Back in June I mentioned that the Committee of the Society of Bookmen (which doesn't have a website and so I've linked to an interesting article by Hazel Bell on 'The fellowship of the book' which gives a little of the Society's history) had appointed me its Chairman for a year. Last night was the first dinner with me holding the gavel. I am not meant (under the terms of the Chatham House Rule) to mention the identity or affiliation  of the speaker or the participants but I can tell you that we had a terrific talk on the issues of being both a Picador novelist (When we were bad) and a publisher (Headline Review) - oh to hell with Chatham House, it was the multi-talented Charlotte Mendelson. Not only was she entertaining and insightful but she reduced the average age of the diners substantially.

The next meeting is scheduled for the Thursday before the annual Frankfurt Book Fair and we have a leading American mega-publisher as guest. The pre-Frankfurt frenzy of e-mails arranging meetings, flyers advertising new gizmos for transforming the books business and the Fair itself reminding us all to attend has begun. I was particularly taken by this piece of information from the organisers:

35,000 sausages, 18,000 sandwiches: caterers Accente have 1,200 staff in action to provide for everyone at the Book Fair.

I suppose the statistics are meant to be impressive but I am merely concerned. I normally spend five days at the Fair every year and calculate that I get through at least ten sausages in that period. Last year nearly 300,000 people attended. I think they may have seriously under-estimated sausage demand.

One of a publisher's jobs is to ensure that an author's book reaches as many people as possible. We achieve that through publicity, marketing campaigns and most importantly through visibility in retail environments. I classify (and I think most other people would do so too) these environments into independent book shops, chain book shops, libraries, supermarkets and the Internet. Each of these environments has its own characteristics in terms of type of customer, cost base, cost to service, range, and service levels. Each is important.

Publishers are frequently under attack for favouring one channel over another and of being short-sighted in allowing different prices to prevail in different sectors etc.

You only have to run a search on this blog for 'Keeble' and click to some of Clive's comments to get a sense of the debate. In essence, independent booksellers feel that large discounts granted by supermarkets rob them of sales of mass-market titles, large discounts granted by Internet booksellers rob them of sales of higher-priced 'quality' non-fiction sales, and large discounts granted by high-street chain booksellers rob them of everything else.

I recently checked out the UK sales of two recent best sellers. The first is a mass-market fiction title in paperback. The chains represented 50% of sales, supermarkets 35%, Internet 9%, independents 5% and libraries 1%(rounded up).

The second is a serious TV tie-in hardback non-fiction title. Chains were again 50%, Internet 30%, independents 11%, supermarkets 8% and libraries once more a little under 1%.

In making these calculations I assumed that the bulk of wholesalers' sales are to independents and I included small chains (a few outlets rather than scores or hundreds) in the independent sector. In other words, I don't think I have understated the independent share of the overall market for these books.

These numbers can be interpreted many ways and I'd welcome feedback. What it says to me is that the industry needs all these (and maybe other) channels. Certainly the independent market share is a concern but if we had not offered these books through the Internet and supermarkets (by not trading with them on acceptable-to-them terms) and, say, independent sales had doubled as a result (unlikely because neither of the titles would have made the best seller lists without supermarket and Internet data), our authors would still have been significantly worse off. The result of that would have been the loss of these authors in the future and consequent medium-term damage to our business. We have to find ways of creating a viable independent book shop sector but not by impeding other routes to market.

On a lighter note I am indebted to David Silverman for alerting us to this French version of Puff to sit alongside the book and CD we publish tomorrow. Enjoy.

The Almost Moon is the title of Alice Sebold's new book which Picador publishes a month from now.

Her previous book The Lovely Bones was one of Picador's best sellers of all time and everyone who has read the new one reckons the author has written another masterpiece. As part of the build-up to publication the UK marketing team is running a competition with signed advanced proofs as the prize. It seems that proofs have become more valuable than the finished book. Strange but true.

I spend quite a bit of time (mainly unsuccessfully) trying to explain why publishers are not all evil, stupid or mad. It doesn't help when publishers shoot themselves in the foot. PRISM is a lobbying organisation and describes its mission as:

The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine - the PRISM Coalition -- was established by The Executive Council of the Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to educate policy makers and the American people about the risks posed by government intervention in scholarly publishing. The coalition is guided by the PRISM Principles, which affirm the key role that publishers play in peer review, access and dissemination, and preservation of knowledge, and which advocate sustainable business models to ensure continued investment and innovation in these essential contributors to scientific objectivity and integrity.

All well and good. Unfortunately this lobbying appears to many people to be anti-scholar and anti free flow of information and may actually set back the debate by antagonising many researchers and indeed many publishers too. It has already generated articles like this. Maybe publishers are evil, stupid or mad.

It's exactly one year to the day since the launch of Staff Room, the subscription-funded part of the world's largest ELT website, onestopenglish which has more than 400,000 registrants. Most of the subscribers are teachers of English as a foreign or second language and they come from every part of the world with Germany and Mexico leading the way. The testimonials for the service are glowing and, unlike many web propositions, people are willing to pay for the content. But the Staff Room is just the most recent development of onestopenglish which was launched in May 2001.

Here is the birthday cake in the real world.

For a flavour of onestop try this trailer to The Road Less Travelled, a soap opera for learners of English. Whatever next?

You may remember a post about the scifoo camp at the beginning of August. There were many distinguished participants from the world of science but here is evidence that it wasn't just a bunch of nerds. The guy on the left is Phil Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature. Next to him his personal adviser on home improvements.

And here's a link for lovers of nature and the underdog.

I spent some time over the weekend reading Inside the Googleplex in this week's Economist. It gives a fascinating insight into the workings of and issues facing the 21st century's commercial giant. In the editorial, the conclusion is:

'One obvious strategy is to allay concerns over Google's trustworthiness by becoming more transparent and opening up more of its processes and plans to scrutiny. But it also needs a deeper change of heart. Pretending that, just because your founders are nice young men and you give away lots of services, society has no right to question your motives no longer seems sensible. Google is a capitalist tool —and a useful one. Better, surely, to face the coming storm on that foundation, than on a trite slogan that could be your undoing.'

I could not agree more.

Having digested the Google stuff I then moved through the rest of the issue and realised (for the umpteenth time) that this magazine must be the best weekly print publication in the world for the general reader and we all know that Nature is clearly the best for the scientific reader. Both these magazines have British roots but both have adapted to become genuinely global. I suspect they do more for British prestige around the world than almost anything else, including hugely expensive prime ministerial visits. Hooray for British journalistic standards.

And now the Economist Group is launching a new quarterly sister magazine called Intelligent Life. You can find out more about it here. If it's as good as its sibling, it will surely be a huge success.

This interview with Pete Yarrow, co-writer of Puff and co-author of Puff,the Magic Dragon book which we've just published took me straight back to 1963. I couldn't find an original version so here is a much more recent performance

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.

I was at a boarding school with little heating and little entertainment bar sport. The highlight of the week was the Sunday afternoon singles chart lists on the radio. The Beatles were riding high, Presley released Devil in Disguise, Gerry and the Pacemakers released the best-ever football anthem You'll Never Walk Alone and who could forget Brian Poole and the Tremeloes and Do You Love Me? (now that I can dance)? In the middle of all this edgy stuff came the sweetest little song from a clean-cut American folk trio.

I'll bet that as soon as you saw the title of this blog you started to hum the tune in your head. I also bet that most of you never knew how to spell Honah Lee - and what on earth is it? Buy the book (and CD) and find out.

Finally, just in case you missed this wonderful advertisement for Western education...

The posting on author royalties continues to generate interesting comments but perhaps the most challenging response comes from Evan Schnittman on the excellent OUPblog. He argues for a single payment for all standard publishing rights in a title for a defined period - and then spoils the purity of his propsal by introducing 'kickers' for higher than anticipated sales, which is a royalty by any other name, but let that pass. I'm not sure I agree with everything he says but his penultimate paragraph bears reading:

'The state of book publishing requires a radical change to the standard business practices that have existed for decades. This has to happen from within the core assumptions of the most basic elements of the business. Retail price vs. gross earnings are just window dressing on the real problems of trade publishing.'

The author of Typo, David Silverman has uploaded a video about booking a hotel room - it's a joy.

It's the first day of September which means Autumn is with us. It also means I have to compile the monthly statisitics for this blog. August was a relatively quiet month (unsurprisingly) with 77284 visits against 84682 in July but 80% up on August 2006's 42944. It brings the total visits to the site to over the million at 1,068,510.

Yesterday's posting about royalties has generated some really interesting comments, largely from the USA. Do check them out and join the debate.

I wrote about Oliver Morton's new book a couple of days ago and invited him to contribute a guest blog here. Being the journalistic professional he is, it arrived on deadline and here it is:

'I don’t know much about book festivals, but you don’t have to know much to be knocked out by the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which closed on Monday night. I’d been there before a few years ago, for an on-stage interview with Jim Lovelock that was a sold-out success, and this time I was there to plug my own book, Eating the Sun, at two events. But the thing that struck me, both times, was the enthusiasm of both organisers and punters, the stunning number of people and topics that they manage to get into 17 days (700 events, 650 authors, pdf programme) – and the stamina that those 17 days must require. Organiser Catherine Lockerbie, who has that stamina in spades, found time to give the Daily Telegraph a taste of what the weeks are like.

Good things: endlessly friendly and helpful staff; generous sponsorship in kind (and doubtless otherwise) from Highland Park, which may not be “the best spirit in the world” (among other things, forget not the Ott) but which is undeniably wonderful; a terrific bookshop; excellent chairs at the events who knew their stuff and worked hard to do their best by the speakers and by the audience; Carol Ann Duffy’s closing poetry recital; my co-presenters Martyn Amos and Nick Harberd; bumping into Ken Macleod (great short story published in Nature|recent Nature feature, both subscribers only); speaking in the Spiegeltent, which had a really great vibe to it – much more Moulin Rouge than the venue for your average talk on “The future of nature”; pretty much everything else.

Bad things: not being able to go to all of it; one slightly underlit lectern; err … that’s it.'

Guest blogging at Richard’s kind invitation; cross-posted at my own blog Heliophage. And this is a photo taken not in Edinburgh.