Why I Am No Longer a Soundview Affiliate

I used to be an affiliate of Soundview's Executive Book Summary service but recently (early 2008) they removed me from their program for refusing to stop linking to freely available summaries (see below).

For some history, Soundview used to offer sample summaries for direct download, which I made available on this site. At some time, they changed their approach and now request people fill out a form to access the sample summaries. They contacted me and asked me to stop making those .pdf summaries available from my server, which I promptly agreed to do. However, I subsequently noticed that BNET still offers summaries (some .pdf and some audio) directly from their site. You have to be registered with BNET (though that is free) to access them, but they are there for the taking. Soundview noticed that after I removed my direct downloads I was linking to the BNET downloads and asked me to stop doing so.

Now, the entire nature of MBA Depot is to point people to the best, manually reviewed, free business resources around the Web. If it's out there, my linking to it is legal and appropriate. Soundview seems to feel otherwise. I quite naturally asked why they don't just ask BNET to stop offering the content in which case my links would become useless and I would naturally remove them, but in fact, I was dealing with Soundview's affiliate managment company, not Soundvie directly, so that question was never answered.

So, on principle I have decided to forgo the affiliate revenue in favor of providing the BNET links. I still think Soundview has a good product, but I'll leave it to you to decide whether a company that behaves as they have deserves your business. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, you may want to read my review of business book summary resources

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Soundview Summaries on BNET

I have found that BNET still has many Soundview summaries available. I don't know if they will be asked to remove them or not. In the meantime, I am posting direct links to the summaries I found on their site (some .pdf and some audio).

The 8th Habit - Audio Summary by Stephen Covey
The Art of the Start (Audio Summary) by Guy Kawasaki
The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave by Leigh Branham
Blink (Audio Summary) by Malcolm Gladwell
Time Traps (Audio Summary) by Todd Duncan
Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Off The Cuff: What to Say at a Moment's Notice (Audio Summary) by Anne Cooper Ready
The Enthusiastic Employee (Audio Summary) by David Sirota, Louis A. Mischkind and Michael Irwin Meltzer