Business-English Books
When I worked in Taiwan, I wrote 6 business-English books for the mass market, and 10 business-English training books for a large ODM company (Original Design Manufacturing company) called Universal Scientific Industries. This company made high-tech products for big brand names that you are familiar with.
My goal is to write 1-3 books for the general global market, and to achieve the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. Some topics I might write about are life direction, personal achievement, and self-learning.
Business-English Series
A publishing company asked me if I would like to try to write a book for English learners. Writing books was one of my dreams since I was in grade school. The offer came at the perfect time, because I was frustrated with the lack of quality among common books used by English-teaching institutions.
My first book was a success: English Interviewing. So, I wrote five more books: Oral Correction, Product Presentation, Oral Business Communication, Negotiation, and Advanced Business Communication.
Three of the books were best sellers in their field. Four were later reproduced as “pocket books”. Those same four books were picked up by Mainland China’s largest book publisher after examining the series at an international book fair.
Book Series Advertised by the Publisher
This is a page in my publisher’s advertising literature. It is advertising the six business-English books I wrote, plus others written by different authors.
After my series proved very successful, the publisher asked others to contribute books to the series.
My books changed the business-English publishing field in Taiwan. Virtually all books prior to mine had serious flaws such as a lack of meaty vocabulary, lack of practical usage explanations, neglect to address common errors that are easily dealt with, and lack of application of linguistic concepts regarding the presentation of language material.
I was happy to find out that my books were picked up by university libraries and used in university classes. Actually, I wrote the books for individual study, but they work very well as textbooks. In fact, at the time I wrote them, they were the only cross-over language books bought in large numbers by both individual buyers and institutional buyers.
Advertising Brochure
This is the front of my publisher’s advertising brochure, introducing my series of books. The publisher branded this series as their “BIZ English” series.
‘Business Weekly’ Promotion 1
Business Weekly was the most popular business magazine in Taiwan. (Maybe it still is today; I don’t know.) The magazine gave away one of my books to new subscribers of the magazine.
You can see in the brochure that my books came with audio CDs. The CDs contained audio recordings of the correct pronunciation of every vocabulary word, phrase, and patterns sentence in the book.
‘Business Weekly’ Promotion 2
The Business Weekly magazine ran another promotion: one of my books was packaged with the magazine. The magazine ran this promotion for two issues that I am aware of.
Actually, I am not aware of all the promotions of my books.
‘taipei Times’ Promotion
Taipei Times is the premier English language newspaper in Taiwan — one of three. The newspaper ran a series of excerpts from my books.
My publisher promoted books well by striking win-win deals. The Taipei Times promotion is a good example. The newspaper increased readership among non-native English speakers, and the publisher increased book sales.
‘Commercial Times’ Promotion
Commercial Times is another English language newspaper in Taiwan. It also ran a series of exceprts from my books.
Corporate Training Books
An ODM company in Taiwan (Original Design Manufacturer) asked me to set up a business-English training program: create the training material, teach classes, train other teachers to teach classes, and train company employees to be English Mentors.
This offer came after I had already written most of my mass-market books, and I was an experienced business-English trainer and course developer. Therefore, the offer was music to my ears.
In the end, I wrote ten training books of approximately 200 pages each: “Advanced” and “General” courses for Salespeople, Engineers, Purchasing & Logistics staff, Quality Management staff, and Manufacturing Service staff.
Corporate Training Classes
Pictured here is one of my corporate training classes at a coffee shop on a farm. Taiwan has amazing coffee shops and tea shops — not just in the cities but out in the countryside, even nestled secretly in the middle of enormous stretches of rice fields.
The Human Resources manager responsible for the English training program at the company developed the idea of holding the last class of each training period over dinner at a restaurant. At these dinners, I took on the role of a potential customer from overseas, and the students had to communicate with me using all the language they learned from the course. It was great fun. Taiwanese are easygoing and friendly people.
