"The situation is like this," he explained. "The publisher McGraw-Hill had asked Maimunah Aminuddin and I to produce a four-book set on human resource management. Maimunah wrote one of the books, I did two and someone else did the fourth book on managing performance. Unfortunately, this fourth book is not up-to-mark and I'd like to ask you to write a new one from scratch."
I was attracted to the offer. I had heard of Maimunah, a human resources specialist who had written several books on human resource management and industrial relations, and liked the idea of being part of this joint initiative. "But," Tan went on, "you need to have the final draft ready within a month and it has to be about 100 pages long." I said okay, even though I would be paid royalty based on sales, something which I'm not keen on because the total amount I would receive would be very small, given book sales in this country.
I accepted the job because of the opportunity to work with Maimunah, who functioned as editor of the series, and Tan. Also, McGraw-Hill is a reputable international publisher and being a co-writer of one of their book sets would look good on my portfolio. I completed the final draft in time and the end result is Managing Performance in Malaysian Organisations, one of four books that make up The HRM Toolkit for Malaysian Practitioners. The other three books in the set are Recruitment and Selection in Malaysian Organisations (by Tan), Compensation Management in Malaysian Organisations (also by Tan) and Effective Training in Malaysian Organisations (by Maimunah).
It was quite an experience to receive a cheque every now and then over a number of years. The lengthy time in-between cheques meant that I'd forget about the royalty payment and would be pleasantly surprised to receive one in the post, regardless of the amount.
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