It's a grey day here in London as 2006 comes to an end. I've been back through a few of the emails people have sent me during the year to share with you.

When you're in deep SHIT, say nothing, and try to look like you know what you're doing. 

Happy New Year everyone.

This press release arrived yesterday morning in the USA.

This letter was published in yesterday's Times.

Sir, It is time for the Society of Authors to discuss with the Publishers Association the payment of huge sums to celebrities, television reporters, sportsmen and politicians, whose books prove to be flops. Advance fees, which should be going to bona fide authors and young literary people who need financial help as they attempt to enter a difficult profession, are being flushed away. There should be a limit on these advances, and earnings should come only from sales.

British publishers appear to be bent on ruining English literature with this profligacy and poor judgment.

I don't know Peter Kinsley and I don't know whether or not he is a writer, publisher, or reviewer. I sympathise with his irritation that large advances distort the market and draw funds away from young (and indeed not so young) writers. At Macmillan we have two experiments running where we pay no advances but do pay very decent royalties - Macmillan Science  and Macmillan New Writing. We do, of course, pay advances and sometimes big ones (and sometimes to 'celebrities') in other parts of the organisation.

The problem with the Kinsley letter is his proposed solution and the consequences of the Society of Authors and the Publishers' Association meeting to limit advances.

1. Such a meeting is probably illegal and the participants might end up in jail for collusion (arguably a reasonable place for some publishers to be but not a first choice for most).

2. If 1 could be fixed here would the limit be set and who would decide who was a bona fide writer as opposed to a celebrity?

3. If 1 and 2 could be fixed who would monitor compliance and what sanctions would the group be granted? Can you imagine the Society of Authors discovering that a publisher had paid an author more than the stipulated limit and then having to take the publisher to court for being kind to authors?

4. If 1,2, and 3 could be fixed what would happen to authors and publishers who are not members of their respective asssociations? Presumably they would be free to negotiate whatever terms they like. This would defnitely lead to the demise of the two associations as their members deserted.

5. If 1,2,3, and 4 could be fixed what would we do about foreign authors or deals struck in foreign lands (e.g. USA)? Presumably we'd have to ensure the arrangement was global and would therefore require global monitoring and compliance.

6. If 1,2,3,4 and 5 could be fixed who would ensure compliance? I imagine we'd have to call on the services of the United Nations which would divert their attention from trying to solve the problems of the world.

QED

Incidentally, it's strange that people actually think publishers are bent on ruining English literature and that they deliberately exhibit poor judgement and profligacy. We're a pretty useless lot but I promise everyone it's not deliberate - it's just another unintended consequence.

PS I see that Susan Hill has also picked up on this letter and written a much better piece than this one. Do check it out.

And because it's the holiday season here is  photo of our team in Argentina wishing everyone a very happy new year. Please note the very smart white van in the background.

At various times during the Christmas break I've been catching up on back issues of Publishers Weekly which is edited by the often controversial Sara Nelson. The magazine has improved significantly over the years and its banner now claims that it is 'The international voice for book publishing and bookselling'. It is definitely more international than before but some of the differences between US and British culture are still apparent.

It was great to see in December 11 issue that Jane Friedman was chosen as 'Publishing person of the year'. Given her excellent track record and her high standing in the industry this seems completely appropriate. PW covered the award well and I wasn't suprised to see that their excellent ad sales team had managed to 'persuade' a significant number of HarperCollins suppliers to take out sensibly congratulatory ads. I spotted Verso Advertising, Arvato, Command Web Offset, Quebecor, and Bowater all of whom deserve this further plug for their companies.

Unfortunately the ads don't appear in the online version and so I cannot show you the full page ad on page 5 which knocked me sideways and got me thinking of the differences between the USA and Britain rather than the similarities. You'll have to imagine the typography - here are the words.

Congratulations

Jane Friedman

Our Leader

Our Friend

Our Inspiration

From all of us at HarperCollinsPublishers

I wonder, did the cost of the ad come out of the corporate PR budget or was there a whipround all staff to raise the cash? In the words of the great Dorothy Parker, 'Pass the sickbag, Alice.'

I did a Google blog search on Macmillan mainly to discover whether any of our own websites are running blogs themselves. I couldn't find any (except the brilliant Nascent from Nature) but I'm sure that was my poor search strategy. There must be more.

However, the search did throw up a number of blogs from writers or commentators on Macmillan New Writing which we've discussed here from time to time. For a tiny upstart imprint MNW has certainly made waves, at least in the blogosphere and progressively elsewhere too. I don't think we've cracked the problems associated with publishing new fiction but at least we've found one channel which has the possibility of being commercially sustainable whilst retaining publishing integrity. Here are three blog links worth checking out.

http://macmillannewwriterpart2.blogspot.com/2006/12/some-things-and-quick-thing-about-old.html

http://davidthayer.booksquare.com/archives/2006/11/09/546/

http://girlondemand.blogspot.com/2006/10/in-defense-of-macmillan-and-other.html

One other link caught my eye.

This is the second book from the writing team of Clare ('not just another Bridget Jones') Naylor and Mimi ('youngest director of development for a Hollywood production company') Hare. The book will be published at the beginning of March which gives all of you time to enjoy first The Second Assistant (if you see what I mean). And now I have to declare an interest. They're both friends of mine as well as being a great writing team. We all know that word of mouth is what makes books sell. Do yourself, your friends and the authors a favour - get whispering.

