The 7th Annual Small Business Book Awards Feature What’s Worth Reading


The 7th Annual Small Business Book Awards Feature What’s Worth Reading

It’s time to nominate your picks for the Small Business Book Awards!

The event recognizes titles of interest to small business owners and entrepreneurs. But there are also books of interest to small business CEOs, managers and their staffs. The awards, now in their seventh year, also recognize resources for authors and the publishing industry as a whole.

The small business community plays a key role by nominating, showing their support for and voting on, their favorite titles and authors. In addition to community voting, the Small Business Book Awards also has a panel of expert judges who review the nominations and will vote for the 2015 winners.

Mark These Dates in Your Calendar

  • Nominations are now open and will run through March 11, 2015.
  • Community voting will begin March 12, 2015 and will run through April 2, 2015.
  • Community Choice Winners will be announced on April 3, 2015.
  • Judges Winners will be announced on April 10, 2015.

The History of the Small Business Book Awards

“Back in 2007, we noticed that most business books being reviewed or winning awards were books of interest to the enterprise or corporate audience. No sites consistently covered books specifically for small business owners and managers, and entrepreneurs,” says Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends and Founder of the Small Business Book Awards.

And so the business book review series here at Small Business Trends was born. More than 500 small business books later, the review feature at Small Business Trends is still going strong, thanks to a dedicated and committed team of reviewers.

The Small Business Book Awards were a natural next step. Once you’ve reviewed as many books as we have, you start getting asked for a lot of advice. People want to know which books you think they should read. You can spend a lot of time responding to these kinds of questions. Instead, we created the Small Business Book Awards with the goal of recognizing the best of the best. But more importantly, those titles aren’t just picked by our reviewers – they are chosen by you, the Small Business Trends community.

How it Works

You can nominate your favorite business books and author resources from now until March 11. Eligible books are those published between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014. We’re accepting books in the following categories:

  • Motivation
  • Startup
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Economics
  • Technology
  • Social Media
  • Resources (These are people, companies and tools that help small business book authors.)

Nominate a Business Book Now

Voting

After nominations close, you’ll be able to vote for your favorite business books and resources. You can vote for as many books and resources as you like and you will only need to vote once during the entire voting period. After voting closes on April 2, 2015, we will announce the Community Choice Winners.

The nominees with the top number of votes overall in each category at the conclusion of Community Voting will each be named a Small Business Book Awards Community Choice winner.

Overall and Category Winners will be determined separately by the Judging Panel, based on excellence and merit.

All winners will be recognized as such and will have the right to display the appropriate badges and stickers on their books, websites, brochures and elsewhere.

How We Maintain Quality and Credibility

Our goal is to establish the Small Business Book Awards as the premier award recognition for small business books. To that end, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the process and to build credibility into the awards.

Last year we added our panel of expert judges who reviewed the nominated books and voted on the best books in each category. This year, we have added an advisory panel comprised of small business experts and thought leaders to help us spread the word and continually raise the bar for the awards.

We’ve always had a very robust security process that disqualifies vote buying. And we use technology that ensures that all of the votes are legitimate and that there is no ballot stuffing.

This is YOUR Book Awards

I can’t speak for other awards, but as the manager for the Small Business Book Awards, I can tell you that my favorite part of this process is the community element. This is truly a business book awards by small business owners for small business owners.

Most of the nominated books will never see the New York Times best seller list. But they are often an important ingredient in helping small businesses become “best sellers.”

Books Photo via Shutterstock


More in: 3 Comments ▼

Ivana Taylor Ivana Taylor is the Book Editor for Small Business Trends. She is responsible for directing the site’s book review program and manages the team of professional book reviewers. She also spearheads the annual Small Business Book Awards. Ivana publishes DIYMarketers, where she shares daily do-it-yourself marketing tips, and is co-author of "Excel for Marketing Managers."

3 Reactions
  1. This event is a nice time for us to get together and celebrate the business books that have been written and look for books that will improve the way we do business. I love the idea. Improvement has always been an integral part of being a business owner.

  2. Love the contest and looking forward to some new recommendations to add to my reading list.