Want to get your neighbour to turn down his sound system? Convince your ex to switch weekends for the kids? People sometimes like to disparage academics the way they like to dis lawyers, but useful work is done by both.
All royalties from Antonis Parras' Negotiating Skills for Everyone (Kwantlen College University Press $40) will be used to create a bursary award for a needy student at Kwantlen's Business College where Parras teaches.

"I basically wrote this because a simplified negotiation book does not exist,"; he says, "one that can teach students at the undergraduate level and lawyers the simple steps for everyday negotiating."; Greek-born Parras has also published fiction. It shows in the preface.

"Moses was more than an Old Testament prophet, he was an ace negotiator. He had been up on the mountain all day long negotiating with the Supreme Other Side. His buddies were waiting for him at the foot of the mountain, drinking wine, eager for the results. At dusk, Moses came down and his buddies offered him wine.

"'Hey, Moses,' they asked, 'how did it go?'";

"'It was rough up there today,' Moses answered, quite exhausted. 'The good news is I got Him down ten. The bad news is adultery's still in there!";'

Hundreds of B.C. academics publish new books each year, disregarded by media. Some, like Parras, are published by relatively small presses, such as the new Kwantlen University College Publishing mandate (604-599-2354); others play in the big leagues at Princeton, Oxford or Cambridge. As in trade publishing, small can be beautiful.

[BCBW Autumn 2001]