Although we publish a large range of business books in Palgrave Macmillan and in Pan Macmillan I must confess to a deeply-held scepticism about the whole area of business studies and management education. In the early nineties I enjoyed a wonderful twelve weeks attending the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

It was a privilege to be there and I made a lot of friends, had a wonderful time, and deepened my understanding of American corporate executive dynamics. I also learned what I was really bad at. Top of my incompetence list was office space planning. I'll keep the rest of the list to myself. However, I wasn't convinced that the academic basis of the curriculum was really as rigorous as it might have been and I came away believing that common sense was probably the best way to run a business profitably.

It was therefore with some surprise that I came across the Stanford Business School's Bob Sutton and his 'Ten Things I Believe'. I think I believe them too.

1.    Sometimes the best management is no management at all -- first do no harm!

2.   Indifference is as important as passion.

3.    In organizational life, you can have influence over others or you can have freedom from others, but you can't have both at the same time.

4.    Learning how to say smart things and give smart answers is important. Learning to listen to     others and to ask smart questions is more important.

5.    You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior;   self-interest is a learned social norm, not an inherent feature of human behavior.

6.    Getting a little power can turn you into an insensitive self-centered jerk.

7.    Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.

8.    The best test of a person's character is how he or she treats those with less power.

9.    Err on the side of optimism and positive energy in all things.

10. Work is an over-rated activity.

Along with the last of the Christmas cards there arrived the Trinity College Cambridge Annual Record. It is a beautifully restrained piece of production, printed at Cambridge University Press with an elegant one-colour paper cover, 136 pages well-edited text and a handful of beautiful illustrations of the college, some of which are in colour. Trinity is indeed beautiful and these photos don't do it justice.

The last pieces in The Record are an obituary from the The Times  and an address by the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, about Harry Williams. I had missed notice of his death until I saw these.

I met Williams when, as a 16-year-old, I was invited to an interview to see whether I would be an appropriate member of Trinity assuming my exam results were satisfactory. I was studying biology, physics and chemistry and was applying to read medicine. It was therefore slightly surprising to be interviewed by someone who showed absolutely no interest in my clever rehearsed pieces about natural selection and cell differentiation. This genial old monk very courteously invited me into his rooms on Great Court.

He offered me my very first gin and tonic. If I'd thought of it I might have been expecting  a sherry but G and T it was. We discussed rugby and the harshness of schools and the absurdity of exams. Then he offered me another G and T and more chitchat. We shook hands and two weeks later I had a letter telling me that I had a place provided I passed the exams reasonably well. When I started my rather undistinguished Cambridge career he was my 'moral tutor'. His broadminded liberalism was a huge relief to me.

I'm sure the interview wouldn't pass muster today where they have to be more 'rigorous', take into account 'balance' of admissions ensuring not too many middle-class people enter the college. I imagine, however, that what I enjoyed was what had been practised successfully quite some time as this list suggests.

The obituaries told me more about Harry Williams than I had known. I certainly didn't realise the impact he had on theology. I do, however, know that the interview with him and its result had enormous impact on my life and I am grateful to him for that.

The death of Saparmurat Niyazov has triggered much about his absurd megalomaniac presidential decrees. It is a reminder of the personality disorders which can afflict those with power. It's pretty easy to laugh off the foibles of a central Asian dictator but power corrupts and the closer the power is to being absolute so is the degree of corruption.

Fortunately in business, reality is forced on even the most megalomaniacal by the market place. We can't force people to buy Wayne Rooney's memoirs, nor prevent them from buying Why don't penguins feet freeze?. Things become a little more difficult though in the public sector.

The democratic process in London elected a guy called Ken Livingstone as Mayor. There can be no arguing with the process but I'm beginning to have concerns about the degree to which he is being corrupted by power. He has appointed a Cartoonist Laureate. He appointed a 'Cabinet' although I can't find any reference to their meeting since 2002 (perhaps they disagreed with him). He built a new palace for him and his team on the Thames.

Apparently it's already too small to house his staff and his ambitions and they are looking for a new opportunity to build a larger palace at Londoners' expense.

But what really triggered this outburst was the receipt through my letterbox of The Londoner which describes itself as a newsletter for Londoners. It is actually a propaganda document for the glorification of the Mayor and all his deeds reminiscent of Pravda in the good old days of Soviet imperialism.

After three months of email badgering (see below and read from the bottom up) I have now established that we taxpayers are contributing at least £3 million pounds a year to support the political ambitions of our Mayor. Harrumph. I'm waiting for him to change officially the names of South Ken, High Street Ken, Ken Salrise, The Ken Nington Oval, and Ken Tishtown.

Incidentally is a service level of 20 days to respond to an email adequate in the 21st century?

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

From: Mayor [mailto:mayor@london.gov.uk]

As The Londoner is a publication giving information about all the services in the GLA Group it is jointly funded by the Greater London Authority, Transport for London, The Metropolitan Police Service and the London Development Agency. Information about the budget for each of these bodies is available on the GLA's website. Please visit the link: http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/budget/current_budget.jsp for the Annual Budget 2006/07 and the information on the council tax precept.

Your email is currently with The Londoner team and is receiving attention. We aim to answer emails within twenty working days from the day following receipt. I have attached a link to our service standards http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/plu_service_stds.jsp