We have decided to make this editorial linked to this news story in Nature open to everybody to read. I quote from the opening paragraphs of the editorial.

Imagine that five American nurses and a British doctor have been detained and tortured in a Libyan prison since 1999, and that a Libyan prosecutor called at the end of August for their execution by firing squad on trumped-up charges of deliberately contaminating more than 400 children with HIV in 1998. Meanwhile, the international community and its leaders sit by, spectators of a farce of a trial, leaving a handful of dedicated volunteer humanitarian lawyers and scientists to try to secure their release.

Implausible? That scenario, with the medics enduring prison conditions reminiscent of the film Midnight Express, is currently playing out in a Tripoli court, except that the nationalities of the medics are different. The nurses are from Bulgaria and the doctor is Palestinian.

This is something worth making a noise about in my opinion. Stories generated by the editorial are being collected on Connotea by Declan Butler.

This week also saw a sad event for Macmillan, the retirement of Alastair Gordon after a 21 year distinguished career in publishing sales. I asked Charles Jenkins and Jim Papworth to pen a few words about him:

Alastair studied PPE at Oxford and after short stints in the wine trade and as a stockbroker, entered the publishing industry with Pergamon Press being interviewed by Robert Maxwell (as was I, RC).He subsequently joined Macmillan Publishers in 1985.

For the last decade he has been International Sales Director at Palgrave Macmillan.  Alastair built up enormous reserves of respect and genuine affection amongst colleagues and the international publishing and bookselling communities around the world.  Modest and unassuming by nature, his achievements have been considerable, overseeing significant sales growth in our international markets for academic, reference and professional books, especially in Europe, Middle East, South Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America, and encouraging and guiding literally hundreds of staff under his wise and humane leadership.  His presentations at sales conferences were legendary for their panache!

On his last day he sold a 30 volume set of Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes to a customer in Chile. Truly characteristic.

In the late 1970s or maybe early eighties there was an article in Publishers Weekly about a new company called Dictronics which had acquired the rights to produce floppy-disk versions of a number of their reference books in the USA. I was head of reference at Oxford University Press at the time, called them, blagged a return ticket to New York and visited them to see if we could join whatever electronic party was about to happen. We did a deal with a substantial advance to OUP($600k if my memory serves me right) and Dictronics began work. Their editorial director ('the guy who can spell and things like that') was a young guy from Chicago, Andy Rosenheim, who then emigrated to England to work on the stuff and stayed here. He got a full-time job at OUP and then at various London trade houses including four years at Penguin, wrote a few top-notch novels, got married, had children,became a great friend and now has taken over as editor of my favourite magazine, The Author, which does not have a website but is run by The Society of Authors. This is a long preamble to justify my reprinting a piece which will appear there by Simon Greenall, one of the Macmillan team of authors. And please take out a subscription to the Author to help fund the new editor's desire to make the magazine even greater.

It’s about 8.30am, and I leave for the office, about fifteen minutes’ walk away. I go past the uniformed security guards and into the large open plan office where I greet my friends. Someone brings me a coffee and the latest gossip, then I sit down, sometimes with one editor, sometimes with another, and we start work checking proofs. I could be with any ELT publisher in the UK … but this is the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) in Beijing, and it’s the start of a very typical day.

About seven years ago, Christopher Paterson and Yiu Hei Kan of Macmillan Education began to explore a possible partnership with FLTRP, one of the largest educational publishers in China. China was soon to be admitted to the World Trade Organisation and would sign the International Copyright Agreement. These events coincided with an important curriculum reform in primary and secondary education.

The first fruits of this partnership were a textbook series for primary schools. The Chinese Ministry of Education curriculum reform now requires English to be taught from the age of eight. No one in China had produced books for this age group before, and while Macmillan has published primary school books elsewhere in the world, no one was certain if this experience was relevant for China. A team of UK-based writers, with Printha Ellis as Chief Editor, worked with an editorial team in FLTRP to publish a series of textbooks. Sadly, Printha died before she could see the extraordinary success of New Standard English for Primary schools, which soon became the best seller in China.

