I have always admired writers. All of us write (I answer some fifty emails a day; the rest I delete) but some write better than others. There are, of course, great writers and their talent is hard to teach in spite of the best efforts of creative writing courses. But most of us just want  to write clearly and accurately. I fail on a regular basis given the number of times people manage to misinterpret a message from me. The need to write clearly is one of the keys to success as a university student and we published Write it Right by John Peck and Martin Coyle a couple of years ago.

The reason I mention it here is that we have issued a free audio download version of this and several other study guides via the Palgrave Macmillan website. College textbook publishing has had to adapt as publishers move from being a supplier of books to being a partner in education. Booksellers used to be the key 'customer'. Over the last twenty years the focus of attention has moved to the lecturer. I suspect the focus has to shift yet again, and this time the key customer is the real thing, the student. 

It sometimes seems that the book trade is operating in several parallel universes - authors, agents, general publishers, educational publishers, specialist publishers, independent booksellers, supermarkets, wholesalers, second-hand booksellers etc.

What I didn't know until this morning is that the first scientific proposal for the existence of parallel universes is fifty years old today. It was part of a PhD thesis developed at Princeton by Hugh Everett III.

You can read about how this young quantum physicist came up with the concept here. This special feature of Nature also heralds the return of Futures, a weekly series of scifi short stories. This is where fact and fiction meet and where the parallel universes of Nature and Pan overlap.

Back to reality and our monthly statement from Google Adsense. June generated $43.47, the second highest month ever. Total income has reached the heights of $338. Unfortunately it seems that the value of the dollar against sterling is declining almost as much as the account is increasing. More seriously, the strength of sterling is posing significant problems for British exporting publishers. One more thing for us to worry about. 

Julia Donaldson, along with the brilliant illustrator, David Roberts, has come up with a modern classic published this week. I just received this message from the book's editor Suzanne Carnell and I believe her:

Do have a read: children love it – and so will you. If you’ve got kids, this is one you’ll positively enjoy re-reading on a daily basis. I’m extremely proud of this book and, as Gordon Brown (who last week chose The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler as one of his top five favourite books) might say: I recommend it to the House!

Two of the most important serial best sellers in my life are Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (of which I am a non-executive director) and Harry Potter which Macmillan Distribution is proud (and worked to the bone) to distribute for Bloomsbury. In the normal course of events these publications have little in common but at the premiere of the latest Potter film, its star Daniel Radcliffe pulled a copy of this year's Wisden out of his pocket (big pocket) to get cricket celeb and cover adorner (see below) Shane Warne to sign the book. Aaaaah.

I don't suppose many people come to this blog more than once a day (most only once in a lifetime) and even fewer will have noticed a change yesterday. In the morning, this comment appeared:

Okay, I know I'm boring about Nature Publishing Group and its initiatives but, I ask you, how could I not post this link from the Guardian all about our recently launched Nature Network London? The writer of the column has (quite rightly) picked up on the dating (sorry, I mean relationship building) aspects of social networks such as facebook. I'm sure NNL (as it will be known, I'm sure) will be addressing the needs of scientists in this arena shortly - probably via the Holtzbrinck-owned and highly successful Parship (lousy name in English, great service).

While on the subject of social networks and their importance I have been musing on the concept of an anti-social network. I suppose the mafia was an early adopter in the field but you'd think there was a significant opportunity using modern networking technology to create establishment alternatives. Throw off your ASBOs (anti-social behavious orders for those of you not in the UK), meet your peers, build gangs, exchange safe-breaking tips, see ads on the best stolen goods handlers in your local area... The opportunity is huge but I suspect someone is already there, as usual!

Another aspect of techno-networking is tagging, which I don't understand in spite of having just been tagged myself. So far, nothing terrible has happened but I (as usual) fear the worst.

I'm on holiday for a few days, so the blogs might be even worse than usual. Sorry. 

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.