Small Business Profiles: A Guide to Todays Top Opportunities for Entre

Covers the nature of a variety of small businesses; start-up infomration; current practics and trends; prospects for success; and the possible perils of owning your own opeation. Each volume features 60 entries on wide variety of business ventures. Entries detail start-up issues, such as marketing, licensing and insurance, computer systems, costs and profits, financing, location, layout, and staffing.

Gale's Small Business Sourcebook (SBS), now in its eighth edition, is well known as a vital source of information for small business owners. This new companion work will be useful, too--especially for those who are considering starting a business or beginning to explore opportunities in a variety of fields.

Projected to be an annual compilation on current practices and trends in each of 60 "hot" businesses, Small Business Profiles (SBP) will enable a student or potential entrepreneur to evaluate options, to estimate startup costs and profits, to produce a marketing plan, and to contact useful sources of information and financing. The straightforward language, easily read layout, and thorough indexing (including keyword cross-references and a franchise index) make this a logical place to begin researching small businesses. The sources cited at the end of each essay direct the reader to more information as do the recommended reading lists in some chapters.

The authors of the articles are not identified by credentials. Members of the advisory board seem to be practitioners in business, government, and libraries. Although there is some redundancy (SBA information, in one form or another, is in every essay), this allows each entry to stand alone--a plus for those with limited time or funds for photocopying.

Persons wanting more, or more scholarly, information will still want to consult Small Business Sourcebook. In addition to the profiles of small businesses, startup information, primary and secondary associations, statistical sources and trade periodicals included in SBP, SBS lists educational programs, sources of supply, computer databases and software, and libraries and research centers relevant to each business described. SBS also includes a glossary of business terms and state-by-state (and provincial for Canada) listings of SCORE agencies, Small Business Development Centers, and SBA regional offices. And of vital interest to entrepreneurs wanting to develop or distribute new products is the list titled "Incubators/Research & Technical Parks."

Small Business Profiles is a useful addition to the wealth of information on small businesses and an excellent introduction to the specifics of the businesses profiled and to the intricacies of business startup.