A little while ago I blogged about a letter to the Harvard Business Review complaining about their policy on on-line subscriptions. They have now responded and turned a complaining reader into a loyal customer and, as Ann Michaels rightly says, that's good marketing.

Another way of creating loyal customers is equally obvious (and equally often forgotten). It is to encourage customers to tell you what they think - and tell each other. We are launching a new blog today with the somewhat inelegant (to my eyes) title connect2mec which is there to help teachers of English keep in touch with us, share ideas with each other and find out about the latest available lesson plans, study aids and how to best integrate Macmillan English Campus into a blended learning programme within their institution. Here's the team.

And here's a press release about Editorial Estrada which was issued this morning in Buenos Aires.

Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A. has reached an agreement with Macmillan Publishers Limited

Buenos Aires,  May 2007.  On April 30th, Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A., a company with 130 years’ tradition in educational publishing in Argentina, reached a non-binding agreement with Macmillan Publishers Limited pursuant to which Macmillan will acquire the company’s publishing business through the purchase of the shares of Editorial Estrada, S.A, a company controlled by Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A.

Completion of the purchase of Editorial Estrada S.A. by Macmillan Publishers Limited is subject, among other conditions, to legal and financial due diligence, at the end of which both parties will agree the final price of the transaction.

Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A. will continue to operate, concentrating on its school and business stationery  division.

The Securities Exchange Commission and the Stock Exchange have been informed of this agreement.

Press Relations in Estrada:

María Eugenia Fernández Blanco

RRWW Comunicaciones

mefernandezblanco@rrww.com.ar

Ph: (+5411) 4556-0099

Contact in Macmillan:

Christopher West

Ph: (+5411) 4717 0088

Ángel Estrada & Cía S.A. was founded in 1869 and is Argentina’s first publishing company.  Its stationery brands include Arte and Rivadavia:the latter has been in the Argentine market for 90 years.  The company has two business divisions: school and business stationery under the brands Rivadavia, América, el Nene and Arte; and high quality, creative educational texts and complementary teaching materials.    The stationery factory in La Rioja province dates back to 1982 and the company has a modern distribution facility in Spegazzini, in Buenos Aires province, which distributes its products nationwide. 

Macmillan Publishers Limited  was founded in 1843 and is part of the German media group Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH.   The Macmillan group has been established in Argentina since 1998 and is a market leader in textbooks for teaching the English language.

Arrived back in London this morning having missed the Booksellers Association Conference which was held in Harrogate this year. Apparently there was a dearth of booksellers which rather misses the point. It would be awful if it were to become just another get-together for publishers.

However, the good news from Harrogate is that Pan Macmillan's brilliant rights director, Chantal Noel, was voted rights professional of the year. I'm amazed she hasn't won it before but better late than never. I tried googling Chantal for a photo, only to discover there is another Chantal Noel who is not in the least like ours.

And another friend was voted young publisher of the year - Clare Christian, managing director of The Friday Project.

Trivial fact of the day. I was discussing the differences in style between American and British dictionaries - in partcicular between Webster's Third International and the Oxford English Dictionary. The American approach is to be far more descriptive (for instance, check out Webster's definition of 'hotel'). The British approach is to describe a word accurately with as few words as possible. I believe the greatest (and least helpful) example of this was in the sixth edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary where the brilliant but pedantic editor, John Sykes, defined 'aspirin' in two words, analgesic febrifuge.

Here is the office of Puerto de Palos in Buenos Aires. I love it for its turrets, for its scruffiness and for its anonymity. The problem is that the wiring is pre-historic, the offices are tiney and not very well ventilated and some of the corridors and staircases are, to put it gently, a little unsound by modern standards. The guys outside might be issuing the certificate of safe business premises. They might equally be from the local branch of the protection of businesses society. Or even the management eyeing up a potential real estate opportunity.

As this is the first of the month I share with you the blog statistics for the previous month. In April we had a disappointing 68227 visits. This is down from March's record 81424 bringing the total visits to 689184. Any ideas for boosting traffic (apart from the obvious ones) gratefully received.

I'm returning to London this morning, just another seventeen hours travelling. Thank goodness for books.

It's very strange being at the other end of the world and reading articles like this in today's Guardian newspaper. It quotes the head of the UK retail group Woolworths as saying that publishers had 'whipped independent booksellers into a frenzy' about Woolies' proposed takeover of the wholesaler Bertram Books. This frenzy had then led the booksellers to complain to the Competition Commission in an attempt to block what might be considered a potential monopoly in book distribution to the independent trade.

This report is very strange for three reasons. Firstly, publishers normally stand accused of never supporting independent booksellers (see any number of comments on this blog from various independents). Secondly, unlike in last year's Wottakars case, I'm pretty sure that the Publishers Association has taken a rather passive stance. And thirdly, and most strange,  I think I can safely say that publishers have never been able deliberately to whip independent booksellers into a frenzy about anything. Sometimes by mistake of course...

Now back to reality. I have a day of meetings ahead of me in various parts of Buenos Aires. Our companies here are Macmillan Argentina (who have the great but only occasionally true slogan 'With Macmillan you have all the answers') which serves the English Language Teaching market and Puerto de Palos which publishes books in Spanish for children, schools and the genral market.

During the dreadful Argentine economic crisis of 2002 several international publishers abandoned their companies. I am glad for all sorts of reasons that Macmillan did not. Of course we had to adapt the business to the economic horrors of the time but we hung in, thanks to the committed local team, and we are now on a significant expansion path. Nothing is straightforward in Latin America (or anywhere?) but there is a strong recognition of the importance of education and we are determined to be at its centre.

