As I come to the end of another week of travelling, I was amused by the latest addition to Dan O’Connor’s Department of Neologisms, the noun ‘Scrobbleizer’ , which is apparently a tool that automatically creates a list of your favourite well-paid corporate bloggers. God forbid that I should ever be scrobbleized.

In other news I was interested to read this by blogger Robert Nagle on the attractions, and disattractions, of the current crop of eReaders, focusing on the Sony device.

And finally, despite the initial sensation of shabbiness that attached itself to me after the Google heist at Bookexpo on Friday, I have been buoyed by the support of the blogging community, for example in the comments on this blog here, as well as here and here. Although I have to admit I haven’t Scrobbleized them yet.

PS. Just found this link on The Register with 24 comments to date, mostly, but not all, supportive. One guy wants me to be banned from the USA for the crime. It could be worse. 

While moseying around Book Expo in New York on Friday, I came across a wondrous sign on the OUP USA stand. I managed to persuade a passing Japanese with a camera to snap the sign and gave him my email address to send me the photo. It hasn't arrived, but fortunately the OUP website has the same phrase in its description of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

The world's most comprehensive, thorough, and up-to-date unabridged dictionary, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is an essential resource for every library.

I encouraged the sales guy on the stand to look up the word 'unabridged in the Shorter' and of course it means unshortened.... But it's still a great dictionary.

Here's a worrying statistic from one of our international sales people. A campus bookstore manager showed him a breakdown of the shop's sales in the first three months of 2007 (the peak college season in that country) and 45% of revenue came from selling mobile airtime to students (and at very low margins).

As I've just spent thirty hours travelling from New York to Chennai (lesson - avoid Emirates like the plague) I'm a little behind with the news but I think this Irish initiative to find new non-fiction writers deserves a mention. The biggest problem was for the editor having to sift through more than 2000 submissions and now there's talk of making it an annual event.

The other bit of news I've only just tripped over is the decision by Reed-Elsevier to sell off its defence exhibition business because of pressure from various pacifist organisations and individuals. I'd be very interested in people's views on this. The danger is a form of creeping censorship where it is very difficult to draw the line between moral and non-moral activities when the activity is entirely legal. I suppose (and hope) that Reed-Elsevier's decision was entirely pragmatic - by selling they can make more money than by not selling. At least that is consistent with their philosophy. Any other reason would be a big worry for shareholders.

This is a typical scene at Book Expo America. A lot of people milling around aimlessly. But check out the picture below.

There's no computer where a computer should be to the left of the gentleman's arm. You will also notice that there is no sign saying 'please do not steal the computers'. I confess that a colleague and I simply picked up two computers from the Google stand and waited in close proximity until someone noticed. This took more than an hour.

Our justification for this appalling piece of criminal behaviour? The owner of the computer had not specifically told us not to steal it. If s/he had, we would not have done so. When s/he asked for its return, we did so. It is exactly what Google expects publishers to expect and accept in respect to intellectual property.

'If you don't tell us we may not digitise something, we shall do so. But we do no evil. So if you tell us to desist we shall.'

I felt rather shabby playing this trick on Google. They should feel the same playing the same trick on authors and publishers.

On a more positive note (but not making me feel less shabby nor Google less guilty) Google threw a great party in their amazing New York offices, for which I am very grateful.

The first of the month brings statistics. This blog enjoyed 81296 visits in May, up from the disappointing 68227 in April and taking the total visits to 770480. We should pass the million before year end.

Last night I went to a 'desserts party' at the right-on Housing Works Bookstore in SoHo.

We were there to celebrate our US children's publishing and to meet a number of the world's best children's authors. I was particularly pleased to meet Jacqueline Wilson who is an enormous success in the UK but, for no good reason, has not yet cracked America. Roaring Brook Press is now publishing her and I'm betting that they'll do the trick although the US market can be a fickle beast.

By the way, Roaring Brook are the publishers of one of my favourite children's books Leemons are not red which sadly and inexplicably (I'm sure there is a good explanation but it will be convoluted!) is not published by Macmillan Children's Books outside USA.

Now I'm off to the BEA to be horrified at the cost of the event, perplexed by the volume of new books, amazed at the creativity, baffled by the economics and cheered by meeting old friends and enemies.

I wrote about Wormsley cricket ground last week and Andrew Hall has kindly sent me this great photo of the back of the pavillion complete with a proper English phone box. It makes me homesick although this view from my hotel window compensates quite a bit.

The video promoting Richard Wiseman's Quirkology passed a million views on youtube yesterday. An extraordinary piece of book marketing which is generating global sales.

