The Euros will throw the spotlight on Poland and its co-host, Ukraine, for a month. The major cities will find themselves occupied by foreign fans; their central squares suddenly bathed in red (Spain, holders, begin in Gdańsk) or green (Ireland start in Poznań). England, mystifyingly, are camped in Kraków even though their group games are over the border in Ukraine.

Each and every visiting fan will be touched by Polish culture in some way. Some will eat pierogi (ravioli-like dumplings); others might step inside the 11th century crypt of Kraków’s Wawel Castle in search of shade; almost all, surely, will down a shot of Żubrówka vodka (famously flavoured with bison grass).

Hopefully, visitors and TV spectators alike will take the time to explore Polish culture in more depth. Poland’s art, literature, music and so on are woven intimately around the nation’s history. From the late 18th century through to the end of the 20th, Poland (at one time the strongest power in central Europe) was partitioned and occupied almost continually. Its authors, painters and playwrights kept the ‘nation’ alive through their work, bequeathing a rich legacy of culture that runs, linked, all the way from Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz to the punk bands that helped undermine Soviet rule in the 1980s.

Five Polish facts to get the half-time banter moving

• Poland had its equivalent to Bob Dylan: singer/songwriter Czesław Niemen was the first artist in the Eastern Bloc to really question the ruling Soviet authorities. He remains an iconic figure in Poland.
• In Russia they had Tolstoy; in Britain, it was Dickens. The Polish author who did most to shape the nation’s 19th century outlook was Henryk Sienkiewicz, best remembered for Potop (1886) (_The Deluge_), recalling the Swedish occupation of Poland in the 17th century.
• In 1939 Warsaw had a population of 1.3 million. By 1945, at the war’s end, 422,000 remained in the city.
• With his father in Mauthausen Concentration Camp and his mother in Auschwitz, as a young boy Roman Polanski (now an Oscar-winning filmmaker) lived wild in the Polish countryside.
• Poland harbours the biggest statue of Christ in the world. At 167ft high, Pomnik Chrystusa Króla (Christ the King) in Świebodzin, western Poland, erected in 2010, is 42ft taller than Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer.

Buy Speak the Culture: Poland here

No, 12-bar blues, according to a leading article in The Times (1st March 2012), celebrates 100 years since the first one (Dallas Blues) was published in March 1912 and is a form of song structure that has underpinned blues and popular song even longer than that. And, as Muddy Waters sang, “The blues had a baby and they named the baby rock and roll.”

12-bar blues lies behind all of the music of the last and current centuries. I can remember teaching one gifted musician what is it all about and, immediately, he behaved as if I had shown him the promised land (which in a way, musically, I had).

If you want to know all about playing 12-bar blues, look no further than Thorogood Publishing’s Playing Popular Piano and Keyboards.

The audience was made up of those taking relevant university courses as well as publishers, authors and practitioners in all the other skills involved in the publishing process. All came together to try and make sense of what is happening to publishing in the current climate and speculate on the ‘where next?’ question.

I tried to concentrate on what we at Thorogood Publishing are actually doing and I endeavoured to keep some focus on how we are going to ensure that publishing can be self-sustaining, when finding the right format is actually, these days, easier than hitting the right profit-making formula.

Thorogood has the following product formats in its portfolio: – printed books – pdf downloads – e-books – specialist reports available in print and in a digital ‘library’ – distance learning in print and online – audio product in mp3 – brochures in printed and downloadable form

The incredible diversity of information now available via the internet is incredible. But making sensible shape of it all is still vital. The service that search engines provide is in making selections that help searchers make sense of the mass of material available.

This is also what publishers do best, whether in newspapers, magazines, reports, books, journals, etc and whether in print or digital formats. It is what we at Thorogood try to achieve in our general publishing and in our business and professional publishing: to make sense of a topic; to distil complex issues down to the essentials and to provide practical, useful guidance to help the user’s everyday business and personal life.

The information free-for-all hailed by many as the best part of the internet will not remove the need for having publishing excellence at manipulating content for the benefit of its customers. The trick will be trying to make a self-sustaining profit whilst doing so.

Punk, as we all know, was anti pretty much anything. Anti-convention. Anti-establishment. Born in the US and UK (each claims sovereignty: Stooges or Pistols?), it was raw and exciting; and had a serious influence on western culture, in particular music and fashion.

But really, once the dust had settled – after all the swearing, spitting and smashing – punk didn’t realign the establishment to any great degree. It didn’t bring down governments. At least it didn’t in the West. In Poland, however, punk rock – and its calmer sibling, new wave – played a role in ending years of Soviet rule.

With marshal law, strikes, shortages and inflation, life in Poland in the late 1970s and early 80s was grim. With little collective or personal freedom, the frustrations of a younger generation were epitomised perfectly by punk. The underground bands that emerged, led by a Warsaw group called Tilt, gave the youth a voice; to be heard – at gigs, festivals and demos – alongside the intelligentsia and the workers who were slowly eroding the control of the Soviet authorities.

Bands had to pass their lyrics in front of the censor; if the words met with approval, the artists could enter the recording studio. Many bands simply altered their lyrics for live shows, aware that the security services in attendance at most gigs would have little understanding of what they were singing. Audience members would record the shows and then circulate illicit audiotapes.

The anarchic lyrics of Polish punk and the way in which it brought Polish youth together were all part of the momentum that led to democratic elections in the country in 1989; elections that helped initiate far wider change in Eastern Europe.

Five important Polish bands from the 1980s
Brygada Kryzys. Punk band formed from the ashes of Kryzys and Tilt by frontman Tomek Lipiński. They were banned after refusing to headline a state-organised concert.
Republika. New wave band that used rich metaphor to get round the censor.
Maanam. Post punk, new wavish band fronted by female singer Kora. One particular song (and album), Nocny Patrol (1983) captured the mid 80s mood.
Kult. An underground rock band whose direct lyrics found censorship but which went on to achieve great success in the post-communist era.
TSA. Hard-to-ignore band that brought together the accoutrements of hard rock (long hair, sweaty torsos, etc) with invective for the regime.

Speak the Culture: Poland will be published in May 2012

Some of the bigger publishers are against such a move. Long-established publishers don’t like the fact that Amazon cuts out literary agents, publishers and bookshops in the traditional route to market. They even question whether books published by Amazon are more like vanity publishing than serious literature. They also raise the issue of an Amazonian monopoly in online book-selling and in downloads.

Please!

