The lottery has begun. Thirteen out of 110 entries have got through to the next round, the shortlist of six to be announced on September 6. Picador has one title on the list, Self Help by the youngest writer on the list, Edward Docx. Fingers crossed.

Of course the list can be interpreted any which way. The Bookseller's headline 'Indies shine on Booker's dozen' isn't really borne out by the facts. I'm not sure that two out of thirteen is a particularly high strike rate. And where are the darling 'indies' such as Faber, Canongate etc? A more appropriate headline might be 'Triumph for conglomerates as Random House bags four'. The Guardian went for the shock giant-killing story but I'm not sure that Ian McEwan and A.N.Wilson count as complete outsiders. The Chairman of the Judges, Sir Howard Davies, goes for the quick win approach by describing the list as 'diverse', which means absolutely nothing but wins political correctness brownie points for implying racial diversity.

The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that the dreadful shock as described in the Guardian article will soon pass and editors and literary agents wil be assuring each other that the literary manuscript in hand will definitely win next year's prize.

'The news will produce as much shock among literary agents as authors - and the editors who entered them with some confidence for yesterday's long list.'

You may have noticed the Google-supplied ads to the right of this column, although very few of you click on them to judge by my earnings from this source. I occasionally click if one catches my eye and I clicked on Manuscript Editor Online yesterday. It's a service offering scientists help with preparing their manuscripts for publication but it's a shame they can't spell 'ophthalmology' in their main catalogue. It makes you wonder. Grumpy old ex-copyeditor speaking - and I know this column is anything but literal-free, but still...

I am absolutely clear that I am incapable of writing a book. So are most people (incapable of writing a book that is). It is extremely difficult. It is even more clear that - and I know it - I couldn't write a great book. Great books are rare and wonderful and require a slice of genius. However, there are some books which I half-think I should have had a crack at writing. I've just read one such.

The book is about a team of (almost entirely) useless cricketers known as the Captain Scott XI, named after the (failed) great explorer and against whom the Baldons Cricket Club (for whom I have played for more than thirty years) battled annually. The author, Harry Thompson, tragically died before the book was published. I remember him as a highly competitive, irritating and rather untalented opening batsman (not unlike me). He has, however, written the book I would love to have had the talent to write.

It is not just about low-quality cricketers touring the world. As a producer and writer of, amongst other things, Have I got news for you, he knows how to put the boot into the likes of British Airways. However, he is also wise. In one scene, the team is enjoying the low cost of food and drink in Buenos Aires. A bottle of Malbec which would cost £20 in London was selling for £2. Rather than buy the £2 bottle they wondered how a £20 bottle of Malbec in BsAs would taste. Out of this world, of course. And a good strategy.

It's an excellent and funny book published by John Murray and I'm sure they won't mind my pointing out the mis-spelling of 'genius' in the blurb of the hardback.

PS on book prices. The average price of a meal for one in the new restaurants in London as recommended by food critic Fay Maschler is £41. Makes Harry Potter,even at full price, a real snip.

From left to right: Christopher West, Macmillan's Regional Director for Latin America; Zsolt Agardy, Chairman of Angel Estrada; and Richard Nathan, Macmillan's Strategy Director. They are formally signing off the documentation for the purchase of Editorial Estrada, Argentina's first domestic publishing company founded in 1869, the same year as Nature and only 26 years after Macmillan itself. The location is the dining room of Estrada's offices which they have occupied since the beginning.

If you're Spanish is up to it, here is the full press release:

Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A formaliza la venta de

Editorial Estrada S.A.

La operación se realizó con Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Buenos Aires, julio de 2007.  Ángel Estrada y Cía. S.A, empresa con una trayectoria de 138 años al servicio de la educación, la cultura y la papelería escolar y comercial, dio a conocer la formalización de la venta de su división Editorial Estrada S.A a Macmillan Publishers Limited, anunciada oportunamente.

La operación concretada por parte de Ángel Estrada, se realiza en un momento de sólido crecimiento de su unidad de negocio editorial, manteniendo una significativa participación de mercado y buenos resultados.

La venta dará lugar a que Ángel Estrada y Cía. S.A incremente su posición de liderazgo en el negocio de papelería escolar y comercial a través de sus marcas Rivadavia, Arte, América y el Nene, tanto en el mercado local como en el internacional.

Zsolt T.J. Agárdy, presidente de Ángel Estrada y Compañía S.A manifestó: "Estamos satisfechos con la transacción, ya que permitirá una mayor focalización y crecimiento de Ángel Estrada en su negocio de papelería escolar y comercial, ampliando su oferta de productos al consumidor local y aumentando sus exportaciones. Estoy seguro de que el ingreso de Macmillan será positivo para la Editorial”.   