Similarly, this article about George Lucas using Starwars fans to create mash-up versions of his films raises issues about how best we book publishers can encourage reader involvement in the editorial process. It really is a brave new world.

Meanwhile, in the old world I have to go off to my next batch of board meetings - for St. Martin's Press, Tor and Scientific American. Pip pip.

Pedalling away on the exercise bike in the hotel gym here in New York I found myself watching this on the TV. Somehow it captures my frequent sufferings at the hands of mobile technology.

New York is looking great in beautiful May weather and the Flatiron Building which houses most of our US-based colleagues is looking close to its best after much renovation.

The only problem is that city appears to be overrun by British publishers. For instance, I bumped into sixteen visitors in the Palgrave Macmillan offices from small Northern British independent publishers such as Carcanet Press here to learn more about the American market and to visit Book Expo America ('Where the world gathers to get a great READ on the industry' - yuk). It was an intelligent and lively bunch of committed publishers but I found myself wondering (in a disgusted of Tonbridge Wells sort of way) why the North-West Regional Development Agency was spending British taxpayers' money on subsidising these very competent publishing people to discover America. It's a strange old world.

The other large and visible contingent comes from Google who are, as ever, telling the publishing industry and the world at large how lucky we are to be helped by them. There is an excellent piece about the recently-launched Google Universal in the latest Outsell newsletter (terrible branding for what used to be the clearly-labelled Electronic Publishing News). Here are the last two paragraphs for a flavour and a warning to publishers.

And in this lies the opportunity for other search engines and publishers as well. Google´s apparent abandonment of a vertical approach appears to open a door for others who are working on honing down their results to address a narrower field of content – be it based on subject, content type, or locale. But complacency here is not advised. Google will be applying the full force of its engineering to hone algorithms to decipher this vertical intent all from one screen. The opportunity for others to gain new users is now, before these results are improved significantly enough to keep some narrower audiences from looking around.

Yet amid this short term opportunity is perhaps an even greater threat. What Google´s new universal search provides is ultimately a platform for aggregating disparate pieces of information and displaying them in a unified view tailored to an individual´s unique needs. In short, it plants the seeds for Google to become an agile publisher and one that is able to cross nearly every type of content and medium. And it gets worse. With this change, searchers are now being exposed to pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements alongside web results that include video and news. This is a significant development as previous concerns over Google´s approach to copyright were largely quieted because the company did not run display ads along those sites like News and YouTube which caused the most concern. That line was quietly crossed last week by monetizing all web content – regardless of copyright - and the debate will now rest entirely on the definition of fair use. If publishers do not act aggressively now, they may soon be faced with a very large direct competitor able to monetize content it does not pay to produce.

I'm in New York this week but I wanted to share some news from Macmillan Spain, where we are developing our local publishing programme and have just launched three flagship literature collections for children.

The launch has been well received with coverage in the Spanish press and on children's publishing forums. As most of it is in Spanish I'm copying an English translation of the piece in Diario Siglo on 10 May:

The new Spanish imprint, Macmillan Infantil y Juvenil (Macmillan Children’s Publishing), that was presented today in Madrid, is be represented by three flagship collections: "Librosaurio", "El mundo de Rita" (Rita’s World) and "Pepe en Inglaterra" (Pepe in England). This is how it was outlined by  Jeremy Diéguez (Managing Director of Macmillan Spain) and Elisa Ayuso (Publishing Director), who stated that the official launch of this new publishing venture would take place on 2nd June coinciding with the Madrid book fair.

This imprint (which will be launched in both Castilian Spanish and Catalan) arises with the aim of "promoting creativity and offering quality books to children, future readers who we have to inspire", stated Elisa Ayuso. In her opinion, the success of this collection lies in the right choice of subjects, contents, authors and illustrators.

In the Librosaurio series the latter two have a particular prominence. In this way, Spanish authors and illustrators the likes of Alfredo Gómez Cerdá, Marinella Terzi, Vicente Muñoz Puelles, Rocío Martínez, Carlos Romeu, Sara Rojo, Paz Rodero, Tesa González, Juan Kruz and Juan Berrio, share the limelight with foreign authors Christine Nöstlinger (Austrian), Enrique Pérez (Cuban), Lawrence Schimel (American), Claudia Ranucci (Italian) and Fréderique Loew and Nathalie Choux (French).

TWO PECULIAR CHILDREN
The collection "El mundo de Rita" (Rita’s World), with text and illustrations by Mikel Valverde, has an eight year old as the main character. She is a short, dark-haired girl with a variety of situations and problems common to children of that age, who travels the world accompanied by her uncle Daniel.