Should you ever be in Buenos Aires do try Los Pinos restaurant for basic Argentine cooking in an authentic setting (sounds like a travel brochure but I couldn't think of alternative words). The photo doesn't quite do justice to the melancholic and nostalgic atmosphere. The other thing is that the meal costs less than £10 a head including top quality wine.

I'm not in Buenos Aires for its book fair but, as I was here and so was it, I wandered in to have a look. It is amazing. It runs for three weeks, is visited by a million people and is packed more or less continuously. Publishers and booksellers offer books for sale (rarely at anything less than full retail price) and people queue to pay - in cash. It is open until 2 a.m. It is a joy to see books absolutely central to a country's culture and, perhaps most encouragingly, a significant commitment to ensuring that the next generation grows up with a love of reading. I'm not famous for being a fan of book fairs (expensive, introspective, self-satisfied, cliquey) but this one is a triumph.

There's an interesting article about the music industry and digital rights management in the excellent technology section of the Guardian newspaper. After years of resisting pressure to reduce the security embedded into digital music downloads, the industry is now moving to DRM-free offerings at higher prices. I won't try to recapitulate the arguments (read the article) but I do think it's strange that book publishers seem to be moving towards stricter DRM control just as the parallel music industry is moving beyond that debate. I'd be very interested to hear from people (within or without Macmillan) what they think.

For those of you who want another angle on Argentina (from Noel Coward and Nina), you might want to check this out.

Another overnight flight, another rotten airline, this time AeroMexico. To quote from their chief executive in the in-flight magazine -

At a time rife with positive changes, I would like to reiterate our ongoing commitment to excellence for our passengers with a modernised fleet and corporate image and its attractive new routes such as Mexico City to Buenos Aires.

I can only think that they must have used up all their resources on the corporate image because the plane on the Mexico to BsAs leg was at leasdt forty years old, the service was dreadful, and the only thing that was reallyt essential - sleep - was denied by the flight team switching the lights on every hour to ensure maximum disruption.

However, my heart lifted on arrival in Argentina. The city of Buenos Aires is great. The sun was shining, there is very little pollution and the traffic is a breeze.

Of course the technology did not work. Neither Blackberry nor WiFi nor Internet connection but thanks to the team and especially Carola at Design Ce hotel who, against all the odds on a Saturday, managed to find me a working computer on which to write this. And the point of the title of this blog is that the designer and owner, Ernesto Goransky, owner, designer and manager of this hotel studied at the Architectural Association in London and knew one of my cousins and a number of acquaintances. If you are ever in Buenos Aires this place gets my vote for trendiest design and most helpful people.

The last time I was in Mexico I was shown a dilapidated multi-storey car park-type building which I was assured would make wonderful offices for our two comanies here. I was a tad sceptical but the cost seemed sensible and the location bwas a vast improvement over either of the two original offices. The work has amazingly gone almost to schedule, the building has been transformed and we now have the best publishing building in Mexico City on the best terms. A truly Mexican economic and architectural miracle although from the outside it still looks a little like a car park.

As I mentioned yesterday our main objective in Mexico is to publish for schools whose quality enhancement is vital for the futre of Mexico economically and culturally. I was interested to hear some statistics from the British Government. Apparently one in seven children in UK primary schools does not have English as a first language. That's 800,000 children. Late last year we published an innovative reading scheme for the Middle East but based on the methodology used in British classroooms. It is Macmillan English Explorers and we've now begun a marketing campaign for it in the UK. Another example of globalisation in action.

One of the recurring themes in English Language Teaching publishing is to come up with new titles for series - Access, Horizons, Streamline, Contact, Turn Around etc. I was, therefore, delighted to discover that one of our most successful ELT courses ever (over 13 million copies sold) had the gloriously boring and incomprehensible title, Basic Junior Active Context English. Can anyone beat that for the least memorable title in history?

For the latest on Second Life which we mentioned earlier in the week you could do worse than check out Jo Scott's latest blog about Second Nature. It's mysterious but fascinating.

Most of yesterday and a bit of the day before was spent on a thirty hour journey from one very large, very hot, very congested, very polluted, very exciting city to another. The main difference is that Mexico has the added joy of high altitude and consequent breathlessness.

I won't bore you with the tedium and discomfort of the trip but here's a personal recommendation. If you can possibly avoid using Delta Airlines, do.

Board meetings about Mexico and Latin America in general start later today. The good news is that it appears that the recently elected Mexican Government seems to have recommitted itself to addressing the acute educational problems of this country with vast numbers of school-age children and a need to develop fast. Our two main Mexican ventures, Macmillan de Mexico and Ediciones Castillo are both crucial to educational development here and our discussions will involve how to serve this market even more actively. More later.

But while I'm away, things continue to develop in Europe. This article from the Irish Examiner tells how the major TV channel, RTE has teamed up with Gill & Macmillan to find undiscovered writing talent in Ireland. Without wishing to over-generalise I can't help feeling that this could open up the organisers to the largest wave of submissions in the history of publishing. Every Irish person has at least two books in a drawer and is confident that the world wants them. If, however, a new Irish star is found the Guinness will be on me.

My favourite headline of the week comes from the Guardian:

Tale of a sexless tortoise shortlisted for science book prize

It refers, of course, to my favourite book, Henry Nicholls's Lonesome George. They know a thing or two, these shortlisters.

I'm off for a jetlag busting walk in neighbouring Chapultepec Park (pre-Colombian hill of grasshoppers). Mexico City is not all pollution and concrete.