The Bookseller: Aug 30

· Every university wants its own Oxford University Press. The publisher's latest financial results put its turnover at £392m last year, with sales up by 7% in the UK. While other university publishing houses have struggled, OUP has surged ahead with market-leading reference guides, school textbooks and academic monographs. It has exploited its natural riches, drawing authors from the university; and it trades on the Oxford name overseas, and the popularity of English language learning. Yet, to the resentment of commercial rivals, its £58m profit will stay untouched by the taxman: as long as it donates to the university, the company qualifies for charitable status. So the funds are likely to be used to confirm OUP's dominance by buying up other publishers - most recently it absorbed the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Grove Dictionary of Art. Some argue that OUP's commercial activities should be restricted. But, as with the BBC's highly commercial publishing arm, OUP will continue to capitalise on its advantages as a cultural institution.

· OUP's most famous book, the Oxford English Dictionary, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The first edition, which took more than five decades to produce, was hailed by the then prime minister Stanley Baldwin as "the greatest enterprise of its kind in history". But, as Simon Winchester writes in The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (OUP, October), the project was not finished. "It never could be, it never would be, and it never will be." By the 1980s, the OED - with 12 volumes and five supplements - had grown out of control. Technology intervened, and OUP began to digitally archive the entire publication. In 1993, work began on a third edition, for which every single word is being reviewed. Chunks of the edition are gradually released online, and new entries for condensed dictionaries are tested for popularity through the search engine Google. Yet the work of the lexicographer is as important as ever: a team of 120 is employed in the task, as well as 200 specialist consultants and readers. Nobody knows how long it will take to "complete", and the full work is unlikely ever to appear in book form. While other publishers such as Bloomsbury, Collins and Chambers have developed substantial language databases, the myriad spin-offs from the OED will keep booksellers busy until the next millennium.

· Bookcrossing.com, the US website that encourages people to leave books in public places to be read, reviewed and then re-released, has caught on - some 2,000 books were "set free" in the UK in August. Bookcrossing strikes at one of the industry's darkest fears: that there are already enough books in the world. Some authors have voiced anxieties about the phenomenon. Jessica Adams, novelist and editor of the War Child anthologies, accuses the site of profiteering. The fears are understandable, but misplaced. There is only an infinitesimal chance that the person who finds a "released" book would have otherwise bought the same title, and the industry has long survived alongside second-hand bookselling and lending. If Bookcrossing lasts, the number of books that are left and then picked up will remain small. However, the vast network of reviews, discussions and reading groups that have grown up around the site have helped fuel word-of-mouth bestsellers such as Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. There's even evidence that Bookcrossing adds sales: aficionados of the site buy multiple copies of new books to randomly distribute.

· Joel Rickett is news editor of the Bookseller. Readers of the Guardian can subscribe to it for £13.35 per month and receive the next eight issues free at www.my-subscription.com/bsel/guard.html.