First of all, the big, established publishers have been quite content to dominate the existing routes to the market by, for example, meeting and paying the, in my view, discriminatory and excessive charges demanded by booksellers, like Waterstones, to stock titles and display them in prime locations (both within the stores themselves and across the network of branches). Also, the book buyers in the chains and supermarkets favour the large publishers, with juicy deals and discounts cementing their arrangements. Added to that, cosy relationships with reviewers compounds the closed shop aspect. It is difficult for small publishers to break in.

Excuse me, therefore, whilst I show no pity for the big publishers. Their cries of unfairness and monolopy leave me unmoved. So too do their accusations of vanity publishing, when I know for a fact that these days it applies throughout the publishing world.

So, come on big publishers, man up and face competition in the Man Booker.

Neil Thomas

Apparently Booktrack have music and background noises crackling fire, birdsong, rain and footsteps in their version of Sherlock Holmes’ “Speckled Band”. The speed that you read and the points you reach in the text trigger the chosen sounds/music.

Naturally, this development has delighted some and alarmed others. What do you think?

Here at Thorogood, rest assured we will be in the vanguard of electronic publishing development. Suitable music such as “Money Makes the World Go Round” from “Cabaret” will obviously feature in our Finance titles; Cole Porter’s “You’re the Top” will underpin our Leadership titles; and perhaps Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” will be the background to our Employment Law titles.

“Money” from Pink Floyd , or “Money, Money, Money” from Abba could provide musical inspiration for our Selling a Business titles and The Beatles/George Harrison’s “Taxman” can play-in our Tax Planning titles.

Seriously? No!!! You won’t be getting sound effects on our business ebooks now or in the future! (Well never say never.)

You really would have to be in ‘Dire Straits’ to invest in putting music sound tracks into e-books as you really would be spending your “Money for Nothing”!

Neil Thomas

Look, be honest, have you ever heard of ‘Bibliotherapy’?

When I first came across it, I thought it sounded absurd. I read about it in a magazine where some ‘expert’ was advising on books that could be selected for the ‘client’ to read which would suit that person’s taste, library and what is happening in his/her life.

Daft? Well apparently Bibliotherapy has a history – dating back to the 1920s where treatment of war-damaged servicemen or life-damaged individuals included specially devised reading programmes.

I am sure we have all prescribed ourselves a nice long escapist page-turner to counter boredom, sleeplessness, emotional trauma, wet afternoons and tedious journeys. We have probably listened to a friend’s symptoms and, despite not being ‘qualified’, have suggested or book or two to perk them up or occupy them. Did we see ourselves as bibliotherapists?

Now, of course, I will no longer describe myself as a publisher. I am a Bibliotherapist. I would invite you to let me have some brief details about yourself and I will tell you which of Thorogood’s books you will have to buy (and read!). In fact, I think I will create a new niche ‘business bibliotherapy’ activity for Thorogood to exploit this opportunity.

By way of illustration here, I could offer a few examples of typical ‘client’ requirements and my solutions:

1. Do you need to take stock of who you are, what you are capable of doing and how you could improve your business and personal life?

Buy Me-Time: Life Coach Yourself to Success by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE Me Time: Life Coach Yourself to Success

2. Do you feel jaded as a manager and want a quick fix of common sense ways to improve how you operate?

Buy The Best of John Adair on Leadership and Management by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE The Best of John Adair on Leadership and Management

3. Are you struggling with low self-esteem as a manager because you haven’t done an MBA?

Buy The Shorter MBA: A Practical Approach to Key Business Skills by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE The Shorter MBA: A Practical Approach to Key Business Success

4. Do you feel that time manages you and you can’t seem to address important decisions at work because of all the other demands on your time?

Buy The Concise Time Management and Personal Development by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE The Concise Time Management and Personal Development

5. Are you now the boss, but are afraid to admit that your leadership skills are preventing you from operating at the top level?

Buy Leadership for Leaders by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE Leadership for Leaders

6. You have been appointed a director of your company but you are afraid to admit you don’t really know what that means even though you know that there are legal responsibilities involved?

Buy The Company Director’s Desktop Guide by clicking on the link below:

Click HERE The Company Director’s Desktop Guide

I am sure you are getting the picture now. Actually, I am really getting into this and I could go on and on (and well might in the future).

Perhaps bibliotherapy might not be such a bad idea after all! You might well be tempted to shout “rubbish” or “it’s just simple common sense” or “you can’t con me” or “this is nonsense”.

But, if you believe in the power of books to change someone’s life for the better, then can you come up with a better word than ‘Bibliotherapy’?

And do you think I have a new career as a ‘Business Bibliotherapist’?

Neil Thomas

As the summer season has finally approached, it has brought some amazing opportunities for starting creating our own exciting new experiences.

Just last month I have been exploring the amazing French Riviera and it was one one of the most magnifique experiences of Art De Vivre!

I would like to share this experience with our selection of photographs capturing the real beauty of Côte d’Azur:

Nice, South of France

Cannes, South of France

Monaco, Principality of Monaco

If you would like to find out more information about France, explore our Speak The Culture: France guide by clicking on the link below:
http://bit.ly/bG7VMF

If you are interested in exploring any other European countries, please see our Speak The Culture range by clicking on the link below:
http://bit.ly/jTCcMo

The author Frank Baines returned to haunt his former home in the North Essex town of Coggeshall for the launch of Brian Mooney’s biography – Frank Baines: A Life Beyond the Sea (Thorogood) – and to celebrate the publication of Chindit Affair (Pen & Sword), Frank’s posthumously-published account of his wartime in experiences in Burma.

More than 100 guests were present at the event, which was held in the walled garden behind the elegant Regency house which was Frank’s home for some 30 years.

The two books unravel the many lives of Frank, who was at different times a sailor, soldier, Hindu monk, author and traveller. He was also gay and a social rebel. After cycling back to India in his early sixties, he returned to Coggeshall, where he died in an alms house in 1987.

The guests at the launch included Richard Rhodes James, the last surviving officer who fought alongside Frank with General Orde Wingate’s Chindits behind enemy lines in Burma in 1944.

Angela Spall was there for Thorogood.

Author Brian Mooney, who now lives in Frank’s former house, stumbled across the unpublished account of Frank’s wartime experiences when he was writing his biography.

‘It was an amazing discovery, just one of many I made about Frank as I researched his life,’ says Brian. ‘The manuscript had been lying on the shelves of the local solicitor’s office for almost a quarter of a century.’

Brian’s biography brings together for the first time all the aspects of Frank’s life and reveals his highly unusual family background. In addition, the book reproduces some of Frank’s early work as a journalist in Calcutta and includes the full account of his bicycle journey back to India at the age of 62.

