I have just received a copy of Green College News, the alumni magazine of Green College, Oxford where I was once a supernumerary fellow (whatever that means). The college was set up by Sir Richard Doll with money from Cecil Green, the founder of Texas Instruments. Doll was then Regius Professor of Medicine and was committed to growing the Oxford faculty of medicine significantly (which has indeed happened, spectacularly successfully). Many of the established colleges were sniffy about offering college facilities to all these new medics ('we'll be over-run...') and so he established Green to abosrb some of this growth and to offer a new sort of Oxford college. He succeeded.

The sad news reported in the magazine is that Green is to merge with Templeton College, an institution set up to specialise in management and business studies. The move is justified on the grounds of scale, cost, academic strategy and available capital (Templeton sold some land and they could use the cash generated to develop further the Green College site in the centre of Oxford).

So, why sad? I'm not sure but I'll bet that academic politics has played a part and that this merger was driven by that more than anything else. The new entity will not differ significantly from the other colleges. The medical and management strands of the individual colleges will be lost. And I'll bet the synergies promised do not emerge. It all sounds like the mergers that happen in publishing on a fairly regular basis where two and two end up making three.

On a more positive note, warmest congratulations to Joe Wikert whose Publishing 2020 blog has won the 2006 Annual Litty Award for Best Publishing Blogger from the Book Chronicle. I'm not surprised.

And finally today is the first birthday of Macmillan New Writing and I asked its editor, Will Atkins, to bring us all up to date with this heinous (in the eyes of some people) creation.

Macmillan New Writing – ‘The Ryanair of Publishing’™ – is a year old this month. We launched in April 2006 with six debut novels, and have published one per month since then. News of the imprint’s creation was greeted with scepticism from some quarters of Literary London: apparently Macmillan was not only ‘abdicating cultural responsibility’ but taking advantage of ‘impressionable young authors’.

So what was all the fuss about? The business model is simple: we consider unsolicited novels from unpublished writers; we don’t pay an advance but we do pay a good royalty. (Nicholas Clee lamented in a recent Bookseller piece that royalties from sales of his own recently published book were ‘lower than they would have been under the terms of the Macmillan New Writing list.’) Anyhow, suffice to say some commentators found this rather modest, rather old-fashioned way of publishing distasteful.

In other respects, MNW works in the same way as any conventional publishing imprint: the books are edited and produced to the same standard as other Pan Macmillan titles; jackets are designed by Pan Macmillan’s design department; publicity is handled by a dedicated publicist.

The criticism that greeted MNW’s launch twelve months ago doesn’t appear to have been taken seriously by writers (and it has, in any case, been outweighed by far more positive coverage since then): around 7,000 completed novels have now been submitted, of which we have published eighteen. The latest, Brian McGilloway’s superb police procedural, Borderlands, was launched last Thursday at a packed event in Derry.

One of my favourite columnists is Matthew Parris. His latest piece is entitled 'So much for world progress. We have failed. We're stuck.' It promotes the contrarian view that there has actually been little progress in the last fifty years in the West (accepting that developing countries have seen significant change). He also referenced this link to the February 1950 issue of Modern Mechanics magazine predicting how the world will be in 2000. The predictions are, by and large, wrong. Here is one paragraph which is fairly typical.

'When Jane Dobson cleans house she simply turns the hose on everything. Why not? Furniture (upholstery included), rugs, draperies, unscratchable floors — all are made of synthetic fabric or waterproof plastic. After the water has run down a drain in the middle of the floor (later concealed by a rug of synthetic fiber) Jane turns on a blast of hot air and dries everything. A detergent in the water dissolves any resistant dirt. Tablecloths and napkins are made of woven paper yarn so fine that the untutored eye mistakes it for linen. Jane Dobson throws soiled “linen” into the incinerator. Bed sheets are of more substantial stuff, but Jane Dobson has only to hang them up and wash them down with a hose when she puts the bedroom in order.'

This got me thinking about our ability to predict and how hopeless we probably are. We all remember predictions for the paperless office. Ha. Remember when libraries were going to get rid off all books and replace them with microfilm? Ha.

