A couple of days ago we threw a party to wish one of Pan's greatest stars a very happy retirement. Ray Fidler had chalked up 39 years and 4 months service. It is a real testament to Macmillan that an earlier smaller gathering of friends and colleagues held on Tuesday evening established over dinner that between the 13 of them they had 282 years service.

A propos of absolutely nothing, I loved this quote from the guy organising Anna Nicole Smith's memorial service: 'It will be something very beautiful, very private, very over the top and very pink.'

It's just under a year since I last wrote about World Book Day which celebrates its tenth birthday today. It has been a huge success in the UK. I wish it would take off elsewhere to the same extent. Perhaps we should plan to celebrate its twentieth birthday in Beijing. Anyway, a few facts from the UK.

Record numbers of retail outlets are taking part this year. The total number is around 3300 stores. Every  major retailer and  library authority in the UK is supporting Quick Reads 2007, to encourage non-readers to pick up a book. 47,000 World Book Day packs for primary and secondary schools and preschools have been sent out this year, all with World Book Day £1.00 tokens for every child on the roll. More than 90% of schools celebrate World Book Day in some way. Over 400 stores around the UK are using World Book Day to work with their local communities to collect Books for Hospitals. And more, plenty more.

And I recommend you click here with the volume on to hear a song by Julia Donaldson which celebrates her World Book Day book.

 It will be a good day for books if J.K.Rowling succeeds in her case against eBay. She has won the first round with an Indian injunction won by Akash Chittranshi, the lawyer who represents the Publishers Association anti-piracy activities in India. Some publishers (particularly some general book publishers as opposed to academic or educational publishers) think that spending money on anti-piracy activities shows little benefit. Here is an example of where it does and with implications way beyond India and eBay. Essentially, web retailers will have to take responsibility for ensuring there is no distribution of illegally created or imported copies of books through their services. Such a shift will protect authors, copyright and the free movement of legal copies - hooray. I've never met J.K.Rowling but I think the global book trade should thank her and not just for Harry Potter.

Good news today for Palgrave Macmillan who have signed an agreement with the hugely important International Monetary Fund for the publication of the IMF Staff Papers from April this year.

I think this photo wins the futile advertising of the month award. The bus stop is round the corner from Nature's Kings Cross, London offices in Caledonian Road. Apart from the Nature team (who already subscribe to Science) there can be no potential readers of this excellent but very high-level journal at this bus stop. The poster is there (at significant expense) presumably simply to irritate the Nature team (I can think of no other explanation). What it does suggest is that 'not-for-profit' publishers (Science is owned by the learned society, AAAS) can be more liberal with their subscribers' money than privately-owned ones.

It's the first of the month and so time for charkinblog stats. In February we had 66527 visitors, down from January's record 73059. My rather feeble excuse is that February is three days shorter than January. I guess I'll have to be a little more controversial or undertake a free marketing campaign to get the numbers moving again. Total visits to date are now 539533.

Back in London and in no state to compose a coherent posting. So a few bits and bobs from my inbox.

Congratulations to HarperCollins for discovering a new business model for success on the web. The only trouble is that they had to sack the innovators.

I suspect many of you are aware of this latest piece of neuroscientific research but I share it with you just in case.

fi yuo cna raed tihs , yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

Good news from the Pan Bookshop who have reignited their blog. Let's hope they can keep it going, and more importantly keep on selling books.

And as I'm back in London I thought I should mention a new initiative from Common Purpose (of which I am Chair). Go check it out here.

Finally, I've received two rather disquieting promotional emails. This one suggests I'm rich, which I'm not.

And this from Sunset Overseas suggesting it's time for me to shuffle off into retirement, which I'm not, I hope.

I'm still in Delhi where excitement levels are building for the upcoming world cup of cricket. The front page of yesterday's Times of India review had a photo of Rahul Dravid holding a copy of Tony Crozier's excellent Wisden History of the Cricket World Cup with his deep assessment of the work: 'I love the pictures in this book', exclaimed Dravid, promising to say more after he had read it.

I imagine the Times Literary Supplement will be keen to publish his final and decisive verdict.

