The graveyard shift, that is the session following the ever-popular Business Meeting immediately after lunch on the Saturday of the Philadelphia Convention, was sportingly awarded by our American cousins to the UK Society's favourite publisher John Fletcher, one of our committee members and the corporeal manifestation of Porpoise Books. In this guise, John has published many recent books on Wodehousian themes, not least Tony Ring's massive concordance and You Simply Hit Them With an Axe, which deals with Wodehouse's relationships with the tax authorities.

Well, it has to be said that our American friends knew a thing or two, and certainly were better informed than my cynical suspicions. John's talk was entertaining and informative, indeed more so than I fancy he dared to hope himself, since the planted questions he had liberally sprinkled around the members present proved unnecessary as the audience, by questioning him enthusiastically at the end, showed that it had not only stayed awake, but listened avidly.

John was introduced by Susan Cohen, installed only seconds before as the new President of The Wodehouse Society. She launched him with a quotation from PGW: "I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with grey matter; but I've got their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old flat with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along."

Aided by further readings by Robert and Hilary Bruce, John then went on to illustrate the essential truth of this statement. One thing was pretty clear: unless you are publishing blockbusters, it is a serious error of judgement to go into publishing to make money. John's advice was: "Decide what you can afford to lose on your first book, and do your best to get it into the bookshops for no more than that."

There was just a little more to it than that, of course. After reminding us of other vocations of which Wodehouse had given us some understanding, for example how to open a safe in 15 easy steps, starting with step one – "Get your dynamite" – (Soup Slattery in Hot Water), how to separate a policeman from his helmet (Bertie Wooster); and how to detect a false pearl with an endoscope (Jeeves), John used quotations from PGW's work to give us an insight into the pleasures and pitfalls of publishing books.

Entertaining and informative stuff it was too. Even the most jet-lagged among us stayed awake and lapped it up without conscious effort. At the end my understanding had developed in a number of directions: delicate negotiations with writers, illustrators, printers and others are routine; judgement has to be exercised over the colour of bindings; there is much fun to be had; and above all, publishers are of unblemished moral character, shocked to the core at the thought of one of their number kissing an author. I also know why John wears jackets with leather patches on the elbows and why he looked so fraught in the months leading up to the emergence of a volume of the concordance. What I could not understand is how the Macmillans became so rich.

Publishing the kinds of books he does is unlikely to make John a fortune. On the other hand, those who love the works of P G Wodehouse would be much poorer without his efforts.