Chindit Affair relates the story of 111 Brigade which was commanded by the future author John Masters. More than 2,000 men were dropped into Northern Burma to engage the Japanese from the rear. Five months later there were only about 100 men left fit to fight. Frank was one of them. He tells of the horrors and privations of jungle warfare – and of his unconventional intimate relationship with one of his Gurkha riflemen.

By birth Frank Baines was a son of Cornwall – but his later life revolved round Essex, and it is out of Essex that these two fascinating books have come.

Reported as having ‘a strong belief in the cultural importance of book stores’, how will they fare in this challenging era of bookselling, when bookshops are subject to the pressures of:

1. Supermarkets
2. The internet
3. E-books
4. A less ‘bookish’ society
5. Tough trading conditions in the economy as a whole
6. Rents at levels which are economically unsustainable (and at odds with problems on the high street – landlords cannot get their heads round the fact that rents need to come down considerably)

What do I think Waterstone’s new team should look at doing?

1. Creating a more pleasurable in-store experience (a bit more like Ottakar’s, the chain that HMV/Waterstones swallowed up). As Mary Portas would say – you have to make people want to shop at Waterstone’s and not just think ‘I could get that cheaper at Amazon’

2. Working to ensure the public can trust what Waterstone’s does and that it is merit alone which lies behind its own buying and promotional policy (for example it must prove that its window and other displays are not simply a result of publishers paying for prominence).

3. Reducing the number of copies of some titles being out on display at positions all over the shop (= the shameless over-promotion of key titles) and stop competing with the supermarkets.

4. Recognizing and embracing that e-books exist and set up a service accordingly.

5. Stopping the selling of stationery and gifts.

6. Introducing small publishers tables.

7. Trying to sponsor new titles.

8. Moving away from the over-rigid categorisation of titles and making displays more relaxed and eclectic.

9. End fixed times when Waterstone’s makes book selection decisions, which causes invidious comparisons and only goes to guarantee the dominance of big publishers.

10. Franchise small town stores to local managers so that local interests can better be served.

Out of all of these, the one that could make a big impact is the honesty/trust one. Book retailers should be more transparent and either end the practice altogether, or be totally open about the fact that the publishers who pay more get stocked and displayed more. Waterstone’s should become the hero of the book-buying public and the scourge of other booksellers that do not match their new high standards (eg come out and be honest WHSmith about the workings of the Richard and Judy Book Club).

And what about Waterstone’s awards for new authors or specialist publishers?!

Let’s see what happens…….

Neil Thomas

There was a certain end-of-term informality about the final day of the 2011 London Book Fair (LBF) on Wednesday. After 72 hours of meetings, greetings and tweetings, the exhibitors drew breath and by and large seemed to call it a success (and a welcome tonic to last year’s ash cloud disappointments).

I spent the day meeting with the aggregators that help Thorogood sell their books in digital format around the world. In common, they talked about how rapidly the ebooks market is evolving; both in terms of buying habits and in the processes used for converting books to digital format.

We’ve been selling PDF files of Thorogood titles for some time. And now we’re adding epub format files to the catalogue – so that Thorogood books can be read on ebook reading devices like the Kindle and its competing cousins. For us, and for the rest of the publishing world, the next big leap forward lies in adapting more visually-led books for the digital world. Art books, graphic novels and titles like our own Speak the Culture series are much harder to marry with the demands of digital.

However, there were firms at LBF promoting new software that purported to do the job. So, envisage a book displayed rather like a glorified app – one that can bolster content with video clips, audio and links, and which can display rich artwork and photographs within the flow of the text. Sounds impressive – and the samples I saw were very promising indeed. It remains to be seen whether the book buying public will accept the reduction of their weighty, elegant design-led books down to an electronic image in quite the same way that they seem to be doing with text.

Andrew Whittaker

Easter is the first real chance of the year to grab a holiday. A lot of people do just that and head off to the slopes or the sun, to the country or the coast.

It gives a chance to ‘recharge your batteries’, as we like to describe the process of emotional rebalancing that a break from work can provide.

As well as a physical change in routine and the variation that a change of location can provide to the senses, it is worth thinking of topping up mental reserves through the effects of good books! It doesn’t matter whether you are Kindle-ing or paper-ing your reading – they all count.

Reading does affect mental well-being – a recent letter in The Times pointed out that in cases of mental health problems, doctors would do well do ask patients how many books they were reading – and on the answer, ‘none!’ they should suggest that it would help to read more.

So, if holidays can give a physical rest, then mental reconnection is just as important. And why not look at ways of improving your approach to life?

Two books this year that have given me pleasure in this dimension are:
How to Live:Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Answers by Sarah Bakewell – a literary tart of a name, you could say; and How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton – who usually hits the right philosophical ‘button’.

Oh! And if you want anything to sharpen your business thinking and freshen up your thought processes for the return to the office, then anything published by Thorogood would help – maybe for starters anything written by Barrie Pearson or by John Adair.

Neil Thomas

Last year’s event featured The Ash Cloud, which sounds like a new work of fiction by a popular American author dissecting a family being torn apart by feuding, after the family home is burnt to the ground. Film, Paperback, translation and foreign rights will all be available at this year’s fair!

Actually, the impact of flight cancellation and disruption blighted the 2010 London Book Fair and prevented many exhibitors and visitors from attending. It will be interesting to see if it has bequeathed a legacy of non-attendance to this year. Questions that people will have been asking ahead of booking up are, undoubtedly, ‘did my not going last year impact me or my business?’

Sure enough, Thorogood will have its key people there again this year, using the networking opportunity afforded by the Book Fair to meet up with new and old contacts in the service industries that surround publishing: the agents, the aggregators, the distributors, the rights sales people and so forth.

What of the future though? If only a few more each year decide they can live without going, it would quickly lose its appeal. I also wonder at what point a virtual exhibition will replace it. Instead of traipsing round aisle after aisle of a big book fair, you will be iPadding around an electronic exhibition, stopping to look at any onscreen ‘stall’ that appeals and to have impromptu or pre-arranged ‘face time’ with people you want to meet; and ditto having video-linked web meetings with people you want/need to do business with.

Will all exhibitions go that way? This might be unlikely as some products you need to touch and test, for example furniture or yachts. Will Book Fairs go that way? Why not? After all, despite years of thinking that the bookshop was the only way to sell books, the publishing industry now realises that it isn’t. For books, more than many other products, bookshops and book fairs may become a thing of the past. One thing for sure is that it is going to be interesting to see if the 2011 London Book Fair is a bounce back or stay-away event.

