I've had a bad blog morning. I wrote a pile and then the server lost it. Grrr. So I'm running late today.

Anyway, World Book Day on March 1 approaches and it's their tenth anniversary. For some reason this always leads to a plethora of lists and this year the Bookseller (check out their excellent new web design) has asked a random bunch of readers like me to list their 'top ten books people cannot live without.' Of course any such list is pointless and subjective but I list mine for what it's worth. Incidentally I notice that this week's Bookseller poll shows that 59% of voters think that discounts will rise faster than book prices (29%) and book sales (10%) - we're an optimistic bunch.

1. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack - although you might do best to wait until the 2007 edition is published, along with Spring, towards the end of March.

2. Oxford English Dictionary - I treasure my 20-volume set but really the online version is more sensible, less expensive, and does a better job.

3. Summer Lightning by P.G.Wodehouse, the master who created an England which probably never existed but should have.

4. Billy Bunter's Brainwave by Frank Richards whose real name was Charles Hamilton and who was not only the least politically correct novelist (and one of the funniest) but also the most prolific - 80 million words in a lifetime is going some. Here is Bunter as played by Gerald Campion.

5. The darling Buds of May by H.E.Bates - for humane comfort.

6. A Handful of Dust - by the dreadful but brilliant Evelyn Waugh and well worth reading this review from 1934.

7. A Fine Balance by the magical Parsee writer, Rohinton Mistry.

8. A-Z of London - although I fear that more and more it's being replaced by UK Streetmap.

9. Times Atlas of the World for obvious reasons.

And finally

10. A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz - because we all need some schmaltz in our life.

Do let me know your lists.

There is a traditional niche in publishing for books about spooks, codes, conspiracies, and leaks. I have never been an addict although I was peripherally involved in the publication of Peter Wright's memoir and expose of MI5, Spycatcher. The book was commissioned by Heinemann in London with modest expectations of sales. I think the first printing was to be in the low thousands of copies. The British Government tried to ban it. Lots of lawyers made lots of money. Paul Hamlyn was courageous and unwilling to be bullied or bribed by the great and the good of the time. Publication was moved to Australia. The book was printed in Ireland and Finland and could therefore be legally imported into the UK whatever the Government tried to do. It went on to sell (literally and truthfully) millions.

On a more serious level there have been many books about the British Government's intelligence centre, GCHQ, in Cheltenham. I hope I won't be arrested for showing this picture of its latest office building.

I was reminded about spy publishing by the arrival yesterday of a copy of Thirty Secret Years by my former boss and friend, Robin Denniston. The book is about his father, Alastair Denniston, who was in charge of the code-breaking team at Bletchley Park during the war. There are many historians who reckon that this project was a defining contribution to the outcome of the war.

I don't suppose the book will be another Spycatcher in terms of sales, not least because the Government has probably learned a few lessons about censorship attempts, but it would be great to see Robin and his far-sighted publishers, Polperro Heritage Press, succeed. It is a fascinating account of the back-room teams of intelligence and a social history of a special period of world history. The book is underpriced in trade paperback (in my opinion) and so order now!

Alastair Denniston worked in secret on behalf of Britain for thirty years. Neither the Times nor the Guardian published an obituary of him although belatedly the Dictionary of National Biography has put the record straight. On a much less important stage he reminds me of all those people in publishing who ensure success but never get any recognition. So a salute to the code-breakers of publishing as well as to Alastair Denniston.

Neologism of the day - 'frenemies', to describe the likes of Google or Amazon. They are our best friends but could easily become our worst enemies.

On the right of this picture is the British novelist, Peter James, receiving the Prix Coeur Noir, France's leading award for crime fiction. Or as the PR agency Midas headlines its release: French beaten on home turf for major literary prize by plucky Brit. You can read him in English and German too.

I mentioned the party we held on Australia Day to celebrate the careers of Geoff Todd and Mike Barnard, two long-serving Macmillan directors. I'm not sure they'll thank me for this but here are photos of them at the party. Geoff is the Burns lookalike, Mike with the guitar.

Finally, to round out the Macmillan top sellers for 2006, here is the list of our top twenty English language teaching  courses in unit sales order. For obvious commercial reasons I'm not publishing the actual numbers but I have been allowed to say that the first course in the list had sales of 50,513,200 in the year. The others were slightly less, but some pretty impressive numbers nonetheless. It's hard to link each of these individually but you can see a good selection at Macmillan English.

