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Forty books might sound like a fairly sizable number of titles to make up a longlist, but when you consider hundreds upon hundreds of entries, the number forty is excruciating to reach. As Dylan, our Editorial Director, so eloquently wrote last year, “The culling process we undertake during the awards process is always painful. As great as it is to dive into the stacks and discover some books for the first time, and rediscover and revisit some past favorites from the year, there are always ones left behind, books that get laid back down softly on our desks with care instead of thrown back in a box on the floor. There is a list of books just as long as the list of books that made it here that caused us real distress to leave off—that we want to stand behind and will in other ways.”

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• The Compass and The Nail: How the Patagonia Model of Loyalty Can Save Your Business, and Might Just Save the Planet by Craig Wilson, Rare Bird Books
• Does It Work?: 10 Principles for Delivering True Business Value in Digital Marketing by Shane Atchison and Jason Burby, McGraw-Hill Education
• Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An Inside View of Fee-Cutting Clients, Profit-Hungry Owners and Declining Ad Agencies by Michael Farmer, LID Publishing
• The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior by Shlomo Benartzi with Jonah Lehrer, Portfolio
• X: The Experience When Business Meets Design by Brian Solis, Wiley