The debate runs and runs on the future of the book. But are publishers too hung up on wondering what the 'killer device' will be that launches a thousand eBooks? Publishers are constantly getting excited about the potential for the ipod to become an eReader, as illustrated by this video. On Peter Brantley's excellent Book 20-1 list there have been heated exchanges over Manolis Kaneidis's 'BlueBook' prototype (a paper book with circuits embedded in each page and with text printed with conductive ink), as reported here. It strikes me that Adam Hodgkin's insights about all this over at the Exact Editions blog are spot on. He suggests that the obsession with the hardware is wrong-headed. I couldn't agree more. Publishers should be focusing on digitising their content and ensuring that it can be accessible via a web-based interface. The Apple iPhone, which does not incorporate specific eReader software but does feature a 'humble familiar web browser', could leapfrog the various eReader device offerings to become the consumer's eReader of choice. Many don't know it yet but I also believe publishers will need to ensure they have the capability in place to deliver content streams via subscription - and not just in the academic and STM sectors in my view. At Macmillan I am glad that we are developing BookStore to enable publishers to deliver on these needs.

On another note entirely, one of the things I like about blogging is the interesting co-blogger contacts that you make. One such is Eric Neu. Eric, who works in e-business for a publisher in Brussels, has posted this 'mini-interview' with me on his blog. It's nice to see my words up in French. They sound so much more interesting.

We've just anounced that we'll be publishing Ronnie, the autobiography of Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones on 20th October this year. It promises to be 'interesting' to say the least. It may not sell as many copies as Harry Potter but it'll certainly cause a big stir and bring both teenagers and grandparents into bookshops to discover what keeps those stones rolling.

This title more or less completes our Autumn list for trade books in the UK. It is a spectacular programme. Already Pan Macmillan has seen its market share increase significantly in the first half of 2007, with growth in fiction, non-fiction, Picador and children's books. The second half looks even stronger with great titles from all our traditional best selling authors; new authors such as Kate Morton (whose House at Riverton has been picked as a Richard and Judy Summer read); and the long-awaited Borat (Kazakhstan's sixth most famous man) book. It's going to be a good Christmas for Macmillan.

I attended the final sessions of the First Bloomsbury Conference on E-publishing and E-publications and was asked to make predictions for the future of the industry as a wrap-up. This is, of course, a completely impossible and futile task. I don't think I was particularly helpful or insightful but the event took place in the Darwin Theatre at University College London which gave me the excuse to quote the great man. As readers of this blog may have ascertained, I'm not a great lover of mission statements or management dicta ('passionate about gardening', 'do no evil', 'for the love of it' etc) but I do think that Charles Darwin got it right when he wrote:

'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.'

If Macmillan had to adopt a by-line perhaps that should be the one.

There is an old publishing adage. Books by journalists about journalists don't sell. The infighting between newspapers is endlessly fascinating to the protagonists but to nobody else. It is therefore surprising when booksellers liken such a book's impact and sales to that of Harry Potter.

The book is Gerald Stone's Who killed Channel 9?. Clicking on this and a few of these Googlenews links will give you some idea of the furore the book is generating among the sensitive souls of the Australian media. Last year Macmillan Australia published Schapelle Corby's My Story which dominated the best seller lists. I suspect they have this year's winner too.

Incidentally, my favourite Kerry Packer anecdote is the one about him driving back from a successful day at the races with a bunch of mates and a bulging wallet. They stopped at a cafe for a bite and the owner said he was just closing for the night and couldn't serve them. After a certain amount of 'discussion' with the owner they drove on to the nearest pub and ordered some sandwiches. When the bill for £15 arrived Packer counted out £1000 in cash, including the tip. The publican was delighted and amazed. 'What have I done to deserve this?' 'Nothing yet,' responded Packer, 'But you know the cafe down the road? Tomorrow morning just go and tell him what a lucky thing happened to you.'

And while on Australia it was great to see the inauguration of a new Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History  which was won jointly by Les Carlyon's The Great War (which has sold more than 100,000 hardback copies in Australia alone - hard to imagine such numbers for a serious British book about World War I) and Peter Cochrane's Colonial Ambition published by Melbourne University Publishing of which I am proud to be a non-executive director. Australian publishing is in excellent health.

The Labour Government in Britain, through a wholly undemocratic process, has appointed a new Prime Minister to lead us and he started his new job this week. So far so good. He showed excellent taste in an interview (scroll down to open book and click) on the radio where he chose The Snail and the Whale as one of his five favourite books of all time. Quite right, Gordon.

Further to this morning's post this link just hit my inbox. 

Two stories from yesterday's PN Online depressed me.