However, sneakily things do change (usually in an unpredicted fashion) and book publishing is changing. Last year we commissioned Jeff Gomez who is head of internet marketing at Holtzbrinck Publishers USA to write a book about these changes. It's called 'Print is dead' and will be published in print form this Autumn (or Fall). As part of writing the book Jeff has set up the brilliant Print is dead blog and I was particularly taken by this photo and quote from Woody Allen:

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

I ran into a little trouble recently when I posted about a competition to promote the Macmillan English Dictionary by releasing red balloons and offering a round-the-world air ticket to the competition winner. In spite of the balloons being biodegradable there was still the issue of carbon dioxide emissions from the plane. In any event, things went ahead and I'm not really too ashamed that the competition has got off to a great start with this launch from Bucharest.

And this one from Madrid.

And while on matters green, you can hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu reading The Gospel according to Judas via audi download without harming a single leaf of a tree. Give it a whirl. On the same theme, Pan Macmillan launched its first e-list with nine titles. There are many many more to come but we wanted to act fast and start learning as soon as possible. I don't suppose we shall make any money on this first list but we and our authors have to engage in the digital world and find the new opportunities and we won't do that by sitting on our hands.

And finally a link to an article in The Spectator all about developments at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the be-all and end-all, the alternative title for our new Complete Shakespeare.

Have a good Spring weekend. I'm preparing for the London Book Fair which, glory be, has returned to West London and within walking distance from my home.

It's an open secret that one of the most innovative and most important parts of general book publishing is in the children's arena. We are very proud that Macmillan Children's Books has been in the forefront of creativity for the last decade and has grown faster than almost any other children's publisher, matched only perhaps by our colleagues at Priddy Books.

Yesterday we announced a major coup in children's publishing, the Ugenia Lavender series from Geri Halliwell. Coverage of the announcement has been extensive and there is much more to come. Congratulations to everyone in the team who has worked so hard to win this programme and thanks in advance for all the work that still needs to happen.

One of the best books published by Picador is John Lanchester's Debt to Pleasure. He is also a journalist and has written an extremely interesting and cogent piece on copyright in a digital age. It's a shame he spoils it by arguing for a legally imposed (but almost certainly legally unenforceable) minimum royalty rate which would have no effect but to increase rancour and bureaucracy.

Exactly a hundred years ago this year (and approximately 99 years before some large American publishers descended on the Beijing International Book Fair 2006 to teach Chinese publishers how to do business) Macmillan appointed F.G.Whittick as travelling representative in China. A year on the headcount was doubled by the appointment of M.E.Taur as his assistant on $40 per month (not bad for those days) but this didn't work out and Taur was 'demoted' to being a 'mere' translator. Selling Macmillan's very British and rather imperial titles in China proved tough and so a local publishing programme was established including 'Arithmetic for Chinese Schools' and in 1912 a Chinese school atlas.

In 1979 the programme was revived after a visit by Harold Macmillan, then aged 85 but still determined to do a publishing deal and to muse on the 'unheard of possibilities we must be ready for.'

This century of hard (and often unprofitable) work is beginning to pay dividends now with the establishment of New Standard English as market leader in the Chinese English Language Teaching market; Nature China as the premier shop window for Chinese science; Nature Asia which makes English-language scientific information available Chinese, both simplified and traditional, as well as Japanese and Korean; Macmillan Production Asia which sources print and associated products for Macmillan and many other publishers; and much else.

The latest venture in this centenary year I mentioned earlier in the week and I can now link to a page all about Picador Asia which we launched at the excellent Asia House with the help of our Chinese literary adviser and make-things-happen guru, Toby Eady. It is a great initiative with great books, great authors and a continuation and enrichment of a great tradition of learning from China rather than lecturing to China.

Here are the first two authors in the list, Diane Wei Liang and Fan Wu.

Yesterday I wrote in praise of Wilbur and in the hope that his clutch of number one best selling positions (in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand) might be added to in the UK. I can now confirm that The Quest is indeed the best selling novel in the UK this week, way ahead of number two.