Neil Thomas

Take for example the recent Report published on Mediation, authored by Alex Bevan, Guy Hollebon and Lucinda Bromfield. Not only do you get real insights into this increasingly vogue area of professional development, but also you can use it to obtain CPD hours.

It is worth your while looking through the whole range of these Reports to grasp their range and their value to you in your daily professional life and your professional development.

The main idea behind the Reports has always been to examine a key area of practical importance and to get analysis and understanding of the key issues as well as techniques for overcoming problems and avoiding pitfalls.

Thanks to Thorgood’s work on distance learning, through its sister company Falconbury, it realised that CPD could be applicable to these Special Reports and the mechanisms to achieve it could be set in place. Thorogood has sought to apply CPD qualification to all relevant Reports and will do so, similarly, on Reports published in the future.

As a further feature for professional firms – you can now subscribe to our Reports service – this makes all the Reports in their latest editions available for download within your firm and all users can utilise the CPD process when reading them.

Please look at the Reports we publish in the light of this new CPD enhancement.

The successful ones know that a better cultural understanding leads to better commercial results with buyers and sellers in ‘foreign’ countries.

Not surprisingly, Thorogood’s practical guide The World’s Business Cultures and how to unlock them is the handbook of choice for the savvy international trader.

The Chartered Management Institute recognised this in shortlisting The World’s Business Cultures for its Management Book of the Year, 2010.

It didn’t quite win as the prize went, predictably, to the long-established US management guru, Henry Mintzberg. Quite why escapes me! And, after all, Americans are the ones who would benefit most from reading Thorogood’s book on the business cultures of various countries!!

Neil Thomas

Greville Janner’s book (Janner’s Complete Speechmaker) is a book that helps you overcome the fears of public speaking (in small or large gatherings) – it should be given to all employees to help them perform in meetings, pitches and conferences.
After all, if we can learn the tricks of the trade and the techniques to acquit ourselves well, then we can perform at our best.

Thorogood has this book as one of its ‘Box of Books’ special offers and some thoughtful bosses are buying them (a box contains 25 books) to give to their staff.
A great present – something that will help the individual to give of their best and develop themselves and the business.

A neat idea for Christmas – to spread some enlightenment. Actually, though, this is something that can be done all year round and it is worth checking out the titles that could be used in this way.

National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) continue to be an area where the development of individuals is recognised as being key to their ability to perform well in their jobs. They benefit, their careers prosper AND their employers get the best out their people.

Training is going to get more vocational in the coming years, particularly with the failings of the educational system. NVQs are the accepted vocational training instruments and surely will become more widespread, increasingly recognised as a badge of achievement in individuals.

We at Thorogood recognise the growing importance of NVQs. More and more companies are doing so too. What better way for employee training support than companies buying this book for their valued employees who are, or are thinking of, undertaking NVQs. Look at the special offers for this first class practical guide to NVQs in management.

Fortunately we can take the broad view when celebrating the excellence of one of our recent publications. We have recently published a great book (The World’s Business Cultures and how to unlock them) which has had its praises sung by the Chartered Management Institute by selecting it as one of its Management Book of the Year short listed titles for 2010.

So, modesty and behavioural etiquette can be observed by letting the CMI short listing trumpet the value of The World’s Business Cultures as a reference and guide book to its business users.

However, as a trumpeter (which I am), can I blow our own publishing trumpet and tell you that we think it is a great and practical aid for any executive with any kind of international role or working for a multinational employer. In fact, for anyone with any dealings with different business cultures, this book is a must buy (and must use) item.

Please check it out for yourselves and feel free to blow our trumpet for us.

Has anyone spotted any difference?

There is still the dominance of celebrity bios, despite the fact that Waterstones said they had not worked last year. So much so, in fact, that in my local Waterstones, there were no fewer than nine (at least – even I got a bit bored with my mini survey) different piles of Stephen Fry’s latest masterpiece (irony intended here, folks) in addition to the window display. Why, when space is limited do they do this? It smacks of desperation, as even the most half-witted and short-sighted of customers could find a Fry-up on the shelves for either an intended or an impulse buy.

What it does do is limit the choice of other titles the bookshop can display to say nothing of the fact that they must think that all we care about is the latest high discount offering.

Neil Thomas

In its most insidious form, the anti-competitiveness of the business can be seen in the lack of openness that lies behind how books are ‘selected’, not just for prizes but also for promotional campaigns by large retailers.

There may still be quite a few readers who believe the following: – that prizes such as the Man Booker prize are awarded to books carefully selected from all the relevant books published in the period concerned and not just from books entered by publishers with payment of a fee required, up to £10,000 in the Man Booker case; – that the new Richard and Judy Book Club, operating through WH Smith, chooses only those books that the Club have specially chosen as the best in class for readers (and not just from those publishers prepared to cough up a fat fee – of £25,000 per title); – that large chains, such as Waterstone’s and WHSmith, stock and promote books on merit alone, displaying and pushing books that they believe in and not just those from publishers who fork out a large contribution to achieve that status (up to £50,000 plus); and – that book review pages can be relied upon to be representative of books currently available.

Sorry readers, very little that is available to you in the bookshops or supermarkets is purely through the merit of the book itself, or of the good taste of the retailer, and prizes are not dispassionately awarded to the best of the best.

Someone should really write a book about all this (what is above is only the tip of an iceberg in a very murky sea). The trouble is, no-one would be able to see it as the big book retailers or supermarkets wouldn’t stock it and, of course, none of the big publishers would publish it in the first place.

It also quoted that The Rough Guide to France, which sold 11,493 copies in 2008 fell by 45% to a sale of 6,561 in 2009 and the article went on to point out that the average sale of each guide book title from the leading five publishers was around 1,500 copies.

More and more, apparently, people are finding their info online or in Apps and some publishers (such as Nota Bene) have decided as a result to abandon print formats for their publications altogether.

Why am I telling you all this?

Clearly we are watching developments in the travel book business with interest, because of our own growing success with our Speak the Culture series. We seem to be bucking the trend and achieving some success with title sales. Fortunately, they are not guide books as such, but are a different way of exploring the culture of a country.

What we will do is pursue online, e-book and other applications, which will bring the fascinating mix of cultural information that is packed into each of the Speak the Culture books to as wide a range of people, in as wide a range of formats, as it is prudent and effective so to do.

• Waterstone’s & WH Smith, who sell DRM-ed (don’t get me started on that) books in ePub format, usable on a Sony reader, or a number of other devices;

• Amazon, whose Kindle is becoming very popular in the US but has been available here via an odd model; requiring you to buy it from the US, and go back there for eBooks.

