My old friend Adam Hodgkin posed a question in a comment here which I think is worth a discussion.

I would be interested in the Macmillan view on why it has been possible to develop really excellent and profitable digital publishing for the Nature audience, and the commercial digital market still doesn't look at all convincing for trade publishing in general.

The first thing to say is that Macmillan doesn't have a view. Macmillan is made up of several thousand people all of whom have different views on more or less everything, thank goodness. This is my view.

1. Scientists are by their nature early adopters of technology and thus have had no problems moving from communicating in print to communicating digitally.

2. Scientific publishing has been intrinsically more profitable than trade book publishing. This allowed the major publishers and societies to invest the significant sums needed to create electronic delivery and storage platforms for scientific information. These platforms are a cornerstone for the creation of a new business and communication model.

3. Budgets for the acquisition of scientific information already existed and coud be readily transferred from print to digital acquisitions. These budgets were and are controlled by a professional cadre of librarians whose job is to ensure the best and most economic retrieval of information. They are the key partners to ensure highest standards.

4. The people who work in scientific publishing are by and large fascinated by the challenges of delivering often obscure information to a global audience and have embraced digital technology.

Trade book publishing has very different characteristics.

1. The general public has adopted some new technologies very quickly but to most people a book is a book - sheets of paper between covers, usable without batteries and readily portable.

2. Trade book publishing is usually a low-margin business and any spare cash has tended to be spent on investing in new authors and new marketing campaigns rather than long-term technological platforms. This is changing now with the emergence of solutions such as BookStore but this late movement hasn't helped a business model to develop.

3. Apart from the less-than-healthy public library market, there are no institutional budgets for the purchase of trade books and so no easy way of pump-priming the market.

4. The people who work in trade publishig are driven by the desire to find a great new author, to mix in the world of literature, to win literary prizes. Delivery mechanisms and complex technology are simply not high on their agendas. This is also changing but it will take time. 

And I suppose the final reason why trade books will find it harder to establish a digital model than scientific journals is that not all books are purchased simply to be read. They are purchased as gifts, as furniture, as status symbol, as insurance against boredom. None of these reasons is adequately solved by a digital version. A scientific paper is only purchased for its content.

However, none of this means we should not be investing in digital delivery of trade books. We owe it to our authors to invest in every means of finding an audience for their works. We owe it to them to hold their copyright material securely and to fight on their behalf to protect their rights. We need to serve readers in whatever way they choose. We need to work with public libraries to make digital and on-demand editions of books available through them. We need to use digital versions to promote books and to create digital libraries for research and study.

Trade books are different now but I'm convinced that the technological gap between general book publishing and scientific publishing will narrow - and the pace is gathering.

To finish today's blog on the future of books I thought I'd share a thought sent to me by an old colleague of mine in France. Apparently the most interesting analysis of publishers' and authors' rights issues and their interaction with the concepts of digital libraries, open access and public domain is to be found in the 1763 La lettre sur le commerce des livres by the always brilliant Denis Diderot. Apparently it has never been translated into English and it should be. Can anyone help?

I can't resist this quote (of no relevance whatsoever to books or publishing) from the man himself:

Il y a un peu de testicule au fond de nos sentiments les plus sublimes et de notre tendresse la plus épurée.

This blog is usually about one or other aspect of publishing and books. Today is different. I celebrated the release of the six foreign health workers from Libya and the threat of the death penalty a couple of days ago. Our editorial team, and in particular our senior reporter Declan Butler, at Nature played an active part in the campaign to secure their release and Declan has written this piece as a guest blog explaining more of the background. As I said before, I am really proud of Nature's part in achieving a modicum of justice and grateful for Declan's contribution.

How much more ransom was really paid in the murky deal between the European Union and Libya will probably never be known. The $400 million in 'blood money' paid to the families of the infected children from an opaque international fund – which paved the way for the end of the crisis -- may in fact have largely been paid by Libya, as part of a complex face saving deal. But Libya extorted concessions on debt relief, and many other fronts. The EU has also promised returns by normalizing its political and economic ties with Libya.

The human rights case was also not entirely lost. After the verdict, the EU broke temporarily with its policy of 'silent diplomacy' -- refraining from public criticism of Libya's handling of the case and relying on behind-the-scenes discussions – and condemned in no uncertain terms the human rights violations, and abuse of scientific evidence in the case. This, combined with the fact that Bulgaria became a member of the European Union at the start of the year, led to pressure for a speedy resolution of the case.

The 1998 outbreak was a triple tragedy — for the six unjustly imprisoned, and for the infected children and families. Exoneration of the medics must be the next step. And as Vittorio Colizzi, an AIDS researcher at Tor Vergata University in Rome, Italy, who campaigned for scientific evidence exonerating the medical workers to be considered by the Libyan courts, says: "We must not forget the children." The third victim was the stuggle to have nation states abide by the fundamental international principles of justice and human rights enshrined in treaties to which they are, on paper, parties to.

The Charleston Report, a newsletter about the US Library Market, has been landing on my desk - and over the last ten years - my desktop, for more years than I care to remember. Its focus is of course now primarily on changes brought about within the market by the impact of digital, and it always highlights some interesting tidbits. If the latest edition is anything to go by, it seems social networking trends have hit libraries jus as much as other markets, with reports that:

1.  50% of faculty members across the US believe social networking sites will change the way students learn according to a recent Thomson survey
2. video advertising through sites such as YouTube is now a significant trend as shown by a  survey by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) which reveals substantial statistical data on the attitudes and behaviours of Internet users towards online video
3. OCLC has added a social networking feature to WorldCat.org, to allow users to create their own profile and create personalised lists of items catalogued in WorldCat, then share them with colleagues
4. the 'Infotubey' award winners have recently been announced - 'Infotubeys' being awards given to libraries for exemplary content posted on YouTube. Information on winners can be viewed here.

And the social networking theme continues as I have just learned that Pan Macmillan has developed a facebook page for its forthcoming title HEARTSICK, with the aim of generating publicity for the book in advance of publication on 3 August. The group has 150 members and counting, perhaps lured by the promise of a free advance book proof (while stocks last) to everyone who joins the group. Facebook fans might also like to look up the facebook group dedicated to our new book lovers' community site, lovelybooks,  here. 

On an entirely separate theme our Australian publishing deserves another mention today as Les Carlyon's brilliant book The Great War, published by Pan Macmillan Australia, won Australian Book of the Year last night at the 2007 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA), as reported by the Australian News here. 
 

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.