And finally and with no particular logic I thought I'd show you this link which popped up as a Google ad here recently. It is quite extraordinary but perhaps I'm simply being old-fashioned.

Last night we had a Macmillan 'family' dinner to celebrate the launch of Wilbur Smith's 31st ( I think, it's hard to keep up) novel, The Quest. Do have a look at Wilbur's website and in particular his autobiography. He may be most celebrated for his best-selling novels (he is right now number one in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and our fingers are crossed for the UK this weekend) but he is much more. Here he is with his wife and the dedicatee of The Quest, Niso.

At the other end of the book publishing spectrum, one of the main news items this morning has been about the changes in family life in Britain. In particular that one on four children is being brought up in a single-parent family. This research has been published by Palgrave Macmillan in the 37th (Wilbur will have to put his skates on to catch up) edition of Social Trends created by the UK's Office of National Statistics. There is hardly any good news in the data - more obesity, more time being ill, less ability to fund house-buying etc. Ah well, we'll all have to escape to fiction for some good news.

Yesterday afternoon I was taken, along with a delegation of the World Presidents' Organisation to the US Ambassador's residency in Regents Park. It's known as Winfield House and is an amazing piece of real estate in central London shown by this aerial view.

The ambassador, Bob Tuttle, was forthright, interesting, urbane, and diplomatic (as you'd expect). But the bit I liked was the talk by his wife, Maria, about the history of Winfield House. It was acquired by the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton. After World War II she offered it to the State Deoartment for a dollar who hesitated (there must be a catch) but eventually accepted the gift. The only condition Hutton made was that it retained the name 'Winfield' which is the 'W' of F.W.Woolworth, her grandfather, Frank Winfield Woolworth. So now you know!

There's a lot of tosh in the book trade press (and indeed in the general media) about 'the most powerful person in publishing'. In Britain, the accolade usually goes to Amanda Ross who co-produces the Richard and Judy Show and manages its hugely successful book club. In the USA I guess Oprah Winfrey fills the bill. Once upon a time, the chief buyer at Waterstone's, Scott Pack was deemed to be Mr Big (incidentally his blog is well worth following). Of course, none of these people, however influential, is really powerful. Their impact is rather limited in scope (perhaps a dozen books a year out of 100,000 new titles published), in geography (typically very national) and in genre (fiction and some narrative non-fiction).

I received an email this morning from an old friend and business partner, Li Pengyi, President of FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) in Beijing. He has a new job as Party Secretary and Vice-President of the China Publishing Group which is an umbrella group for a dozen publishers, printers and distributors including, for instance British publishers' principal trading partner for finished books, CNPIEC (China National Publications Import and Export Corporation).

Given China's importance to the twenty-first century world and, in particular to publishing, and given the centrality of this new job, Pengyi gets my vote as the most powerful person in publishing 2007. He is also one of the most professional. Any other contenders?

While on matters Chinese, we are holding the London launch of Picador Asia tomorrow which Dan Watts wrote about in February. One of the launch titles is The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang which brightened my weekend and which taught me more about contemporary Beijing than any number of learned articles.

There is the beginning of a debate about the future of reference books on Tim Coates's Good Library Blog. It was started by a recent posting about our dictionary for learners of English, Macmillan English Dictionary, which we're about to launch in a second edition along with website and CDRom. Clearly reference books are changing in relation to the web but that doesn't mean either that they are doomed or that the print version is redundant.

But that debate seems rather small beer compared with the recent flurry of articles about the media revolution. Forbes Magazine,for instance, tries to analyse the winners and losers:

'Advertising on TV will vanish as we know it as home media servers take over command of home entertainment and step past it. Movies will quickly lose the DVD sales income that help inflate their budgets beyond what the cinema can recoup. Cinemas themselves will be under threat as home screen sizes grow to theater-sized proportions. Even the venerable book will be threatened when some time in the near future a "digital ink" media becomes as cheap and cheerful as paper. Why buy a Harry Potter book when you can download it for free from a book p2p network to your cheap digital paper?