My piece yesterday on BookStore prompted my good friend, colleague and author Jeff Gomez to remind me of the blog he's set up to support his forthcoming book, Print is Dead, which we are publishing in print and electronically later this year. Jeff is responsible for the electronic publishing and marketing of much of Holtzbrinck Publishers, our sister company in USA and he knows what he's talking about.

And another sister company has just launched a new service to showcase the fruits of Chinese science to the world. It is Nature China. This has been made possible by the generous sponsorship support of AstraZeneca and is another example of the development of multiple business models to support the dissemination of scholarly material.

Yesterday I was asked in the comments for more detail on our visitors. Here are two pretty pictures showing which websites feed this blog and which countries during January. I hope they are helpful.

As this is the first of the month, I bore you with blog stats. In January we had 73059 visits, compared with 9036 in January 2006 (when we'd only just started) and 60,400 visits in the previous month (December 2006). This brings the total number of visits to 473,006.

I got into trouble yesterday for mentioning the deadline on the go-live date for BookStore ahead of its implementation. 'Supposing we'd had to delay - how embarrassing.' Quite. The best way to ensure compliance in Britain is not to threaten violence or offer bribes, it is to wave the possibility of embarrassment. In any event it worked and here is a relieved piece from MPSTechnologies commercial director, David Sommer. I should, however, add that, as with all babies, this is not the finished article. We are already working on improving speed, enhancing functionality, developing new formats and business models. It took over 500 years for the printed book industry to reach its present status. Let us have at least a few weeks to establish the e-book industry!

'Well - it has happened. MPS Technologies launched BookStore yesterday - on time.  Macmillan Science and Macmillan New Writing are the first two publishers to go live with over 30 eBooks in a variety of formats.  See their sites at: http://www.macmillansciencebookstore.com and http://www.macmillannewwritingbookstore.com

BookStore provides publishers with a customizable platform to better serve the needs of their readers and authors and enabling them to:

• Market, sell and deliver eBooks in the 3 main downloadable eBook formats as well as read online access 
• Remain in control of their content and protect authors’ copyright
• Build a direct relationship with readers and reach new readers
• Experiment with flexible business models to slice and dice access to content in new ways

Both sites allow users to browse inside the books’ content, without compromising the control that Macmillan has over its digital content.

Authors at both imprints are enthusiastic about their work becoming available digitally and giving many more people the chance to search, sample and purchase these critically acclaimed books in a flexible, future-proof and eco-friendly way. 

This is a major milestone for Macmillan’s digital book strategy, but is just the start of the journey.  There is a long way to go in terms of enhancing BookStore, adding functionality and meeting the needs of our publishing clients.  We really would welcome your feedback on the sites please send comments (good or bad!) to: ValuableBookStoreFeedback@mpstechnologies.com

For more information, contact Lisa Hayden at Macmillan Science (l.hayden@macmillan.co.uk), Sophie Portas at Macmillan New Writing (s.portas@macmillan.co.uk) or Rupert Bacon at MPS Bookstore (r.bacon@mpstechnologies.com).

About a year ago we published the hardback of Pleasurable Kingdom, a wonderful book by Jonathan Balcombe which argues that animals can feel pleasure. Here's the jacket which demonstrates the thesis.

The book hasn't (yet) made the bestseller lists but it has sold decently and its paperback release in July will give it further impetus. When we first published we focussed attention on the core markets of UK and USA but I was delighted to see just this week that the Macmillan machine burst into action in India last week to support the author on a tour and to ensure great press coverage such as this. It sometimes takes time for a book to reach its potential audience and it definitely takes patience. It also takes determination. Special thanks to Kalpana Shukla and her sales and marketing team in India. It's not always the obvious books which need marketing support.

But a forthcoming best selling book which will definitely be receiving the full marketing works is in house now and being prepared for worldwide publication this Autumn. It is the latest thriller from Ken Follett entitled World without End. It is a sequel to his record-breaking Pillars of the Earth and I have absolutely no doubt that it will outsell all the other 20-odd books called World without End! Thank goodness there's no copyright in a book title.

Incidentally, today is a big day here at Macmillan because we promised various people that they would have an up and running digital BookStore by the close of play today. As with all deadlines we are right up against it and teams in the UK and India are working franticly hard to deliver. I'll report tomorrow on whether we've kept our promise.

