When some executives of Google came to the Publishers Association to discuss their plans for digitising in copyright material they brought with them two 'communications consultants' better known in English as spin doctors. I wondered why. I now know.

I do not not know the business editor of the Times, James Harding. I assume he's an intelligent and diligent journalist who does his best to report and comment accurately. What then explains this article? How does an announcement that Google is digitising some classic and out of copyright books make the main leader in the business section of a great newspaper? The business impact is close to zilch. The books mentioned have already been digitised many times over and so it's really not news. Google have already press released any number of times about their various library scanning projects. And purple prose such as this:

Google may have just done for book-reading what e-mail has done for letter-writing. Yesterday the internet search engine started making classic, out-of-copyright books available to download and print free. The service makes available to everyone the dusty pages of old tomes that once were reserved only for those with privileged access to the likes of the Bodleian library in Oxford and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Google likes to boast that its mission is to organise the world’s information, but it is doing something better than that: it is is democratising it.

But the bit that's really got my dander up is where he (or a spin doctor?) says:'Inevitably, the Google service has been greeted by the book industry with the kind of welcome normally reserved for a can of kerosene and a box of matches.' This is garbage. The industry has no quarrel at all with Google over the digitisation and searchability of out of copyright works. We quarrel with them over the use of the copyright material produced by authors whose copyright we are obliged to protect. They wish to usurp that copyright without prior permission. That is our argument and it is straightforward to understand. Presumably the 'communication consultants' failed to make that clear to James Harding and he didn't think it worth finding out why publishers have reacted the way they have. The positive publicity - e.g. the headline of the article, 'Google does book-reading a huge favour' - will  certainly have justified the spin doctors' doubtless exorbitant fees but, frankly, it makes me feel a bit queasy and I wonder what else I should recognise as complete rubbish in the Times.

Coincidentally in the same issue of the paper there are big articles on page 2 of Times 2 on Paris Hilton and Jeffrey Archer. After yesterday's blog should I begin to suspect a conspiracy? I also wondered yesterday whether juxtaposing the names would increase traffic? The answer is no. We had 1628 visitors yesterday against an August average of just over 1500 a day. In scientific research, negative results can be just as valuable as positive ones, albeit slightly less fulfilling. 

I came across this headline on the blog of a celebrated British journalist Bryan Appleyard. He has written about Jeffrey Archer in the past and still writes about him a lot nowadays never favourably. But what interested me about the headline was the complete lack of connection between the two people mentioned. The only explanation I have is that Bryan Appleyard knows a thing or two about marketing as well as about journalism and that reckons that those two names juxtaposed will bring more traffic to his site.

This site averages 1500 visitors a day at the moment. Let's see if my pinching Mr Appleyard's idea can improve this number. A simplistic form of Google manipulation but most marketing ideas are pretty simplistic! I'll let you know the results of this scientific experiment although I am aware that Bryan Appleyard has written extensively about the threats to society of science itself.

Of course the problem is that if the results prove positive just about every book blurb will contain the words Paris, Hilton, Jeffrey and Archer, such is the me-too-ism of publishers' copywriters.

I've just received this extract from a marketing flyer about the forthcoming Frankfurt Book Fair:Record number of 7,223 exhibitors from 101 countries took part in the Frankfurt Book Fair 2005. 284,838 visitors came to the Fair from 121 countries, 6.3 % more than in 2004. About 30 per cent of visitors were from abroad. With these credential the fair needs to no introduction. This fair is the most important platform for the books and publishing industry to feel the pulse the market and open itself to the new opportunities. 

What this says is that approximately 100,000 visitors came from overseas. I estimate that the average cost per person of attending the fair from overseas (airfares, hotels, food and drink, transport, cost of stand, opportunity cost etc) is of the order of $5,000. That means a total of $500 million. If the average margin from selling books is, say, 10% it would be necessary to sell an additional $5 billion just to pay for attending the fair. Hmm. 

The thought of Japan makes me nostalgic. I used to visit once or twice a year when I worked at Oxford University Press. We had two companies there, TOPELL which sold English Language Teaching books and TOPMAST which sold the rest (you can puzzle out the acronyms for yourself). I was a director of TOPMAST. The nostalgia comes not just from fond memories of a wonderful country but from a time when publishers could make money from a rich and vibrant economy. Our standard discount to retailers was 25% (30% for very large orders). There were no returns whatsoever. Orders were substantial, placed in good time and the quantities ordered were meant to keep the book available for several years (rather than several hours as in much of the UK today). Accounts were paid absolutely on time. Business courtesy was everything. The ethics of business remain the same. It says a lot about a culture when the two owners of a major book importer committed suicide recently because they could not meet their financial obligations. However, the market is not what it was. A combination of demographics, economic slow-down and regional shifts have all served to push Japan down the league of publishing hotspots.

