I was talking to an author this morning who changed his literary agent. The one he dumped was, apparently, very good at extracting large advances from publishers but he didn't show enough care in commenting on the author's work as he completed it.

This reminded of a long-held ambition of mine to start a new-look literary agency. The concept is twofold.

First, every author is different and is looking for different things from an agent. Some want love. Some want money. Some want accounting help, some don't. Some want an auctioneer, others simply want someone to negotiate fair terms with an existing publisher.

The second part of the concept is not to charge a percentage commission (on all sales until 70 years after the author's death in the UK) but to charge a fee in the same way that other professional advisers charge (lawyers, accountants etc).

Whenever I've discussed this idea with an agent it has been dismissed on the grounds that all authors want everything all the time and that I'd never be able to charge enough to cover my expenses without the cross-subsidy from easy money rolling in from the 'backlist' authors. They are probably right but I've had fun drawing up a draft a la carte menu for authors signing up with the imaginary new firm.

Opening file (cover charge) £100 (compulsory)

Reading manuscript and giving opinion £100 per hour

Reading manuscript and giving brutally frank opinion £500 per hour (but normally this only takes 15 minutes)

Phoning author to reassure £200 per hour subject to a minimum annual payment of £2000

Submitting an unknown author to appropriate publishers £500

Submitting a well-known author to publishers and conducting an auction £5000

Submitting a well-known author to her existing publisher £500

Drawing up contract and negotiating small print with publisher £200 per page of contract

Checking royalty statements and arguing with publisher £100 per hour

Complaining about sales and promotion on behalf of the author £100 per hour

Avoiding repayment of advance when author fails to deliver £500 per hour

Tendering legal advice £500 per hour plus direct outgoings and the cost of indemnity insurance

Transferring files to new agency £5000.

Please feel free to amend or add to these. I was also thinking of creating a menu touristique which gave a basic all-round (but not very good) service for £200 per annum.

I've had a lot of flak about running the Google ads. The next step in my learning is working out how to cancel it. I'll keep you informed.

You may notice down the right-hand side of this blog some ads. One of the purposes of this blog was for me to learn how things work. It's taken about a month to set up the deal with Google. when we first did it our server crashed just as Google went in to check our validity. And then it just seemed to take forever for them to re-check. However, all is now well although I'm hoping the ads might become a little more interesting. I'll keep you in touch with how the income stream develops. I'm not anticipating this to be Macmillan's profit salvation but it should be interesting.

Incidentally, I notice that one of the ads which appears from time to time is for Macmillan - but I do not intend to pay myself if anyone links - and I don't remember authorising Google to sell any ads for us. A mystery. Can anyone illuminate me?

This caught my eye this morning in the Book2Book newsletter:

The Crime Writers' Association has announced that it is to start charging publishers for any of their books that are shortlisted for its annual Dagger Awards.

The charges for each shortlisted title will be £500 per title for the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, £200 for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger and Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and £100 for the New Blood and Non Fiction Daggers. As previously, there is no entry fee for books submitted for the Dagger Awards.

CWA Chair Robert Richardson said: "This is not a money-making move, but a way to reduce the considerable financial costs we face in organising and promoting the Dagger Awards. We are not a wealthy organisation and it is an increasing burden on our limited finances. Authors and publishers benefit from being shortlisted - and especially winning - while there is no gain to the CWA. The income these charges generate will not cover the full costs of the operation, but will leave us with a balance that we can afford. This is solely a CWA committee decision."

Higher profile prizes such as the Booker and Orange prizes charge as much as £2000 per shortlisted title.

Macmillan has always been a strong supporter of the CWA and we were, of course, delighted at Ann Cleeves's success this year. However I found my eyebrows raising at the idea of being charged to be shortlisted. And then a bit higher when I was informed that the Booker and Orange prizes also charge. I quite understand the desire to defray the costs of organising the prize and the winners certainly benefit from the exposure but I have one question. If an author or publisher refuses to pay when shortlisted what then happens? To exclude a book for reasons other than literary surely devalues any literary prize? Or am I just being naive?

In July this blog had 31151 visitors, 15% up on June which was 19% ahead of May. Still going in the right direction but Summer lassitude must surely slow the growth soon.