In December 2000 I went to Beijing to discuss plans for the continuation of the New Standard English series in junior middle and senior high schools. I sat through my first nerve-wracking meeting, one of three people from Macmillan facing twenty Chinese editors, publishers and professors. It was the start of many meetings.

Since then, we’ve spent much time discussing the kind of English that China would need for the 21^st century. We’ve researched the traditions of teaching and publishing in China, and we’ve explored how Macmillan’s international expertise can be used in the Chinese context. The Chinese Ministry of Education imposes many requirements on the grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and the social and cultural content. Our final course design has had to work within these constraints, as well as to have a story line, and to be interesting and motivating for the schoolchildren. Above all, we’ve had to submit the seventeen main coursebooks to the Ministry of Education for approval. About forty books, including teachers’ books and supplementary material, have had to be ready for the start of the school year.

There have been up to fifteen authors and editors in the Macmillan team, and about twenty editors and professors in Beijing. As co-editor in chief, my role in Beijing is to help interpret feedback from both the market and the FLTRP team, and to develop the course design. Back in the UK, I then brief the Macmillan team, monitor the writing progress and help edit or rewrite, if necessary.

It’s not always easy. One problem has been the Ministry wordlist, a list of about 3500 words which are considered to be the most frequently used and which need to be taught. While it is relatively easy to think of unconnected sentences to illustrate the meanings of these words, we need to ensure they are presented in a more extended context, within the general topic of the lesson, and in a way which practises different language skills. At times it has meant trying to write an exciting dialogue for teenagers which includes such disparate words as Ottawa, dumpling, goldfish and shabby.

The Beijing team has to ensure the dialogues and passages that we write are appropriate for schoolchildren. Only positive moral values and role models can be portrayed, respect for parents and older people is maintained at all costs, and negative feelings about, for example, upcoming exams is unacceptable. More specifically, there are certain words which, if we include them in a reading passage, will be questioned. These include not only the most obvious ones, such as human rights, Taiwan, or God, but also names, places and events. Apparently innocent (to a westerner) words, such as change, exile, boss, need to be treated with care, and even the word communism would trigger attention to the context in which it’s used.

One particular difficulty in our working relationship has been our different understanding of the concept of time. There is a theory that all societies gradually move from a concept of appropriate time (I’m hungry, so I’ll have lunch) to one of clock time (It’s 1pm so I’ll have lunch). This is usually related to some transition in their economic, trading or business life. Cultures which are at different stages in this transition may experience conflict between the two contrasting views of the same concept. Perhaps this explains why, for our project, schedules were often unrealistic, quality was initially compromised, and there has been a lot of urgent rewriting. Although the UK and the Beijing teams share the consequences of any setbacks, and give each other endless support, we have never entirely overcome this cultural difference.

But on the whole, the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. On the personal side, I’ve seen regions of China I would never have visited otherwise. Part of my work involves visiting provinces which have adopted our books. My visits usually include a presentation, a question-and-answer session, the inevitable fifteen course banquet with the provincial ministry officials, and some of the most welcoming hospitality you could imagine. These trips have taken me all over the country, from Ningxia, a Muslim, semi-autonomous province in the desert in the north, via Guilin, with its rocks rising vertically from the river in scenes photographed for travel books everywhere, to the tropical island of Hainan, with its water buffalos and rice fields.

A substantial part of the marketing budget is assigned to teacher training. FLTRP, for example, holds seminars all over the country, and runs training courses at its purpose-built conference centre just outside Beijing. The facilities here include a 1500-seater auditorium, two or three smaller lecture halls, break-out rooms, a hotel and other accommodation for all the delegates or trainees. There’s also an entertainment complex with a bowling alley, karaoke room, gym and a 25-metre swimming pool fed by the hot springs which were discovered while the centre was being built. It’s extravagant and visible proof of FLTRP’s commitment to developing best practices in education.

