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Joel Libava has made many outstanding contributions to the franchising community since he took on the role of the Franchise King. He has worked tirelessly to help people find the right franchise for them. His new book pools that lifetime’s knowledge  into a handy and wonderfully-readable book called Become A Franchise Owner.

You’ll immediately  recognize Libava’s straight-talking style in his book. Joel is truly an honest broker when it comes to giving business advice. As a former consultant, he’s seen franchises thrive and franchises fail. Most importantly, he understands the fine line between success and failure. This wisdom is the backbone of his new book.

Not everybody is cut out for the hard work of running a franchise, and after reading Joel’s book, you’ll know right away whether a career in franchising is right for you. The most important part of purchasing a franchise is honestly assessing your skills so that you can find the ideal franchise for you. Joel’s Become A Franchise Owner will help you look yourself in the mirror and face up to your strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur.

And if you decide franchising is the right path for you, and can choose a business that’s perfectly suited to your abilities, Joel’s book also provides a list of 40 questions that you must ask yourself before signing on the dotted line.

Of course, Joel Libava is a frequent contributor to Franchise Direct. Even if he wasn’t, though, we would give this book a ringing endorsement. As Franchise Direct CEO Sean McGarry writes: “Joel Libava’s informative, succinct guide to franchise investment should be a must read for anyone thinking of buying or expanding a business through franchising. The book is packed with business wisdom and advice, all presented in Joel’s inimitable, readable style. In a market littered with how-to publications, this one stands out as a really useful, practical aid to franchise entrepreneurs everywhere.”

Anyone with an interest in the history of franchising, and for history in general, will take great interest in a new book that charts out the spread of one of the most popular restaurant chains in the American frontier.

Appetite for America by Stephen Fried traces the history of Harvey’s restaurants, which was at its time, the biggest name in American eating. The restaurant chain was founded by Fred Harvey, a brilliant entrepreneur who sensed the westward development of America and realized that all of these hungry travelers chasing their fortune in the American West would get quite hungry along the way. Harvey’s genius was to open restaurants near all of the popular train stops around the turn of the twentieth century.

As the Wall Street Journal writes in a recent review: “It was this ambition—to serve not just fast food but the best possible fast food—that would mark his true contribution to American business. Before there were four-star hotels or restaurants, he set out to create a brand that delivered the goods quickly without cutting corners on quality.”

It’s hard to appreciate now, but Harvey faced incredible challenges getting his fresh food to out-of-the-way restaurants. But he managed to build a small empire, and a Harvey chain of hotels and bookstores were soon to follow. I think of Harvey as a proto-franchisor. He saw the value of a national brand way back in the era of the telegraph. He built a centralized business up from scratch and he has a lot to teach today’s entrepreneurs. As the car grew in popularity, America fell out of love with rail travel and the sun set on the Harvey empire. Regardless, he was a giant in business that laid the ground work for today’s big international franchises.

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Here at the Franchise Blog, we enjoy a good book about franchising now and again. Buying a franchise is a difficult decision that involves some serious self-analysis before you even get down to dealing with banks, investors and franchisors. There’s tons of social media devoted solely to question of whether or not someone is cut out for franchising, but maybe a book-length meditation on the subject is really the only way to truly evaluate one’s fitness for the task at hand.

So we’d like to recommend the latest book on the subject: Mitchell York’s alliteratively-titled Franchise: Freedom or Fantasy? York has a proven track record in business coaching. A Columbia MBA, he’s coached executives for over 30 years and is the president of E2Ecoaching. He also blogs on the always-interesting All Business website, and recently wrote an informative post on the decisions that franchisees need to make to be successful.

The purpose of this book is to answer that question that seems as old as Shakespeare by now: to franchise or not to franchise? In the book, York discusses the steps you’ll need to take to open a successful franchise and the mistakes you’ll have to avoid.

Initial reviews of Franchise: Freedom or Fantasy? sound positive. According to Angie Shaw of The Entrepreneur’s Source, “this book is a must-read for anyone who is considering owning a franchise. Business ownership is a life-changing event that must be carefully considered and this book is a great first step”.

If you’re wrestling with the idea of franchise ownership, this is definitely the one franchising book you should buy this year.

