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U.S. News & World Report Names Top Online Communities for Small Business Owners

Small Business Forum and StartupNation were listed among the “6 Communities Small Business Owners Should Join” in a September 30 article in U.S. News & World Report’s Money section.

The other four free online support communities and offline networking groups on U.S. News & World Report’s list are SBA Small Business Development Centers, Entrepreneur.com, American Express Open Forum, and Small Biz Nation on LinkedIn.

U.S. News & World Report said that each of these resources can be useful to those in the process of launching an entrepreneurial venture or that are facing a few obstacles with an existing business.

National Reading Group Month Announces 2015 Great Group Reads

The Women’s National Book Association’s National Reading Group Month Committee recently announced the titles on its 2015 Great Group Reads book list.

A committee of 25 writers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians, publicists, and readers compiled the list of 20 books for this month’s celebration:

  • All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (McSweeney’s)
  • All Who Go Do Not Return: A Memoir by Shulem Deen (Graywolf Press)
  • The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (Hogarth)
  • Call Me Home by Megan Kruse (Hawthrone Books)
  • Delicious Foods by James Hannaham (Little, Brown and Company)
  • Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (Gallery Books/Scout Press)
  • Dietland by Sarai Walker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
  • Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (Simon & Schuster)
  • Henna House by Nomi Eve (Scribner)
  • Landfall by Ellen Urbani (Forest Avenue Press)
  • Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Man Alive: A True Story of Violence, Forgiveness and Becoming a Man by Thomas Page McBee (City Lights Publishers)
  • Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell (Maiden Lane Press)
  • No. 4 Imperial Lane by Jonathan Weisman (Twelve)
  • Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade (William Morrow Paperbacks)
  • A Perfect Crime by A Yi (Oneworld Publications)
  • The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton (Grand Central Publishing)
  • A Sister to Honor by Lucy Ferriss (Berkley)
  • Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim (Crown)
  • The Wonder Garden by Lauren Acampora (Grove Press)

Booksellers can get involved in promoting the list and the National Reading Group Month initiative using resources found in the National Reading Group Month Marketing Toolkit, which includes downloadable shelf-talkers and table-top posters.

Ingram to Distribute Humanoids Inc.

Ingram Publisher Services Inc. has added graphic novel publisher Humanoids Inc. to its list of publisher clients and will handle exclusive sales and distribution of its titles to the book trade.

Over the last 17 years, the Hollywood, California-based publisher’s books have been available exclusively through the comics channel direct market; its partnership with Ingram represents its first foray into trade distribution to bookstores.

Consortium Adds Seven Distribution Clients

Consortium has announced the addition of seven independent publisher clients to its distribution list.

Consortium’s new U.S. clients are comic book publisher 2dcloud; art and photography book publisher Daylight Books; Fabled Films Press, a publishing and entertainment company creating original content for middle-grade and YA audiences; and Unfiltered Media, digital media company and publisher of books on craft beer.

Its other new clients are Canada’s ChiZine Publications, a publisher of “dark genre fiction” in both trade and comic book form; the U.K.’s Garnet Publishing, a publisher of novels, travel and art books, and cookbooks; and Spain’s NubeOcho, which specializes in diverse children’s picture books.

All of the presses begin distribution with Consortium on January 1, 2016, except for Unfiltered Media, which Consortium will begin distributing in August 2016.

Svetlana Alexievich Wins 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature

Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.

Alexievich’s first work translated into English was War’s Unwomanly Face (Progress Publishers, 1988), which is based on interviews with hundreds of women who participated in the Second World War. The work is the first in Alexievich’s “Voices of Utopia” cycle of books, which depict life in the Soviet Union from different individual perspectives.

Other books in the cycle include Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices From a Forgotten War (Chatto & Windus, 1992) and Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press, 2005). Because of her criticism of the regime, Alexievich has periodically lived abroad, in Italy, France, Germany, and Sweden.

Nobel Prize winners in most categories will be honored at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, and the Nobel Peace Prize winner will be honored, as is traditional, at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway the same day.

A bibliography of Alexievich’s work as well as a more detailed biography can be found here.

Keen Communications Acquires Adventure Publications

Birmingham, Alabama-based travel and outdoor guide publisher Keen Communications has acquired Adventure Publications and will merge their interests and imprints in a new company, AdventureKEEN.

Cambridge, Minnesota-based Adventure Publications, a major independent publisher of birding books, joins the other publishing brands of Keen Communications, which include Menasha Ridge Press, Wilderness Press, Clerisy Press, The Unofficial Guides, and Nature Study Guild.