For some bizarre reason, Nick Nolte keeps turning up in my dreams, to ask how business is going. It seems Nick has a daughter in the book business in Germany. She’s in sales. Anyway, there I was in some ancient dynastic pit, a film set, where the bodies of plague victims were being ceremonially burned or interred (some sixteenth-century lyrics were being recited by the bloke who takes care of the mass burials). Close by were glowing glass canopic jars some local craft class had made earlier, wonky cat shapes lined up on the floor, all being warmed by the raging furnace fires next to some Roman baths. So, I’m mixing up the centuries with medieval plague pits, hypercaust systems and local arts and crafts love-ins for the WI, when I spot Nick by the pool dressed, revealingly, in a bum-length open toga. He mosies on over. I tell you this guy is big, a real bear of a man.
“So how’s it going?” we both say at the same time.
“Oh, fine, what about you?” says Nick.
“Couldn’t be better, Nick,” I say, sturdily.
“Really?” says Nick, looking at me askance, his brow furrowing, head inclined towards me.
“Well, we’ve had some growth and financially things seem more secure,” I add.
I’m pondering on why Nick keeps turning up in my dreams, and I’m getting concerned that he’s in a toga, but it all seems to be business as usual.
“My daughter got these four books on a CD from this guy in Dortmund, the other day.”
“Uhuh?”
“Yeah, and I can’t see how you guys can compete with this stuff.”
“On disk?”
“Yeah, she might not like some of them, but it only takes one, I guess, and phwoah.”
Nick’s blonde locks are falling across his earnest frown.
“Hmm. Well, we’re looking into it, Nick.”
And so we are. The cameraman or woman was busy taking some great panning shots of the plague pit come Roman baths. I think back to that edit of the bodies being buried, great clouds of lime billowing around the grey mounds while a short distance away, some extras were swimming around as Nick dragged his hand through the warm waters. What does it mean?
Earlier in the night I’d had David Beckham in some FA meeting with me (Victoria was lying at his feet in a black cat suit). He was in a toga too, and he kept, well, swinging his bits out. It’s getting quite worrying all this. As for Nick, his interest in Salt seems, well, genuine. I quite like having my monthly chat with him about strategy.
I’m not big on auguries. Skrying, second sight, necromancy; I left them behind with other superstitions in my late adolescence. But Nick’s on to something. As Linda reminded me before our sales meeting in Tate Britain earlier in December, Salt is about content. This started me thinking back over XML workflows in my Cambridge University Press days and reconsidering the ebook future of the book trade. Is it time to jump? I’ve been thinking over the Christmas hols, as the toy fire-engine competes with the blaring narratives from Bandai’s Warhammer PC game; “bee baww, bee baww, weeaw weeaw” “Here are the slaves of wracknaw, kill them all!” Meanwhile Kirsty is in her new leopardskin outfit curled up on the sofa with the laptop, playing Runescape, “Callum, I’ve got the sixth key, where do I go now?”
Where do I go now? Nick Nolte seems to have given me the key. Should corporate strategy be driven by celebrity dreams? I ponder on the Prime Minister’s adherence to the big fellah in the sky, and his predilection to go holy on the big issues of the day. (Always a bit worrying when believers in Armageddon get to buy new toys to continue the nuclear threat.) Anyway, I think Nick is right, it’s time to move Salt into electronic content. We tried ebooks out in 2002, we’re already offering econtent to customers through ellibs, now it’s time to begin an XML workflow to drive the business forward and expand our product range even further. So here goes, and thanks for the pointer, Nick.
