I did a spell (approximately 1979-84) as head of reference publishing at Oxford University Press. Whenever I had what I thought was a brilliant new idea for marketing reference books someone would mutter (often under their breath) 'Tony Pocock tried that and it didn't work' or 'We've been doing that ever since Tony Pocock thought of it'. Tony Pocock was at that point sales and marketing director at Faber and teaching us lessons from afar. He died some three years ago and was rightly much lauded in obituaries for all he did to shake up the book trade.

In 1993 (when I was with the no-longer existing Reed International Books) I put out my back and was consigned to lying prone in bed. I was bored. Even reading a book was uncomfortable. I thought I might, however, be capable of picking up and reading individual pages of a typescript and the office duly sent over a recently-arrived manuscript destined to be published by Secker and Warburg. We had published this author's first three books to critical acclaim but disappointing sales and we were sitting on some quite large unearned advances. As I worked my way page by page through the manuscript I was impelled to ring the agent and ask if we could sign a contract for the author's next book at double the advance on the one I was reading - a very uncharacteristic move. I then shuffled off to the local bookmaker and tried to place £100 on this book to win the Booker prize - the bookie wouldn't accept the bet. He smelt a rat. The book didn't win the Booker but Louis de Bernieres and Captain Corelli's Mandolin went on to become global literary phenomena.

The third book person is John Suchet. He has been a TV journalist for most of his career and and my parents and his were close friends and we've stayed in touch over the years. John is proud of his journalistic career but I suspect he is even prouder of what he's achieved in writing books about his passion, Beethoven. The books are definitely not scholarly and they're not intended to be, but in a strange way they are more insightful than the most detailed scholarship.

I couldn't find a photo of Tony but here are Louis and John.

The reason they're all featuring here today is that I've just discovered a common thread - they and I were all at the same dismal and tiny boarding school (Grenham House) in Birchington-on-Sea in our formative years (9-13) at different times. I can't remember literature being high on the agenda but maybe homesickness, freezing swims, sadistic teachers and meagre and disgusting meals encouraged us all into the book trade.

Last year the British Parliament had two major items to debate - the war in Iraq and whether or not fox-hunting should be banned. The war continues and so does fox-hunting but the latter is now a crime. Yesterday's blog was about the latest parliamentary effort to prevent criminals profiting from writing books about their crime and there have been a couple of interesting comments. If this law is passed Siegfried Sassoon would not have been allowed to publish Memoirs of a fox-hunting man - not to mention the implied sexism in the title. Tim Howles (t.howles@macmillan.co.uk) is collecting views for our submission and I'd like people in Macmillan as a whole to let him (and this blog) know what they think.

In the euphoria of the 2005 Ashes victory, I rashly invested half my winnings (A$500) in a bet on England to retain them in the 2006/7 campaign in Australia. It seems that our captain won't be fit until at least the third match, our swing bowler is out altogether and now our star opening batsman has gone home suffering from depression. My investment looks extremely dodgy and the only description for me is whingeing pom. I attach a photo just to remind my good friends in Australia that miracles can happen.

I received yesterday an email invitation to a Christmas party. At the bottom was the following paragraph which seemed somewhat inappropriate (but probably legally quite sensible):

Any term contained in this email is intended solely as a basis for further discussion and is not intended to be and does not constitute a legally binding obligation. No legally binding obligations will be created, implied or inferred until a definitive agreement in final form is executed in writing and delivered by both parties. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the parties intend that there shall be no obligations based on such things as parol evidence, extended negotiations, oral understandings or courses of conduct (including without limitation reliance and changes of position).

The British Government Home Office has issued a consultation paper. The purpose is to generate a debate about the issue of whether criminals should be able to profit from their crimes by selling their memoirs or similar. Macmillan has been involved in at least two books where this issue was raised. In 1999 we published Gitta Sereny's Cries Unheard, the story of the child murderer Mary Bell. There was outrage that Mary Bell might have received financial support from the author. More recently we published Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diary where the author donated the income from newspaper serialisation to a range of charities.

The publishing industry has been invited to comment on the proposals and Macmillan will be responding in detail by the deadline in February. I don't believe there is any attempt here to gag authors:

However, there are bound to be varied responses to the proposals and it would be helpful to have people's views both from within Macmillan and elsewhere. I suppose Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom was written in prison and he earned money from it. Some people would regard George Bush's invasion of Iraq as criminal. Should he be banned from selling his memoirs? I sense an interesting debate in the offing.

Two scientific events today. I'm chairing a workshop this afternoon on the future of scientific research publishing. We have an opportunity to debate the direction of this vital industry with the benefit of a mass of hard data rather than soft prejudices.

Then to the other end of scientific publishing for the launch of Giant Leaps at the Science Museum in collaboration with The Sun newspaper. The marketing Director for this book, Tony Blair (who, incidentally, I've never met), has given us the following quote:

“I know better than most people how vitally important science is for our future, prosperity and quality of life. And it is getting more important by the day. So I wish I had paid more attention to science subjects at school. I have been trying to catch up since. I also wish there had been a book like this to awaken my interest in science and make me want to find out more.”

Great news this morning from Nielsen BookScan in Australia, the top five highest new entries in the Australian bestseller charts are all from Pan Macmillan and not a celebrity biography in sight:

And we've got plenty more still to come. It should be a vintage year.

An interesting development in blogland and Wolves by Emily Gravett has been nominated already:

I'm not an obsessive soccer fan but a Chelsea/Watford fixture is special for me and I was lucky enough to be taken to Stamford Bridge for the game (which Chelsea won convincingly and stylishly). It's special because I used to live in Watford and thus support when they were a solid fourth division side acting as a retirement home for former first division players such as Cliff Holton. And then later when I first had a flat in London I occasionally used to watch Chelsea in the Peter Osgood days. Two major differences between now and then. This is what the ground used to look like.