It's coming up to five years since we launched Pan Macmillan Asia under the leadership of Dan Watts. It is now an established part of the Asian book trade and of Macmillan. Here is Dan's history of the adventure.

May 2007 marks five years since Pan Macmillan first opened offices in Hong Kong.  It’s been quite a journey and the time has flown by more quickly than I could have imagined.  Looking back we’ve enjoyed some significant milestones.  The Asian markets and our business have changed since the late nineties when I covered the region as an export rep out of London.  Indeed, the prospects for trade publishing and English language sales in Asia are looking brighter that ever.  It seems timely therefore to take a moment to reflect on the journey that’s brought us this far and what lies ahead for Pan Macmillan in Asia.

I began my foray into bookselling in Asia in 1999 after relocating to London from Pan Macmillan in Melbourne.  At that time I was responsible for Pan Macmillan UK’s export sales to The Middle East, The Indian Subcontinent and Asia Pacific.  India represented the biggest sales territory and was certainly perceived to be strategically the most important area for our English language sales and most efforts were focussed here accordingly. 

At the time two thirds of our sales were accounted for by Singapore/Malaysia.  Otherwise HK, Thailand and Japan represented other significant territories.  We had no export sales to China, Korea or Vietnam and negligible sales to The Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia.  Most British publishers still referred to Asia Pacific as ‘The Far East’ and the sales efforts were largely channelled through single market distributors in the countries with strong colonial histories.

Macmillan Childrens Books represented a mere 10% - 15% of our sales at this time compared to over 50% today.  The English language children’s book boom was still far from being anticipated.  China’s recent economic growth was just starting to make waves in the west although it was still thought to be many years before we’d be selling any English language trade books there.   Little optimism prevailed with regards to HK which had sunk into gloom in the wake of the hand back to China two years prior.  Korea was only just beginning its drive for international competitiveness and Japan was barely starting to show signs of shrugging off its decade long recession.  Political tensions between Taiwan and China were at their height and Singapore was looking at a recession as it watched its electronics manufacturing industry slowing disappear to cheaper labour markets like China.  Generally the region had been heavily shaken by the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis.

Despite the prevailing negative mood, we were approaching the end of the century and times were changing.  The ‘dot com’ bubble was starting and the world was facing an information technology revolution from which Asia Pacific would be one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Pan Macmillan’s export sales doubled in 18 months through a combination of opening up new markets, and breaking down old distributor arrangements in existing territories.  We started to realise the cross over potential of children’s books through the educational sales channels and the wider economic recovery had begun.  Potential for English book sales outside the non-commonwealth territories was becoming apparent.  The positive growth trends continued steadfastly and East Asia soon came to represent around 2/3 of our revenue from greater Asian territories.

In 2002 we made the decision to take advantage of Macmillan’s infrastructure in Hong Kong by adding a small Pan Macmillan sales office to the existing production and publishing offices.  I relocated to Hong Kong in May of that year and hired an assistant sales manager and a marketing assistant in addition to our Japan rep, Shino Yasuda.  The aim was to provide a better service to our growing database of customers, expand sales into emerging markets through local skills and service combined with the unique ability of providing regional marketing and publicity services.

In the same year, Holtzbrinck Publishers were reviewing their existing arrangements for export sales into Asia from the USA.  Considering Macmillan’s new local position they soon changed their representation arrangements from a third party sales agent to use the services provided Pan Macmillan.  The combination of Pan Macmillan and Holtzbrinck Trade sales made Pan Macmillan in Asia a formidable presence for general books in the regional markets.

In 2003 Hong Kong, and many other countries in the region, were hit with the terrifying phenomenon of the SARS outbreak.  Air travel, tourism, the hotel industry, the restaurant industry all practically ground to a complete halt.  Could this spell the beginning of another Asian Economic crisis? Our business was hit hard, as was our lifestyles.  (Can you imagine commuting to work every day wearing a surgical mask?)  Paranoia completely swept the region.

