The Entrepreneur Library

Small-business owners don’t need to know who moved their cheese. When you built the maze, being a mouse trapped within takes on an entirely different meaning. Most of the management and workplace books out there cater to people trapped in a system bigger than they are.

Here’s a selection of books for entrepreneurs faced with making tough decisions without a lot of help and with no one to blame but themselves if things go wrong. This list is deliberately eclectic, with a couple of "how to" books and a few more general books of interest to the entrepreneur.

The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What To Do About It by Michael E. Gerber (Collins, $16, 1995).

Gerber has fashioned a little "how to" empire for himself, based on his concept of the "entrepreneurial myth." He believes that small businesses tend to start because an entrepreneur has a specific skill (painting houses) but not necessarily the skill to run a business. If this is your problem, Gerber can coax you toward a more organized business model. Forget being nimble and spontaneous, this model says, think McDonalds, where every store is the same, everywhere in the world. This series isn’t for everybody, but if you need some order in your life and business, it’s a good place to start.

Michael Maiello

Full List: http://www.forbes.com/work/entrepreneurs/2005/08/31/books-entrepreneurs-publishing-cz_mm_0831books.html?partner=moreover