For those of you who not yet seen it and for everyone who loves gossip, intrigue and a publishing soap opera please go to Even Bitches Have Feelings and enjoy the story of Judith Regan, Rupert Murdoch and O.J.Simpson. I think that the whole animal kingdom should find pleasure in this - with one or two notable exceptions.

The last couple of days have seen a number of articles about the potential threat to the finances of the British Library as a result of the current Government spending review. This article sums things up pretty well. I should declare interests. Apart from being a great fan of the BL I also sit on one its advisory committees and I love the Eduardo Paolozzi sculpture of Isaac Newton in its piazza.

Fortunately the Library has a very strong  and vociferous bunch of supporters who will be arguing for its budget for reasons of culture, scholarship, history etc - for instance here. It does seem crazy that the while the 'creative economy' is being heralded as one of Britain's fastest growing and world beating industries that we should be contemplating cheese-paring at its heart.

I would like to add one thought only and it's to do with geography. In November 2007 the Channel Tunnel rail link will open at St Pancras and will deposit 50 million passengers a year literally a stone's throw from the British Library. The library will be not only a magnet for British citizens but for the whole of Western Europe. Apart from the clear cultural benefits to Britain, the possibilities for generating revenue for the economy are enormous. Don't let's miss the chance by administering pointless cuts now.

Australians have a particularly direct way of describing politicians with whom they disagree about such things. Former Federal Treasurer and then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, was a world-class insulter and here are his references to opponents in 1984 alone: harlots, sleazebags, frauds, cheats, blackguards, pigs, mugs. clowns, criminals, stupid foul-mouth grub, corporate crook, rustbucket, scumbag, rip-off merchants, constitutional vandals, perfumed gigolos, gutless spiv, stunned mullets, barnyard bullies, pieces of criminal garbage - courtesy Sydney Morning Herald and Matthew Engel.

From one great national and international insitution to another, Google Corporation. The spat over copyright and the Google library program continues and the lawyers are getting even richer. Meanwhile the story is beginning to make it into the broader press. Here's an excellent article from the New Yorker. The sentence below sent a shiver up my spine. The sooner the publishing industry can develop ways of working with Google on the basis of copyright licences and the sooner Google can accept that copyright is a genuine asset which cannot be appropriated without permission the better for all parties.

'The law is supposed to resolve issues like these—between self-interested parties with reasonable claims and legitimate arguments. But the rules of copyright are so ambiguous, and the courts so slow, that the judicial system serves largely to implement the law of the jungle.'

I've been challenged by a commenter for this exchange in a recent interview with me.

Q: Are publishers an author's natural enemy, and is that the real reason for open-access journals?

A: No, readers are the author's natural enemy because most of them don't want to read a particular author's work, however good it is. There have always been open-access journals - they're usually called "controlled circulation" (or "organs of state propaganda"), and normally they are rather substandard. I'm sure that Public Library of Science and others are excellent, but I don't think they are the result of anti-publisher sentiment but rather a legitimate desire to make available everything to everyone for free. The problem is there is no such thing as a free lunch, and a good value one can be pretty sustaining.

Of course the question related to scientific authorship and the open access movement. My answer was slightly tongue in cheek and could be interpreted more widely. However, thinking about it more, perhaps there is some truth in it.

I remember Per Saugman, the early creator of Blackwell Scientific Publishing (sold recently for £600m), gave me a tip for authors demanding a higher royalty (the advance had not been invented!). His argument was that the publisher doesn't pay the royalty, the book purchaser does. And does the author really feel that his readers would be willing to pay significantly more for the book? Normally authors settled for the existing royalty and price on the grounds that the reader wasn't overkeen to pay the extra.

And then there's the nearly universal authorial complaint that their publisher isn't marketing hard enough. We all know that the best marketing is word of mouth. If sales aren't high enough it might be the publisher's marketing budget but it's more likely it's those pesky readers not spreading the word hard enough.

Sometimes readers even have the temerity not to like a particular book. Or they may find it of no interest. Or they just can't be bothered. Hard for the publisher to explain to the author whose world frequently revolves round the latest book.

Publishers are not authors' natural enemy. Authors and publishers and booksellers might do well to join forces and try to ally themselves with readers too. Perhaps that is the explanantion for the success of the Richard and Judy Book Club. Last year one in four of all books sold in the UK were recommended by R&J, an extraordinary statistic and evidence of the power of understanding the reader. Here are Britain's leading book marketers posing in front of a tiny proportion of the books they've been helped sell.