Above all, the relationship between FLTRP and Macmillan seems to be a model of intercultural co-operation, with both teams learning from and supporting each other. And together, we’ve been fortunate. The New Standard English course is now one of the best selling courses in China, and sells tens of millions of copies every year. However, the price of each textbook is low, sometimes 40 pence for a book for which the UK list price might be £9 or £10. Recently, in order to make the main course textbooks for Primary and Junior Middle Schools even cheaper, the government has decided to allow publishers to print and distribute their competitors’ books under licence within their own provinces. The licence is subject to a bidding process: the lower the bid, the cheaper the title, and so a more attractive proposition to the provincial ministry. It’s like OUP being obliged to sell a licence to CUP to print and distribute OUP books in Cambridgeshire, for a low royalty. Fortunately, the licence bidding process should increase overall sales and its net effect on revenue should be neutral. But it’s a decision which shows some of the unpredictability of doing business in China.

Over five years of almost monthly visits by me, our mutual trust and affection has grown. FLTRP is a first-rate publisher and a model employer, and has welcomed me as one of the family. Among my friends and colleagues, we recognise, enjoy and even celebrate the cultural differences between us. I’ve had the privilege of an insight on life in China which is denied to most visitors from the West. But above all, I’ve learnt that I should not always view a different culture or society through my own Western eyes.

It’s now six pm, and the last evening of my stay. Someone has booked one of the many rooms in Partyworld, where we have something to eat, and then sing karaoke for three hours or more. Any song by the Beatles or from the Sound of Music are favourites. It’s surprising how much fun we can have with our own poor singing and without any alcohol to give us courage. When I say goodbye, I already begin to miss my friends, although it won’t be more than a few weeks before I come to Beijing again. We sit together, we work together and at the end of the day, we play together. We will remain friends for life.

Simon Greenall is an ELT writer, and a committee member of the Educational Writers Group. He lives in Oxford … and in Beijing.

And while on the subject of China please follow this link and click on Picador Asia Brochure to see the amazing progress that new imprint has made in a very short period of time.

Transparency is all. I told you that I'd be monitoring the income from the Google ads which appear (fairly unintrusively) on the right of this blog. It's proved harder than I thought to get the information, to do with tax declarations etc, but I can now reveal our total earnings to date - $22. This is not actually paid over until the account reaches $100 so celebrations are for the time being rather muted. I know some of you think we should drop the ads but I do think it's worth claiming the first $100 at least.

I'm off to Oxford today to visit our principal educational publishing operation. The offices are in the former home of the Potato Marketing Board and when we took over the lease the signage reflected the organisational structure - crisps, chips, new potatoes etc. I suppose our structure (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Caribbean, Latin America) is just as baffling to an outsider. The building is also famous for starring in Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Country where he describes it as one of worst architectural warts in Britain. I think we've improved it a little but the best bit was and is the (albeit distant) view of the dreaming spires.

And if we use binoculars we can just about see (from a superior position) the offices of our fiercest competitor, Oxford University Press.

This is being composed on the early flight to Stuttgart where I have a board meeting later today. I try not to make this blog too Macmillan-centric but for every rule there must be exceptions and this is one.

For those who don't already know we have two new main board directors, Julian Drinkall and Steven Inchcoombe. I won't bore you with reporting lines, structures and responsibilities. That'll come through the normal channels. What they will have to do is fill the enormous gap which will be left by the upcoming retirements of two of the most important people in the history of Macmillan, Geoff Todd and Mike Barnard. These are not household names in the British book trade like Gail or Gillon or Vicky or Caradoc (why are industry celebs by and large known by one name, like Pele or Fangio?) They have, however, contributed as much or more by being at the forefront of introducing modern management to the running of the business - in forecasting, in logistics, in production, in IT. Thank goodness they have also taught us the wisdom of planning ahead and we've allowed a sensible handover period to ensure continuity and the maintenance of Macmillan's culture.

On the publishing side of Macmillan there has never been greater activity. Just a few examples.

