We have a tradition here in Kings Cross of inviting interesting people to come and speak to the staff about interesting developments, usually of a digital kind. A little while ago we had a fascinating presentation from the Mind Candy team. One of the presenters, Adrian Hon, has a blog called Mssv which is shorthand for massive apparently. His pieceyesterday on the death of publishers is well worth reading even though he has a few side swipes at Macmillan and even though I disagree with much of what he has to say.

Meanwhile, Pan Macmillan's summer of successes rolls on, with Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons  winning the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story 2007 and Jackie Kay  winning the Outstanding Contribution to Literature Award at the Grazia O2 X Awards last week.

More importantly, today is a day to celebrate the release of the wrongly incarcerated and prosecuted nurses in Libya. I am proud that Nature took such a proactive stand on their behalf as described here and that the world of science as a whole stood up for justice.

It's a dank, grey Monday morning here in London. I hope this video from David Vaine helps to start your week with a smile.

And for something a bit more serious, check out this One Laptop Per Child talk by Nicholas Negroponte. I was brought up to speed on this last week at a strategy meeting of our African managing directors who are beginning to grapple with the issues of digital education in unbelievably poor countries. It's hard to argue against the scheme which is potentially of huge benefit to schools and education. I see two problems. First, $100 for the hardware is too much for many developing countries. Second, the focus on technology is detracting from the need for better materials for computer-assisted learning. At Macmillan Education we are working with OLPC to help with the latter. It would be a disaster if all the efforts to develop and distribute millions of laptops to schools ended up with unused hardware lying redundant in the corners of classrooms.

The latest quarterly update from Book Marketing Limited landed on my desk this morning. I think I may have mentioned the Travelodge survey on what British people prefer to do in bed but it is well worth repeating.

1. Reading 44%

2. Watching TV 23%

3. Going to sleep 21%

4. Making love 16%

5. Listening to music 14%

Reading is nearly three times more popular than making love.

Finally. a reality check on book prices. I decided yesterday to spend a couple of hours at Lord's Cricket Ground to see Kevin Pietersen score yet another century (which he duly did). The cheapest ticket available was £70 compared with Wisden Cricketers' Almanack at £40 (recommended retail, frequently sold for less) for 1664 pages and hundreds of hours of use. Go figure.

A little while ago on this blog I quoted from a memo written by an old friend working for us in Nigeria:

'A reassuring scene, though: a dusty entrance lobby with pealing lino tiles and segments of spaghetti-type wiring; battleship grey paintwork (always so encouraging I find); a receptionist reading a two-day old copy of the Daily Times plus a grubby Mills & Boon novel; a fading picture of the late Supermac hung at a rakish angle but so high up you had to positively seek him (o tempora! o mores! o winds of change! - nothing had changed in this lobby for years); the MD's ante-chamber crammed with cheap Asian wall clocks and support staff with little to do pending the arrival of the MD but read newspapers and seek soul-mates on the web; and the car park full of sound and fury, drivers and reps, but little if any sign of coordinated activity ...'

At the bottom of the email he mentioned that his stepson had become a rather successful musician with a band I'd not heard of at the time, Razorlight. On Friday this week, when tuning in to Test Match Special to get the latest score in the cricket, I found myself listening to a tea-interval interview with a cricket-loving rock star, Jonny Borrell. Usually these interviews are with former international cricketers rabbitting on about the good old days blah blah. The rock star was interesting, interested, insightful and funny. I'll bet he's a good musician too. He's also got a film-star girlfriend, Kirsten Dunst of Spiderman fame.

It's a strange series of connections.

Back to books and Harry Potter in particular. I was sent this Seth Godin link.

What do you think?

Yesterday, England suffered some pretty bad floods which caused the usual amount of chaos and disarray. Amazingly however, there was play in the India-England cricket match even though it looked at one point like this.

This is, of course, not the first flood to hit Britain and Nature reports this week on the flood which created the English Channel 200,000 years ago - and you can listen to the podcast version too.

In spite of the floods we managed to distribute HP7 successfully. The acid test is that Macmillan distribution has hardly been mentioned in any of the coverage. Phew - and thanks again to the team.

The last few days have seen a series of almighty rows about HP7 and I've mentioned the book a couple of times (and so have Clive Keble and others in the comments) here and here. I've had any number of journalists ring up and ask me to opine, all of which I declined on the grounds of ignorance of the detail of the row and also because Macmillan Distribution is Bloomsbury's client and has a hard enough job ensuring the security and efficient delivery of the millions of copies of HP7 without me muddying the waters. (And here I simply have to say a big thank you to all at MDL who have contributed to the toughest logistical exercise in book distribution history and who, in spite of the pressures, have managed to maintain their customary high levels of service for all the other things they do. You know who you are. Fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong today and that you can take a well-earned mini-rest and enjoy the sense of a job well done).

