I went to the launch of Jonathan Drapes' Never Admit To Beige last night - the latest release from Macmillan New Writing. It was a good party, great turn out and good atmosphere. In fact, some Pan Macmillan editors I got chatting to said that MNW launches are better attended and more fun than some of theirs with their 'established' authors. I was introduced to the MD of Pan Macmillan who seemed genuinely proud of what MNW is doing - he was boasting about the number of new writers that Macmillan as a whole have published in the last year and seemed to think that discovering and publishing new writers was an important part of his job as a publisher. I also had a brief chat with Mike Barnard who founded the imprint but has now retired from it. I asked him how it had performed over all. He said that financially every body was very happy - the imprint had 'washed its face' financially, in his words. As they had expected to make a loss, this is good news.

Michael Fuchs' The Manuscript has been optioned by a film co. Matt Curran's The Secret War (out next month) has been sold for a reputedly serious sum to the German division of Random House.

And Jonathan's Never Admit to Beige has been picked out to be Simon Mayo's FiveLive book of the month for December. Jonathan will be interviewed by Mr Mayo at 3pm on Thursday. It's also been selected as a Waterstone's 3 for 2 and has been chosen by Goldsboro books as their Book of the Month, which guarantees a certain number of sales.

I got the bus home with Will Atkins who is now ed-in-chief of MNW and lives near me. He said that, with MNW and other initiatives in the pipeline, Pan Macmillan wanted to become the natural home of new writers. They are talking about making all the MNW books available as ebooks too. They are revamping the MNW website to bring it inside the Macmillan website as a whole - at the moment it exists as a separate entity.

Just thought people might be interested in how the imprint is faring, now that it has been going for a few months.

Thanks for this, Roger. I remember talking to Geoff Duffield about MNW last year and it was clear he was really committed to the idea.

(Panmacmillan also host an annual conference for independent booksellers to help them network and to ask them what they want from publishers.)

Hi

As you know, I've always been behind this, despite the media naysayers. Macmillan have been very brave and forward thinking in starting their New Writers line, and I wish them, and their authors, all the best.

JB

Roger, good to know it's going so well, and that PanMacmillan are behind it so thoroughly. And I like to think of the MNW authors feeling a certain solidarity among themselves. (Do you keep quiet about Faber in that company?)

seemed to think that discovering and publishing new writers was an important part of his job as a publisher.

I think most publishers actually do think this (though sometimes their view of a new writer worth publishing may not be the purists'. The difficulty is - has always been - to make the sums add up when you're basically asking the public to fork out for a pig in a poke, which is what a new novel by a new writer is. MNW is a very, very clever way of making the sums just about add up, though it's worth remembering that they couldn't do it without the financial stability of PanMac behind them.

Emma

Thanks Kate, JB and Emma.

Emma - I did talk about my Faber deal with the other MNW-ers. People already seemed to know about it. The rumour mill, I suppose. Everyone was very interested and supportive. I was a bit embarrassed when I was chatting to the two Pan Mac editors and one of them asked what I was working on at the moment. The question of MNW publishing it came up and I had to say, well, actually it's going to another publisher. They were fantastic though - congratulated me and told me not to be apologetic about it, not to worry about it at all and in fact to enjoy it. Even the PM MD was very cheerful when it was mentioned to him (by somebody else). I've not become a pariah there, thankfully!

Thanks for telling us about it - all sounds very promising.

It's a great initiative.

Sarah

You may find you're head-hunted later on, Roger!

Hey,

I am also very much behind the MNW idea, despite,as JB says, the media cynicism.

Thanks for sharing this, Roger. I'm glad they let you graduate without guilt!

"the imprint had 'washed its face' financially"

That's a new one to me! Must introduce it to the Department, where it can hob-nob with 'end-of-pipe'.

This all sounds very positive - thanks for the update.

Jim

Thanks all, glad it was useful.

(Jim - it was a new one on me too. I mean, I think that's what he said. Maybe it was something completely different and I've just invented a new bit of meaningless jargon!)

<Added>

By the way, Jonathan's interview on Radio 5 is about to start around about NOW (15.00 Thursday)!

<Added>

If anyone's interested in hearing Jonathan's interview, it's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/entertainment/mayosbookpanel/">here</a>

<Added>

Oh, forgot, this is a square brackets site.