But books still appear and one of our directors, Richard Nathan, has just published a new edition of his Frequently Asked Questions about Corporate Japan and I attach his notes about it:

The new revised edition was published on the 28^th of August by Kondansha (http://www.kodansha-intl.com) eight years after the first edition, which sold more than 17,000 copies after six re-printings. The first edition also came out in audio format and believe it or not was licensed to Microsoft for use in research they were conducting on translation software. Apparently, according to the Microsoft boffins, the Japanese-English bilingual structured format was ideal for computers to try to mimic. I doubt the research came to much and I haven’t noticed any improvement in translation software or seen a Microsoft branded product like the Babel Fish in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but you never know it might just be round the corner!

Many of the original questions in the book came from the mouths of visiting Macmillan executives to Japan when I was based in Tokyo. Such as “Why do Japanese businessmen exchange business cards so often?”; “How are annual pay rises negotiated in Japan?” and “Is sexual harassment a problem at Japanese companies?”  Not sure why they asked the last question, but we did have some pretty faces in the office.

It is quite amazing how much Japan has changed over the last 8 years. For example, the finance and banking industry has been completed restructured. In the early 1990s there were 23 major banks including retail banks, long-term credit banks, and trust banks in Japan, but this number has now fallen to 8, and three groups now dominate the market. The largest bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (http://www.mufg.jp/english) which has the rather odd slogan “Quality For You“ is now the world’s largest bank and manages a staggering 40 million accounts. It doesn’t compare well to US and European banks in terms of profits. Nevertheless, it is still amazing how much has changed since the last edition of the book.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that Maruzen (http://www.maruzen.co.jp/home-eng) is still the oldest surviving company listed on the stock exchange in Japan, despite all the changes and disruption to traditional publishing activities in Japan following the collapse of the economic bubble and the entry of Amazon and others into the Japanese market. Maruzen was founded in 1869, the same year that Macmillan published the first edition of Nature (www.nature.com) and today Maruzen sells print and online editions of Nature to universities and libraries across Japan. In its early years Maruzen imported and sold Burberry rain coats and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The book (ISBN4-7700-4035-0) is available from Amazon Japan at: www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4770040350/sr=1-2/qid=1156779250/ref=sr_1_2/250-0114605-6236240?ie=UTF8&s=books and probably at all good bookstore in Japan including Maruzen.

There are many upsides to being in the publishing industry. You work with (mainly) intelligent people; your objectives are (mainly) laudable; your products are (mainly) at worst harmless and at best inspirational; your lifestyle is (mainly) free of physical danger; and you may, if you're lucky and/or reasonably able, earn a living wage.

The downsides are that most people you meet have an opinion about publishing and publishers. I wouldn't say we get a completely bum rap ( I suspect arms dealers, drug runners, secret policemen, dictators do worse) but I (and I hope it's not just me) get a fair amount of flak essentially pointing out the general inanity or foolishness of the industry.

From booksellers - why don't you give more discount to me? Why don't you give less to others? Why aren't books more expensive? Why don't you make books cheaper?

From authors - why don't you pay me more? Why don't your editors love me more? Why do your editors interfere so much? Why do you give booksellers such big discounts? Why isn't my book in Waterstones in Dulwich?

From would-be authors - why won't you publish my book? Why did you publish that other guy's book? Why has nobody spotted my brilliance? Why is there a conspiracy against me?

From agents - why don't you print my client's books on better paper? Why aren't they designed better? I want to know in advance before you sell Serbian rights. Why do you insist on exclusive European rights when you know the Americans want to sell into Europe? I don't like the jacket.

From friends - have you thought of publishing other books like Harry Potter? I don't think this book is good as her last one. Why don't you advertise more? Publishers must make lots and lots of money because I spend lots on books - and they're very expensive. Why did you publish that heap of rubbish?

But on Friday a miracle happened. I was having my annual medical check-up and was wired up for the treadmill heart test. I rather enjoy it because it's an opportunity push yourself to the limit knowing that there's a consultant cardiologist by your side. If you're going to have a coronary there's no better place or time.

While I'm hammering away on the treadmill the doctor asks me what I do. Publishing. What sort? All sorts including scientific and medical. What sort of medical? Nature Clinical Practice. 'Aha', he said, 'you must work for Macmillan. The medical profession was concerned when you launched that series. The worry was that you were simply using the Nature brand to con us into buying a bunch of new journals. We were wrong. I subscribe to Cardiovascular Medicine and it's absolutely terrific. The articles are excellent, the editor is the best possible person in the world, production is excellent, pricing is fair. I'm also a contributor and the in-house team have been complete professionals in every way.'