The first was about HMV's 'disappointing results'. The headline affecting the book trade is that Waterstone's like-for-like sales were down 4.1% in spite of all the price promotions, marketing activities, Richard and Judy hype and some brilliant books being published. Apparently, this year has started better and we all want the new team at Waterstone's to succeed. My concern is that the Chairman's statement doesn't seem to address the fundamental need to sell more books at economically viable prices:

 “The strategy has three important strands: protecting our core business, saving costs aggressively and growing in new channels and related products. The environment for entertainment and books retailing will remain highly competitive. However, with aggressive plans, focused leadership and the continued commitment and dedication of our employees, our resilient brands will strengthen their market positions and performance as they comprehensively satisfy the preferences of our customers.”

The second story relates to a much smaller chain, Fopp Music Books + Film who are fighting to avoid bankrupcy and the closure of its 46 stores. Fopp has tried to innovate with very contemporary shops and eclectic purchasing but it doesn't look like it's working.

Add these two stories to the continuing drip drip of independent bookshop closures and the picture for book retailing in the UK does not look pretty. It's a little too easy to blame the lack of retail price maintenance, or competition from supermarkets and the Internet, or the existence of a returns system. It is also simply too easy for bookshops to demand ever higher discounts (or marketing bungs) from publishers. A vibrant high street book trade is vital culturally as well as economically. We must fix it - and fast.

Most educational publishers and many other businesses have invested heavily in building software platforms to present materials for schools and universities. The amounts of money invested have been astonishing in some cases. Financial and pedagogical successes have been limited.

At Macmillan we have focussed on a subset of education rather than the whole curriculum and we have concentrated on building a system which uses technology in the context of the traditional classroom and with the teacher absolutely playing the central role. The subset is the teaching of English for non-English speakers and the project is known as the Macmillan English Campus (MEC). Today we announce a new edition which will further strengthen our leadership in this important and fast-growing market. Everyone at Macmillan is proud of what we've achieved not only in creating a brand new business but in showing that online education actually works - both students and teachers have confirmed that our language is learnt faster and better using MEC.

While innovations such as MEC are flourishing, other parts of the publishing industry are still enmired in legal actions and arguments about copyright in a digital world. We have to find solutions and we have to be flexible. This announcement about so-called 'orphan works' is another example of our industry's efforts to adapt and take leadership in the digital world.

Not all things digital are good though. This 3-D model was produced for a business English course we are publishing. I imagine this particular CEO avatar might deter anyone from aspiring to be one.

Nature, along with many other publications, runs a regular feature reprinting clips from 50 years ago. This one from 22 June 1957 caught my eye:

"Far from causing a decline in reading, as was once predicted, it is now becoming evident that television has led to a greatly increased sale of books dealing with topics which have proved popular on the screen. This is perhaps most evident in archaeology, but it is becoming noticeable in other fields too. The growing sport of undersea swimming has reinforced the demand for books about sea life, the publication of which has received a further fillip from the film and television successes of Hans Hass and Jacques Cousteau. We cannot blame the publishers for trying to satisfy this demand, but we can blame them for publishing books seemingly written in haste merely to profit from this fashion.”

The messages are clear and still relevant.

New technology does not necessarily kill old technology and can in fact enhance it.

Publishers are profit-chasing idiots (or at least blameworthy profiteers) and always have been.

Yesterday I gave a talk at the Annual Meeting of the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) whose job is to distribute money received from licensing organisations to publishers. It is a parallel organisation to the Authors Licensing and Collecting Agency (ALCS). Both organisations are excellent and vital. They are both facing challenges as we move into the digital world. It's not going to be easy. Will publishers be happy to see a third party doing deals with the digital content they control? The organisations were set up to ensure fair payment for the use of copyright material from photocopying etc. A collective licence was clearly the best way to deal with that. But is it the best way to deal with digital delivery of content which can be tracked much more readily? I definitely don't know the answer but I do know that working together through these organisations is a better way forward than every author and every publisher trying to set rules.

And today, on a similar theme, I am attending the first international conference of ACAP whose acronym hides the incomprehensible but important words 'Automatic content access protocol'. It sounds arcane but it is an essential development if copyright holders are to work successfully with the major search engine companies. I quote from the conference programme:

At its first major conference on 26 June in London, ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol), is presenting its work so far in developing a standard by which the owners of content published on the World Wide Web can provide permissions information (relating to access and use of their content) in a form that can be recognised and interpreted by a search engine “spider”, so that the search engine operator is enabled systematically to comply with the permissions granted by the owner. ACAP will allow publishers, broadcasters and any other to express their individual access and use policies in a language that search engine’s robot “spiders” can be taught to understand.

It is not an easy road and some of the technical stuff is jaw-breakingly dull but ACAP has managed to bring together most parts of the media industry (newspapers, TV, radio, publishing) to work with search engines. The result, if we can get there, will be that search engines will be able to find relevant pieces of information and allow the content holder to control access and charge if desirable. That is beneficial to all and allows full copyright control.

As today's posting is a bit serious and acronymic I thought I'd end with this link. Many people have suggested that I suffer from ADD but I thought they meant attention deficiency disorder not this alternative translation.