Despite the sudden impact of the SARS outbreak we did manage to grow the business over the next two years.  UK and USA sales continued to flourish. We began representing a growing number of third party publishers such as Granta, Rodale and Walker Books on a commission basis.  We started selling Pan Macmillan Australia books into the region and managed a number of regional, high profile author tours including Wilbur Smith, Daniel Mason, Matthew Reilly, John Banville and Alan Hollinghurst.  We were generating regional publicity and promotion in a way that had never been done by any of our competitors.  Janet Chan and Jade Lui who had joined me with the initial move to HK had now developed a mature approach to the business and had become invaluable members of the team.

In 2005, as a result of Richard Nathan’s strategic review of the Holtzbrinck Group’s business in Asia, it was decided that Pan Macmillan Asia would cease to become a sales branch of the UK instead to become a stand alone, commission based, business centre.  Assuming responsibility for our own profit and loss provided the incentive to take the business beyond simply a rep office towards a local publishing operation.

It was fortuitous that year that the well known literary agent and sinologist, Toby Eady approached David North with the idea of partnering with Pan Macmillan to create an Asian focussed publishing program.  Thus, the idea of Picador Asia was formed.  Toby’s experience with oriental writers such as Jung Chang and his contacts in China provided us with a wealth of publishing opportunities within China and the greater region.  The aim was to acquire Asian literary talent from our offices in Hong Kong for publication locally and within the group around the world.

A year later we published our first title, February Flowers, by Fan Wu and have consequently slowly put together program of Asian writers through Toby and from within the resources of the group to bring about a schedule of around 6 – 8 new titles a year from 2007. 

The books have not only been successful in the English language but have also proved popular internationally as well.  February Flowers has now been sold in 13 different languages and Picador Asia’s second title The Eye of Jade in 15 languages included a $250,000 deal with Simon and Schuster in the USA as part of a two book deal.

In this time the export sales business continued to grow so did the team with an increasingly diverse international flavour.  Keren Cheung switched allegiances from Macmillan Education to join the Pan Macmillan team.  Claudia Buzzoni left Macmillan Australia for a stint in Hong Kong and Ilangoh Thanabalan left our Singapore Distributor, Pansing to work with us in Hong Kong.

We also continued to expand through acquisition of further third party sales agency contracts including Lonely Planet, Houghton Mifflin, Kingfisher, and Guinness World Records to mention a few.  A weak US dollar provided a boost to our US business resulting in a 50% increase in export sales in 2006.

Our marketing efforts have also intensified.  More author tours of more big names gained even better exposure for our titles.  Lord Jeffrey Archer completed a hugely successful tour of Singapore, Andy Griffiths toured the region and completed a marathon of school visits and next month we’ll host a four city tour for Julia Donaldson.  We’re regularly securing interviews with CNN, The International Herald Tribune, The Asian Wall Street Journal as well as a larger number of local publications.  We’ve developed our unique website as a bookseller resource and producing our own unique quarterly catalogue.

 In April this year we’ll open a new sales office in Beijing in order to capitalise on both the growing export sales opportunities in Greater China but also to develop co-publishing ventures in the mainland.  We have plans to launch a direct sales channel in China in the form of a Book Club and are discussing a possible joint venture with FLTRP in Beijing to launch a Chinese Language Children’s books program under Macmillan Children’s Books China.

Other plans under development include a possible partnership to manage some limited local distribution of our locally published titles.  We’re looking to expand our copyright activity and facilitate further local production, direct deliveries and printing.

The Chinese Economic phenomenon continues with full force and is driving aggressive optimism throughout the region.  Japan is firmly bouncing back from its economic woes and the Korean Children’s Book boom is back in full swing.  With the Beijing Olympics just on the horizon regional confidence has not been stronger.  The spread of the internet is facilitating the spread of the English language and with that is coming a seemingly endless increase in demand for English language books of all varieties.  We’ve achieved quite a lot in five years but there’s still so much more that can be done.  I hope that in another five years I’ll be able to report much more than I have today.

Not only is my body clock at sixes and sevens (London-Bangalore-Sydney-Melbourne-Delhi in a just a few days) but so is my blog clock, so this is Monday's posting although it's Sunday for many readers. Yesterday's post which was Sunday (!) elicited an interesting comment from Alok Bhatt who works at MPSTechnologies in Gurgaon, one of India's high-tech hubs and growing at an extraordinary rate.

