Once upon a time I was in charge of the reference division of Oxford University Press. It was at a time when Collins had declared a 'dictionary war' to fight over market share in the UK trade market. These 'wars' broke out on a fairly regular basis and still do. Collins had many advantages. They had more clout in the trade because of their fiction and mass-market lists. They had more marketing money. They could even afford to use Frank Muir in TV ads. All we had was our brand which reeked of authority, reliability and seriousness. The problem was how to broaden the appeal of the brand without besmirching our name or spending money.

We got lucky. A daily word quiz programme called Countdown was being launched (and twenty-five years later it's still going strong) and they had the idea of using live lexicographers as adjudicators. We were invited to supply these boffins and, after negotiations about clothing allowance (lexicographers aren't by and large renowned for dress sense) and attendance fees, we agreed. Oxford dictionaries were promoted every day to a mass audience on TV and the TV company were paying us for the honour. It was (and still is) wonderful branding.

I was reminded of this as I passed Piccadilly Circus on the way to work this morning.

The McDonald's ad in the centre must cost a fortune. This morning it was replaced by the words 'Oxford English Dictionary' and a series of sentences saying why McJobs are really good things. The reason is that the McDonald Corporation has taken offence at the OED definition of 'McJob' - 'an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects'. They are running a petition to have the definition changed and are advertising it on their absolutely main site. Has there ever been a better exposure campaign for Oxford? Whoever decided to include McJob in the dictionary deserves to win the industry branding idea of the year award.

It's party time in the London book world and last night was no exception. Off to the very chic October Gallery for the annual celebration of the existence and future publishing of Gerald Duckworth and Co Ltd, hosted by its owner (also owner of The Overlook Press), Peter Mayer pictured here just after he'd rescued the Duck from the liquidators in 2003.

Since then the company has healed itself and, in spite of market difficulties, is re-established as a home for both general and scholarly authors - still quirky, still small but very definitely alive and kicking.

While Duckworth chugs along perfectly well publishing books traditionally, the debate about the future of the book continues to swirl around the web. Here is yet another (and rather good) discourse on the possible scenarios. Who will be the new publishers? The social networking sites, Amazon, Google...? Or maybe Duckworth or Macmillan will survive by virtue of doing a few things well - spotting an opportunity,finding good authors, encouraging them to write books people want to read (rather than the other sort), editing, packaging, promoting, investing, doing deals for the author and then paying royalties. When someone at my space can do all those things as well as Peter Mayer, then we have something to fear.

Last night I visited the London Library, shamefully for the first time. It is a really beautiful building and the writers I spoke to there all raved about its utility and importance. Here's an old photo of its Art Room.

While the publishing industry is rightly involved in debates about our digital future, the economics of retailing or public library funding, it is easy to forget the importance of aesthetics. I am indebted to Nat Torkington of O'Reilly Radar for this librophiliac link to some of the most beautiful rooms in the world. I cannot think that any other human activity (sports, aviation, theatre, art etc) could have created quite so many wonderful rooms as reading has (although I guess opera houses might come a close second). For purely personal reasons, this is my favourite, the Wren Library of Trinity Cambridge.

But for splendour, how about Melk Abbey Library? And more, so many more.

A few days ago I published some statistics about the proportion of new books sold through independent booksellers in the UK - only 5% of a paperback and 11% of a hardback. Many people have explained these low percentages as being caused by discounted sales through Internet bookshops. I have therefore done some research in Australia where Internet sales represent only 0.4% of the total (compared with 9% for the paperback and 30% for the hardback in my previous example). Even if you allow for people buying from the US or UK Internet sites, the proportion would be very small. These figures reflect sales across hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction and non-fiction (in brackets are my previous numbers, paperback then hardback) - chains 56% (50,50); supermarkets 29% (35,8); Internet 0.4% (9,30); independents 11.5% (5,11); libraries 3% (less than 1 in each case).

I wouldn't claim that these statistics are definitive, hardly anything in publishing is, but they do suggest that picking Internet booksellers as scapegoats for the woes of independent bookselling is ill-founded. It seems that, in the absence of significant Internet bookshops in Australia, customers are buying more books through chain booksellers than in the UK. It's also interesting to note the significantly higher proportion of sales to library suppliers. Perhaps the Australian Government is showing more respect for libraries, books and education than the British bunch. Good on 'em.

Returned from France late yesterday evening to find a note from the police to let me know that someone had smashed the driver's window of my locked and alarmed car, legally parked in a 'safe' street. They didn't steal anything but it'll cost me several hundred pounds to fix assuming no collateral damage (not worth losing a no-claims bonus) and ....grrrrrr.

While in France I was chatting to a nomadic writer. He doesn't own a house and survives by house-sitting for friends around Europe and earning enough from his writing to pay for his car, computer and books. Not a bad life. He was telling me how he has just finished The Discovery of France by Graham Robb and that it was so good he was going to read it again straight away. What an endorsement. There are more extraordinarily glowing reviews from the more traditional reviewing media here.

The book (essentially a social history of France since the beginning) is clearly a work of enormous scholarly importance but it fascinates too. I didn't know about the stilted shepherds (and postmen) of Les Landes. They could move over rough land at 8 mph which is significantly faster than the average speed of traffic in London today. How about the Mayor of London introducing incentives for stilt walking?

And I love these lines he quotes from Madame de Genlis's phrasebook for stagecoach travellers:

"The wheels are on fire… I am suffering greatly. I am going to vomit. Give me the vase".

That's how I felt when I got to see my car last night.

I attended a wonderful wedding at this church on the top of a hill in Southern France yesterday.

The first church was built on this site around 1000 A.D. and it's been adapted, augmented, and fiddled around with ever since. It has, however, always been a church and a very beautiful one too.

The ceremony involved two English friends and the opening hymn was William Blake's Jerusalem.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded there
Among those dark Satanic mills

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my (my) sword sleep in hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

After the service I asked the Deacon whether he thought that hymn had ever been sung in that church in the past thousand years. The answer was no. I remembered that some German colleagues expresssed ignorance of the hymn at a previous service in England. An American I quizzed told me that she'd never heard it or of it until she came to live in England. Here it is for those who don't know it.

Of course, the hymn IS very English but it is so powerful that I'm surprised it seems not to have crossed national barriers at all. Any explanations? 

And a late addition to this item, the altar of the church in question.

Last night saw the opening game in the Rugby World Cup. I happened to be in Toulouse airport going to a friend's wedding and stopped by the bar with a TV. The silence was golden as it became clear that Argentina were going to beat France. It doesn't mean much in the mathematics of the competition but it certainly makes things interesting. England will probably be next for humiliation.

On the publishing front, the highly successful Macmillan Digital Audio has moved into educational audio with the launch of downloadable Macmillan Readers. This is a series of classic novels with limited vocabulary for learners of English. It will be a fantastic resource for adults as well as students. Try out the samples at least.

In another digital development, an organisation called Live Ink maintains that rearrangement of words can make screen-presented text more readily ingested. I'm not sure, but if you check out this version of Moby Dick they seem to have created an automatic method for turning prose into poetry. I'm sure Melville would have been impressed.

And finally, a plaudit to a competitor. It is fifty years since the launch of Sputnik and New Scientist magazine has produced a wonderful web celebration here if you click on the 'gallery' icon.

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.