Making the leap into entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging choices a person can make, and a global recession doesn’t make the decision any easier. Across America, there are many people continuing their 9 -5 grind, doing unfulfilling work simply to pay the bills, uncertain about the future with their employer and dreaming of owning their own business. Those people need a guide telling them how to break free from their cubicle chains. Luckily it exists in book form, and it has been written by author and blogger Pamela Slim.

We blogged recently about Escape From Cubicle Nation, which takes its title from Slim’s popular small business blog.  Her aim is to help people achieve business success on their own terms and create something personal out of their  skills and creativity. Her first book is a primer on how to attain that dream.

Slim admits her suspicions with corporate life from page one. Her main complaints are that the corporate world is unstable and its leadership is stubborn to change. Over time, Slim begins to create her portrait of “cubicle nation”: a place where creativity stifled, meaningless work is done over and over and workers spend most of their time responding to mountains of email. Slim calls on workers to escape the corporate system and go out on their own.

Escape From Cubicle Nation is a very handy resource for aspiring entrepreneurs. Slim outlines the realities of starting and owning a small business, and provides helpful insight about what needs to be done to get a business off the ground. She stresses the importance of consulting with other people. Slim says entrepreneurs should enlist a mentor for their new business as well as a High Council of Jedi Knights, who you can go to during pivotal moments in the life of your business.

The book has a streamlined lay-out reminiscent of other business books, but what makes Escape a vital read is Slim’s compelling story and her clear and concise writing style. Escape speaks to a real economic truth of the moment. Given the harsh economic realities of today, entrepreneurship is the only way a person can truly control their future. Slim provides a lot of insight about how to break free from the corporate world.

Once you do, may I suggest owning a franchise?

You can buy the book it here.

The business world is fixated with entrepreneurs like Matt Zuckerberg of Facebook or Muziic’s 15-year-old founder David Nelson. These are prodigious young talents, 21st century businessmen, changing the world with a new technological concept. But these are not the only types of entrepreneurs. As Mike Michalowicz would like us to remind us, there is another type of business person out there, toiling outside of the limelight, a person he portrays in his new book, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.

Michalowicz brands the Zuckerberg’s of the world as Media Darling Entrepreneurs (MDE’s). They won the plaudits of the media with their lucrative and trend-setting ideas. In his book,  Michalowicz tells the story of the everyday entrepreneur, someone who struggles in order to make their business work, starting with little more than a dream,  forced to do more with less. His book is a primer for these entrepreneurs, people who don’t have millions in their savings account or investors lining up outside their house.

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is an insightful and irreverent take on entrepreneurship.  The ‘how to become a successful entrepreneur’ market has long been oversaturated and it’s nice to finally read a fresh voice. One feels that entrepreneurs, especially young ones, could learn much, much more from someone like Michalowicz than any MDE.

In his book, Michalowicz charts his own career arc, from the owner of a small computer programming company, which he started from scratch, to the founder of Obsidian Launch and a multiple winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Along the way, Michalowicz discusses the various attributes that he thinks are necessary for becoming a successful Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. Belief is crucial, as is passion, the desire to succeed and the ambition to work in a career that you actually love. At the same time, Michalowicz is crystal clear that entrepreneurs are born, not made. If you don’t have an instinctual drive towards entrepreneurship, odds are, you will be lost at sea.

Throughout the book, Michalowicz filters in the life stories of other Toilet Paper Entrepreneurs, people like Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who started their famous company with only $538 and a ‘beat-up drill press’. Or Simon Sinek, who stared failure straight in the face and emerged as ‘the leading authority for entrepreneurs who seek their purpose’. Or David Tyreman, who after seeing his antique business fail, spent his last $20 on beer. He woke up the next day satisfied with himself and ready to start from scratch. From there, he founded successful branding companies like Propaganda and World Famous. In their meager beginnings and flirtations with failure, each of these entrepreneurs discovered the blueprint to their own success.

These inspiring anecdotes are almost as important as the entrepreneurial advice that Michalowicz offers. If you’re passionate, driven and ready to succeed, you’re probably a Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, even if you wouldn’t describe yourself as such. This book offers a guide to rewriting the rules of business and a path to becoming a resilient and driven entrepreneur.

Finally, if you’re curious about the origins of the title of the book, we recommend you purchase the book for the introduction alone.  Michalowicz defines the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur in truly vivid detail.

Find out how to buy The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur here. In the mean time, check out Michalowicz’s blog and especially this post on the 163 ways to become a successful entrepreneur.