The product is 50 accounting workbooks in both English and Russian.
They are now found on http://www.profmoscow.site (English) and http://www.profmoscow.site/ru
(Russian)
From 2003-9, I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Moscow on European Union projects in the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Russia (Central Bank). Part of my work was writing 50 accounting workbooks, which were translated into Russian and then published on the project website, attracting more than one million downloads.
The books used the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) being adopted globally and were crucial, as there was not an official Russian translation of IFRS at that time.
When the projects ended in 2009, the global economy was not supporting further projects, so I had to find alternative employment. Many foreign (non-Russian) companies were replacing foreign staff with local staff (who were cheaper) and the latter have proved that they have been capable of the promotions.
Also, some foreign companies left Russia, while few new companies replaced them. Facing a drop in income from my project days, and no business employment on the horizon, I turned to training as my next career move.
The third edition of my accounting books had been published as I left PwC, so I could identify them as my work to potential employers. Within a year, they were out of date, as new standards were introduced into IFRS.
The European Union had copyright, which forbade sales of the books. To update them, I would have the cost and zero revenue for my work. This helped me, as PwC had no interest in regularly updating 50 books for no income. PwC and The European Union gave me the books to control.
For the first time in my life, I had a unique asset – the best IFRS workbooks in Russian (and little competition in English). Unique, as nobody else would do this amount of work and give it away free of charge.
They were out of date and my problem was to find help translating the Russian books. having just moved into a new flat and no longer working constantly, my finances were not strong.
A former colleague was interested in helping me with the Russian version and his university was going to host the books on its site, but for some reason (still not clear today) he broke contact and went silent. It wasted months and his university had a reorganisation, so I had also lost my intended host site.
Back to the drawing board!
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