The publishing house has made use of its experience in English language teaching to create "Pepe en Inglaterra" (Pepe in England), written and illustrated by Gordon Reece and which narrates the exploits of a Spanish boy on arriving at this country. "It is a way for the readers to take their first steps in English in a playful and effortless manner”, assured Paz Barroso, one of Macmillan Spain’s editors, explaining that illustrations of the characters with speech bubbles in English are inserted throughout the story of Pepe’s adventures.

Lastly, Jeremy Diéguez pointed out that despite the existence of quality titles for children and young people, this is “a good moment" to launch a series like the one proposed by Macmillan, as "the Spanish market is very open and tolerant of books of English origin".

A print run of between 4000 and 6000 copies of 54 titles (of which 34 in Castilian are to be launched this first year and 20 of them in Catalan) is foreseen.

"Hay-on-Wye? Is that some kind of a sandwich?" A wonderful quote from the great playwright Arthur Miller when he was invited to attend the second Hay Festival of Literature in 1989. The festival now pretentiously describes itself as the 'Woodstock of the Mind' (first dubbed that by Bill Clinton in 2001) and has sponsorship from The Guardian, a blog, a haycast, more than 100,000 visitors and the cream of the literary elite. I am not there and to my shame I have never felt the urge to go. Photos like this one rather turn me off - and the weather is both wet and cold today.

However, this photo is rather more attractive.

As a result of Hay and a bank holiday, books are in the news today. I wanted to share with you the business news on the Today programme of the BBC this morning but the link hasn't yet been posted (try going to 'listen to today's programme in full' and click on fifteen minutes after the beginning - 6.20 a.m. UK time). There were interviews with independent booksellers bemoaning the impact of Internet bookselling; an interview with David Roche about the profit impact of Harry Potter on retailers (with a plug for Borders UK); and a promotion piece for HarperCollins and its eco-friendly policy as explained by Vicky Barnsley. I wanted to ask Vicky why, if using recycled paper is a good idea for titles in her Fourth Estate list, does she not apply the policy to the much longer print runs enjoyed in the core HarperCollins lists. There must be a good reason.

During these various pieces two surveys were cited. One poll showed that most people would like to see independent booksellers survive. The other showed that most people would like forests to survive. Well I never... Motherhood and apple pie - we're all in favour.

And while on radio, literature and publishing, I recommend you find an hour to listen to this week's Private Passions where the guest is co-founder of Bloomsbury and brilliant publisher Liz Calder. Her choice of music is eclectic with a Latin-American tinge. Brilliant.

And finally, you might enjoy this link to the Afghanistan part of the Jewish Virtual Library. With only two Jews left in the whole of the country, they managed to fall out with each other. Very Mel Brooks.

There was an interesting article in The Times last week about the commercial importance of women directors. The article was based on the research described in A woman's place is in the boardroom by Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham.

I think we all understand how important it is to recognise that the previous waste of half the intellectual and business talent of the world has been ridiculous and yet the 100 top public companies in the UK boast only twelve female executive directors. The authors list a series of reasons, described as 'problems' and one of my female colleagues pointed to this one, which rings true with me too.

Problem: A major reason why women don’t reach senior levels is because, as individuals, they don’t think that they’re good enough. They also tend to assume that by doing a good job and working hard, recognition will follow. This does not happen, and is not helped by women’s awkwardness in discussing their own merits, especially as men excel at telling the world how great they are. Worse, women are also inclined to broadcast their limitations.

I had an annual treat last night - a visit to Glyndebourne Opera House for a weird and wonderful production of Verdi's Macbeth. The three witches emerging from 1950s-style caravans will remain with me a very long time. Reviews have been mixed but The Guardian liked it and so did I. The other weird and wonderful thing about Glyndebourne is that people actually dress up in black tie etc in order to have a picnic in the garden and in the rain. Strange lot, these Brits.

We had an interesting comment from Vanessa at the Fidra blog about the pricing of scholarly books. She says:

Or is it that publishers can get away with charging £45 for an academic text because they're mainly bought via library budgets rather by individuals putting their hands in their pockets?

Clearly she is right that libraries are more likely to pay £45 for a book (however good it is) than individuals. What I slightly object to (I am a very sensitive soul) is the phrase 'get away with'. It implies a degree of crookedness. Nobody in his/her right business mind charges less for something than the customer is willing to pay. A very wise publisher of law books, Gordon Graham now of Logos but then head of Butterworth's now (sadly) known as Lexis-Nexis used to regale training courses with two pieces of wisdom;

In order to stay in the publishing business charge more than customers want to pay but no more than they can afford to pay.

And:

In order to keep your job in a corporate environment always show profits slightly ahead of your boss's expectations but always hold back a bit for next year.