Eva Ibbotson, and with Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s GRUFFALO titles and new picturebook star Emily Gravett.

Jean Feiwel joined Holtzbrinck USA in February 2006 to start a broadly defined children’s effort and to guide strategy within the group.  As well as creating new imprints she will also be publishing into paperback and other formats the backlists of fellow Holtzbrinck companies Farrar Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and Roaring Brook Press. Prior to this she spent more than 20 years at Scholastic where she invented the children’s series market with THE BABYSITTERS CLUB, GOOSEBUMPS and DEAR AMERICA, and designed the editorial strategy for all Scholastic’s successful imprints.

For further information contact:

Emma Hopkin, Managing Director, Macmillan Children’s Books: 0207 014 6071

Sarah Davies, Publishing Director, Macmillan Children’s Books: 0207 014 6109

One of the advantages of having a world-beating science journal in the Macmillan stable is that one can invite extraordinarily interesting people to come and talk to our staff. We've had a series of fascinating presentations by scientists, politicians, authors. Today sees a talk by Cory Ondrejka who is CTO of Linden Lab, the developers of Second Life. The concept is both fascinating and scary. An article is this week's Observer newspaper describes things better than I could but I do recommend you take a look at Second Life if only out of fear for the future of cyberhumanity.

Please have a look at yesterday's entry on the difficulties of publishing non-fiction. Probably because it was a Sunday and people have some spare time or because there are some soccer-and-tennis phobes wanting to escape TV we had a great postbag.

In short, the solution from the comments is to publish fewer better titles, reduce prices, give better discounts to independent retailers and worse ones to supermarkets, chains and Amazon, not accept returns, not pay advances, spend money on editorial and design overheads but overall reduce publishing costs.

All good stuff. I remember a management accountant at OUP wondering alound why on earth we didn't stick to publishing best selling expensive titles with low unit costs. He was, of course, right.

I believe Macmillan Science is a legitimate attempt to find a new model which can benefit all 'stakeholders' but en passant our average UK subscription (the support given by booksellers in terms of advance orders ensuring visibility in store) is around 200 copies across 4000 accounts. And these are returnable!

Ah well, soccer must be tough too - Ronaldo sneaks on his team-mate, Zidane nuts someone in the chest, the Argentinian team assaults the Germans after the final whistle, the apparently corrupt Italians win, and Germany doesn't make the final to the disappointment of the advertising community. Now we can concentrate on Pakistan beating England at cricket.

And while on cricket this is by Mike Hopkin a reporter for News at Nature. We feel the match should have been reported on cricinfo and I am still hopeful. Meanwhile charkinblog will have to do:

Cricketing glory for NPG

Arguably one of the few things more complicated than calculating journal impact factors is cricket, so it made sense for Nature to challenge its perennial citation competitors Science to a match.

Science were hoping to avenge their crushing defeat of three years ago, whereas for Nature, a British institution playing that most venerable of English sports, defeat against an American journal (albeit its British staff) was unthinkable.

The select band travelled to Cambridge to be greeted by a tropical downpour and the very real possibility of spending the whole afternoon in the clubhouse. But as the rain relented we realized the battle for scientific and sporting supremacy was on.

With Nature first to bat and clouds still looming, a strong start was vitally important. Thankfully the intensity of the first two overs was unmatched by anything that followed, with Nature's openers Adam Rutherford and captain Andy Douglas smacking Science's surprisingly pacy attack to all quarters of the field.

With the scoreboard ticking along nicely and plenty of wickets in hand, Nature finished with a score of 152 for 9. Good, but would it be enough to defend against a Science batting line-up with obvious hunger in their eyes (and not just for the sandwiches)?

Science, needing to score at more than 6 runs per over to win, were on the back foot as soon as they came up against Nature's devastatingly fast opening attack pairing of Neil Smith and Rob Dicks. Smith combined with Mike Hopkin to produce arguably the scalping of the day, dismissing former Nature staffer Pete Wrobel with a fizzingly fast delivery and slip catch hailed by spectators as "just like proper cricket, like you get on TV".

Any hope the home side had of matching Nature's total evaporated when man of the match Chris 'the Wizard' Townson then produced a simply unplayable spell of bowling, finding pace and bounce on a rapidly drying pitch to claim two victims at a cost of just one run (for those more familiar with baseball, almost the equivalent of pitching a no-hitter).

In the end it was a comfortable victory for Nature by some 70 runs, Science finishing all out for 82. Honourable mentions go to Rutherford for his top score of 40, Douglas for inspiring captaincy, Richard Charkin for unrelenting commitment (including a full-length dive to avoid a run-out), and Peter Collins for overcoming an almost total lack of prior cricketing ability to inflict damage with both ball and bat. Great work also from Gerard Preston, Arran Frood, Quinton Creighton and Robin Brown in ensuring victory.

At a recent meeting of British general book publishers there was a general moan about the state of the non-fiction market. Quality history, biography, politics, economics hardbacks sell bewen 2000 and 20,000 copies in hardback. UK sales of totally brilliant books such as Tom Friedman's The World is Flat are a tiny fraction of US even allowing for population differences. It appears that Americans are more prepared to purchase and read challenging books than the British.

At the more popular end of the market there are some huge sellers - Sharon Osborne, Katy Price etc - but there are large numbers of failures too. And these failures are usually very expensive. Every second-rate Big Brother famous-for-five minutes celebrity is demanding (and frequently getting) ludicrous advances from publishers desperate to find something to sell through supermarkets to to the mass market.