However, tonight is the night and I cannot resist expressing some views. Harry Potter is the most amazing literary phenomenon of all time. I don't have the numbers (nor does anyone I suspect) but I reckon that more people have bought (or will have bought) Harry Potter books than any other title. The Bible may have printed more (it's been going a sight longer) but the majority of copies are given away rather than purchased. I cannot think of anything else that comes close. Even Mao's Little Red Book must have been overtaken.

Its impact on our and other industries has been phenomenal. Of course, Bloomsbury as the original English-language publisher has benefitted but think of all the foreign-language publishers, all the sales agencies, all the rep commissions, the printers, papermakers, freight forwarders, mail delivery organisations, Hollywood, retailers large and small, journalist desperate for copy, literary agents who owe J.K. Rowling and the editorial team at Bloomsbury a huge debt of gratitude.

There will always be carpers and knockers but we should rejoice that a whole generation of children around the world have been introduced to books and reading. It is the job of the rest of us now to turn those children into long-term readers and book buyers.

On a much more local level, Sky News have decided to host a Potter party at the Pan Bookshop in Fulham Road, London. All our regular and not so regular customers are welcome and the shenanigans begins at 10 p.m. Enjoy.

I was sent this link by the managing director of John Wisden. You have to be a little patient but the denouement is worth the wait. I don't think that the scene is from our Basingstoke customer services department but...

The Richard and Judy book club isn't everybody's cup of tea. I was at a meeting where a distinguished publisher blamed it for the decline of almost everything in the book trade - a mite extreme I thought. Clearly it (and other similar ventures elsewhere in the world) tend to make a very limited number of titles best sellers and this might to some extent draw sales away from other equally worthy books. On the other hand the TV show itself has done more for the profile of books and reading than anything else I can remember (except perhaps the Harry Potter phenomenon).

It's not surprising I feel positive about R&J. Here are some quotes from yesterday's show about Kate Morton's The House at Riverton:

You can read more about this and other attacks on libraries on Tim's Good Library blog. I don't suppose it will ever happen but wouldn't it be great if R&J launched a campaign to save public libraries from the ravages of inefficient bureaucracy and political correctness.

A book which will definitely not make the R&J club is Thirty Secret Years by my former boss, Robin Denniston. I wrote about it back in May when it was first published. It is great to see that a serious book from a serious but small and independent publisher Polperro Heritage Press has been picked up and reviewed sensibly in the Spectator. All is not lost.

Our trade publishing around the globe is having a run of successes. Today on Channel 4 at 5.30 Kate Morton's The House at Riverton  published by Pan Macmillan, which is one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads, will be reviewed on the Richard and Judy Show by celebrity reviewers Matt Baker (of Blue Peter fame) and Jo Whiley.  In Australia, Who Killed Channel 9?, the book I blogged  about a week or so ago, is at No 1 after its first full week of sales. And in other trade publishing news, I'm pleased to see that the war of words between ASDA and Bloomsbury over the forthcoming Harry Potter launch was closed yesterday with Bloomsbury receiving the apology they deserved from the Walmart-owned supermarket chain, as reported here by The Bookseller.

Meanwhile, I was amused by the BBC's feature  on the man whose Internet life begins to eat up his entire business and personal life, so much so that he now pays someone else to be him online. Could it be time for me to employ a full-time 'digital biographer'?

On Sunday I wrote enthusiastically about the report of a new Chairman of HarperCollins UK. It turns out that the story was a mistake caused by Publishing News's assumption that HCUK could only mean HarperCollins. This email from David Worlock's daughter, Kate:

Even though it was lovely to see a picture of my esteemed father in your blog today (and I'm sure he appreciates the compliment too!), the news has in fact been misreported.  He's been made non-executive Chairman of HCUK, a producer of online event management software (http://www.hcuk.net/home.asp), rather than HarperCollins. However, since people seem so keen on the idea, perhaps we may soon have HarperCollins knocking on the door as well.

This is, as one of our marketing people pointed out, either a coke machine or a digital content delivery system. It has been developed by the Laverna Group and is described by them as:

The Felix kiosk is a multi-level marketing device running on ADSL networks and offering a range of functions including Everyone’s a Winner game, Mobile Top-up, Digital Purchase library and ATM. Certain kiosks may also include an Instant print Photography unit.

Perhaps independent booksellers should look at installing one by the cash register.

Independent booksellers should also be interested in the row between Bloomsbury and the supermarket chain, ASDA. This is what a forthright Bloomsbury have had to say: