I've done a couple of blogs about the British Government's efforts to stop criminals earning money from publishing books about their crimes. There have been good comments in from various people (disappointingly few from Macmillan employees) mainly politely (or impolitely) telling the Government not to interfere. The dangers of legislation would almost certainly exceed any potential benefits. The risks of unintended censorship and reduction of freedom of speech are inherent in any such legislation.

However, the case of O.J.Simpson's latest efforts highlights another angle. Maxim Jakubowski in his Guardian blog argues that booksellers should refuse to sell Simpson's book (which evidently tells the story of how he would have committed the double murder but which, of course, he did not). Maxim is owner of Murder One which is London's leading crime bookshop and he knows a thing or two about true crime and criminals (not personally you understand). Now, I'm not sure that any sort of censorship is appropriate but the irony of this case is that, under the proposed legislation, O.J.Simpson would fall outside the recommendations because he was found not guilty of the crime.

Regan Books (part of HarperCollins USA) are publishing If I Did It in the USA but HarperCollins UK say they will not. Presumably the UK were offered the rights and declined on grounds of taste. Certainly the only Simpsons mentioned on the UK site are Bart and his family (presumably no relation). I'm sure that both Maxim and HarperCollins UK will sleep more soundly for not being involved but censorship....?

A main purpose of this blog from my selfish point of view is to learn how to generate traffic from the blogosphere by testing theories and then measuring results. A little while ago I was disappointed that having a title containing the names Paris Hilton and Jeffrey Archer didn't seem to have any impact. On the other hand, recounting the story of the Oxford poker school resulted in a 35% uplift in traffic mainly from gambling sites. More recently I blogged about an excellent mushroom book - its position on the Amazon bestseller list rose from 347 to 71 but it may be that the blog and the sales increase coincided with the beginning of the UK mushroom season. Apart from crude visitor numbers I also monitor the routes people have followed to reach this blog. The bulk come from links from other websites and blogs, quite a few from searches for charkin or charkinblog, but the most interesting ones are those referred from search engines where you can see what people were searching for. Here are some of the searches this morning (excluding the charkins etc). I rather feel most of them will have been disappointed when they got here.

John Marsden

Copies sold inheritance of loss

The great war

Not quite ripe

Dutch rugby association

Schappelle Corby

Yes but is it good for the jews

Waterstones returns

Racist jelly babies

Farewell speeches online

On the publishing side the big news of the day was of course the takeover of Blackwell Publishing by John Wiley for £572m. It is an indication of how times have changed that the bookshops have declined while publishing has dramatically increased in value over the last ten or twenty years. When I started Blackwell was principally a retailing name. I do hope that some of the profits from this sale might be ploughed into rebuilding Blackwells Bookshops as the leading college bookstore chain in the UK. It can and should be done.

And finally a sad moment. Sheldon Meyer of OUP USA died last week. I leave to others tributes about his great editorial skills. I'll remember him for giant dry martinis at lunchtime and for commenting when he received his honorary MA at Oxford that it was thoughtful of them to name the Theatre after him.

In 2004 we launched the first Picador Africa titles. Last week we launched what will become our biggest selling title to date and I asked Terry Morris, Managing Director of Pan Macmillan South Africa, to write about it.

'Over three years ago, together with Picador UK, we contracted to publish When a crocodile eats the sun by Peter Godwin author of Mukiwa. The proposal was extremely powerful and on the basis of twenty pages we advanced the most we’ve ever done for the Southern African rights for a book. The manuscript was finally delivered and in October this year we released the book in this country under our Picador Africa imprint.

Quaking in our boots, the enormous print-run arrived in our warehouse and the author on our shores  from Manhattan. The book has received an overwhelming response, not only from the media but from readers who have e-mailed us to tell us what an important book this has been for them. The Johannesburg and Cape Town launches were filled to capacity and the book has hit the number two spot on the best-seller charts this week (behind Screw it, let's do it it by Sir Richard Branson). It’s been a privilege to publish this book in South Africa.

An excerpt from a reader:

I have just finished “When a Crocodile Eats the Sun”…..It is the most beautifully written, poignant book I have ever read. I finished it at 3am yesterday and promptly bought 3 copies to forward to colleagues this morning. More will follow for Christmas presents. I thank you for reaching me as you did. No doubt you will reach many more. I hope it sells out many times over.

Watch out Richard Branson – we’re ready for the number one spot!'

.

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.