Exact Editions is a company set up by some old friends of mine about a year ago. Much as I dislike vacuous mission statements and straplines I think theirs is both straightforward and true - Bringing magazines into the digital age. Unlike many start-ups they don't have wealthy individual or corporate backers and, as far as I know, they don't have glossy business plans with absurd projections of growth and pretty pictures throughout. They are testing the market for online magazines by spending as little as possible on themselves and using brainpower and hard work to attract readers (and publishers) to their site.

And one of the founders, Adam Hodgkin, posts regular insightful pieces on their blog. Adam is by training a philosopher and the pieces tend to be pretty intellectual. Fortunately he is from the pragmatist school of philosophy which is important when involved in business.

The most entertaining thing about the site at present is the random nature of the magazines represented (inevitable with a start-up) - Baptist Times jostling with The Spectator and Green Parent and Today's Flyfisher for our attention. Actually, it's just like going into a traditional newsagent.

Yesterday I wrote about the problems facing libraries. I should have mentioned two links if you're interested in more information - Tim Coates's Good Library Blog and Karen Christensen's Berkshire Blog which is about much else as well, including the fascinating Love US Hate US debate about what the world (and Americans) really feel about the USA. And if you're in the least bit interested in the challenges and opportunities in book publishing in the coming decade I recommend this special report in Forbes magazine.

You may have noticed that I went to two meetings last week where the 'Chatham House Rule' was applied. It seems that more and more activities are subject to some degree of restraint when it comes to expressing opinions. I sometimes think that leakiness and ill-considered statements are at an all-time high but I was pleased to be sent a copy of a recently declassified letter from Eisenhower to General George Patton sent on 29 April 1944.

Dear General Patton

My attention has been called to a statement of yours in which you expressed an opinion as to the future political position of the United States, Great Britain and Russia. I have examined all available reports in the case, including that brought to my attention by your Chief of Staff, and I thoroughly understand that you thought you were talking privately, and moreover that your statements were made on the spur of the moment. Nevertheless, I must tell you frankly that I regard this incident with the utmost seriousness and you should understand thoroughly that it is still filled with drastic potentialities regarding yourself....

I have warned you time and agan against your impulsiveness in action and speech and have flatly instructed you to say nothing that could possibly be misinterpreted by your own subordinates or by the public....

I am throughly weary of your failure to control your tongue and have begun to doubt your all-round judgment, so essential in high military position....

I want to tell you officially and definitely that if you are again guilty of any indiscretion in speech or action that leads to embarrassment for the War Department, any other part of the Government, or for this Headquarters, I will relieve you instantly from command.

Sincerely,

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Commanding General European Theater of Operations

Phew. That's telling him. I wonder whether there was a reply and, if so, what it said.

 

Back in September I wrote about a Pan nostalgia website. Just for fun and with the polonium case in mind I reproduce one item.

This great website is run by Tim Kitchen and he wrote to me recently. It seems that people's interest in what his wife calls an obsession and he calls a hobby has encouraged him to do even more:

'I was going to stop at about 1963 when the number was added to the logo on the front cover and I do have all 1500 titles apart from two and these are all on the site. I then carried on with the later titles which still used PAN's eclectic number system. I definitely stop where ISBN comes in. Of the later titles I have over a thousand still to scan in with about 200 left on the wants list.'

On Thursday I attended a round table meeting at the Smith Institute where a group of very senior politicians, librarians, and managers met to discuss how best to ensure a first-class public library system in the UK. The debate was intelligent and constructive and clearly everyone is aware of the issues of efficiency, management and the need to deliver a service which the citizen wants. The Museums, Libraries,and Archives Council is the body charged with strategic oversight of libraries and they have produced a number of excellent reports over the years.

I have two concerns. First that, in spite of much protestation to the contrary, I'm not sure that books are really seen as central to the library system by some of of the participants. These are the objectives for libraries as set out on the MLA website:

• Provide safe, neutral, shared environments for people from all walks of life 
• Support formal education and learning at all times of life
• Act as centres of creativity
• Serve as focal points for their neighbourhood
• Are at the forefront of universal access to the internet and e-government

No mention of books at all.

