It's Australia Day down under and the Aussies are enjoying it in the traditional way - humiliating England in a cricket match.

It seems appropriate therefore to complete the global review of our bestsellers with Pan Macmillan Australia's top ten.

Guinness World Records 2007

The Valley - the latest from Australia's highest selling female writer.

My Story - Schapelle Corby's chilling story of her imprisonment in a Bali jail.

The Great War - Les Carlyon's  new classic history has sold over 90,000 copies in hardback in Australia - how many serious history books achieve those numbers proportinately anywhere else in the world?

Cat on the Mat is Flat by the brilliantly funny Andy Griffiths.

Circle of Flight by the best-selling author for teenagers ever in Australia, the legendary John Marsden.

Cat O'Nine Tails  - the first Pom in the list - Jeffrey Archer on top short story form.

The Unknown Terrorist - a simply brilliant novel from Richard Flanagan.

Seven Ancient Wonders from Matthew Reilly, Australia's (and progressively the world's) leading adventure writer.

Triumph of the Sun by the ever popular Wilbur Smith.

I reckon that side would beat any team in the world and, in addition to the authors, the success is down to exceptional publishing people. I have a nasty feeling that the Pan Macmillan Australia publishing team would also beat the current England team at cricket too.

And while on the subject of publishing teams, last night we had a very special party on our Kings Cross offices. It was to celebrate the careers of two of our top management team who are retiring. This blog would become very boring if I recorded and commented on every retirement but Mike Barnard and Geoff Todd deserve special mention. Neither of them has featured heavily in the pages of the Bookseller. Neither claims to have the secret of publishing. Neither is interested in bullshit. Betwen them (for over thirty years each) they have ensured that the machine which makes Macmillan tick is in good working order. The accounts come out on time and are accurate, royalties are paid, books are produced beautifully and economically, offices function and conform to the law, IT systems work and don't cost the earth, distribution is the best in the industry. Since I joined Macmillan, I've had to worry about many things but I've also known I could trust the machine to function because it had two such high-quality operators. They are also exceedingly decent and fun people. Thanks guys.

Prospect magazine is the brainchild of David Goodhart, its editor. It was launched in 1995 and has been described as  "more readable than the Economist, more relevant than the Spectator, more romantic than the New Statesman." They have just launched a blog and I was invited to contribute a piece on scientific publishing. In the process of writing the piece I rediscovered the difficulties of explaining a complex situation in very few words and of typing more than one sentence on a Blackberry in the departures lounge at Bangalore Airport.

One theory of success in publishing is that the chances of survival are directly linked to intelligent property policy. Faber's ownership of its offices in Queen Square, Souvenir Press's office in Great Russell Street have helped the companies through difficult times. John Murray's wonderful Albemarle Street offices allowed it to hold on to its independence for more than two centuries.

This article from the New York Times suggests that our Nature team in New York are following an equally sensible property policy. And here are photos of their brilliant (and economic) offices.

As we all know, India is almost perfect. The economy is booming. The human resource is adapatable and plentiful. The food is outstanding. However, every institution can improve and I have four recommendations to put to the Indian Parliament.

1. Move the time zone 30 minutes forward or backward so that dimwitted and jet-lagged foreigners know what the time is when they wake up. Try subtracting 5 and a half hours from the local time.

2. Abolish lakhs (100,000) and crores (10.000,000) except for literary and poetic use.

3. Introduce the New Rupee which is 100 Old Rupees.

4. Persuade British Airways to invest in more than one phone per check-in staff.

I estimate these amendments would increase India's GDP by at least one percentage point.

I am indebted to Tim Coates for the following costs of borrowing a book from libraries in various parts of London. The cost is derived by simply dividing the total costs of library provision in the area by the number of loans. Both the absolute costs (it would be cheaper simply to give the books away?) and the variations suggest that there are huge savings to be made which could lead to enhanced book stocks and even better service.

Camden £11.50
Greenwich £7.14
Hackney £10.07
Hammersmith £6.63
Islington £10.46
Kensington £8.54
Lambeth £10.29
Lewisham £5.77
Southwark £6.89
Tower Hamlets £9.90
Wandsworth £3.64
Westminster £5.91

And finally the mission statement from the only cafe in Bangalore Airport:

To be the best cafe chain by offering a world class coffee experience at affordable prices.

I'm thinking of adapting this for the Baldons Cricket Club which has been obliged by some new regulation to invent a constitution. To be the best village cricket team offering excellent teas at affordable prices. Shame about the pavilion and the pitch.

I wrote a little while ago about the funeral for William Armstrong. Here is a link to an excellent obituary in The Independent.

The riots in Bangalore have subsided. The row over Shilpa Shetty is simmering but not explosive. Today's big news is that the Indian cricket manager, Greg Chappell, has been assaulted for failing to select anyone from Orissa State in the Indian team. When he took the job I can imagine Chappell had a few concerns - selection, fitness, opposition, poitical tension - but I don't suppose being beaten up at an airport was one of them.

