A short quiz. The  Bookseller headline announces 'Outstanding Penguin pushes Pearson to record'. Sales at Penguin are up 2%, 10% or 20%? The answer can be found here.

There is so much corporate activity going on right now that I thought the best thing I could do for those interested would be to reprint here the latest issue of EPS Headlines from Electronic Publishing Services which is my weekly Bible. Like the law-abiding citizen I try to be I called them for permission to reproduce They graciously granted it on the grounds, I suppose, that they may pick up some new subscribers from this promotion. They deserve to. It is the best news service around. I strongly recommend you go the final item if nowhere else.

http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=2967&pickUpBatch=490#2967

SPARC e-News :: http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug06.html#partner

http://www.knowledgespeak.com/newsArchieveviewdtl.asp?pickUpID=2975&pickUpBatch=491#2975

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/149f02ac-63c6-11db-bc82-0000779e2340.html

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=18511

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-10-26T121847Z_01_WEN8096_RTRIDST_0_MEDIA-RHDONNELLEY-EARNS-URGENT.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

SearchEngineWatch :: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061027-085703

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d5390b04-67f2-11db-90ac-0000779e2340,_i_rssPage=cbad994c-3017-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=93447&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=919430&highlight

http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=163852

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/24/digg-does-the-acquisition-dance-with-news-corp/

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13130-2418228,00.html

http://www.eadp.org/index.php?q=node/14984

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a53ea278-62e9-11db-8faa-0000779e2340.html

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_00551

Adobe :: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/

http://online.wsj.com/google_login.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB116161475467500836.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj

http://www.btobonline.com/toc.cms?productId=6&issueDate=2006-10-26

http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/china-unveils-plans-to-boost-scientific-data-sharing.cfm

Physorg.com :: http://www.physorg.com/news80933892.html

This morning's headlines in the UK are all about the publication of a Treasury-commissioned report on the economic aspects of climate change. It's pretty hairy stuff and particularly so as it comes from Nick Stern who has held a number of very influential posts including Chief Economist at The World Bank. The conclusions are stark and require politicians to sacrifice votes in some instances - an almost impossible act for most of them.

I fear we'll have to wait a long time (perhaps too long) for governments to get their acts together. Meanwhile, we can do things as individuals. Get your hands on a copy of Climate change begins at home by Dave Reay. This quote from Popular Science says it all:

"This is one of the most easily readable popular science books I've seen in several years, it's practical rather than ridiculous, it puts the case without being preachy - it really is a wonderfully effective description of the realities of climate change, how it will affect us and our families, and what we as individuals can do about it. So go out and buy one. In fact, buy two and send one to the world leader or large company CEO of your choice."

While on matters environmental, you might care to look at Landmine Action campaign to prohibit the manufacture, sale and use of cluster munitions whose effects impact decades after a war has been resolved. The main sufferers are children. I delivered a signed petition by hand yesterday to the House of Commons - it was very difficult as they don't have a letterbox.

On Tuesday I am giving a talk at Oxford Brookes University in their International Centre for Publishing Studies. The subject is Innovation in Publishing and the title is an allusion to the R and K strategies for the survival of species which is an excuse for a nice picture of a typical K strategy.

The typical R isn't as cuddly but might very well be more successful in the long run. For more on reproductive strategies try this site.

Apart from being happy to discuss innovation with some of the brightest publishing students the other reason for going is nostalgia. This grand building is now part of Oxford Brookes University but it was where I worked in 1974.

It was the home of Robert Maxwell and the headquarters of Pergamon Press.

I was called senior publishing executive, life sciences and my job was to commission and publish about 200 books a year, look after 100 journals and launch as many new journals as possible. Maxwell's (correct) theory was that the fastest areas of research paper growth would be in the biological (rather than physical) sciences because each experiment was cheaper to fund and therefore there would be more literature per funding dollar.

They were exciting times. Every morning we editors and marketing people were summonsed to open the post under Maxwell's tutelage. 'Every piece of paper is a publishing opportunity.' 'Every letter contains a lesson.' 'Don't assume anything except that you will die.' Every morning new edicts would be issued. 'No green covers'. 'Henceforward all textbooks will be designated paperback even if they are hardback.'No more billing in pounds. Tell Blackwell's they have to pay in dollars.' 'All books are journals. Reduce the discounts from 30% to 10%.' 'You're sacked.'

The amazing thing is that Maxwell transformed the company from a rather staid and sleepy business (he'd been away fromt the company for a few years) into an innovative and successful scientific information provider. It was only his disastrous forays into newspaper publishing and his absurd war with Rupert Murdoch which forced him to sell what was the real jewel in his corporate crown. His demise was Reed Elsevier's gain. And somehow his death was inevitable.

Of course Bob Maxwell was a terrible guy in many ways but he did build a great publishing company and working in Headington was a great (albeit not always fun) experience.

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.