In the London Times, nestling next to the announcements of the Royal family's engagements for the day, in the "Personals" section where you expect to find discreet classified advertising for "Personal Services," you would - last week - have found the genteel announcement that put Lehman Brothers into administration.

It's been quite a time, hasn't it, these past few weeks?

Meanwhile I've been chasing around with a standing-room-only workshop in Birmingham at the Chartered Institute of Management's Annual Convention, followed swiftly by a flying visit to Frankfurt for the International Book Fair.

Here it soon became clear that publishing is no longer just about books. I was delighted to find that foreign publishers were encouragingly enthusiastic and receptive to the concept of linking the book series to the Tork & Grunt website, and to the audio-introduction CDs that we recorded to accompany each title. It's nothing revolutionary, but while it's been commonplace for self-publishers to generate "product" for back-of-the-room sales, it's not something the big imprints have yet much cottoned onto.

And, as you'd expect, it's the Koreans who take the lead in multi-media exploitation. My Korean colleagues at Thenan publishing had asked for a meeting to discuss various developments. You can imagine my delight when they asked if I would support their proposal to develop e-learning programmes based on the Tork & Grunt series. Now that's exciting - and as far as I'm concerned - it's worth a few column-inches in the London Times.