The second concern is hard to express and hard to prove. I have a feeling that many of the key figures in the library world believe that libraies are somehow too bourgeois and middle class and that they should be changed fundamentally for a 'more inclusive' system. However, most people in the UK are middle class or are aspiring to be middle class. I think libraries do serve the middle class and they should be encouraged so to do. By creating great libraries all citizens will use them and gain educational and cultural benefits. By artificially trying to change the customer base of libraries we risk losing everything.

The Soviet Union in the days of From Russia with Love showed how counterproductive it is to impose ideologies on people. I do hope the library world will resist any attempts to use it as an agent of political change.

Last night I attended one of the regular dinners of this society founded in 1921. It meets eight times a year at the Savile Club in Mayfair.

The Chatham House Rule applies, so I cannot share with you what was said by whom and technically I cannot reveal the name of the speaker (but I do have his permission). It was Stephen Prickett and he gave a fascinating description of his current job which has one of the longest titles in my experience - Director of the Armstrong Browning Library and Margaret Root Brown Professor for Browning Studies and Victorian Poetry, at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, as well as Regius Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland - phew.

But the most embarrassing moment was when neither of us could remember what he'd worked on for Macmillan. He edited the series 'Romanticism in perspective'.

If the Society of Bookmen has a rather traditional feel, the Centre for Creative Business could not be more 21st century. It is a partnership between the London Business School and the University of the Arts London which I represent on their committee. The strange thing is that both the Society and the Centre have very similar aims - to inspire, facilitate, network, enjoy and help sustain creative businesses, the former restricted to writers, booksellers, publishers and other members of the book trade, the latter a wider group.

Off to rainy Basingstoke today. Apparently there are rumours that Basingstoke can deploy nuclear weapons in less than an hour. I'd better check out this new element on the axis of evil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally an excellent piece by Bryan Appleyard in The Times about the importance of popular science books. His last para says it all.

'These new, humble, wondrous books — and, indeed, that great TV testament to wonder, Planet Earth — are an unalloyed good. They restore the true faith, and will, in time, send children to seek out whatever maths and physics courses they can find amid the debris of the science faculties.'

Every now and again I feel moved to do an update on Macmillan New Writing, our programme for finding new fiction talent which was memorably described as a Ryanair (cheap and basic) concept in Charlotte Higgins's piece in The Guardian. The publishing business model is quite simple. If we can avoid losing money on individual titles the occasional discovery will allow us to make a modest profit overall. We've managed the first part of the equation successfully. All the titles have performed decently but none of the authors has 'broken out' into the really big time. We think we may have found our first mega-seller and I've asked Will Atkins, the editor of MNW, to tell us about it.

'Never Admit to Beige puts Jonathan Drapes firmly on the map as one of Australia's most talented new writers.' - The Big Issue

 

On Wednesday night we launched Jonathan Drapes’s novel Never Admit to Beige. There were canapés, inflatable palm-trees and (this being an Australian novel by an Australian author) plenty of wholly ungracious bragging about the cricket.

 

 

BBC Five Live’s Simon Mayo Show has recently begun a Book of the Month slot and Never Admit to Beige is its December selection. It’ll be discussed live on Five today from 3pm, with Jonathan and a panel of guest reviewers; there's also an online forum where listeners can comment on the book.

 

 

 

Never Admit to Beige is the fourteenth Macmillan New Writing novel to be published since our first books appeared in April. It's an anarchic comic romp across Australia's Gold Coast, following guileless young Englishman Trigger Harvey as he searches, with increasing futility/desperation, for his lost luck. (Jonathan, incidentally, tells me he hadn't heard of his character's Only Fools and Horses namesake when he wrote the book). It includes shootouts with Japanese mafia, a run-in with a couple of coke-dealing OAPs, and probably the most violent round of golf in literary history. It's also turned out to be rather hard to classify - on its website, Five Live has a commendable bash: 'A kind of James Bond meets Inspector Clouseau with Men Behaving Badly'.