He wants to know what I think of India. What can I say without resorting to platitudes and cliches? So I thought I'd simply analyse Sunday's Times of India in the hope that it might throw some light on what's going on here.

The main part of the paper has 32 pages. A quarter of the front page relates to an interview with the captain of India's cricket team, Rahul Dravid where he argues that cricket isn't important enough to be on the front page of a newspaper unless India were to win the World Cup (which begins in a couple of weeks). That is a typical example of an Indian contradiction - a front-page story arguing against being on the front page.

There are four full pages about cricket at the back, a quarter page of cricket nostalgia, a full page on thinking positive and its psychological impact on cricketers, a full travel page on the Caribbean for Indian cricket fans going to support their team, a full page interview with Dravid, a quarter page story about how Dravid wins the hearts of young fans in Delhi.

Approximately 40% of the editorial content of the paper is dedicated to cricket - and the World Cup doesn't begin until 11 March.

And for the rest there are high-quality articles about every aspect of Indian life, business, economics, religion, politics and sex. As Alok says in his comment, India is a giant laboratory experiment. The best way of following it is to bookmark the Times and/or the Hindu and check in several times a week.

I think that India is the most exciting place on earth but that doesn't really answer Alok's question. My personal view is that the success or otherwise of the 'Indian experiment' is one of the most important factors for the health and wealth of the whole world. If intelligence and decency and ambition are keys to success, then India will succeed. If, however,the experiment is derailed by prejudice, corruption and greed, then Gods help us all.

I'm backing England for the World Cup but when we are eliminated (as we surely will be) my support will move to India without hesitation for the simple reason that Indians care more about this than any other nation and they've earned that success.

I feel like an irrational Cantabrian grumpy old man as I write this from a hotel room in Delhi (which gives me an excuse to show a stunning picture of a corridor in the Red Fort).

I received an e-mail from the Cambridge Alumni office which pretends to be about communicating with former students but is actually about raising money from us on the lines of the major American universities. On the face of it this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, so why do I feel irrational and grumpy?

The University of Cambridge doesn't need the money. Many of the colleges (and particularly Trinity which I attended) have invested in property for several centuries - and property has probably been the  best long-term investment ever in the UK, with no signs of any significant threat. Wikipedia estimate of Trinity's endowment is £700m for instance.

Trinity doesn't look too shabby, does it?

Of course, and in spite of statements to the contrary, the British Government has to ration funds for education - and particularly for the funding of high-quality as opposed to broadly inclusive institutions. The Government is also attempting to dictate admissions policy on the quite reasonable 'he who pays the piper' principle.

On the other hand, there has never been more investment in scientific and scholarly research and Cambridge's leading position in a number of fields has allowed it to build significant income from corporate, industrial, philanthropic and government research funds.

I suppose I'd be less grumpy about being 'schnorrered' if I thought that the money would go to maintaining and developing a world-class university. My suspicion is that whilst Government controls the purse strings the ethos will be to favour access over excellence and, if that's the case, then the Government should fund. If Cambridge were to kick themselves of Government subsidy habit and set themselves up on the private Harvard model then I'd happily send them a small cheque and even stop objecting to being called an alumnus.

More on India later.

Yesterday's posting on Kurdistan has generated this link to an account of being a teacher-trainer in Iraqi Kurdistan - fascinating.

There has been some competition for the worst views from Macmillan office windows in the UK. Strangely those with wonderful views don't seem to have submitted any photos.

I'm preparing to leave Melbourne for Delhi this morning. For those of you suffering a Northern Hemisphere Winter you'll be pleased to know that it's chucking it down here. There's been a terrible drought in Victoria and there's no international cricket on at the moment so I guess everyone will be pleased. Fortunately it didn't rain last night when I had dinner with two old friends at a restaurant where this was the view of Port Phillip Bay as the sun went down.

I've written about Macmillan's efforts in Iraq before - here and here.

I don't suppose many of us know very much about the Kurdistan although the picture above suggests it's rather beautiful. Some Western politicians are doing their best to wreck the Middle East but there is some hope while initiatives like this blossom. I'm delighted that we are involved. Apologies for the formatting.