See Who Won The 2014 Small Business Book Awards


Small Business Book Awards

The 2014 Small Business Book Awards are over. The results are in. And we’re pumped to tell you about the winners!

First, we’d like to thank all those whose great books and resources were nominated for this year’s 2014 Small Business Book Awards.  Feel proud — it’s an honor simply to be nominated.  After all, we know how much work it takes to write a book or create a resource that authors and book lovers rely upon.  To you, we tip our hats.

We’d also like to thank the community for your votes, and thank the panel of 24 expert judges for thoughtfully selecting the top winners based on merit. And a big thank you to our media partners who helped spread the word to prospective nominees.  Great job everybody!

Background of the Small Business Book Awards

The Small Business Book Awards program — presented by Small Business Trends — is now in its sixth year. And it started as a labor of love.

The Awards grew out of the weekend business book reviews launched right here on Small Business Trends back in 2007.

The reviews started when we realized there wasn’t enough attention being paid to books specifically targeted at a small business audience. We decided to do something about that and the weekend reviews were born.

The Small Business Book Awards, like the reviews, focus on the books that entrepreneurs, small business owners, CEOs, managers, and their staffs should have on their to-read list.  We also include a category for non-book resources, to recognize those who aid and support authors and book lovers.

Nominees receiving honors were announced at a recent Small Business Book Awards virtual ceremony, on a live Google Hangout on June 4, 2014. And now we’d like to share the results here, too.

The Awards this year had two parts to them:  the Judged Winners, which were chosen based on merit; and a Community Choice group of winners chosen by the popular vote.

2014 Judged Winners

New this year is the judged portion of the Awards.

The Judged Awards consist of an objective evaluation of recently published small business books and resources.  We wanted to interject a merit portion of the Awards, because we know that great books and resources may not always garner a lot of community votes during a voting period.  Some people are hesitant to ask their fans; others don’t have any problems with that.

We also know that great books aren’t always bestsellers.  A book may not make a bestseller list, and may not get a lot of community votes, yet still be an outstanding book.  In other words, neither public voting nor sales figures always signify the outstanding books or resources.  Hence, we added a judged element to the Awards for the first time in 2014 to address this.

The Judged Winners were selected by a panel of 24 expert judges. The judges chose based on 3 main elements:  content (quantity and quality);  usefulness (to small business owners and entrepreneurs as applied in their businesses); and freshness (of the subject matter or how the subject matter was treated).  The judges assigned point totals to each element, based on a scale of 1 to 10.  The two nominees in each category with the most points from the judges, were the winners.

The level of community support was also taken into account. For instance, in the case of tie votes (and there was at least one) the level of community support was the tie breaker.

Drum roll, please…. Presenting the Judged Winners in the 2014 Small Business Book Awards:

  • Marketing: Do It! Marketing by David Newman; and 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall
  • Motivation: Have Fun, Get Paid by Christopher Duncan; and Die Empty by Todd Henry
  • Startup: Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic by Bill Jensen; and The Conspiracy by Marc Daniels
  • Social Media: It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon! by Brian Basilico; and Mobile Marketing by Daniel Rowles
  • Management: Culture Without Accountability by Julie Miller; and Business Execution for Results by Stephen Lynch
  • Economics: Finerman’s Rules by Karen Finerman; and  The Money Bubble by  James Turk and John Rubino
  • Technology: !nnovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World by Kim Chandler McDonald; and Predictive Analytics by Eric Siegel
  • Resources: The Book Marketing Challenge; and BookWorks

2014 Community Choice Winners

Community Choice Awards winners represent the top public vote getters in eight Awards categories as chosen by fans and the small business community. Also, the top vote getter for the Awards was named the overall Community Choice Winner.  In other words, the Community Choice Winners are based solely on popular appeal with the community — the community loves them!

Winners of this year’s Community Choice Awards were:

  • Overall Community Choice Winner: Liber8 Your Business by Laura Humphreys
  • Motivation: The X Factor Selling System by Thomas F. La Vecchia
  • Economics: The Solution Revolution by William D. Eggers & Paul Macmillan
  • Social Media: It’s Not About You, It’s About BACON! by Brian Basilico
  • Startup: You Couldn’t Have Told Me This Before I Started My Business? by Jeff Roziere and Cathy Snelgrove
  • Technology: The Essential CIO by Matt Graham-Hyde
  • Management: Success Tools for CEO Coaches by M.S. Rao
  • Marketing: Valuable Content Marketing by Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton
  • Resources: The Definitive Guide to PR for Small Businesses by Alex Meystelman and Lyuba Ellingson

Meet the Judges, Staff and Media Partners!

Judges include three  members of the Small Business Trends editorial team and staff. They are Small Business Trends publisher Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends Book Editor Ivana Taylor and Small Business Trends Associate Book Editor Pierre DeBois.  Also included is Susan Payton, Communications Manager for the Awards.

Other judges include Susan Payton, William Bruce, Daria Steigman, Kimberly Crossland, Scott G. Wolfe, Carla Jenkins, Robert Brady, Melanie Forman, Simon Dunant, Brian Smith, Steve Sipress, Christina Bouza, Shelley Webb, Deborah Carney, Dustin Luther, Martin Lindeskog, Doc Kane, Lisa Dilg, Claire Boyles, Dale Anne Potter and Carla Holland. Read more about each on the Small Business Book Awards judges profile page.

Also, a big thank you to our partners and official supporters, including:  Author Marketing Club; Expert Marketer Magazine; Corine La Font’s HelpDeskJA; Marketing Tech Blog; and PR Newswire.

Winners get the recognition and publicity that comes with receiving the award and the right to display Winners insignias on books, websites, brochures and elsewhere.  (We also have gold stickers, too!)

Thanks again —  and congratulations to all the winners and to all those nominated.  This Slideshare presentation shows each of the winners:

4 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

4 Reactions
  1. Alright! I have a new list of must-reads. I will try to look for these on Amazon as some of these are not available in our local bookstore.

  2. can you please let me know when the next business awards are and what the criteria is?

  3. Congratulations to all of the winners! Thank you for providing this list. I’m eager to start reading them!