June has been a month of heroic reconstruction here at Syntagma. It may not seem like that at first glance, but we’ve reorganized the place from top to bottom. We’ve also brought in a number of professionals to help out and, in some cases, write for us below the radar as part of specific Syntagma Teams.

This is a new system for us. It gives us a powerful in-house team for the first time, but without massive cost implications. I’m hoping it will move us in a different direction in the year to come.

We’ve also returned to Syntagma Media as our main name, with Syntagma Digital as the operating company.

Along the way some things had to go. The Allusionz network magazine — our poorest performer — will be put out to grass when its advertising contracts run out at the end of this month. Some of its sites have been moved onto LifeTimes magazine. They include : Marshall’s Art NYC, Steve’s Publisher’s Diary, Our Man in Stratford and Jazz Groove. Also Classy Classical and a rejuvenated Stage Latest, which will now concentrate on the West End and Broadway, plus ticket sales ads. Sad to lose so many sites and a few authors, but it’s a business and one can’t be sentimental about it.

We’re also hoping to spawn an offshoot of Syntagma Media in a new direction. We’re waiting on negotiations on this one. There may be some opportunities for existing, and other, authors in the new project. More later.

Essentially, we’ve distilled the Syntagma inventory down to its most profitable core in response to the awkward fact that “blog” networks are not being bought out anymore. The second half of the year should see us expanding out again from a sounder base.

So, after the fundamental change in market conditions in recent months, we’re now optimized for the new opportunities. In many ways we’re better placed than our competitors. The huge success of the Glam network — announced this week — reinforces our decision in going for retail as the future of Web business. But, we are still keeping our powder dry and our independence intact. It’s all to play for, and we are very well positioned for new developments.

No news yet on the Lodge at Exeter Castle, which we hoped might be a candidate for the new Syntagma Towers. It’s looking unlikely as I write, for a variety of reasons.

However, since my short, mocking piece on photographs of desks, I’ve been inundated with … pictures of desks.

I’m just going to publish one of them to show you what splendid readers we have here.

This is the “office” — or library — at Humdrumming Mansions, a stately pile in Shakespeare’s Stratford on Avon, occupied by Steve Newman, a Syntagma author of peerless works of literary magnificence, including a novel, The Crime of the Crimea; a fictionalized biography of Ernest Hemingway; and his “blog”, Our Man in Stratford.

Note the volume on Elgar on the table (2007 is Elgar’s 150th anniversary year), and the picture of John Wayne on the wall-to-wall bookcases. A man of many talents clearly.

Apart from being Senior Director and Editor of the Humdrumming Publishing House, Steve is Director and driving force behind the Stratford International Festival of Literature, the first of which is to be held in September this year. The event will feature such mega-luminaries as Colin Wilson and Guy Adams (another Syntagma author), and is being jointly sponsored by Syntagma Media.

What more could you possible desire?