Articles

Author is the Noah Webster of business

07:47 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 25, 2007
cherylhall@dallasnews.com

Jack P. Friedman has a series of best-sellers to his credit. But none of them has a sexy cover or intriguing title, and nobody has ever read one strictly for fun.

You've probably never heard of him, but you may well have one of his books close at hand.

That's because Jack Friedman is the business world's Noah Webster. The 62-year- old Richardson real estate economist is often the final word when it comes to making sense of business lingo.

For the past three decades, Dr. Friedman has been Barron's go-to guy for its business dictionaries and real estate reference guides. He's led the writing teams for 16 educational books -- almost all are into multiple editions. He's working on the seventh edition of Barron's Dictionary of Real Estate Terms.

Dr. Friedman has written another 10 business books for other major publishers.

All told, more than 1.7 million books have been sold with his name getting top billing on them.

Money magazine hailed his Complete Guide to Investment Opportunities, published in the mid-1980s, as one of nine books every investor should have.

"But no, none of my books is one that anyone would read for pleasure," Dr. Friedman says cheerily.

He completed his first Barron's assignment -- a how-to guide for passing real estate licensing exams -- while teaching at Georgia State University in 1979.

His latest effort, Dictionary of Business Terms, fourth edition, hit the bookstore shelves in May. And if history repeats itself, sales won't set the world on fire, but it will be evergreen -- making it onto the best-seller list from time to time until he comes out with the next version.

Dr. Friedman, Ph.D., MAI, CPA, CRE, ASA, has enough letters behind his name to start a game of Scrabble. He's a consultant and an expert witness in nonresidential real estate matters in such areas as condemnation, ad valorem taxation, finance and investment.

For example, the Internal Revenue Service hired him to come up with the fair market rental value of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's trading floors.

Barry Diskin, a real estate professor at Florida State University and consultant, has worked with Dr. Friedman on dozens of complex assignments.

"When there's a very difficult issue on the table, Jack's able to draw analogies that simplify it," says Dr. Diskin, who had Dr. Friedman as a professor when he was in graduate school at Georgia State. "He can take something that is baffling to most people and make it elegantly simple.

"The first person I call when I get stuck in what I call a logic box is Jack."

The money he earns writing dictionaries and consumer guides for Barron's is paltry compared with the $350 an hour Dr. Friedman gets for expert testimony and consulting.

After divvying up a 15 percent royalty to his co-authors, he typically pockets about 50 cents a book -- about $30,000 a year.

"When I was a professor, it was good extra income, and it helped me know more about the work I was doing," says Dr. Friedman, who was the head of research of Texas A&M University's Texas Real Estate Research Center and was a chaired professor in finance until 1990. "Now it gives me credibility when it comes to being an expert witness."

In terms of satisfaction, the rewards are often inverted.

"The books that I'm proudest of and that I've worked the hardest on intellectually typically pay off the least," Dr. Friedman says. In 1990, for example, Warren, Gorham & Lamont paid Dr. Friedman a $12,000 advance for the second edition of his Encyclopedia of Investments.

It was the only money he earned for the book, which details every investment imaginable, from annuities to zero coupon bonds to horses, paintings and theatrical productions.

"I have another book on income property appraisal and analysis," he says. "My rate of pay on that one was well under a dollar an hour."

Words evolve. Laws change. So he has to keep up.

"I read The Dallas Morning News business section, the Wall Street Journal and periodicals. When I see something I haven't seen before, I have to figure out if that's a new slant on that word or are they misusing it."

Bob O'Sullivan, managing editor of Barron's Educational Series Inc. in New York, says he never worries about mistakes.

"Jack is by far the most knowledgeable author that I've ever come across in my 13 years of publishing," he says. "In terms of what we require for manuscripts -- precision and clarity -- he has delivered in spades."

And there's another important factor: "Most of the books that he's done for us are successful," Mr. O'Sullivan says. "That's why we keep revising them."

Sample Articles

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The Appraisal Journal
Volume LXVIII
January 2000

Appraisal Review in a Litigation Support Role
by
Jack P. Friedman, MAI, PhD, CPA, ABV, and Nicholas Ordway, PhD, JD

Journal of Property Tax Management
Volume 10 Issue 1

Market Value of Inventory: Different Definitions Equal Different Values
by Jack P. Friedman
Summer 1998

Journal of Property Tax Management
Volume 12 Issue 2
Fall 2000

Public Utility Property Ad Valorem Taxation:
Regulatory Formulas Prevail Over Economics
by Jack P. Friedman and Barry A. Diskin

Journal of Property Tax Management
Volume 10 Issue 4
Spring 1999

Strategic Issues in Pipeline Valuation
by Jack P. Friedman and Laurence Zielke

Real Estate Issues
Volume 24, Number Four
Winter 1999

Defending an Oil Company Against Litigation for Environmental Contamination
by Jack P. Friedman, CRE