Christopher West, Director Regional de Macmillan para Latinoamérica comentó: “Estamos muy conformes de haber llegado a un acuerdo en la compra de una de las Editoriales argentinas más antiguas y prestigiosas.  Las publicaciones de gran calidad de Editorial Estrada complementan nuestras actividades existentes en Argentina y marcan un nuevo paso en nuestra expansión en uno de los mercados educativos más importantes de América Latina”.

Información para editores:

Ángel Estrada & Compañía S.A fue fundada en Buenos Aires en 1869. Con una trayectoria de 138 años comprometida con la cultura y la educación del país, Ángel Estrada es dueña de un sólido prestigio en el negocio de la papelería escolar y comercial. A través de sus marcas Rivadavia, Arte, América y El Nene, la empresa ha sido capaz de mantener intacta su firme vocación orientada hacia la calidad, el compromiso y la innovación permanente.

Macmillan Publishers Limited fue fundada en 1843 y es integrante del grupo editorial alemán Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. Tiene presencia en la Argentina desde 1998 en el área de textos escolares y es líder en publicaciones para la enseñanza del idioma inglés.

This acquisiton is a further extension of our Ibero-American strategy reflected in Grupo Macmillan. Across Latin America and Spain we now have nearly one thousand employees and the businesses represent a substantial proportion of Macmillan's overall business. Exciting times.

I've been immersed in a fascinating newspaper aimed at ex-patriate Brits living in France - French News. The main story is, as you might expect, 'Traditional dinner keeps French slimmer.'

But there's plenty of other stuff. France's suicide rate is double that of Britain's. There is detailed analysis of the new President Nicolas Sarkozy's tax-reducing policies and how it affects British immigrants. I enjoyed this headline in the La Vie est Belle section: Supervising his erection in the Haute-Vienne, Barry Cornell finds he has to contend with tradesmen who speak French, Welsh, Yorkshire and Latin.' I was pleased to note Le parti du plaisir led by ex-stripper Miss Cindy Lee has promised to create a network of nudist camps across France if elected next time around.

However, I was most pleased to discover in the sports section that 'Et alors' is the equivalent of 'Howzat' and that on Sunday 26 August on the Damazan Cricket Club ground there will be the finals of Siddalls Cup between Tarn and Toulouse.

The main book review was, of course, Pardon my French.

Britain enjoys a zero rate of value-added tax on newspapers, magazines and books (and children's clothing). Elsewhere in the European Union varying rules apply but books are frequently taxed (e.g. Ireland - corrigendum - silly me, see comment below). The EU, in its predictable way, would like to simplify (i.e. dictate standard terms) tax rules across Europe and the European Commission has opened a political debate on the subject. Fortunately the British Government has promised to resist change to the current system and we can only hope this is a promise they intend to keep.

But I have a further question. If it is important not to tax reading (which I support) why does the Government think that taxing on-line reading makes sense? Readers have to pay VAT on on-line subscriptions and purchases of digital downloads. If we could liberate these from tax it could make a huge difference to the speed of adoption of digital information and make very little difference to budgetted tax revenues.

The Guardian reports that being a librarian is among the least stressful jobs (along with postmen and hairdressers). I can well believe it but perhaps a little bit more stress would improve the library service? It's worth checking out Katherine Rushton's blog about this (and other library matters in the future).

This link is to an article in yesterday's New York Times. The piece is entitled 'Content makers are accused of exaggerating copyright' and is about a complaint made by the Computer and Communications Industry Asssociation to the US Federal Trade Commission. Here are the first two paragraphs of their complaint. You can read the full attack on their website home page.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) announced today that it has filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint on behalf of consumers against Major League Baseball, the National Football League, NBC/Universal and several other corporations. CCIA alleges that the named corporations have misled consumers for years, often misrepresenting their rights through deceptive and threatening statements. The complaint, part of CCIA’s newly sponsored DefendFairUse.org initiative, is aimed at exposing how media and sports organizations have systematically misled consumers with regard to their legal rights to use content, and to protect those rights in the digital age.

“Every one of us has seen or heard that copyright warning at the beginning of a sports game, DVD or book,” said Ed Black, CCIA President and CEO, during a press conference at the National Press Club. “These corporations use these warnings not to educate their consumers, but to intimidate them.”  

A glance at the association's list of members shows how powerful they might be. Clearly, the main battlegorund is video where the owners of rights to sporting events etc are getting fed up with the constant abuse of these rights and are taking legal action against the owners of youtube, for instance. This seems to be a counter-attack. However, book publishers are caught up in the row - Penguin and Harcourt.

