No confidence at corporate drinks? Take a deep breath and give yourself a sharp talking to (Carole Stone's Successful Networking). Feel guilty about the people you have sacked? Give yourself permission not to feel guilty (Perry Wood's Secrets of the People Whisperer). June saw the launch of so many soft business titles it's a wonder none of them lists "become a business publisher" as the first secret of success. Leading the pack were Irish entrepreneur Bill Cullen's Golden Apples; T Harv Eker's Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, about how to get rich by thinking rich; Kate Mayfield and Malcolm Levene's chick-lit careers' guide, Ellie Hart Goes to Work; and Corinne Maier's delightfully cynical riposte to corporate life, Hello Laziness. Come autumn, commuters can improve their memories with Frank Felberbaum and Rachel Kranz's The Business of Memory, the "first memory programme specifically geared to business success", or their work-life balance with James O' Toole's Creating the Good Life - not a Tom and Barbara tie-in but an application of Aristotle's wisdom to work and life. This is on top of myriad launches earlier this year lead by bestsellers The Mind Gym and Sir Alan Sugar's TV tie-in, The Apprentice.
In truth, most fail to earn back their advances, but should one catch on, it stands to make a profit for a long time to come through continued sales, spin-offs and seminars Predicting a hit is not easy. Who Moved My Cheese?, Dr Spencer Johnson's allegory about change in the workplace, has sold more than 12-million copies worldwide, despite - or maybe because - it is a " simple parable" about four mice looking for cheese written in a style that would not tax most five-year-olds. No wonder there is cynicism about the motives of authors and publishers in this field. Andrew Franklin, the straight-talking Managing Director of Profile, is scathing about the sector. "The truth is that most of the people who write about business are self-promoting pillocks," says the publisher of Lynne Truss's bestselling punctuation guide, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. "I think business books have a bad reputation in the same way that self-help does.
They are cynically written and cynically sold and not much help to readers." Franklin has just launched what he claims will be the antidote to business books - Atlas Books, a series about businesses by well-respected authors, including Tim Parks on the Medicis (see review, p23). Franklin hopes it will elevate business books into the world of literature. Blame it on change and increased job insecurity, says Kate Nowlan, clinical director at Counselling for Companies, part of the charity WPF which provides help for stressed workers "Business is very, very tough It is all about productivity," she explains. "One of the problems with business is that it is not always treated as a serious subject for analysis. We are hoping that these will make people think about business in a different way," Franklin adds Whatever Franklin thinks, demand for these books is growing. Next up, she says, is a round-table session with several journalists from Japan. Passing them on the way out, I notice two of them are carrying beautifully wrapped presents.