Right or wrong, the audience cannot be relied upon to pay for media as they do if they absolutely have to. If content can be purloined, a large proportion of the audience cannot see why it shouldn’t be. This is not surprising; people buy what they must and are still left wanting more. There seems to be little doubt that there is no practical solution. As such the media model as we know it is on its way out.'

And Outsell, who have merged with EPS (Electronic Publishing Services) have an article entitled 'Google - the threat to median and information'. To quote from it:

"When Eric Schmidt stated Google's goal to reach $100 billion, Google had hit $8 billion in revenues. Consider that Microsoft at that time was at about $50 billion in revenues. Google's management said, in effect, 'We'll be twice the size of Microsoft in the future.'"

The very detailed research article costs $295 to non-subscribers and should be required reading for everyone in the publishing business. Their list of essential actions might be debatable but I wonder how many organisations are even debating them. Here are the conclusions. Some of the phraseology and vocabulary may sound alien to traditional publishers and the actions might appear millions of miles from what we do to stay in business today but...

'Google’s software is more capable than many recognize. Its pockets are deep and the scalability of its technology unprecedented. Google can innovate endlessly and with little incremental cost. Do publishers pack up and go home? No, there is ample room providing they pick their spots on the battlefield. It’s important to focus on six key areas:

1. Take Action to be Ahead of Aggregation and Back-Office Services

2. Fill Gaps and Provide Context

3. Use New Editorial Models

4. Think Beyond Vertical Search

5. Expand Acquisition and Partnering

6. Upsell, Go Upmarket, and Focus on Annuities

Take Action to be Ahead of Aggregation and Back-Office Services

Companies delivering basic forms of aggregation continue to be at risk from the Googleplex juggernaut. As we’ve written over the years, the ability to add unique value to content or provide unique data in the content is essential for staying power.

Fill Gaps and Provide Context

Product developers must focus on how users consume media and information providers’ content in their workflow. Important gaps in content streams must be filled with new product content. This can be created through new editorial models, acquisition and partnering, or all of the above.

Use New Editorial Models

Focus on new editorial processes and people. New content creation methods that allow for some semblance of agility, or automation that allows cost-effective content creation at the bottom so more editorial focus and value-add can be applied to the top, are essential. This goes beyond outsourcing or re-engineering processes. It is about wholesale change of core knowledge processes.

Think Beyond Vertical Search

Vertical search offers no panacea in the face of Google’s launch of personal search and what it is capable of accomplishing with its technology. In our opinion, publishers and providers must own unique and proprietary data at their core for long-term differentiation. Further, they must be able to marry that core to value-added analysis and the integration of their own analysis with external content. Publishers who “own a space” will want to think beyond their four walls to create a comprehensive user experience. But first they must have unique assets at their core that go beyond editorial.

Expand Acquisition and Partnering

No publisher and provider, not the biggest or the nimblest, can mirror the technical wherewithal of Google. It is being applied on several fronts – content creation, distribution, and monetization. One can’t fight all these battles on all these fronts. Acquisitions, divestitures, and partnerships will be even more essential for future success. Focus on core. Allow others to do what they do best. In our opinion, publishers

and information providers will be even more prolific partners than we’ve seen in the history of this industry or any of its segments.

Upsell, Go Upmarket, and Focus on Annuities

As we’ve advised throughout the last decade, the market is commoditizing because of major disruption from firms like Google. We’ve labeled Google the Wal*Mart of our industry, and we are only one of six industries in its sights as it seeks the $100 billion mark. It is essential to continue focusing on value-added services, core content, and service differentiation. Protect annuity revenue streams first, whether they come from advertisers or paying subscribers. Ensuring a recurring revenue stream from existing customers is the first focus of the day. From there, upsell, cross-sell, partner, and remain

focused. Many of the verticals served by publishers and information providers are so narrow and niched, or so reliant on specific types of information, that they won’t register on Google’s radar screen or customers will insist on continuing with a more authoritative

source. In Outsell’s opinion, just as local shopkeepers or big-box stores have had to counter Wal*Mart’s thrust into their communities, publishers and information providers of all types will have to counter Google. Its presence is too large for the community to stay static.'