Thankfully Macmillan has not been named and we have no need to waste money on hordes of lawyers to defend us against these absurd charges. The warnings at the front of books are the result of legal advice and are what they are - neither misleading nor intimidating. It is ridiculous to imply otherwise and the CCIA should perhaps look at the legal small print which comes attached to the software its members sell - 'people in glass houses' comes to mind.

Copyright in the Internet age is indeed a complex and challenging issue for everyone but this sort of action does nothing to help. It merely siphons money to lawyers and creates antagonism where none need exist, provided that the legitimate rights of content creators (authors in the case of publishing) are respected and valued.

Our publicity triumph of the week relates to this story about the potential for treatment of patients in a minimally conscious state. So far we've had the front pages of The Guardian and Telegraph, a big banner in the Times and articles in the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times, not to mention coverage on NBC nightly News, ABC News, the CBS Early Show and much else - not bad for 'hard science'. Of course, the story of an unconscious person 'waking' after six years is pretty amazing and newsworthy but it requires real skill to have the story reported (more or less) accurately and globally through all media. Congratulations to the whole team.

One of the best sources of news about future developments is Ray Hammond's monthly digest, Glimpses of the Future. This month's issue contains this piece (based on research originally published in Nature Neuroscience) which perhaps is relevant to my posting of yesterday about the England cricket team's fear of losing. But would Cdk5 count as performance enhancing?

A Cure For Fear

Are you afraid of fear itself? MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice.

Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and colleagues showed.

And as a follow-up to another recent posting about Alice Herz Sommer here is an interview with her which appears on the Pan Macmillan website It's not quite in the league of Mel Brooks's and Carl Reiner's 2000 year old man but what is?

What do you remember best from your childhood?

The best memory of my childhood is playing music with my brother Paul. I was not yet ten years old and he was only a little older, and evening after evening my mother said, ‘Come on children, get playing.’ She would sit down next to the stove and we’d play anything that came to our mind – Schumann most frequently, I think. We had a huge repertoire.

What is your happiest memory?

The happiest moment of my life was the birth of my son on June 21, 1937.

What is your saddest memory?

The sudden, unexpected death of my only son, Raphael, in November 2001. Living with this painful memory is a daily challenge.

What is your favourite time of day?

I think it is the morning – the three hours that I play the piano.

Where is your favourite place in the world?

My favourite place in the world is in the middle of nature - anywhere.

Don´t expect others to make you happy. Happiness does not come to you through others. You find happiness if you have a challenge in your life - and you fulfill it.

What advice would you give for a healthy old age?

Discipline! Especially if one reaches old age.   You need to be disciplined.  A routine to keep to. Time for your tasks. And time for physical exercise. Even it is just a daily walk.

Who is your favourite composer?

When I was young it was definitely Schumann. He is just adorable. Now I am older I love Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven – because his music is deeply human and universal, and it represents endlessness. And Schubert, because his music makes you feel you are talking to God.

Do you still play the piano?

Every day! For almost 100 years.  Despite my two crippled fingers I will keep playing until my last hour.

What advice would you give a young musician today?

You've got to work with phenomenal passion, and unbelievably hard! Otherwise it comes to nothing and you won’t succeed.

India duly won the latest cricket test match against England and thus cannot lose the three-match series and have a very good chance of winning it by drawing or winning the last game. They bowled and batted very well and deserved the victory. This is the India captain, Rahul Dravid, celebrating.

The England management will have various explanations and will point to various turning points over the five days of the game. However, I think the series was forfeited by England on the mid-afternoon of the fourth day of the previous game. England had built a lead of more than 350 with their star batsman, Kevin Pietersen, with a century to his name. Instead of launching an all-out attack on India they batted sedately and unproductively for an extra hour to add a few more runs and reduce the chance of India winning. As a result they had no opportunity to bowl at India before the tea break. The forecast for the following day suggested rain. The England lead was almost impregnable. There was only one reason to bat on - the fear of losing. In the end, the rain did arrive on Monday just in time to save India. Had England not been afraid of losing they would definitely have won the game - and demoralised India and almost certainly won the series. A great example of knowing when to be brave and seize the moment. It's sad that England failed but great for India and for cricket - and I hope (but doubt) that the lesson will be learnt.

Incidentally, the same applies to publishing. Carpe diem.

It's the first of the month. In July this blog had 84682 visits, a come-down from the amazing June statistics caused by the Google heist post. However, total visits to date have reached 991,226, within spitting distance of a golden blog award.