We're working literally 24/7 in London and Gurgaon putting the finishing touches to the prototype BookStore which we're launching at Frankfurt. This is an electronic storage and selling vehicle to help publishers and booksellers take advantage of digital information delivery without the risk of losing control of authors' copyright material.

Results are coming in from Spain where it seems we've had our most successful school season ever.

In Mexico our children's books have won more selections for the government school library project and this in spite of the appalling political nonsense going on there - road blocks, demos etc.

We've even managed to publish successfully in Zimbabwe!

At Palgrave Macmillan frantic activity working on two huge projects - the new complete edition of Shakespeare's works with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the new edition of the multi-volume and world-renowned Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.

In Oxford editors and designers are ploughing through the creation of some 500 new titles this year for markets as disparate as Nigeria, Egypt, Russia, and China.

We're working like mad turning our audio business based on CDs into a download business. We've built a podcasting studio in our London office.

At Pan Macmillan, our Picador imprint has a contender on the Booker Prize shortlist for the third year running (the remarkable Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn).  This is a tremendous feat, especially considering that we have won the prize for the past two years.  Fingers crossed for a hat trick.

At Nature it seems there's a new initiative every week.

Note to Macmillan people - if you'd like your achievements or initiatives listed send it in as a comment to this blog. Also, corrections welcome.

Note to non-Macmillan people - apologies if this is boring or show-offy but I am really proud of Macmillan and every now and again I want to tell people. Normal service will be resumed.

I know that many British independent booksellers feel that bigger publishers are ignoring them in the fight for shelf space in supermarkets and chain bookstores. There has been much debate in the comments part of this blog over the last few months and Macmillan has taken its share of criticism. I was pleased therefore to discover that we sponsored a Small Business Forum dinner in Bristol last week. Organised by The Booksellers Association, the SBFis a forum for independent booksellers to debate the issues affecting their businesses as well as sharing ideas to help then thrive. The evening event was attended by eighty independents together with Alison Penton Harper, Beth Webb, Kate Long and Clive James who made an extremely funny after-dinner speech. This is exactly the sort of event which supports independent bookselling and which helps authors and publishers understand the issues of bookselling today.

This week is full of budgeting for next year. It sometimes feels that we might as well simply slaughter a goat and hope for the best! Any other suggestions?

I quote from VSS Communications Industry Forecast just released.

Total spending on new, used and online books will increase 2.7 percent in 2006 to $21.88 billion. The rise of used books is expected to alter the spending pattern on consumer books in the years to come. Spending on used books is projected to grow at a 25.0 percent compound annual rate over the next five years, reaching $2.25 billion in 2010. Record-setting demand for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, plus strong spending on titles related to the movie The Chronicles of Narnia, helped to boost total consumer spending on new books by 3.6 percent in 2005 to $20.48 billion. The used book market, limited primarily to small retail outlets, libraries and the neighborhood tag sales in the past, has become a more important factor in the consumer book market due to the Internet, jumping 25.0 percent in 2005 to $736.0 million. Used book spending pushed total spending on consumer books to $21.31 billion, a 4.4 percent increase over the 2004 level.  The Consumer Book publishing industry is forecast to have total spending in 2010 of $24.9 billion.

What this suggests is that spending on new books might actually decrease in real terms in the next five years with customers turning more and more to the second-hand market. This trend is already apparent in the college textbook market in the USA and is accelerating in Europe and elsewhere. Yet another challenge to how we do business in this changing world. What do you think?

On a more positive note my friends at the Pan Bookshop have launched their own blog.  All power to them.

I've always marvelled that anyone not brought up speaking English can make any sense of it. For instance, the noun 'return' has 19 separate meanings in the OED (the verb has a further 21) and many of these are further subdivided by nuance. One meaning is 'Pecuniary value resulting to one from the exercise of some trade or occupation' - in other words 'return' equals 'profit'. In the book trade 'return' has nothing to do with profit, it is all to do with loss. The distinguished writer and part-time publisher Susan Hill has agreed to guest a piece for this blog on that old adage ' Gone today here tomorrow' which plagues the book trade.