Neither of which I have seen as particularly tempting; the former typically being too expensive and without wide exposure; the latter prompting too many logistical doubts for those outside the UK.

Now, however, it seems that the game is afoot! We have, in short succession, been presented with two very viable alternatives:

• Apple’s iPad – not a dedicated reader device, and perhaps without the readability of the e-ink devices; but versatile and aided by the iBookstore, bringing the ease of use of iTunes to eBooks. As with all things Apple, they have a way of making folk want it, and have sold millions already – so a definitely a lot of promise!

• The imminent arrival of the Kindle store in the UK, with UK pricing – an the accompanying announcement of the latest Kindle device, at an impressive price of £109 (for the wifi-only version). Having said that, contrary to Apple, Amazon seem more focused on selling eBooks themselves, allowing you to read Kindle editions on your Mac or PC, iPhone or iPad, as well as, of course, the Kindle.

Our eBooks are already available on amazon.com’s Kindle store, and (very nearly) on the iBookstore… given the renewed impetus, I’m off to make some more :) We started with a selection of our general interest books (including the very popular Letting Go, by Robert Lindsay), but next up are some of our bestselling business books. Please let us know in the comments if there are any particular titles that you’d like to see as eBooks!

It reminds me what a terrific book, Michael Kuhn’s ‘One Hundred Films and a Funeral’ is. This brilliantly tells the story of the attempt by an Englishman to set up a studio in LA and how, but for the sale of Polygram to a competitor, it would probably still be with us. Along the way, of course, some great films got made, including the one alluded to in the title of the book (‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, doh!).

It is a book which not only deserves to be compulsory reading for all media students and on the reading lists for all film courses, but for all those interested in the film world or the running of a creative business, as it provides a fascinating account of trying to break into the closed shop of Hollywood, battling with international distribution, taking on new media and outlets and trying to make worthwhile films in the process.

The author, Michael Kuhn (a quiet legend in the film world) knows all about the tangled legal and financial aspects of the film world too and this makes his book a real insider’s story. Good though the Dreamworks book is, it was written without any direct input of the main protagonists. Not so ‘One Hundred Films and a Funeral”, it was written by the man who had been there and done it, a gifted businessman who had a vision and managed to realise it against huge odds, only to have it snatched away.

These are exciting stories of dangerous raids and missions and the action takes place in the English Channel and in Northern France as well as on the Scilly base. The key to the success of the novels, besides the story-telling element, is the characterisation and understanding of people and how they interact and behave. The author revels in his portrayal of the passion and intrigue, of the people and places as well as of the dark and sinister and the cowardly and courageous.

We, the publishers, know Mike Williams as a thinker, lecturer and writer on leadership. This gives extra depth to his exploration of character, but it’s his military background (he was in the Special Boat Squadron and Naval Intelligence for a time) that gives his work grit and authenticity.

I believe in Tremayne (the hero), he has created a classic and enduring fictional persona and his development as a character and leader is fascinating to see unfold. In Commander Enever, he has given us the type of leader (or boss) we would have liked to nurture us. There are plenty of other inspirational characters in the books as well as the ones you love to hate who make our lives hell from time to time.

The two books published so far are the first two in our planned Channel Trilogy. Watch out next year for Mike’s Channel to Freedom, which will complete the series.
(Oh and by the way, reading the books will give you a longing to go to the Scillies or to go back there, if you have been already).

Jerry Coe

It is really significant that his autobiography Letting Go has been selected for this show (which grew out of the original Richard and Judy Book Club) as Amanda Ross is the person behind both and she has high standards. She has been described as the ‘most influential person in British publishing’.

There is intense competition to feature a book on the show and, besides their own researchers seeking out new titles, many many hundreds of books are submitted by anxious publishers. From thousands then, Letting Go has made it. And, before you ask, they approached us, which believe me, is an even better feeling than making a successful approach to them. The book’s selection is a real endorsement, a feather in Robert’s cap and, hopefully, a structural support in Thorogood’s fascinator.

The quality throughout the range of Thorogood list is becoming more and more widely recognised. Onward!

It was a wonderful blend of touching reminiscences, hilarious anecdotes and astute observations and the audiences were completely engrossed. Many were as amazed at the breadth of his acting work in the theatre, on TV and in film as they were at his amusing impressions of many leading actors and politicians.

Needless to say a lot of books were sold at each event and the book signings were a chance for many to exchange a few words and many laughs with the author. We are hoping to persuade Robert to do a one-man show: all who know him and his career or who have read the book will know what a triumph it would be – as those lucky enough to have caught him at these Festivals would readily testify.

Jerry Coe

PS Watch out for Robert on the TV Book Club – we will keep you posted on when this is to air, but the fact that “Letting Go” has been selected just goes to show what a great book it is.

Our book “The World’s business cultures and how to unlock them” is one such book that anyone trying to do any kind of business in this shrinking world of ours (where global reach is prized and international trade so desirable) should buy and use.

It does what it says on the tin (in this case, you can judge a book by looking at the cover!) and it gives tips, tricks and techniques for understanding cultural differences and how they impact on doing business and communicating cross-borders and across cultures.

Needless to say, it is one of the titles we will be submitting to the CMI competition. Check out the process, but more importantly, buy the book and learn how to use cultural sensitivities to your advantage.

The World’s Business Cultures

I had a great chat with Robert Lindsay earlier this week about his forthcoming appearance at the Literary Festival in Chester in June – and how he plans to share and perform scenes from his book Letting Go with his audience. I don’t want to say too much more. Check out the dates and try and be there! That’s what I’m going to be doing.

What comes across is that there is so much in the book which will ensure it will be an entertaining and illuminating evening and this emphasizes what a good book it is – altogether in a different league from the run-of-the-mill, so-called celebrity, autobiographies. The range of his acting and life experiences are way beyond the mundane level of the usual pap that gets published when it should be pulped!

Watch out too for an audio version of Letting Go, which is being read and recorded by Robert as I write this blog.

It was reported in today’s newspapers that the Macmillan publishing group has been banned by the World Bank for six years from participating in any its contracts. This sanction is being applied as a direct result of Macmillan apparently admitting that it paid bribes to secure a book deal in Sudan.

Macmillan have stated that “there is no suggestion that these concerns have affected any of Macmillan’s other principal businesses, and it is the case that they are confined to a limited part of our education business”. The ‘unlawful” payment was made by a member of staff in an unsuccessful bid for an education project backed by a World Bank Fund. The Serious Fraud Office in London is investigating!