 

The Five Live Book of the Month slot is relatively new, so its impact on sales remains to be seen, but we've put through a pretty sizable paperback reprint, and Borders will be carrying the book in their Christmas 3 for 2 promotion.  Never Admit to Beige is funny and loveable and bursting with energy; turns out it's also rather prophetic:

 

“Next Ashes series,” one of the novel’s minor characters goads Trigger, “you guys don’t stand a bloody chance. Not if Warney’s on form.”

 

I suugest that non-cricket lovers and anglophiles give this a miss.

When I went to bed on Monday night in the Cotswolds I calculated that the England cricket team would boringly bat until teatime on the last day of the test match in Adelaide thus scuppering any chance of a victory and ensuring a feeble but safe draw. Being an optimist I thought that maybe, just maybe, one of the batsmen would shine and we'd be able to get ourselves into a position where we had more than three hours to bowl Australia out and level the series. It was only when I woke at the ungodly hour of 3.30am that it occurred to me that England's batting might collapse and leave Australia a gettable target. I immediately realised that this was a wholly irrational nightmare and went back to sleep. On awakening I logged into BBC Sport and the excellent ball-by-ball commentary of Ben Dirs. This is what he had to say and there's nothing much I or anyone else can add:

18.53: That was the biggest load of rubbish I have ever seen. Lots of Aussies going berserk in Adelaide, lots of Englishmen looking like they've arrived home to find the French doors have been smashed and their new plasma TV's been stolen. Thanks for staying with me for the last 10 days - it's been a mix of emotions, but mainly depression and boredom, with a bit of anger and embarrassment thrown in. I'm off to Venice this weekend though, that should be nice, they don't even know what cricket is there. Bye.

 

 

The British press has had a wonderful time over the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. Additionally British Airways has had three of its planes suspected of having carried Polonium and thus being a risk to travellers. I use BA a lot and they kindly sent me an email with a link to the part of their website listing the flights which might have been affected. I asked my secretary to check and all was well. But she added, 'British Airways say that they would have sent you a specific email if you were on one of the affected flights because you're an Executive Club Member.' In other words, if you don't have a BA airmiles card they won't bother to tell you you're at risk. Now that's what I call real customer service - and I'm going to apply for a Polonium card to replace my gold card just in case...

This morning I'm driving to the Cotswolds in the West of England for a meeting with colleagues to discuss the future of scholarly publishing and how best to prepare for it. I guess the conversations will be about technology, changing business models, globalisation, threats to copyright, changing academic research priorities and methods, and budgets. The surroundings will be rather different and rather less contemporary - but none the worse for that. England can be very beautiful.

Last week I wrote about the takeover of Houghton Mifflin by Riverdeep. The pretty obvious headline (variations on the Ike and Tina Turner/ Phil Spector song) was used by just about all the commentators. The best analysis, in my view, was by Luke Johnson in the Telegraph. I think this sums up Mr Johnson's views:

'Riverdeep has been a whirlwind buy-and-build in the educational software field. It went public on Nasdaq in 2000, went private in controversial circumstances after three years, and just a year later its private equity backers were bought out for more than twice their entry price.

Its worth appears to have risen from €349m, to €850m, to now perhaps €1.1bn, although underlying growth of the business has failed to match the vertiginous climb in valuations. Prior to this deal it had at least $380m debt of its own, much of it expensive notes at 9.25 per cent. To help fund the project, Davy is offering 200 of its high net worth clients a piece of the action, and have also brought in $200m of Middle Eastern money. Nevertheless, it sounds like the enlarged group will not cover its interest bill twice – wild stuff.

The entire tale has so many characteristics of our times: two companies with years of reported net losses – but no one seems to care; endless refinancings at higher values, while private equity firms book huge cash profits in record time; a very young Irish financier turning into an incredibly bullish industrialist; lucrative fees ($91m on this deal alone) at every turn for the advisers; and a financing structure built on mountains of debt, all at stratospheric multiples, with no hope of ever paying off the principal through operations.'

Incidentally, I first heard River Deep Mountain High in a sleazy and wondeful pub called The Criterion in the centre of Cambridge and it's never sounded better since. Unfortunately the Cri went bust and closed.