RETURNS

Probably I should be a better environmentalist. I recycle the bottles and don`t drive many miles a year. I use no air miles as I have no passport. We grow some fruit and vegetables. Otherwise, I tend to switch off when the talk contains too many words like environment, ecology, global and warming.

There is one thing which has been exercising me on several fronts lately – RETURNS, as in books and Sale or Return but the front which struck me especially today can be summed up by the word WASTE. Waste of fuel, waste of paper, waste of road miles, waste of resources, waste of time, waste of energy.

In no other retail business are there Returns except  for ‘returns of damaged goods.’  But in the book trade, everyone buys books on S or R. As a publisher, I preach to authors every time I take them on, that a sale is not a sale INTO a bookshop, it is only a sale when it goes OUT of the bookshop in the hands of a customer.  No one listens.

So let me tell you what has happened this week in this topsy-turvey, alice-in-wonderland world of publishing.

Earlier this year my company Long Barn Books, published a book. 2,000 copies were printed. The books came to me on a lorry on pallets. Waterstones did a scale-out from Head Office of some 1,400 copies. So parcels of books were packed into cartons and sealed with brow tape and labeled and send off to 160 odd stores around the country by courier. More van journeys.

The system of invoicing is quaint and involves a great waste of paper. I am obliged to put an invoice into each carton, and to send a copy of that invoice, a paper copy, to the Finance Department. They eventually pay me – though they do this via BACS, which at least saves some paper.

The books stay in the Waterstones stores for some 3 months. I then get a request to authorize Returns. I agree. This involves the sending of a single e-mail to which I reply. More efficiency.

During the ‘Returns Window’ cartons start to arrive back to me, on courier vans, with unsold copies of the book. The cartons contain requests for Credit. I have to pass these pieces of paper on to the Accounts Department. But a considerable number of the books are returned carelessly packed so that they come back to me bumped, cover-damaged or, worst of all, with 3 FOR 2 WATERSTONES stickers plastered over them. I refuse to give credit for these, which involves a bit of a battle and more paperwork.

I sent out some 1,400 copies and some 600 have come back. This is what I mean when I tell the author that they are not SOLD they have only been on offer.

This is waste enough. BUT there is worse. Out of approximately 40 branches which have returned books some fifteen have RE-ORDERED THE SAME TITLE, sometimes on the same day that the RETURNS were dispatched to me. They have Returned FIVE and re-ordered FOUR. So four books are sent back on their way via yet another van, traveling more miles, to the same shop. I have to process the paperwork for the returns and then raise new- paper – invoices for the new orders.

I was told there was no alternative though everyone realizes it is a nonsense, and a WASTE.

On environmental grounds alone, this is madness. Multiply those books to-ing and fro-ing by however many separate titles from however many publishers there are in the UK, at least twice a year – around the end of January (post-Christmas de-stocking) and around now (pre-Christmas de-stocking) and you see the waste involved.

I think the government should step in the outlaw this nonsensical and wasteful practice on environmental grounds alone.

And I never ever thought I would hear myself say anything like that.

Anyone who is in the least bit interested in the history of publishing will enjoy Tim Kitchen's brilliant First 25 years of Pan Books website. In particular, the covers are sensational. Here is one. The site has scores - all evocative.

Yesterday I encouraged you to bet on our two Man Booker longlist titles. The shortlist is now out and we are very sorry (and fed up) that Claire Messud has not made the cut. However, delighted that Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn is still in the running and his odds are shortening.

At the Global Information Summit yesterday in Amsterdam there was much talk of the competition between India and China for leadership in the 21st century. My trivial observation was that India's population will inevitably exceed China's because of its obsession with cricket where the highest score always wins. China's only hope is to take up cricket with immediate effect (and with great benefits to the Wisden Group).

And meanwhile Macmillan India has completely upgraded its very impressive website. We now employ twice as many people in India as in the UK or the USA.