Strangely enough, last week I posted a blog (www.falconbury.co.uk) about the new Bribery laws due to be coming into force in the UK later in the year.

Now, what do we make of all this?

The World Bank is surely not unaccustomed to such practices going on. My point of view is that ‘bribery’ payments are made more often than not as a result of extortion. Winning the contract is rarely on merit alone. The problem is rife and it is getting worse throughout the world. The payer gets punished but not the payee.

Nobody knows, of course, how widespread this is in the world of publishing – just how many contracts are won and lost where hidden payments sway the decision? Marketing and promotion expenditure and other expenses will hide a multitude of sins.

The pertinent point here is how often in publishing (just to stay focussed on that ‘industry’) are payments made which cannot be directly related to services received?

One area I am thinking of is the significant payments from large publishers to major booksellers to secure stocking and display arrangements. They are made in the name of marketing, but what are they really?

The 2010 London Book Fair was hit by the volcanic ash chaos and attendance, by exhibitors and visitors, was decimated by the fall-out.

Anyone who had perhaps chanced on the Fair without having seen the news on TV, online, or in the papers AND who had perhaps strolled into Earl’s Court from their flat around the corner (thereby avoiding all transport problems) could be forgiven for thinking that the whole emptiness of the 2010 Book Fair had symbolically captured the ghastly state that publishing is currently in.

In advance of the Fair (and not knowing what was to hit it and an industry already on its knees), Robert McCrum in the Observer had an interview with Andrew Wylie -who, perhaps, is the leading literary agent in the world of publishing – did not allude to the challenges that will face agents themselves. However, in an otherwise interesting and well written article, he did have a quote from Wylie, who, in saying that he was ‘not interested in mass culture’ went on to say “When I started out (in publishing), I saw nine out of ten people heading for the door marked Money, Commerce, Trash. So I chose the door marked Quality, Interest, Significance…”

You can be sure, dear reader, that Thorogood marches through that same door: Quality. Interest. Significance. If we had a coat of arms, those words would be emblazoned thereon.

...and in the absence of anyone else to do it, here follow a couple of nice mentions for the Speak the Culture series in the press.

The Independent’s resident culture pundit Tom Sutcliffe covered the books in ‘The Week in Culture’ recently, referring to “some very nice touches in the British volume – including an illustration of the safe gaze-range while looking at passengers opposite you on the Tube (anywhere between shoelaces and mid-chest is OK).

The Sunday Telegraph’s travel section carried a piece on Speak the Culture: France in Clover Stroud’s Travel Book Reviews. In particular, Clover honed in on the literature and philosophy chapter: “There are some good sections on French philosophy, taking the reader on a whistle-stop tour from Descartes to Bernard-Henri Lévy. This is a light-hearted guide, which might either inspire the reader to delve further into French culture, or at least help him or her talk their way through a dinner party conversation on the relationship between Foucault and the roots of post-Structuralism.”

Right, there you go, trumpet blown. Now, who wants to hear me play the banjo…?

We know, from the Sam Goldwyn, that ‘a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on’.

The columnist Sathnam Sanghera (The Times) recently made a few telling points in relation to a Harvard Business Review article by Deepak Malhotra which basically was in favour of less rigid contracts in the business world, when he pointed to Warren Buffet’s preference for a deals based on trust (an example being his acquistion of McLance & Co from Wal-Mart for $1.5billion where he said “ we did no due diligence. We knew everything would be exactly as Wal-Mart said it would be”).

He also referred to the conclusion reached by a research project in Warwick Business School, which was that trust was a better basis for a business agreement than a precisely worded contract.

What can all this mean – shorter contracts or no contracts, no due diligence, less contract disputes, more trust?

What would this mean for lawyers?

However, the more serious aspect of this is – what would it mean for law publishers!!

Fortunately, what might be called the ‘short-and-easy-to-understand contract movement’ is unlikely to get very far – firms are too untrusting, too frightened of risk, too bureaucratic and too in thrall to lawyers and accountants ever to embrace simplicity and mutual respect at the expense of a complicated contract. Phew!

(So, take a glance at Thorogood’s books on contractual matters, from contract administration and negotiation through to drafting and remedies as well as the technical reports on International Commercial Agreements, Employment Contracts or Software Contract Agreements. Hurry while stocks lasts and contracts remain!!)

I am thinking of starting a campaign to push for a knighthood for John Adair.

In all my years in the leadership and management development field, I think he has, more than any other single ‘guru’, contributed the most widely-relevant, easy-to-understand and long-lasting prescriptive analysis of leadership and related skills.

I first got to know him whilst working on a leadership course with RAF Cranwell that was open to British companies and then we published a book he had co-written on Time Management (“The Concise Time Management and Personal Development”).

From that we went on to publish books by him on Communication and Presentation Skills and on Leadership. We were able to re-publish his classic study in leadership lessons from great leaders, entitled “Inspiring Leadership”.

He is a widely published author (not just by Thorogood) and I said to him once, “John – wouldn’t it be great to have the main points from all of your books – there were then over 30 of them – brought together in one volume?” He replied that “Yes, that’s a good idea. You know my work as well as anyone – why don’t you do it!” I agreed.

It was only when I was driving away that I realised what had happened. I had said yes to this weighty project delegated to me – he had displayed his superior leadership skills!!

It turned out to be a wonderful time for me – reading and assimilating all his extant work and turning in a concise guide to his ‘teachings’. The book came out as “The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership” and then in a version called “The Best of John Adair on Leadership and Management”.

I urge all managers and leaders to read John Adair. I have been helped immeasurably by knowing him, working with him, reading his books and using his concepts in my management life. You will benefit greatly from his books.

He deserves a knighthood if anybody does.

I have been looking again at Thorogood’s recent major contribution to information management (its ‘Specialist Reports Subscription Scheme’) and marvelling not just at its value, but also its practical usefulness to members of those professional practices and companies where far-sighted ‘librarians’ have realised its usefulness.

It demonstrates just how far the service of a ‘librarian’ has travelled in recent times and how much Thorogood is trying to make the journey for them even more comfortable.

Information management, information science, information broking, knowledge management, research specialists, competitive intelligence specialists AND those who still call themselves librarians (!) will find, in the scope and coverage of the Reports, a wonderful source of incredibly useful information.

Not only in the Reports included in the service, but in the updates that will be made in new editions and new titles, the service will also feature extended facilities in continuing professional education aspects (including CPD points/hours) which participating firms will be able to access on-line – a very handy service to individuals who use the scheme.

It would be helpful to hear how users find the service and what additional features they would find useful. Please let us know.