And now.

More significantly compare the length of the shorts in these two photos. Can we learn anything from footballer's hemlines?

I've been taken to task for not disclosing that I know the author of a book I mentioned yesterday. Someone called Derek asked whether Nicolette Jones was a friend of mine - you can check out the exchange here. I'm not sure whether I should feel flattered that he'd think that this blog might even be compared with quality journalism or simply irritated that anyone would want to be so snide. Incidentally, if I were to declare an interest every time I mention a name I fear this blog would become as boring as Arsenal winning 1-0.

In the world of three for twos and micro-celebrity cut-and-paste instant books one category of publishing in particular is being punished. It is the serious work of non-fiction thoroughly researched, well-written and aimed at the general reader as well as the scholar.

Of course there are exceptions such as Norman Davies's recently published Europe at War which will undoubtedly set the tills ringing in the run-up to Christmas but is, as ever with Davies, a monumental work of scholarship as well as a rattling good read.

A more typical example of the genre is The Plimsoll Sensation by Nicolette Jones, the writer and freelance journalist. I have no idea how many copies Little Brown have sold to date in the UK (and no doubt they'll let us know in due course) but I'm sure it hasn't been easy to persuade bookshops to stock more than a token number. However the reviews have been spectacular and yesterday it won the Mountbatten Maritime Prize. It will go on to win more prizes and more great reviews because it is quite simply a fascinating book about a fascinating guy in a fascinating period of history. Amazon will no doubt continue to sell the book well but traditional booksellers will probably have already cleared their shelves for the next batch of 'sure-fire bestsellers'.

I'm beginning to sound like a grumpy old bookman, so I'd better sign off.

PS I was very pleased to link the Plimsoll Sensation to an excellent non-Amazon Internet History Bookshop. Offering a good service with specialist knowledge works as well on the web as it does in a traditional retail environment. I hope they succeed.

Yesterday evening I tramped down to the hideous building housing the UK Government's Department of Trade and Industry.

The event was the launch of the Booksellers Association report on the digitisation of content, Brave New World. We had speeeches from the team who put together the report; from David Roche, President of the BA, CEO of Borders UK (whose website didn't work this morning, hence no link) and book trade personality of the year 2005; and from Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins whose 'business' website is extremely helpful to professionals in the book trade and which links (rather quietly I thought) to 'consumer' sites.

The theme was that booksellers as well as publishers need to engage in the 'digital' revolution and that authors and publishers should facilitate a process of partnership.Everyone was saying the right things and the report itself is absolutely excellent and a credit to the BA and its authors. But nice words butter no parsnips. Here's my threepenny's worth.

1. Authors and authors' agents and societies need to trust publishers to protect and manage their copyrights in the digital age. There will be disagreements about rights and terms and consent and permissions and it is understandable that authors wish to have guarantees of protection and remuneration. However, if publishers don't act with speed and decisiveness there may be little future for paid-for content on the web. Delaying implementation while the minutiae of every author's contract are debated at a collective and individual level simply won't work. Digital sales are analogues of print sales and should be covered by existing contracts as far as possible.

2. Retailers need to invest in risk-taking. I don't think anyone knows what the future holds for electronic books but if bookshops wish to be viewed as the trusted source for literature and information they need to demonstrate that in their stores. They also need to negotiate terms with publishers which reflect the new reality rather than the former stock-holding and capital intensive past.

3. Publishers need to invest in a digital infrastructure for their books. We are building BookStore for ourselves and all publishers who wish to join. The working prototype was demonstrated at the Frankfurt Book Fair a month ago and literally scores of publishers have contacted us to discuss implementation in more detail. The first two Macmillan digital 'bookstores' to go live in January 2007 will be Macmillan Science and Macmillan New Writing. We shall be wanting to work with retailers, wholesalers, search engines to ensure that our authors' work is given the maximum possibility of selling in any format.

For the whole book trade I think the time has come to stop writing strategy reviews and planning systems. The time has come to invest, act, experiment and learn from the real world of publishing and selling.

I was meant to be in Bangalore this week for a board meeting of the Wisden Group but had to be in autumnal London instead. The reason for the Bangalore meeting was that Wisden has moved its Cricinfo headquarters and its group CEO, Tom Gleeson, there. EFY Times, The Hindu and various other newspapers covered the event. There are few things more English than Wisden and yet the move is completely logical. Market size, enthusiasm for the game, availability of high-quality, committed and techno-savvy people make the move exciting and inevitable. Fortunately the Almanack itself will continue to be edited by the English Matthew Engel, published by the English John Wisden & Co, printed in England by the English Richard Clay and sold to the UK book trade by the very English A&C Black sales team. Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ca change.

Last night I attended a wonderful farewell dinner for Alan Giles who is retiring from being CEO of the HMV Group which owns Waterstone's bookshop chain.

The great and the good (and some of the not so good) were all there to wish Alan well. In spite of various fracas over central buying, demands for ever greater discounts from booksellers, the takeover of Ottakar's Alan was always forthright, professional and a pleasure to argue with. He leaves the chain in much better shape than he found it and with a top-class management team to take it forward. There is a real place for high-quality bricks, mortar and web book retailers in the UK and Waterstone's is in prime position.

Walking to the event in the Waterstone's flagship Piccadilly store I heard  a news item on my portable radio about a group of scientists who have mentioned to return sight to blind mice. I was delighted that the scientists had decided to publish their ground-breaking results in the very best place.