Ouch!

Last Friday was a company away day, where in the spirit of team bonding, various challenges were set including duck herding (and lots of inevitable keeping your ducks in line jokes). But perhaps the most fun was an unscheduled match of football, which as you can see from the photo, was taken extremely seriously, with Katie Cowan, publisher of Collins and Brown very much playing the man, not the ball. My bruises are still healing, but at least I've learnt why her authors deliver on time...

All Must Have Prizes

Awards season is well on the way, with the Booker shortlist being announced and Elbow winning the Mercury Music Prize. I haven't read the Rushdie (the Joseph O'Neill is the only thing I've read from the longlist), but the dissing by Hardeep Singh Koli will probably not give Salman Rushdie any sleepless nights -- no, I'm not sure why he's on the panel either. Interestingly, in a recent report of previous Booker judgings, Midnight's Children apparently only just won by 3 votes to 2 -- but is now seen as the Booker of Bookers. All of which confirms my long held opinion about literary awards -- they are arbitrary bollocks, unless your book wins, in which case they are prescient and on the the money.

The Elbow win, meanwhile, I found interesting as it is only the fourth time in the Mercury Prize's history that a non-debut album has won the award. Like publishing, music is more and more sucked into the excitement of someone new, rather than rewarding an author/ writer for learning their craft over a number of years. The sad fact is that if you don't deliver saleswise on day one, you might not get your chance to fully develop to your full potential (and ironically, that's saleswise as well as creatively). Elbow, who have been dropped by their record label in the past, and faced the situation that this particular album might not even be released, fully deserve their moment in the sun. I just hope this breaking out of common sense isn't a one-off.

(I know Salman Rushdie isn't going out with Padma any more, but any excuse for a gratuitous photo)

The TV show... the wine... the book

A lot of publishing waffle around at the moment about 'platforms', which I think means different places to flog your stuff, rather than editors moaning about their commute. Here's one such example: Chateau Monty, the story of Monty Waldin's attempts to make his own organic and biodynamic wine, is a TV programme (Channel 4, Thursday nights at 8pm, or you can catch up here) -- 'a corker ... highly entertaining' according to The Observer. It's also a wine -- 'a nice fruity, thoroughly healthy, natural-tasting southern French red' according to Jancis Robinson , which you can buy here. And, oh yes, that's where we come in, it's also a book. Personally, I'm all for this multi platform lark, especially when one of the platforms you can uncork and pour into a glass...

The Prince of Amazon Blurbs

This time last year, Prince was in the middle of his 21 night residency at the O2. And very Princely it was too. This year, to celebrate/cash in on the residency, comes a book. I say 'book', because whoever is writing his amazon blurbs has gone a touch purple themselves.

The book will be 'juxtaposing his dueling worlds of music and solitude'. And as well as photos 'it will incorporate Prince's evocative poetry and lyrics'. Nope, I was unaware the man who wrote 'Do Me Baby' was a poet on the sly either. Perhaps in his moments of solitude? But most impressively of all, there's a free cd music, which is included 'as part of the dimensional experience'.

Perhaps that's what my books are lacking -- not enough attention to the dimensional experience...

101 Ways to Die Before You Die

Sometimes you just can't make these things up. With the publication imminent of Richard Wilson's Can't be Arsed: 101 Things Not To Do Before You Die, comes the news that Dave Freeman, author of the original 100 Things to Do Before You Die has, well, died. And not by doing one of his ridiculous things to do -- touching a tiger or swimming with dolphins or so forth. No, the guy fell over at home, hit his head, and that was it. Had he done his 100 things? Nowhere near, he'd done about half.

There's a word for this kind of stuff, isn't there?

It's like Christmas come early

One of the best bits of the job is when the advance copies of your new books come in. It's that moment when all the hard work is made worthwhile and you finally hold a finished copy in your hand. With autumn fast approaching (if not already here weatherwise), we've had a glorious glut of new titles coming our way in the past couple of weeks. These advance copies are there to check, and once approved, then the bulk gets sent on to the warehouse, and out into the shops. With the exception of one title, which the printer managed to print on the wrong paper, everything seems to be running smoothly and on schedule. Which is no easy matter when books are coming in from as far afield as Finland and the Far East...

Northern Lights

This week, while David Cameron's think tank has been bemoaning the state of north and encouraging everyone to move down south, I've been going in the opposite direction to visit Portico's more northerly writers. First stop was Newcastle, to catch up with Harry Pearson, who is writing a humour book for us for next autumn. Then it was onto Edinburgh to see the authors of our 'I See' Spotters books, which are out this Autumn. Part of the visit was practical -- a bit of nuts and bolts here, and marketing and publicity ideas there -- but the main reason, really, was (to use that horrible phrase) face time: to say hello, have a chinwag and the sort of proper catch up you just can't do at long distance.

And despite what the think tank said, I came away (as I always do), thinking what fantastic cities the north has, and what a shame it is that publishing is, the odd exception aside, so London based...