Audra Lamoon and Sue Gilkes of Your Impact, an International business and People development skills training consultancy, recently traveled to Ireland to talk about their business and book, Blondes in Business.

Having your own business is scary and difficult especially in current climes, yet two blondes have got a successful business!

Finding a book that gives the truth and relates to you when you are thinking of setting up a business is currently not possible – or at least we never found one!

Business books are boring – this book is very UN-boring – full of their real life stories, some very funny!

They believe that anyone can relate to the book, whatever the hair colour, male or female; they don’t have degrees or rich parents – they are normal girls made good through hard work and attitude.

Women and Men all over the world are currently facing times of uncertainty, redundancy and lack of opportunity. This book gives hope, inspiration, and a practical down to earth approach for anyone who wants to secure their future by having their own business.

Where do you go for business advice, how do you set up a company, who do you talk to where do you start – this book tells you yet you wont be bored, you wont be able to put it down!

This book shows anyone that they too can do it – they really can and that is VERY exciting!

View their TV interview on The Evening Show here

Felicity Lerouge has today released a beautiful video to promote her book, Changing the Channel.

Created to co-ordinate with the premier of the movie, Eat, Pray, Love which takes place in August, please visit Felicity’s page on Ecademy Press to view the video.

We love it when our authors create such powerful promotional tools such as this to market their work!

Dan Poynter, author of 124 books and publisher since 1969, recently traveled through London on several speaking engagements and discovered The Guide to a Dead Bril­liant Funeral Speech — Because you only get one chance to make a last impres­sion by Neil Dor­ward and published by Eacdemy Press in 2009.

This is fantastic PR from a publishing expert with a huge following, and Dan has written about the book in his blog: http://blog.parapublishing.com/

To purchase a copy of this book, please click here: http://www.ecademy-press.com/shop/health-and-well-being/the-guide-to-a-dead-brilliant-funeral-speech-by-neil-dorward/

So not long to go now .. England play Slovenia this afternoon in their “must-win” match .. if they want to stay in the World Cup.

So what must they do to win?

JO SIMPSON says the England team have to develop a “winning mindset”.   A PMA – Positive Mental Attitude – as someone else once called it!   It’s about changing patterns of thinking, which are preventing England working together as a team and winning.

Jo’s new book “They Thought It Was All Over…They Were Right!” explains how to recognise negative self-fulfilling prophecies ….  such as ‘We never win on penalties’ and ‘We are only a quarter finals team’ to name a couple.   And Jo says maintaining a positive mindset at all times has a massive impact on performance — and is achievable!

And Gary Linekar has endorsed it !!!

“They Thought It Was All Over…They Were Right!” by Jo Simpson (& Janice Barnett, & Ged Palmer)

Hear Jo on the radio today at the following times:

1020 SHEFFIELD LIVE

1040 COV & WAR LIVE

1050 GUERNSEY LIVE

1110 SOMERSET LIVE

1120 SOLENT REC

1130 CORNWALL LIVE

1140 BRISTOL LIVE

1150 TEES REC

1210 HUMBERSIDE

1220 KENT LIVE 

1240 NEWCASTLE LIVE

1250 SHROPSHIRE REC

The Bookseller Magazine is reporting that Christmas 2009 is “still impossible to call”. Booksellers have described the trading environment as “unpredictable” and “volatile” with sales of the bestselling titles well-down on last year and the market in general still below last year’s levels.

“Booksellers have reported a slight improvement in this week’s trading, compared with last week. But the Christmas Number One – Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol – has sold just 58,468 copies in the week to Saturday 19th December, a fraction of last year’s top title, J K Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The Harry Potter spin off saw sales of 159,337 in the same week, and seven other titles all sold more than 60,000 copies that week, a feat achieved by none this year.”

“Overall, Nielsen BookScan has reported a book spend of £75.7m—up 9.6% week on week but down 8.2% on the same week last year. According to BookScan, £1.69bn has been spent at UK book retailers thus far in 2009, down just 1.2% year on year. However, on a rolling 12-month basis, sales are down just 0.1% to £1.75bn, meaning that with an extra day’s trading this year the market could yet enter positive territory, with takings at UK book retailers this week expected to be much higher than the comparative week last year.”

Full story is HERE

The administrators of Borders bookstores in the UK have announced that the remaining 45 Borders and Books etc stores will close tomorrow and all staff will lose their jobs on Christmas Eve. The Times reported on the closure last Friday.

