Product Details

• Published on: 1978-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 211 pages

Customer Reviews

From the horse's mouth
As the author of this book, still going strong at 81, I am amazed to find that nearly 40 years after I wrote it, some copies are still on sale.

It was first published in 1972 for £3.50. It was a best seller (for a management book). It was reprinted three times. The second edition was published in 1978 for £6.95 quoting favourable reveiws from the Financial Times, Management Today and New Society.

The book was based on the handout for a one-day seminar entitled Tackling the Problems of the Smaller Firm. At that time I was a senior management consultant working with a non-profit seeking organisation specialising in small firms. We devised the seminar as a means of making our services better know but we did not pressure participants to use our services.

In 1971 I took up an appointment as head of a new department at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) providing education and training for managers in smaller firms. I wrote the book, again for publicity (and to provide an extra source of income to maintain the standard of living of my family).

After taking an attractive early retirement package in 1982 I ran a series of one-day seminars entitled Managing for Profit. The participants attended for one day per month for eight months (managers in small firms can't afford to take time off to attend lengthy course). In effect, they got one chapter per month with a handout based on the typescript of the book. I also devised practical exercises for them to do after lunch to reinforce the teaching and discussion in the morning (and to prevent them falling asleep). I realised that many people cannot learn from reading books; they need to be taught by a good teacher.

Some of the managers who participated were from larger firms. Many of them said that they had never really
understood how a business worked. So if you don't understand how a business works, buy this book.

The basic principles outlined in the book are eternally valid but the financial figures are outdated owing to inflation. The book is better suited to managers in manufacturing industry but the principles are valid in service industries too.

My book royalties (10 oer cent of the selling price) did not make me rich but the seminar fees and the consultancy work that arose from the seminars kept my family in the manner to which they had become accustomed. Charles Dickens never made a good living as an author; he became rich from reading his books to paying audiences, especially in the USA.

The moral is, if you write a book, don't expect to become a millionaire from the royalties but do exploit other sources of income based on the contents of the book