You could have knocked me down with a feather or a myocardial infarction.

If you google (note lower case initial, the sign of brand domination) 'Logos' you find a number of logo companies, a journal of modern society and culture, a foundation dedicated to music in Flanders, a magazine about research at Argonne National Laboratory, a journal of Catholic thought and culture and so on, page after page of things called Logos. At last I found the Logos I was hunting.

Logos is the premier journal of the world publishing and book community. Unlike other trade journals, Logos is international in scope and focuses primarily on the deeper issues and challenges facing publishing and the book world. Appearing quarterly since 1990, Logos has featured hundreds of essays by many of the leading figures in publishing and the library community.

If Publishing News is the Daily Mirror of the publishing industry, The Bookseller is the Daily Mail, Publishers Weekly is the International Herald Tribune then Logos is the Economist.

Logos doesn't have a website. It is run as an independent charitable foundation which has an email for service and ordering - logos-Marlow@dial.pipex.com. I rung up its editor, Gordon Graham, for permission to use a review he wrote and published about Mike Barnard's Transparent Imprint. Gordon was a very successful publisher as MD of McGraw-Hill in the UK and then CEO of Butterworths and President of the Publishers Association. He is a brilliant speaker and I remember some of his bons mots such as: 'The secret of success in a corporate environment is always to let your owners have better returns than they expected but less than you could afford'; and in defence of charging for scientific information 'Wherever information is free there will be no freedom of information'.

In any event, the only problem with Logos is that its circulation is small (please do subscribe) and therefore not many people will see this review. I apologise in advance because printing it might be seen as immodest and self-serving (which it is) but I think Mike's book is excellent and I want to tell the world - or at least the readers of this blog.

LOGOS

The Journal of the World Book Community

BOOK REVIEWS

TRANSPARENT IMPRINT: How a Publisher's Decision to Tell the Truth to Authors Stirred Up a Storm

Michael Barnard

Macmillan, 2006 208 pp

ISBN 1-400-9242-4

£l0

If you work in a large publishing corporation, how do you win sanction to start a new publishing programme which has no promise of profit? The answer is by conviction, persuasive power, tremendous energy and faith. Michael Barnard has all of these qualities. His energy even enabled him to write this book about the new publishing programme just before it was launched.

The new programme was built on that notorious graveyard of literary aspiration – unsolicited first novels. So many of these are received by trade publishers that they have no time to acknowledge, let alone read, them. In fact, the Macmillan website until 2005 warned, "We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts." However, one day Mike Barnard – a career executive whose responsibilities embrace production, distribution and information technology – wondered aloud at a meeting whether "a streamline system" could he devised to handle unsolicited manuscripts, not only to encourage and do justice to authors, but in the hope of achieving an occasional bestseller which might pay for the programme.

From this casual remark was born Macmillan New Writing, with the blessing of CEO Richard Charkin. At the beginning Barnard thought that his problems would be to harness the powerful resources of the many departments inside Macmillan who would tend to regard the new programme as an orphan without a future. What he did not expect was to be scorned by forces outside of the company. Viewed inside the company as working on a shoestring budget, his "streamlining" was called, particularly by literary agents, publishing on the cheap and exploitation of authors.

The books certainly don't look cheap – each printed in hardcover and full colour, with individually designed jackets, reasonable quality of paper, head and tail hands, ribbon markers and modest retail prices (£12.99). What is missing is invisible to the outside observer or reader – no author advances, minimal print runs, standardised contracts, standard designs. Those with long memories may well feel that Barnard has resurrected fiction publishing as it used to be.

Of course, the first problem for Barnard and his team was somehow to arrange that all of the manuscripts would be read. This labour was dispersed among a team of freelance readers, and eased by requiring that all manuscripts be submitted as electronic files. Another rule was that there would be no dialogue with authors except those whose manuscripts were accepted.

The scheme was immediately popular with authors, including the 99 per cent who were rejected, because they knew they were in with a chance. And they would rather accept the formulaic terms – same royalty for everybody (20 per cent of net receipts), no rewriting, take-it-or-leave-it contract, no cash advances – than have no chance at all of being published.

Barnard was content with the usual fate of those with bright ideas: "You thought of it. Now do it. But don't spend any money." What he did not reckon with was the enormous public criticism that the announcement of the programme would attract. But he was clever enough to see this as welcome publicity. The first report, appearing in The Guardian, quoted views that "the scheme is a scam", is "atrocious and wrong", and that Macmillan was guilty of requiring authors to bear their own editing costs.

