Now in paperback-an inside look at Countrywide Home Loans and the mortgage crisis, from a former mortgage lender executive. In July 2004, Adam Michaelson attended a high-level meeting at Countrywide Financial headquarters about a new loan product that would allow borrowers to pay less than their minimum monthly payment. The "finance jocks" believed that the booming housing market would only get bigger, supporting homeowners in a cycle of borrowing against their houses and refinancing later. They were wrong. And when the bottom dropped out, Countrywide suffered the consequences-as did millions of Americans. With an insider's knowledge and thorough reporting on the impact on American families and the ripple effects on the economy, Michaelson examines the marketing of a mirage and the bad business decisions that destroyed a company, confronts the ethical questions that have arisen in the wake of the foreclosure crisis, and offers creative proposals to prevent such a meltdown from ever happening again.

Price: $12.99 USD

Honest and precise everything about writing for children there is to know. Jane Yolen, author Here is the comprehensive guide to writing, publishing, and selling for the ever-expanding and always exciting children's marketnow in a new and updated third edition. * Includes new chapters on self-publishing and on "how to choose a how-to", plus revision and updates throughout * Offers practical advice on getting started--and on dealing with out-of-print books * Covers picture books, chapter books, nonfiction, middle-grade and young novels, and common formats and genres * Reveals what happens inside a children's publishing company, and provides guidance in working with an editor * Sample cover and query letters, manuscript format, glossary, and recommended resources in an extensive appendix * Plus information on agents, contracts, copyright, marketing, and more

Price: $15.99 USD

Insightful summaries of fifteen outstanding management books Since 1978, Soundview Executive Book Summaries has offered its subscribers condensed versions of the most relevant and influential business books published each year. The company has won acclaim as the definitive selection service for business book readers. Following its successful first collection, The Marketing Gurus , Soundview has now compiled The Management Gurus , which includes summaries of fifteen management classics. One of them is a previously unpublished summary: Jack Welch and the 4 E's of Leadership . Other featured books include: * Winning with People by John Maxwell * Judgment by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis * Managing Crises Before They Happen by Ian I. Mitroff These summaries distill thousands of pages about leadership, strategy, crisis management, organizational behavior, and moreperfect for busy executives and students.

Price: $18.99 USD

Entrepreneur Stuart Skorman—the founder of Elephant Pharmacy, Hungryminds.com, Reel.com, and Empire Video—grew up in a retailing family in Ohio. He worked every kind of job, from cab driver to professional poker player to CEO. In this entertaining, personal account of his coming-of- age in the business world, Skorman gives an insider’s view of what it takes to start a business from the ground up. Stuart Skorman offers his hard-won lessons in business for any entrepreneur or small businessperson who wants to create a company that has a heart and soul. He reveals what he learned about marketing while working a stint as a rock band manager and bares his soul about his failure during the dot-com bubble. He describes in vivid terms the roller coaster ride of the entrepreneur in good times and bad and explains how to survive in today’s uncertain business environment.

Price: $22.95 USD

Microsoft Office Live is a service that allows individuals, small businesses, and organizations to create Web sites, share documents, and have a shared storage area on the Web Explains how to create a Web site; share documents, contact lists, project plans, and calendars; send or receive e-mails using Live Mail; and allow customers, employees, and vendors access to data based on specific security restrictions Discusses establishing security levels, sharing documents, defining and managing projects, tracking company assets, using the Contact Manager, using marketing campaigns, and working with client workspaces Office Live services can be used independently but they also integrate well with Microsoft Office programs used regularly by more than 400 million people around the world, including Microsoft Access, Excel, Outlook, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Small Business Edition

Price: $24.99 USD

'From Brand Vision to Brand Value' presents the reader with practical applications for brand building that build upon the theoretical background outlined in 'Creating Powerful Brands', a hugely successful text co-written by the author. It moves beyond the foundation material in that preliminary text to construct a flow chart for progressing the brand building process from strategy through tactics to implementation. Each stage in the flow process is examined to demonstrate how it can be applied in a real business context. The book provides an authoritative template for understanding the steps to maintaining, building and maximizing brand value. The best practice will therefore be allied to templates that allow people to undertake appropriate activity within their company. It will be essential reading for practitioners, students and executive courses. Creating Powerful Brands gives the background and this book contains the practical steps to implement theory Squarely aimed at practitioners and executive students within/without the CIM One of marketing's ongoing hottest topics and by the UK's leading brands academic

Price: $39.95 USD

Three things can happen when establishing a product price. A price set too high is a lost sale that could have been profitable at a lower price. A price set too low is rewarded with unprofitable work. Only when a price is set appropriately does a company make both a sale and a profit. Just as activity-based costing and activity-based management revolutionized the cost accounting world, activity-based pricing will bring a disciplined approach to developing pricing. Activity-based pricing examines the relationships between price, cost and sales volume and how this relationship effects profitability. Pricing for Profitability joins the disciplines of marketing, economics, business strategy, engineering and cost accounting to achieve maximum profitability.

Price: $120.95 USD

The Guerilla Performance and Multimedia Handbook is the ultimate guide for artists at all stages of their careers engaged in creating original performance and multimedia work, including hybrids of theatre, visual art, installation, physical theatre, dance, CD-Rom and web design. It covers all aspects of artist support including starting up a company, funding, multimedia tools, and documentation and marketing, and incorporates a useful Yellow Pages section with contact information for production, funding, venues, galleries, publications, festivals, printers, equipment hire, technical support, artists organizations, performance archives, copyright offices and software support. The book is lavishly illustrated and interviews from major artists and directors of some of the leading artist support groups in the UK and US along with illuminating case studies address practical questions and offer indispensable insights into how to succeed in the performance arts.

Price: $160.00 USD

Carefully crafted to provide tightly focused and authoritative information, the Directory of Therapeutic Enzymes covers all approved therapeutic enzymes currently used in medicine. Written mainly by industry experts, the book includes information sourced directly from the company that developed or manufactured the product. It explores major development issues, from manufacturing and marketing to delivery of the finished product. Chapter 1 reviews applied enzymology while chapter 2 delineates theory and applications. Between them, the first two chapters set the appropriate backdrop for the remaining chapters, which focus on actual enzyme products that have gained regulatory approval for general medical use. The chapter authors discuss the biochemistry of the enzymes, the reactions they catalyze, how they are produced or manufactured, and their medical applications.

Price: $169.95 USD

Over the past few years many people have experienced a profound sense of unease at the succession of strategic movements carried out by companies, which has led them to question the hidden meaning behind the torrent of management-speak. There is, moreover, a contradiction between the aspirations to a company's social responsibility, aspirations to sustainable development and practices widely used in management circles argued that, by focusing on techniques aimed at optimising results in the short term, marketing obliterates any sense of meaning or ethics in favour of rationalism and utilitarianism. The topic of this e-book focuses on the ultimate purpose(s) of our business undertakings with respect to our lives. How can we work in an ever more demanding professional context without loosing the meaning of life and our sense of responsibility? Phenomenology is a philosophical approach that can provide us with new insights as well as concepts and methods to help us assess this issue in a radical way.

Price: $199.00 USD