The reason? “The business has struggled with severe cashflow pressure this year after sales declines accelerated.

Stock levels were also hit as several of the company’s suppliers stopped or reduced its credit limits, while a number of credit insurers reduced their cover for the company.”

The administrators MCR had hoped to find a buyer but none had emerged resulting in another significant consolidation of bookselling in the UK.

From a publisher’s point of view, this can only be seen as making distribution more difficult as power is concentrated into a few big chains. major online stores and the remaining independent booksellers.

Borders were one of the pioneers of the concept of bookstore as a place to linger and browse books over coffee. They will be missed.

Over 70 people from across Belgium and neighbouring countries have gathered to celebrate the launch of networking expert Geert Conard’s latest book Friends with Benefits.

The launch, which took place on Sat 21st November at the Cultural Centre in Geert’s hometown of Diest, kicked off with a red carpet photoshoot and promo-movie by Cineworks. Guests were then entertained with speeches and presentations before doing what Geert does best, networking. The author also signed copies of Friends with Benefits and shared his sought-after expertise.

Find out more about Friends with Benefits and buy the book.

Visit Geert Conard’s press page at www.friends-with-benefits.eu

Please order early for Delivery in time for the Christmas Holiday.
Hardbacks need to be ordered by 6th December and Paperbacks by 10th December. Later orders cannot be guaranteed to arrive in time.

In order to make it more attractive to order your books for Christmas, we are offering Free Shipping on all book orders until the end of 10th December, 2009.

To take advantage of this, order your books as normal and, when you add your shipping details on the Checkout page, simply add Freeshipping (case sensitive) to the Discount Code field which is at the bottom of the page just above the PayPal logo.

When you confirm your order, the shipping field should be £0.00 and the words ‘Discount Code Freeshipping has been applied to your cart.’ will appear below the total price. If this does not happen, use the ‘back’ button to check and reenter the discount code.

Our books make great Christmas presents for your friends and colleagues.

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas
Ecademy Press

We are very happy to publish Geert Conard’s latest book for several reasons.

The first is that his Girlfriend in Every City was the first book we published in December 2005.

The second is that he is addressing a very topical subject – How to Network in the New Economy.

The third is that he is an excellent networker and a good friend.

So when he approached us with this latest book, we simply said YES.

What is the book about?
Four years after his first book ‘A Girlfriend in Every City’, Geert is back with more stories, examples, quotes and glimpses into his life as a proactive networker. This time his focus is on the changed world in which we live and work today. In this new economy, networking has become more important than ever before … The book is already available to buy both here and on Amazon.

Book Launch
On the evening of Saturday 21st November 2009, the book will be officially launched in Geert’s home town of Diest, Belgium. The presentations will be in Dutch with English powerpoint. The book is in English.

If you are interested in attending the launch, you can request an invitation from the book website.

You can buy the book for £14.99 from Ecademy Press and from Amazon at £14.24 (at time of posting this).

Philip Cox-Hynd, the author of ‘Change by Choice; the art of managing change’, published by Ecademy Press has been asked to deliver a keynote talk, in Holland next week, to senior figures from across Intervet, Europe, on the subject of, ‘Change; agent or victim’?

Intervet, a mainly European based animal health company, was recently acquired by The Schering-Plough Corporation -one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies – as part of its strategy to move further into the animal health space. Further acquisitions are planned.

Schering-Plough realises that acquisitions often mean disruption and uncertainty for it’s people as well as exciting challenges for others. To most people faced with ‘change’ that the individual did not seek, the sense of ‘choice’ regarding change is often a question of attitude. One of Philip’s ‘invitational’ phrases to those he works with is, “within every apparent ‘no-choice’ situation, there is always a choice; finding it is the challenge. This is often a personal ‘choice’, rather than something dependant on the outside world changing”.

Philip will challenge his audience to think more about how to embrace change and make it theirs, rather than change be experienced as an imposition and so the individual feel like a victim of change, rather than a change agent. Philip will draw on his experiences of bringing about and managing change in organisations over the past 20 years.

These experiences formed the basis of his book, ‘Change by Choice’, in which he explores both the psychology and practicalities of delivering change that is sustained and becomes a part of the new norm.

Philip’s web-site has 80 or so short video clips of him answering client questions on managing change. To have Philip speak at your event, contact him at philip at harley-young dot co dot uk

Change by Choice is available from Ecademy Press priced at just £12.99.