The Reports themselves are based on the concept of a special topic being given a succinct and practical analysis by an ‘expert’ author at a length that lends itself to easy assimilation by the ‘reader’, or ‘user’, as I suppose us ‘information publishers’ must start calling our ‘customers’!!

Speak the Culture Italy

Italy is a country that many of us feel we know well. The food, the buildings, the wild hand gestures – all of them iconic. But what lies beneath the clichés? How do the Italians actually live? What do they know of their own history, of their music or sport? What do they know of their own culture?

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is rarely out of the international news. Most of the press is negative: the foreign media guffaw at Berlusconi’s weakness for attractive women and the accusations of dodgy dealing. Yet, in Italy, he commands the kind of popularity rating that Gordon Brown or Barack Obama can only dream of. Why? Speak the Culture: Italy explains it all, giving the background on Italian political culture and the widely held attitudes to government and power.

When you’re done boning up on politics, Speak the Culture: Italy can also instruct on which wines come from where or how the Italian diet breaks down region by region. And then there are the great films of Italian cinema, the key books by Italian writers, the story of Italian art and architecture (more colourful than most), the fashions, the media, the comedians… it’s all in there.

Like the previous titles in the Speak the Culture series, on France, Spain and Britain, the new book is expertly, wittily illustrated by artist Johnny Bull. The title also benefits greatly from the input of the Italian Cultural Institute, who were kind enough to advise and instruct where required.

So, you’ve got your phrasebook in hand, and know roughly what to say. And with your travel guide, you have a rough idea on where to visit. All you need now is Speak the Culture: Italy for that rounded understanding of what Italy and the Italians are all about.

They were a decent, intelligent bunch of people, mostly the wrong side of fifty – although in fairness, their hair was probably more grey than their personalities and lively conversation flowed about the current problems faced by the ‘creative industries’, as the political guest speaker kept referring to the assembled, mostly non-creatives in front of him.

In truth, of course, the problems facing publishing – from the retail turmoil to the digital challenges faced by the traditional book – are enough to ensure that where one or more publishing types are gathered together there will be lots of nervous laughter at predictions of what the future holds and all sharp knives are best removed lest the throng be moved to self-harm.

In the crowded bar beforehand, it felt as if I was milling around at Sevastopol with the cavalry officers of the Light Brigade the night before Balaclava and the doomed charge of the six hundred, or perhaps it was more like being at a drinks do in the officers mess of a cavalry regiment awaiting embarkation to France in 1914.

The way that the forthcoming publishing war is to be fought will be very different from those in the past. The cavalry officers have had their day. The old order changeth indeed.

In fifteen words or less please tell Thorogood why you deserve to win the free signed copy

Already there are a lot of free e-books available (from new authors as well as out-of-copyright works) and pricing is going to be an issue.

However, some have the vision that Apple’s iBooks ‘store’ will do for books what iTunes has done for music. Only one article (that I have seen) from the ever-thoughtful Sathnam Sanghera in The Times (26th January 2010) has pointed out that this is not necessarily a model worth rushing to follow, when he concluded, “herein lies the paradox of the digital age: music and book fans will have more choice than ever, but as a result of paying nothing or virtually nothing for what they consume, they’ll eventually have very little to choose from.”

In truth, consumers see digital access as being cheaper for them (AND they then spend less than before on what they consume). This is not going to make it any easier for publishers to make money in an already difficult market. The real truth is that much of the drive for digital devices comes from the technology companies – publishers would rather sell books, but they now race to keep up. They try to embrace the future but will probably strangle themselves in the process.

• a year-on-year decline in book sales • the collapse of the Borders chain of shops
• the failure of Waterstones to give trade leadership in book-selling, settling instead in trying to compete with supermarkets (a ray of hope – Waterstones have realised part of the error of their ways and the man supposedly responsible has now been replaced)
• the pursuit by all the bookchains of the pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap approach • the failure of celebrity autobiographies to maintain their appeal • the ascendancy of Amazon and other on-line booksellers
• the race to the bottom in pricing – lowest price wins – with the runners being the book chains, the supermarkets and the online sellers • the rise and rise of supermarkets in high-discount, high-volume sales
• the much-punted rise in electronic readers like the Kindle and Sony Reader, to say nothing of Apple’s likely announcement of an iSlate, or iTablet, or whatever it is to be called.

What they (the Literary Editors) have failed to acknowledge is their own role in all this – in particular it is now more difficult to get a book reviewed than it is to persuade the chains that a book is worth stocking.

Instead, Literary Editors are obsessed with being thought of as intellectually superior and they review books that buff up their own narcissistic view of themselves and their reviewers as refined aesthetes of impeccable taste. Books reviewed are mainly ones that you would expect to find cluttering up the storage cellars in some university library and are on niche subjects that have limited appeal.

What they don’t do is find the nuggets in new publishing. They are as much to blame for the struggle that it is to be a publisher of new works of fiction and non-fiction as the book shops they malign (quite rightly as it happens) and they themselves are part of the problem.

Come on Literary Editors! Wake up, get off your snooty high horses and start reviewing new books from new authors and publishers and start sleuthing out some real publishing gems that deserve a wider audience. At the same time you will be doing your own readers a good turn by discovering some really good books.

Can I give an example of what I mean … of course I can. You need look no further than the list of titles from Thorogood Publishing Ltd.

Janice Austin from Hatfield

Congratulations Janice!!

Just a reminder to all those still interested in getting their hands on a signed copy – Thorogood are selling signed copies of ‘Letting Go’ for £18.99.

We look forward to receiving your order!

I have read, over the years, about quite a few people who in their adult years regret not being able to play the piano. Some talk about taking it up like Sir Alex Ferguson or Des Lynam in later life and some like Lenny Henry and Sebastian Coe at an earlier stage. Countless others would like to play the piano or keyboard but never quite get round to it.

The book that does the hardwork of making playing the piano/keyboard easier for you is Playing Popular Piano and Keyboards from Thorogood Publishing.

It makes the piano seem less of an adversary and more of a friend, showing how you can play what you want to play. In a straightforward series of self-study lessons, you can learn all about chords and how to use them to speed your progress in learning to play.

Why not give it a try?

Added to that is the basic fact that so few people understand themselves and what they want to do in life, that their lives very often start off on the wrong foot and limp along from then on.

Too few people take stock of themselves and their talents and then decide some kind of plan – with goals to achieve and milestones to reach where effort can be put in and rewarded with success.

This is why there is so much attention given to self-help and personal improvement books and why life coaching is in vogue.

