Clocks go back (or is it forward?) in the UK tonight (or tomorrow morning). I think what it means is that I'll wake up even earlier than ususal and fall asleep even earlier (hardly possible). There is some discussion about whether we should move to European time. Apparently this would save lives (not quite sure why) and would make communication within the EU easier. I'm not sure about the latter. Lisbon and Dublin are on the same time as London. Would they change too? And it would be odd to change your watch when driving from Belfast to Dublin. Still, the forces of European homogenisation are strong.

Whilst I disagree with the need for uniformity of time across countries I do think India could do us and itself a great favour if it would abandon Indian Standard Time. Given the huge latitudinal spread I can understand the need for compromise over which time zone to adopt but to compromise with a 30-minute shiift seems unnecessary,unhelpful and perverse. But not as odd as Kathmandu which has a 45-minute difference.

My entry about the amount of email spam we are intercepting generated a comment from the head of Macmillan IT with these statistics:

January 2002, 400,000 emails received
January 2003, 960,000 emails received
January 2004, 1.6 million emails received
January 2005, 2.2 million emails received
January 2006, 6.5 million emails received

If only our sales had increased in proportion.

One of my favourite writers is John Banville. He has written any number of high-quality 'literary' novels, the last of which, The Sea, won the Man Booker prize. My recommendation is The Untouchable for the entirely inappropriate reason that one of the characters is called Charkin and I suspect that is the only literary character in world literature with that name. But I digress. John has decided to pursue a writing career in parallel to his literary novels with the launch of Christine Falls by 'Benjamin Black'. I think this review from Guardian says it all.

I seem to be in Australian mode right now. We're publishing Richard Flanagan's new book in Picador Australia next Tuesday. Paul Kenny, who is possibly Australia's greatest book marketeer has had to pay out of his marketing budget for a pole dancer in a Hobart night club. He claims this is the first time but I'm not absolutely sure.

However, what he has created for the book is one of the most innovative online campaigns for a literary work that I've ever seen. The book is The Unknown Terrorist and don't forget to turn off your mute button.

And while innovation occurs in the real world of publishing there is tremendous activity in the slightly unreal world of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, private equity, leveraged buy-outs, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. Springer is trying to buy Informa; Riverdeep and Houghton Mifflin are 'merging'; Wolters Kluwer has hired Lehman to sell its Education Division; and now Thomson is threatening to sell its Learning Division. I'm certain that all these assets will fetch very high prices but can't help feeling that the real winners will be, as always, the bankers and the lawyers. I wonder whether authors,students, academics and educational organisations will benefit as much.

This book story broke yesterday in Australia and Tom Gilliatt of Pan Macmillan Australia shared this internal note with me..

Sitting in her cell in Kerobokan Jail in Bali (shared with a minimum of five other prisoners, and sometimes as many as fifteen), Schapelle Corby has been writing her story. In appallingly primitve conditions, and despite the crushing weight of a 20 year sentence, Schapelle has written something quite extraordinary. It's harrowing, it's deeply moving, it's utterly compelling and it presents an almost unarguable case for her innocence. For once the publisher's blurb on the cover is not hyperbole: it's simply the most unforgettable book you'll ever read.

The book is now at the printers, with a first print run of 120,000 copies, and I suspect we'll be returning to the press a few more times before the year is out. The book is still officially a secret until Wednesday 25th October, when it will feature on the cover of The Women's Weekly, and there's a complete embargo on any material from the book till the weekend of 11/12 November.

This is going to be a bestseller in Australia and elsewhere - more on the book here.

And some internal (and frightening) statistics from our IT department in the UK - in short 94% of emails sent to us were invalid for one reason or another.

In the past month:

-     78% of email received (nearly 6.5 million emails) were rejected by our mail systems as the servers attempting to send the emails had poor reputations, meaning they have been classified as highly  likely to be sending spam.

-          12% of email received (just under 1 million) had invalid recipients.

-          4% of email (about 300,000) was classified as being spam emails

-          6% of email (about ½ million) were clean emails and were delivered.

One of the key tenets of modern medicine is to develop treatments based on collected evidence rather than intuition. While the very best physicians do have a streak of intuition this is based on experience and data (sometimes accumulated subconsciously). Publishing can be a pretty intuitive business. What market research would have identified Eat, Shoots and Leaves? However, there is always a place for reviewing the outcomes of publishing initiatives.

A couple of years ago we announced the formation of Macmillan Science, an experiment in non-fiction publishing. The idea was to publish popular science books globally and simultaneously in the key English-language markets. Authors would receive no advance but royalties would be based on publisher's receipts rather than retail price (as retail price is completely variable) at a higher than normal rate. We would not anticipate high subscriptions for the books because this might lead to high returns from booksellers. Our print runs were intended to be conservative with reprints the norm rather than the exception. We used our academic rather than our trade sales forces in general. The books would be supported by promotions in our various science-related journals and websites including Nature and Scientific American. And perhaps most importantly the person publishing the books is a specialist in scientific journalism and comunication rather than an all-rounder general editor.