A vigorous public debate ensued in both the trade and national press. The major assault in the latter came from Robert McCrum, literary editor of the Observer, who told his readers that the launch of Macmillan New Writing meant that the "days of taste and literary discrimination at Macmillan are over." Barnard's written reply to McCrum's article, calling it "a bizarre outburst", was not published.

Nicholas Clee in The New Statesman wondered whether Macmillan was "exploiting authors' desperation". Under the heading "Publishing on the budget plan", The Washington Post announced that Macmillan New Writing was "the talk of Britain's book world".

Meanwhile, Barnard's team had read three thousand manuscripts and decided to publish just six. The programme would continue at the rate of one publication a month.

The second half of Transparent Imprint deals with the nuts and bolts of bringing together all of the elements in the publishing process through what Barnard calls "horizontal management". His book thus has elements of a publishing primer, written in a lively, conversational way which makes the reader feel it was written as it happened – as it was. Through the whole of the adventure Barnard somehow continued his regular executive responsibilities, including trips to Asia, where the books are typeset, printed and bound.

Macmillan New Writing kindly sent LOGOS copies of their first six books along with Barnard's Transparent Imprint. We don't review fiction. I don't even read it. My wife does. But I do study publishing. To me, the most encouraging feature about this book is one that Barnard does not mention, but which is implicit on every page: individual enterprise can indeed flourish in the corporate environment. It just needs the right individual to take the initiative – and the right boss to lend support.

Gordon Graham

My grumpy old man blog of yesterday touched a few nerves. After the enormous success of Eats,shoots & leaves I shouldn't be surprised that the subject of spelling and use of English is a popular issue. I suppose the problem starts in schools. And if it's difficult to teach British kids how much harder is it to teach English to non-native speakers.

About five years ago Macmillan Education launched onestopenglish to offer teaching resources, tips and support to teachers of English throughout the world. It has been a huge success with 350,000 registered users who come back time and again. The material is free and usage has not been restricted at all.

Fine and dandy and very web 2.0 but we needed to develop the site further, to pay top-class professional writers, teachers and developers and to create a web 3.0 level of service. This requires an income stream but we could not risk losing our loyal users. We therefore developed a subscription site, the Staff Room where we have responded to user feedback gathered via questionnaires, workshops and focus groups by generating new 'missing' material, enhanced search, comprehensive support materials and much else.

Teachers of English are not wealthy and we have therefore kept the subscription price to the lowest possible level - £2 per month - and onestopenglish users have already begun to convert in good numbers (we launched last Thursday). Do have a look at onestopenglish and if you are a teacher of English do take out a subscription to the Staff Room - it's worth a go.

I know that this blog sometimes has spelling mistakes - mea culpa. I do try to eliminate them but I type badly and fast and make mistakes. Does it matter? Yes, it upsets me. We are a publishing company and should know how to spell and we should care about getting things right all the time. More importantly (and even more importantly in a computer age where successful searching by and large depends on accurate spelling) bad spelling causes problems.

For instance roughly half of Macmillan's internal reports used to spell Ottakers (sic). Which meant that to find out the total Ottakars sales you had to search on both spellings. It's also a bit insulting billing a customer twice because we can't decide how to spell him/her. Of course this is now a lot easier,although is it Waterstones or Waterstone's?

However, that is nothing compared to the horror I found on the main Macmillan website this morning (which I hope will be corrected by the time you read this):

Picador celebrates the inclusion of two of it's authors on the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006 Longlist

It was like a knife to my heart. Can everyone in Macmillan please learn the difference between it's and its - please. And if the rest of the world would follow suit I'd be a happier guy. Or is this yet another sign of fast-approaching grumpy old bookman-itis? Aaaargh.

On the way home earlier this week I popped in to see the bookshop co-owned by one of our regular commentators, Adam Powell. The shop is absolutely great - just what an independent bookshop should be. Good but not flash design. Interesting stock range. Intelligent and engaging staff. The problem is that Adam's customers want the best quality, the best range, the best service and the lowest prices - a difficult business proposition. From a publisher's point of view and with the best (honest) will in the world it is hard to fulfil all the needs of such a bookshop when their purchases are inevitably so much lower than those of the big chains and supermarkets. Who knows what the solution is but committed booksellers like Adam are absolutely part of it. 

But he's not always right. In his latest comment he says that record companies and publishers are reacting to rather than engaging with technological change. I guess that might be true in some instances but I don't believe it's true in general. British publishers in particular are at the forefront of embracing, using and experimenting with new models. The most difficult area in which to move quickly is where there are the most constituents with a voice. That is probably literary publishing where everyone has a vested interest, an opinion, and a right to veto - authors, agents, retailers, reviewers etc. We do need to open this up to change but, believe me, it's hard!