Publishing Industry

The 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards category winners (and shortlist for the best book of the year) 2014.

Impress your boss or empower your employees with books to help them grow... or just treat that special business someone in your life.

The culling process we undertake during the awards process is always rigorous, but we've narrowed it down to 40 books—5 each in 8 categories.

The business and economic world's most visible book award was announced today.

The s+b yearly list is always decidedly and refreshingly different than most others.

A shortlist for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award was announced yesterday. The books chosen focus very much on the big-picture issues of the day, "the most important trends shaping our world" as the press release puts it, so the switch from Goldman Sachs to McKinsey as a partner to FT has not reduced the scope of the books as I thought it may. (I speculated back in May when the announcement was made that McKinsey would now be backing the award that it may change focus to the more nuts-and-bolts business management issues that McKinsey ostensibly focuses on in its own work.

I speculated back in May when submissions opened for The Financial Times and McKinsey & Company 2014 Business Book of the Year Award that the books they looked at would be more focused on business nuts-and-bolts issues now that a consultancy firm (McKinsey) had taken over for an investment bank (Goldman Sachs) as the Financial Times' partner on the awards. I also thought they would not be announcing a longlist as they had in the past because it was not on their awards schedule. It seems I was wrong on both counts, because The Financial Times and McKinsey announced a longlist this morning, and the books on it are mostly big-picture books, not nut-and-bolts business and management books.

Here at 8cr, we are so fortunate to work, and form long-lasting relationships with, really great authors who are sharing important ideas with people around the world. We see them out on the road speaking to hundreds of groups a year, trying to make the world of business a better place. Spending time away from their friends and families, they work hard to make sure that the ideas that they’ve captured on paper are helping people become better leaders, communicators, listeners.

Today is officially the last day of Jack Covert's tenure as President of 800-CEO-READ, a company he founded and has led since 1984. If it were up to us as a staff, we would find some grand gesture to mark the occasion. We would release a flock of exquisite birds in his honor, or etch "Thanks, Jack" onto the face of the moon.

Click on the links below to read more about our choices for the top books of 2013, as well as the books that made our category shortlists. We will be announcing the Best Business Book of 2013 at our (mostly) annual We Believe in Books party in NYC the second week of January. Stay tuned!

So, how does a specialty bookseller like 800-CEO-READ tackle reviewing Brad Stone's new book on the biggest bookstore in the world? We could ignore the book. We could deride the book.

The Financial Times has announced the shortlist for their annual business book award, co-sponsored with Goldman Sachs. The have narrowed the field to six: The Alchemists: Thee Central Bankers and a World On Fire by Neil Irwin, The Penguin Press Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy by Iain Martin, Simon and Schuster (not yet released in the U. S.