But ….. people can life-coach themselves to success and a blueprint to do just that is provided in Me-Time from Thorogood Publishing – in easy steps it shows you how best to develop and exploit your assets, skills and character to achieve personal and financial success as well as enjoy a good work/life balance.

Some other bright spark said that this was leadership!

It is fairly obvious then that we should be making sure that we can make sensible decisions when called upon to do so, even in circumstances where the right sort of action is not clear-cut.

We need the right (or perhaps I should say, left) sort of brain training to help us to do this.

The two people who have helped me most in this area are Barrie Pearson and John Adair.

Barrie Pearson’s common sense views on financial management, profit improvement and strategic thinking certainly get managers thinking in the right way to deal with whatever gets thrown at them. See his book Exit Right to pep up your own management performance.

John Adair is full of calm advice on how to approach problems and find the way ahead. His thinking is so clear that it is catching and The Best of John Adair is packed full of ways to help you to know what to do even when you don’t know what to do.

Sometimes intelligence is knowing where to look for inspirational ideas to guide you to know what to do.

So, Thorogood have bucked the trend with what you could call a ‘ Celebrated autobiography’. In other words, this is a well-written autobiography from an incredibly well-respected actor who concentrates more on the price of fame (unlike Jordan who concentrates on the fame of Price), the importance of family and roots and winning respect through hard work, as well giving a glimpse into the highs and lows of being in the spotlight.

Robert Lindsay’s book “Letting Go” is frankly a cut above the pile-‘em-high-and-sell-’em-cheap-at-vast-discount-books that supermarkets and book chains are, between them, stocking and flogging to the extent that they are killing both public interest and bookshops at the same time.

Obviously, Robert’s book is the must-buy this Christmas for people who like books and enjoy reading something worthwhile.

If you’re not quite sure about how this works, read our eBook FAQ.

We’re also planning to convert more of our books to the ePub eBook format, coming very soon will be:

The Secret Channel by Mike Williams
Channel of Invasion by Mike Williams
Poison Farm by David Williams
Jellied Eels and Zeppelins by Sue Taylor

As you can see, we’re focusing on our General Interest section, since they are most suited to the reflowable format for electronic readers (remember that we offer PDF downloads for reports in our Professional section).

Please let us know in the comments below if there are any other books you’d like to see as eBooks – we’ll try and fit them into the schedule!

Well, I say excited, but I’m kind of in two minds about it. In theory, the growing (albeit slowly) eBook market is a good thing. As a consumer, it’s certainly not for everyone, actual books being preferable for many folk – but the display technology of reader devices is impressive and for people who read a lot of books, it gives them the choice not to carry them around.

As a publisher, it’s also obviously very appealing – in theory no printing and distribution costs, and the ability to supply a product to our readers instantly – in the same way we’re getting used to doing with music and films.

However, it seems that ye olde publishing industry is alive and well. Getting eBooks listed on Waterstone’s and WHSmith (for now the main two players in the UK) is proving less than straightforward, so we’re selling them here on our site too. More to the point, anyone who’s been shopping there can’t have missed the fact that most publishers (seemingly as terrified of digital distribution as music publishers were a few years ago) are setting unrealistic prices – in most cases, in excess of the printed book.

This may change with the arrival of Amazon’s Kindle – currently semi-available in the UK but will likely take off when it’s properly for sale on amazon.co.uk. Both their format and reader are proprietary – I’m more in favour of open standards (how un-Sony of Sony to be more standards based!), but suspect they will come to dominate the market, so we’ll very likely list our titles there too when it does happen.

The other barrier is the price of the current readers – I’m sure the manufacturers are trying, but the tech is fairly new and there needs to be a bit more demand before they become cheaper. The current Sony models are about £150 and £230 – you’ve need to be reading a lot to make that worthwhile, I think a lot more will sell when they are under £100.

Having said that, I urge anyone who hasn’t seen one to pop into a branch of Waterstone’s – where they usually have them on display – to have a play. The screen is very different from anything you’ve seen before, much easier on the eyes than an LCD screen (it’s not backlit), and much closer to the feeling of reading on paper. I have the 6” model with a touch screen and search & dictionary features – however, I’d recommend the 5” one which is cheaper, and the non-touch screen is easier to read (which, after all, is what it’s for).

So, on balance, although it’s early days, I am excited about it – and anything that gives our readers more choice and convenience can only be a good thing.

More to read in the following links, and of course let us have your comments below!

More about the Sony Reader
Waterstone’s eBook store
Lots of free eBooks (mainly classics) at The Book Depository

To ensure your signed copy please order now to avoid disappointment.

Purchase a signed copy here – Letting Go

To whet your appetite, we’ve just got our hands on a video of Robert introducing the book, and a clip of him reading from it too.

As usual, full details on the book here. BTW I’ve just learned that when the book is published, we’ll have a limited number of signed copies for sale! More news to come.

Even though you may know us for our business and professional publications, we also have a great selection of general interest books, both fiction and non-fiction.

One of the things that we’re really excited about is the forthcoming launch of Letting Go – Robert Lindsay’s long-awaited autobiography.

To celebrate the launch, we’re offering an exclusive autographed copy of the book – to enter, just leave a comment below, telling us your favourite Robert Lindsay role or moment!

When the book is published, we’ll pick one of your email addresses out of a (virtual) hat and post the winner’s name here.

UPDATE 23rd Oct – The competition is closed.

UPDATE 27th Oct -Thanks for all your great comments on our competition – the book is now published! We’ll be announcing the winner of the competition very soon. If you’re not lucky enough to win a signed copy and you’re not able to get to one of the book signing sessions, Robert has signed a limited number of copies that you can purchase direct from us.

Purchase a signed copy here – Letting Go

We’d still love to hear your comments!

We’ll keep it short and sweet. This is a great offer – one years subscription for £495 – and you can download our whole business report and briefings portfolio whenever you like. What’s more if you download the whole library you’d save £5286, but just 5 titles will save you loads.

Have a look.

• Easier navigation
• Better search facilities
• Lots more information on books and authors
• More discounts and offers
• Improved account access, showing your purchase history – and your single login allows access to all your download purchases

I’m the webmaster here, so if you have any feedback or ideas for the site, we’d love to know – just leave a comment below or use our contact form.

Otherwise, my colleages have been working hard on some great new products and offers that they’ll be telling you about soon. Some highlights include:

• Robert Lindsay – Letting Go – the long awaited autobiography!
• Professional subscription – our new professional download subscription services offers massive savings on our extensive library of professional reports
• Business library – a bundle of our most popular business books at 50% off

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