Macmillan Children's books, part of Pan Macmillan, the global publishing group, today announced that it is taking the controls of its mobile marketing in-house. Having embarked on its mobile marketing initiative in August 2002, Macmillan has now reached a level of expertise with the mobile medium, allowing it to take advantage of some of the benefits of managing its mobile programme internally.

Flytxt, the leading provider of technology and expertise for mobile marketing and interactivity, has helped Macmillan to develop its successful Princess Diaries mobile club which has helped boost the launch of the two most recent Princess diaries books by maintaining an interest in Mia and her adventures in between book releases.

Macmillan will be managing its mobile programme using Flytxt's mobile campaign management platform, 'Flytxt Direct', which incorporates the experience that Flytxt has gained from running thousands of mobile programmes. Macmillan will benefit from reduced costs of running mobile campaigns in comparison with outsourcing mobile programmes. In addition, they will benefit from the flexibility of running and fine-tuning mobile programmes without needing to co-ordination with the technology provider, as well as increased speed to market.

Macmillan's Princess Diaries SMS text club has successfully helped to promote book launches over the last 18 months. The Princess Diaries series made it to the much-coveted BBC 100 Big Read list and The Secret Princess Diaries was number one on the Bookseller bestseller chart for 6 weeks in 2003.

A spokesperon at Macmillan Children's Books said: "What other medium than mobile would have allowed us to reassure our Princesses a few hours after the official announcement, that Mia (the heroine of the Princess Diaries) has no intention whatsoever to get married in Vegas like Britney! Flytxt Direct gives us that instant option".