So here's the evidence so far from the publisher, Sara Abdulla:

'Of the 13 hardbacks and 3 paperbacks we’ve published to date, one is currently longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award (Lonesome George) and one is currently shortlisted for the Times Higher Academic Author of the Year Award (Climate Change Begins At Home). One of the launch titles was longlisted for the 2005 Royal Society Aventis Prize (Venomous Earth) and another was shortlisted for the 2005 Medical Journalists Association Open Book Award (Whole Story). I was shortlisted for the 2005 Booktrust Kim Scott Walwyn Women In Publishing Award at the end of the first full year of publishing. One of these days, fingers crossed, the list will actually win something!

Our tenacious global Palgrave Macmillan sales and marketing force has sold 60,000 hardbacks to date and 6000 paperbacks (these are only just coming through now). The bestseller (The Science Of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) moved 12,426 hardbacks. Average hardback sales are now 4,443 per title. Thanks to our amazing rights folks, we have 11 translation deals, two extract deals, 7 bookclub deals, two film options, two TV adaptations and a museum exploitation rights arrangement.

Macmillan Science books have received more than 140 great reviews to date, appearing regularly in Guardian, THES, BBC Radio 4, NewScientist, Discover, Focus, Seed Magazine, Booklist and innumerable specialist journals. MacmillanScience authors have done at least 125 events at venues including Hay Festival, Edinburgh Literary Festival, Chichester Science Festival, British Library and the Royal Institution. There have been at least 170 print, online and email adverts for the titles in Scientific American and in Nature journals. A couple of authors are now writing for Macmillan Children’s and several are preparing their second books for Macmillan Science. I haven’t signed up any existing popsci stars, I admit, but I think I’ve found a couple!

The main strategic focus now is to offer the books in flexible digital formats via BookStore. Obviously, we also need to keep signing up kickass authors, especially in the US — sales there really pick up when we give them some home-grown talent. UK sales are modest, given the strength and breadth of the books’ critical reception, but they are creeping up now that the list is more of a known quantity to the force, Amazon and the high street. Hardback EU/ROW sales are sluggish too, but giving these territories more paperbacks helps.

So all in all, I’d say our high royalty/no advance/all rights experiment is working — at least for popular science. And plenty more great books to come.'

A little while back I highlighted a piece in Nature about the plight of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor under threat of death in Tripoli. The story has moved on and there is an excellent piece in yesterday's Times about the efforts of scientists to show that the defendants are clearly innocent. Gaddafi is using the defendants as hostages to obtain $6billion and the release of one of the Lockerbie bombers. The article concludes:

'What matters, of course, is the science; Libya will not allow it into the courtroom. Without it, a murderous miscarriage of justice remains a dreadful possibility.'

On a happier note, Julia Donaldson, the author of my favourite book of the decade The Gruffalo is touring Southern Britain. If you have kids (or if you don't) do try to see her at one of her events. And if you haven't yet met the beast get a copy of the original for yourself and enjoy.

If you're in London you might also like to pop in to Chris Beetles Gallery where he is showing a marvellous exhibition of the works of Ronald Searle, famous for St. Trinian's School illustrations. as I mentioned before, he has also illustrated a special gift edition of Jeffrey Archer's Cat O'Nine Tails. All the original drawings have already been sold on the first day to to a single customer (not Jeffrey). I can't resist showing a typical picture of life in a Macmillan office.

And Macmillan is celebrating a number one bestseller in hardback fiction with James Herbert's latest, The Secret of Crickley Hall. Worldwide the Pan Macmillan teams are gearing up for plenty more number ones in the run-up to Christmas.

At some point in the 1970s there was a Christmas party where the hosts served mulled wine in their flat in Woodstock near Blenheim Palace.

Unfortunately the wine was left to mull for so long that the desired level of intoxication for a successful Christmas party was not achieved. There was a drift to a local pub where several of the partygoers discovered that they shared a common passion for poker. Thus began the first of the publishing investment committee meetings. They still happen.

The cast of characters has changed over the years and I won't list them in full for fear of legal action but perhaps the first names and descriptor may help identification for those versed in the history of British publishing:

Alan (lexicographer), Simon (academic marketing), Jon (international sales), Iradj ( academic publisher), Ivon (managing director), Marshall (educational software), David (legal sales), Stephen (ELT sales), Tim He (author), Adam (philosophy editor), Robert (history editor), Tim H (medical publisher), Tony J (accountant), Anton (actor), David C (academic publisher), Bob C (science publisher), Mike (science and legal publisher), Denis (IT inventor), Andrew S (textbook editor), John D (editor) and many others. A clue - there are three current members of the Publishers Association Council in this list.

Having set the scene I can now share with you the confidential minutes of one of the early meetings as supplied by the Secretary to the Investment Committee:

An Episode of Asquith

Polstead Road, Oxford, Friday, 3 November 1978, 11 pm. Fog.