The other thing he would never have predicted is that the BCCI the Indian cricket board would grant TV rights to an operation which has resulted in the most popular sports entertainment for a billion people not being available to half of them. That is even worse than not selecting anyone from beautiful Orissa. 

As the plane prepared to descend the BA steward reminded us to clear the area around our seats of ALL materials - 'including books and other debris'. I sometimes think we're in the paper recycling industry but debris...?

Of course the big news story here is Shilpa Shetty and Big Brother.

The media in Bangalore and across the sub-continent are having the time of their lives attacking British TV, British racism, British manners, and celebrity idiocy - and affirming the superiority of Indian culture. I agree with them.

The other headlines today were all about the riots in East Bangalore where an 11-year-old boy was killed and a curfew imposed. In the West we hear a great deal about violence in the Middle East (of course) and we make a great deal out of, for instance, the riots in Paris. We tend to view India as a vibrantgrowing democratic economy. India has issues too and they are not far below the surface.

But the more positive side of India is evident in today's Bangalore newspaper where the bulk of the ads are from Australian universities trawling for the best students. The world is, indeed, flat.

I'm off to Bangalore later today. This is not one of our offices there.

But this is one of the six buildings we occupy in the city.

We employ around 1500 people in Bangalore and 3000 plus in India as a whole. The business is divided into several divisions and the divisions into units. This is essential for manageability but inevitably introduces complexity.In the two days I am there I'll be attending thirteen separate board or executive meetings, each dealing with a separate strategic business unit. And when I leave I bet we'll have created some new ones too.

I came across this badly reproduced Quentin Blake cartoon for the Pan Bookshop. In spite of competition from the supermarkets, the Internet, silly discounts at chain booksellers, and the inanities of publishers, our little independent bookshop managed to record reasonable sales, better stock turn, a decent profit and many happy customers. The devilish Pan must be smiling on us. Hooray - and phew.

One of the key technologies impacting the book industry is on-demand printing and Ingram's Lightning Source is a leading supplier. A Macmillan production manager visited their factory recently and brought back this photo. When he asked the plant manager what went on in that particular department, the response was R&R. Now we know.

I attended another meeting yesterday focussing on the problems besetting the British public library system. Tim Coates has written about it on his Good Library Blog. I was delighted to see his reference to my old friend William of Ockham. Not much is known about his life except that he was born in Ockham in Surrey and the medieval church there has had a stained glass window of him installed.

The paintings of him aren't very helpful but here's a colourful one looking rather like a cartoon monk.

What I really like about him is the vagueness of it all. His name is spelt several different ways. According to this brilliant article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy he wasn't the originator of his famous philosophical razor concept, nor did he even use the word 'razor'. The concept is written in Latin - entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem - and can be interpreted in any number of subtly different ways.

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

"Simpler theories are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones.

"Don't multiply entities beyond necessity."

"Plurality should not be assumed without necessity."

“It is useless to do with more what can be done with less.”

The amount of hot air being expended on library funding, management and objectives might be significantly reduced by the application of old Bill Occam's razor and a review based on these five Occamesque observations from Tim Coates.

-  The library service is for people and its only purpose is to respond to their needs  (currently it does not do this adequately)

-  It is essentially about reading  (currently it is not sufficiently so)

-  Its operation must be simple (because at present it is too complex)

-- Those responsible for providing the service are those who work in the libraries (currently they are not able to be).

-- Those accountable to the public are councillors  (currently they do not account).

And please may we ignore for this exercise other bons mots such as 'The devil is in the detail' or Einstein's "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."

Bill's contemporary version is "Keep it simple, stupid" and I suggest that all library acronymic participants adopt this as their mission statement.

Yesterday I attended a meeting organised by the Booksellers Association to discuss the opportunities and threats posed to the book trade as a whole by the shifting sands of technology and consumer behaviour. The meeting was conducted under the Chatham House rule but it was agreed that the findings and discussions will be widely communicated as soon as the materials are put in order. I shall not jump the gun but, while listening, my mind kept going back to an interview which I blogged a few days ago. It generated a lot of comments from independent booksellers as the 'mystery entrepreneur' challenged many preconceptions about our industry and bookselling in particular. However, it was the last question and answer which has (understandably) made me think hardest:

WW: What about Publishers? Aren’t publishers part of the problem? Shouldn’t they be part of the solution? 

MC: My guess is that somewhere in that solution will be the elimination of “publishers” as we traditionally know them. The only other industry consisting of massively over-compensated mediocre performers who have utterly outlasted their utility and raison d’etre and exist only by virtue of an entrenched, self-protective, bullying autocracy that gangs up against threats posed by obviously more efficient methods that would, could, should and will eliminate them—is Wall Street.

Well, that's telling us. The only consolation is that, for all its sins, I'm pretty certain that Wall Street will survive - and so shall publishers.

Our virtual tour of Macmillan bestsellers takes us to Palgrave Macmillan in the Flatiron Building in New York who have just ended the best year in their history thanks to brilliant publishing and assiduous marketing.

1. The Statesman's Yearbook 2007