Adam's dad—too baaad for Macmillan

The theme of a HarperCollins conference held at the Belfry, Wishaw, Warks, last week was "Ready to Go". Due to introduce the theme, Eddie Bell, executive chairman and publisher, turned up half an hour late.

Mr Bell looks so fit these days that there was speculation that he had run there, up the M1.



Antony Beevor's victory at the inaugural Samuel Johnson awards surprised some, but not staffers at Radio 4. Mr Beevor had been due last week to give the Saturday essay on the "Today" programme. When James Naughtie, "Today" presenter and chair of the Johnson judges, heard about the commission, he called Radio 4 and got the item postponed. Bookies might check for unusual betting patterns in the Broadcasting House area.



The point has been made before, but is done so particularly pointedly in the BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) Newsletter. "Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade name 'BOOK'", the article begins. A run-down of the features of this device includes: "Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet . . . Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into the user's brain . . . BOOKMARKS fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKMARK can be used in BOOKS by various manufacturers."

It might just catch on.



"If anyone had predicted in 1995 that we'd have 10 million Amazonians by now, they'd have been locked up as dangerous," says Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, introducing us not only to the term "Amazonian" but also to the fact that Amazon's customer base is now roughly equivalent to the population of Greece.

Never one to miss a publicity opportunity, Amazon.com does not let us down on reaching this milestone. Mr Bezos says that he intends to deliver in person the goods bought by "an honorary 10 millionth Amazonian".

One assumes "honorary" in this context means a US-based customer. It might not be a good publicity move on Mr Bezos' part to come to Britain to deliver the US edition of, say, Hannibal.



We all know that a good-looking author boosts a book's PR potential no end. Dedalus seems particularly thrilled to discover that the writer of Primordial Soup—a comic first novel signed up for its literary merit alone, after a recommendation from Peter Kemp, fiction editor at the Sunday Times—was formerly a model at the very classy end of the market.

Christine Leunens worked for the likes of Givenchy and Nina Ricci before giving it all up for the writer's life. "When we asked for a photo of the author to put in our catalogue, and her biography, we couldn't believe what we got. It was as if God had decided 1999 was going to be Dedalus' year," says publisher Eric Lane ecstatically.

Of course, Ms Leunens will visit the UK to promote her book on publication in September. I am sure that Dedalus will entertain her in the style to which she is accustomed.



The Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth, usually a sedate place with its splendid sea views, was besieged last week by hundreds of Macmillan staff, whose duties at their sales conference included dressing like extras from a James Bond film. (The company's Boxtree division has a tie-in to the next Bond movie.) David Macmillan, who would make a rather good Bond villain (while the technophile Richard Charkin could play Q), was the most dashingly attired, in a silk suit. He was asked if he often wore it. The last time, he said, was his wedding day.

Others wanted to know why TV's Adam and Joe hadn't brought along Adam's dad, also famous as "Baaad Dad" from their Channel 4 programme. "He'd just have got drunk and snogged all the girls," Adam explained to me.



Dear Horace, A Pearson Education advertisement in the Guardian for a computer book sales representative says that one of the responsibilities of the role will be to "generate blacklist sales". Is this a feature of corporate life as the new millennium dawns, or simply a new publishing category?

Murray Mahon

MurrayMahon@csi. com



Siegfried Sassoon seems to be all the rage at the moment. Picador has signed up a big authorised biography, Duckworth has just brought out the paperback of Jean Moorcroft Wilson's life, and Richard Cohen is about to publish the paperback of a biography by John Stuart Roberts. As my colleague Boot remarked, biographies cluster like buses.

Roberts' book includes this quote from Sassoon when he was literary editor of the Daily Herald: "The life of the literary editor is like a fairy tale. He gets up at a not unreasonable hour: on his way to work he pops in to see a few eminent and sympathetic publishers. Finally he drifts down Fleet Street like a ray of sunshine and arrives at the office, where he finds that people have sent him presents of lovely books. After glancing at a few of these, he writes some literary notes and goes away to spend his salary."

No change there, then. They're rays of sunshine still.



Triumph was in the air at the IMPAC literary award dinner in Dublin's majestic Royal Hospital this weekend, where Hodder and Andrew Miller, author of the winning novel Ingenious Pain, were making the most of the corporate champagne and cigars. Simon Trewin, Mr Miller's agent, admitted to me that when he read it he had done so with the sections in the wrong order, "but still loved it". Mr Miller's speech—he shared a platform with Bertie Aherne and Jeffrey Archer—revealed that he spends most days in his pyjamas. Lord Archer was impressed: "I have long wanted to know what would lift me from being a popular author to winning a literary award," he commented. "The answer is obviously to wear pyjamas."

Up to a point, Lord A.



Room this week for just two cuttings. Lisa Jewell has bought the Big Issue only once, in order to see a review of her novel Ralph's Party (Penguin). It was a stinker (ES Magazine).

Craig Brown, reviewing Hannibal by Thomas Harris (Heinemann) in the MoS, wrote: "Hannibal is a brilliant book, but the world would be a better place without it."

Horace Bent