      A light is dimly visible from the basement window of a large house. The house is otherwise dark. You make your way through the rhododendrons and crouch to look in. To the left you see a heavy Victorian press, its top crowded with bottles. Beside it seven men are gathered round an oval mahogany table that fills most of the room. Each appears to be taking turns at throwing notes into a large pile of money in the centre of the table. There is a pause followed by loud groans. Long arms reach out to gather in the money. They belong to a lanky young man sitting opposite the window. He has a pipe dangling from one corner of his mouth and his features are half-hidden by a black hat tilted jauntily over his forehead.

      Time to go in.

      “Ah, there you are. Nice to see you. Glass of wine? Red OK? Squeeze in here between Washbag and Sharkfin. Need some change? Twenty OK? You know these reprobates? Richard, Simon, Jon, Bob, Alan, Adam. Right, it’s my choice of game I think. A round of Asquith?”

      “Oh not bloody Asquith, Ivon. Sue’s going to kill me as it is.”

      “It’s your choice next Richard. Does everyone know the rules? You don’t? Well, it’s basically two down three up pass the card eights wild high low two changes the first free the second the last bet for an up card and twice for a down. You'll soon get the hang of it. It’s your deal. Don’t forget the ante. Just a fiver at this stage. Oops, no, deal one card at a time. Sorry, yes I'm afraid it’s double for a misdeal. Try again. Well done. Try to keep your voices down Simon and Bob. The landlady’s asleep on the next floor.”

      By the last round of the hand everyone has dropped out except Ivon and Adam. Ivon is now showing a five, a two, and a wild eight. Adam shows a six and an ace, and also has an eight. They appear to be going low. It is Ivon’s bet.

      “I think I’ll pass.”

      Adam opens his wallet and takes out two ten pound notes.

      “Twenty.”

      There is a long pause while Ivon scrutinizes his cards.

      “I’m not sure I believe you. You’ve got a dirty hole. Your twenty and raise you thirty.”

      “O.K. Asquith, just this once I’ll be kind. Your thirty and see you.”

      “Damn. All right then. Under the table.”

      Both take two coins and put their hands under the table. A few minutes pass.           “Get on with it you two can’t you?”

      Eventually each extends one clenched fist across the table and at the same moment they open their hands with a flourish. There is a single coin on both outstretched palms.

      “Good grief. Going high. Hard luck Ivon. Nice try.”

      Adam flips over his two down cards to show an ace and a six.

      “Full house. Aces on sixes.”

      “Oh well done Adam. What a fantastic concealed high.” Ivon turns over his cards. He has an eight and a five. “But I seem to have four fives. What jolly hard luck.”

      Later...

      “You’ve all got to go? So soon? It’s only 3.30. OK who wants notes for coins? Noone has any coins? Yes, I do seem to have rather a lot. I’ll keep them as change for the next meeting, and what about the next? 24th? and what about a pre-Christmas game on 22nd December? Thanks Bob, I did do reasonably well this evening. Luck of the cards.” He takes out a slim black book. “I’ll just note down the total. Oh Jon, I’ve got an IOU here for £30.”

      “I haven’t got £30, Ivon. How’s your hifi?

      “I haven’t got a hifi.”

      “Have mine.”

      “Does it work?”

      “Yes.”

      “OK.”

      “I’ll bring it to the next meeting. I don’t know why I bother. You’ll just fleece me again.”

      “Nonsense. You won last time. OK chaps see you soon. Could you see yourselves orff quietly please? The landlady sleeps.”

Roger Phillips is one of Pan Macmillan's most successful authors/photographers with a number of books on gardening and plants. His latest book on mushrooms arrived on my desk a couple of weeks ago just in time for the height of the mushrooming season. It is beautiful as well as scientifically accurate and will sell very well indeed, I think. However, it caused me to check what progress Roger had made in converting his expertise to the Internet. We have had on-and-off discussions about what to do over the years. Here's the link to the mushroom site and to the Roses one. I'm meeting Roger soon to discuss web trends and how to 'monetise' ( I hate that word) his million visitors a year. I thought readers of this blog might like to see how traditional books and photos can be transformed into wonderful websites with a bit of imagination and web intelligence. Also I'd appreciate any thoughts for improvements which I can pass on to Roger. For those who can't be bothered to click through here are some mushrooms to whet the appetite (but I bet some of these are not to be eaten).

Just back from Munich which is one of my favourite cities.

It also has one of the most beautiful (and efficient) airports.

Amongst other things I was invited to a party at the Haus der Kunst to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the great publishing house of Langenscheidt. It's hard to describe exactly what it is that makes this sort of event in Germany so special - probably the fact that everything is done so well, the serious bits, the fun bits, the setting, the hosts and the guests. It was a great party.

If you read German (which I don't) you'll find this website invaluable. It started life in 1966 and is still going strong run by Christian von Zittwitz whom I met for the first time.

And today there will be great parties all over India to celebrate Diwali. I imagine the celebrations will be very different from the Bavarian ones of yesterday but no less enjoyable.

Next week I'm hoping to put together some words about Alan Maclean who worked for Pan and Macmillan for many years and died recently. For now I thought you might like to see a handsome picture of him.