And so neither the up-market nor the mass market is performing. Add to this the demise of backlist sales, the pitifully small paperback sales and the legitimate demands of authors for a fair reward for their work. Furthermore in order to achieve this unsatisfactory state of affairs publishers are spending big marketing budgets and granting special discounts to retailers thus undermining their low profitability further.

In the words of the great Russian sage when asked how to solve the problems of their great Tsarist empire: I have the solution. Someting must be done about it.  

Driving on the A20 just South of Limoges in the middle of France I spotted an enormous BMW motorbike with a gendarme with sunglasses aboard waving me down. Off to an 'air' along with several other foreign cars accompanied by similar policemen.

You were exceeding the 130 km per hour speed limit.

But it's not raining. It's 110 when it rains but 130 in the dry.

Not on this stretch.

How would I know that?

Use your eyes.

What now?

You have two choices. Pay a fine right now (no credit cards allowed) or I confiscate your driving licence, you stay the night here until someone rescues you, you go to court and then we fine you. It is your choice.

How much? €90. Okay. Here's two €50 notes.

I don't have any change.

Okay, don't worry. Keep the €10.

I am not an Italian poloceman, I am French.

Sorry. How about borrowing the €10 and betting it on France to beat Italy on Sunday. If France wins (which please God they do) we could split the winnings. If not, tant pis.

He didn't go along with this suggestion, borrowed €10 from a mate to give me and let me go. I was so relieved. I suspect that if I were Italian I'd have had a lot tougher session.

Bon weekend tout le monde et allez France.

It was an evening for nostalgia last night as a team from Macmillan Distribution (MDL), ably supported by their colleagues at Palgrave Macmillan, paraded around the streets of London, masquerading as Bobby Moore and the boys from the 1966 world cup winning team.  (MDL: A Winning Team.)  David Smith, MD of MDL, took the part of the referee in leading his team round the course and even took the opportunity to send off one of the ‘Wayne Rooneys’, from the HarperCollins team.  For the evening I became an honorary member of MDL and adopted the persona of Geoff Hurst (he was the guy who scored the winning goal against Germany in 1966), joining the boys and girls in red.  We certainly made plenty of noise with our football rattles and World Cup Willie blaring out of the loud speakers.

And the reason for all this was a charity walk on behalf of BTBS known as Walkies.  BTBS is the book trade’s own welfare charity and Walkies is their yearly sponsored walk around checkpoints that include the likes of the Publishers' Association, Foyles bookshop and Bloomsbury.  MDL were not the only ones to send up a team and a variety of costumes and themes were on display.  In the end the prize for best team went to Vista who were dressed up in medical outfits with ‘Vista Cures’ on the back.  The Macmillan team were very proud to come an honourable second although I have had to point out that being a good loser sucks.

The Guardian has an in-depth article about Google and publishers. There's not much new in the piece although it's well written and informative. What I found most interesting is that it is clearly the result of a public relations exercise by Google to influence public opinion in their favour. I can quite understand this but I do wish that such a great organisation would spend less money on spinning their story and concentrate on finding solutions to their impasse with copyright owners.And incidentally, one might think that Google is the only search engine in the world. Thank goodness it is not (monopolies are rarely beneficial) and perhaps newspaper journalists should talk to some of the other organisations in the business. They seem to be able to cope with copyright. 

And finally, now for some thing completely different. Can anyone work out what this ad was intended to say? I am entirely mystified by the hilarious typo. Answers on a postcard (or more simply post a comment) please....

Emma Giacon of Pan attended a meeting today about further developments at King's Cross. Here's her report:

"Peter Millican from the King's Place development and Richard Thompson from architects Dixon Jones popped in at lunchtime to give us all a bit more info on what's going on in the building site next door. After last week's events, first on most people's minds was 'Can we expect to be evacuating our offices again any time soon?'  The answer, happily, was no, with Peter apologising profusely for the inconvenience.  Apparently it was a very small fire, and didn't slow down the building work too much... lucky them!

Development on the site is coming on apace, and we were told that the building will begin to take shape properly around Christmas.  By all accounts it will be an impressive space:  two concert halls (the larger of which will seat 425 people), sculptures (that will be visible from York Way as well as throughout the building), and a floor devoted to visual arts (that will house a permanent collection of portraits) will all be open to the public.  A colonnade along the York Way side of the development will provide some glamour to a currently unappealing road, while an internal street will lead visitors from York Way right through the building to the canal.
I should mention that this will be a very ‘green’ building, producing only half the CO₂ per square metre that most offices produce.

The York Way side of the building will also benefit from a glass façade - which as well as looking very striking - will also provide a noise barrier for the building within.  Dixon Jones (who have worked on notable projects including The Royal Opera House, National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery) have also included a rotunda building that will sit on the corner of the canal basin.  The ground floor of the rotunda will house a huge brasserie restaurant with inside and outside dining, and there will also be a private events section canalside.

We will certainly be gaining illustrious neighbours renting the offices on site.  As well as 1500 staff from The Guardian, the Sinfonietta Orchestra and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be in residence, and New Music groups such as NMC, SPNM and BMIC will likely be based there.  We also hear that Central St Martin's Art College is moving to Kings Cross, so our bright new authors from Pan will be joined by bright young artists - very appropriate!

The thing to remember about all this is that as well as this particular development, the area in general will be completely overhauled by Argent (beginning late 2007 when the Channel Tunnel link is completed).  It really feels as though we are witnessing of something very exciting and refreshing, of which all locals, residents and business, will be able to take advantage."