There was a ghastly groundhog day moment when I was listening to the news yesterday about a team from the Arab League flying to New York to persuade the UN to amend the peace plans for Lebanon. At the end of the bulletin the programme presenter whispered (on air) to his colleague 'I think that was yesterday's news bulletin'. And so it was. But I hadn't noticed (and nor presumably had the BBC technicians). A sad commentary on the Middle East situation. 

A happier day for England cricket where a brilliant test match ended in an England victory. The really good news was that the two heroes of the final day were Mudhsuden Singh Panesar (Monty) and Sajid Iqbal Mahmood (Saj) whose names tell a story. British Asians are becoming mainstream sports stars which will further enhance respect for the first and second-generation immigrants who have done so much for Britain.

A publishing statistic - worldwide sales of textbooks increased 8% year on year according to a recent study from EPS. This is not so surprising. Although mature markets such as the UK have constrained spending on school materials many developing countries have recognised the importance of education as a necessary forerunner of economic and social development (thank God) and have increased budgets for textbooks.

The more telling statistic is that online educational sales increased 18%. In parallel I saw that in Australia teachers are being encouraged to retire earlier in order to bring forward a new cohort of younger teachers more sympathetic to electronic learning systems. In the USA every college course is supplemented with or indeed driven by electronic materials for learning, testing and administration.

The electronic revolution in educational publishing has been slower to arrive than in, say, scientific or legal publishing but it's coming and it's coming fast.

Every now and again the book industry is convulsed by a bout of plagiarism. Someone is suspected of lifting material from another author, there is a court case, someone wins, someone loses and the loser not only loses the case but is typically subjected to abuse from the literary police force. This is not much different from athletes being caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. It used to be otherwise.

I was listening to a Prom (an annual series of concerts broadcast by the BBC) last night and heard for the first time Michael Haydn's Requiem pro defuncto Archiepiscopo Sigismundo which was first performed in 1771 when Mozart was fifteen years old. The introducer of the prom mentioned the friendship between Michael Haydn and Mozart in spite of the near twenty year age difference. He also mentioned the similarities between the Haydn Requiem and the later Mozart Requiem. There are references in various sources to the fact that the Haydn work 'greatly influenced' Mozart. I wonder what is the difference between being greatly influenced and pinching.

Go listen. If this were raised in a contemporary court I reckon Mozart would be branded a top-class plagiarist and would have to hand over his gold medal and a chunk of his reputation to Michael Haydn.

And for today's light relief go to Scott Pack's blog. He wa sthe chief buyer at Waterstone's book chain for a period and he tells the inside story of his departure. He is now working for the innovative Friday Project who might well become the exemplar of a modern book publishing company.

A second posting in a day but I'm afraid it's a business one. The Publishers Association has just released an excellent primer on e-books which I wanted to let you know about - details at the PA website. At £100 for 70-odd pages for non-members (half that for PA members) it appears rather expensive but, as someone pointed out in a previous discussion about book prices, it's the quality not the quantity that matters.

I know that many of the readers of this blog are more interested in literary publishing than scientific research. However, the debate about how best to use the Internet to disseminate information about the latest scientific and medical findings is, I believe, relevant to all types of publishing in one way or another.

There are a number of criss-crossing arguments. In essence, the open-access advocates believe that the fruits of research should be made available through the Internet free of charge to every citizen. This is particularly true where the research has been funded by taxpayers (the bulk of research is funded this way). The business model proposed is that the author (or more likely funding agency) would pay the publisher a fee to cover the costs of publication and access would then be 'open'.

The counterargument is that an 'author-pays' model increases the likelihood of less vigorous refereeing; less investment by publishers in improving the processes of editing, storing and distributing; the proposed business model is intrinsicaly more administratively burdensome than the present one (collecting fees from tens or hundreds of thousands of authors is harder than collecting subscriptions from a thousand university libraries); and is commercially unsustainable.

In any event, a number of open-access publishers have been established and are carving a niche for themselves. In some cases they are achieving very respectable 'impact factors' ( a measure of quality). Nature recently published an article (which I linked too in an earlier posting) suggesting that a well-known open-access pioneer, Public Library of Science, is a bit wobbly financially. This caused a fair amount of comment and has generated some really interesting views and discussion on Nature News Blog. I really think the debate is important and has implications for copyright, for freedom of information and for future publishing investment strategies. Do read it. It is one of the strengths of the web and publishing that dangerous and difficult arguments can be freely expressed and everyone can participate.

If this is all too serious for you perhaps you'd enjoy my entry for the worst song lyrics of the month.

I think I mentioned that my admission that we were taking Google ads on this blog generated flak from commentators. All well and good. That's why there is a comments section - and I've never felt the need to monitor or referee it.

However, I suspect that most of the comments are overlooked. So here are a few recent ones. And I'd love to have more.

Some of the comments are rather pompous. For instance my jokey piece yesterday on a new form of literary agency elicited:

I can't quite decide if this post displays a complete contempt for agents, a complete contempt for publishers, a complete contempt for authors, or a complete contempt for all three. Quite funny though.

For goodness sake! On the other hand this next commentator clearly understands more about marketing than the average publisher:

Is it any wonder that us "ordinary readers" have become increasingly cynical about the whole kitten caboodle and now blog amongst ourselves about great reads and pass the word around? Most of us are ignoring the review pages, the 3 for 2's and increasingly the prizelists.Plenty of us have been quietly exchanging great reads through international online reading groups for years and there's a potential audience that no one seems to have taken any notice of, do publishers even know they exist? Have you typed "reading group" into Yahoo groups lately?
Word of a good read spreads around these like a bush fire and likewise we telegraph the turkeys well in advance!
The Book Bloggers Book Prize when it comes to fruition will have a far bigger audience than many people realise and I don't think it will cost a penny to be shortlisted.The awards dinner won't wreck your cholesterol because it will be virtual, no new outfits to be bought, but just wait;the book that wins will truly deserve to be read.

And here are some wise words about brands in publishing and their importance or non-importance:

Very few consumers walk into a bookshop or browse Amazon and select a book on the strength of the publisher's brand. Penguin used to have that influence, but I would doubt that many book buyers would know if they have bought a Virgin book (Losing my Virginity excepted) even though Virgin has such strong brand recognition. Product reliability and quality is a major factor in the success of many of the companies in this list and this drives consumer loyalty. With a product as varied and variable as a publisher's booklist it is difficult to meet consumer expectation on each and every title (based on the last one read), making loyalty to one publisher brand extremely unlikely.

Please keep the comments coming. I really appreciate them

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.'