We work closely with the world's leading branding organisation, Interbrand. They did an excellent job helping us with the launch of Palgrave Macmillan as a an established imprint with a new name. We also publish with them across a range of titles. I therefore take a particular interest in their annual report on global brands which has had quite a bit of press attention of late.

For those of you who can't be bothered to click to the report and scroll down here are the top ten global brands:

Coca-Cola

Microsoft

IBM

GE

Intel

Nokia

Toyota

Disney

McDonald's

Mercedes

Only one 'media' company, Disney. Google appears at 24, Sony at 26, Apple at 39. Amazon is 65. The first professional publisher is Reuters at 78. There is not a single consumer publisher in the top 100. No Penguin, no Random House, no Hachette, no HarperCollins - definitely no Macmillan. And yet I cannot remember an annual report of a publishing company which did not shout about the strength of its brand and the protection this gives a publisher from the challenges of a changing technological world.

And an old chestnut from British politics but I like it. Someone once asked a colleague why everyone took an instant dislike to Peter Mandelson (now the EU Trade Commissioner, whatever that is) and the answer was 'Because it saves time.'

Last time I was stuck in this godforsaken place and blogged it I was chastised as a a first-class travelling plutocratic publisher of no worth. So I`d better not moan about delays,lousy service, lousy signage, grumpy staff and attitudes more reminiscent of 1960s Britain than I care to remember. So let`s celebrate Tim Coates`s recovery of his own blog Good Library Blog - see Blogroll - which he`s managed to hijack back from the dastardly hijackers - and has celebrated the doubling of book purchases by libraries in Ulster. The scandal of diminishing book budgets in libraries (as opposed to the burgeoning of`other outreach activities`) would never have been noticed without Tim`s crusade. and it matters - see the comments on my previous blog. Aux barricades mes amis pour les bibliotheques - and please will someone privatise Air France properly as soon as possible.

Last year an old friend of mine, Tim Coates, launched a campaign to save British public libraries from politically-correct destruction. He was able to produce evidence showing that library expenditure on books was being devastated by explicit or implicit government policy in favour of 'outreach centres' etc. His campaign has not made him popular with government or parts of the library establishment. As part of his campaign he set up a Good Library Blog which I linked to. This blog has now been hijacked by some variety of loonies. Tim is putting it straight and will announce when things are back to normal. But it is really sad that something so self-evidently worthwhile should be attacked for no reason.

Further to my mention of Glyndebourne I tripped over this cartoon.

 

Pan Macmillan have just announced a Manga distribution contract with the Japanese publisher leading the Manga revolution, Tokyopop. The market for Manga is doubling every year and Pan are aiming to gain the largest market share.

A rather different experience  when I attended a wonderful production of Die Fledermaus at the equally wonderful opera house at Glyndebourne last night. The only problem is the time it takes to get there from London. The show also starts quite early to allow a very long interval for picnics in the beautiful gardens.

This entails leaving London shortly after lunch. There is a story of the late great Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer. He was doing a deal in London involving a bunch of bankers and lawyers. At 2.30 several of them upped and left, explaining they had to get to Glyndebourne. He is said to have remarked (language softened) that 'this is typical of the bloody Poms. They charge an arm and a leg for doing f all and then b.....r off to the races at the drop of a hat.'

Apart from the opera itself the evening is a marvellous way to observe the English (and visiting European and American) upper classes at play Here's a wondeful photo by Tony Ray-Jones from 1967. Nothing much has changed except that the cows seem to have been entirely replaced by sheep this year.

 

I have been reading about Amazon's latest problems with Wall Street in Publishers Weekly. Most of us would be more than content with sales growth of 16% but it is amazing how an organisation the size and quality of Amazon can show operating income of just 2.5% (and I bet that's before all sorts of dadeda - as in EBITDA - and one-offs). On the other hand, for Wall Street to savage a company for investing in its future does seem a bit harsh. Perhaps Amazon should pay a bit more attention to the bottom line by focussing less on the price 'flywheel' and more on range and service - at least when it comes to books.

But while reading this article my eye skipped to an ad for big bad book blog which is an excellent, informative and entertaining site put together by the Greenleaf Book Group who look to be a really sensible publishing company except for one thing. Why pay for an ad on PW Online when they could have had this plug for free?

Someone who never failed to understand the bottom line was my old boss, Paul Hamlyn. I was delighted to see that his Foundation is still going strong and dishing out money intelligently and generously - typical of the man whom I and many others miss enormously.