Category: Publishing

I was talking to an author who had worked for a multinational food company and had recently switched to a not-for-profit organization. She had a book in mind and wondered how many copies we typically sold for a book in that category. I gave her a five-figure range.

“Oh, I guess I’ll have to get used to that,” she said, “because where I came from, we talked about selling millions of boxes.”
Continue reading “Eat Your Book”

“Publishing by its very nature changes your value system.”

I was struck when my publishing friend Roy Carlisle suggested this might be the case. It set me thinking. Instinctively I felt he must be right. At the same time, I felt like such a proverbial fish immersed in the waters of publishing culture that I hadn’t the faintest notion what those changes might be.
Continue reading “How Publishing Shapes Us”

Authors need a platform, a group of people with whom authors are already networked who are waiting and wanting to buy the authors’ books. I’ve said that here before, though the idea is not unique to me. But can books by authors who don’t have a platform sell well? Actually, I think they can.
Continue reading “Concept Books”

A woman in Indianapolis wanted to interview me. Well, it wasn’t actually even as grand as that. She wanted her kids to interview me.

She had a project for her children to interview people in different lines of work to see how they got there. What were their interests when they were the age of her kids? What steps got them from there into a line of work that really fit who they were?
Continue reading “A Bold, Exciting Career”

When I read on my own time, I tend to gravitate toward history, science fiction, fantasy and New Testament studies. Sometimes I’ll throw in some literary fiction or theology or management/leadership books. Sometimes I’ll read a bestseller just to see what the buzz is all about. And I always listen closely to the recommendations of friends and colleagues which can lead me into any number of genres. And if you want to see where my reading interests have taken me at any time, just check out the list on the right hand column of this page.
Continue reading “What I Like to Read vs. What I Like to Publish”

In my car in recent days, I’ve been listening to Sara Paretsky’s Fire Sale, featuring her favorite detective, V. I. Warshawski.

Many fans of this genre have recommended Paretsky to me, so I thought this would be a pretty painless way to test her out. In ways the book is predictable: evangelical Christians are the bad guys–greedy, hypocritical, even violent. Or they are good-hearted but impossibly naïve.
Continue reading “Be Careful What You Wish For”

One of my favorite quotes about publishing comes from John Tebbel’s Between Covers. Tebbel recounts a conversation Mark Twain had with Frank Nelson Doubleday, in which Twain offered “the perfect recipe for a modern American publisher”:

Take an idiot from a lunatic asylum and marry him to an idiot woman and the fourth generation of this connection should be a good publisher. (p. 138)

As Tebbel’s book chronicles, there is a long, tension-filled and hilarious history of the relationship between authors and publishers. Many examples of strong, constructive and congenial relationships populate the past as well. I suspect that publishing is no more subject to these dynamics than any other endeavor involving more than one human being.

If it is more volatile, perhaps it is due to the often subjective nature of publishing. Predicting sales (and thus advances and royalties) is an art, not a science–thus it can be a point of tension. Knowing how and when to revise a manuscript is an art, not a science–thus also a point of potential tension.

Books have also been compared to being an author’s “baby.” There is a protective, parental concern that can hover over this toddler. As a parent’s identity is wrapped up with what children say or how they perform, the same can be true with an author and their book. Publishers and editors and marketers are wise to take note of these factors.

I like the idea of working in partnership with authors, as a team. We each have strengths to bring to the table and seek to establish a mutual trust that focuses on doing what is best for everyone and for the book. Is that ideal? Perhaps. But it’s an ideal that’s worth the effort.

Off and on over the past year I’ve been commenting chapter-by-chapter on Tom Woll’s Publishing for Profit. The front cover quotes the Associated Press as calling it “the Bible for the industry.” Almost as good as Holy Writ? Well, you be the judge.

For your convenience, here’s Woll’s table of contents linked to each blog post I’ve made on the book.

I. The World of Publishing
1. C3–Commitment, Consistency, Credibility
2. The Publishing Environment

II. Managerial Organization: Strategy and Techniques
3. Define Your Niche (part one)
3. Define Your Niche (part two)
4. Make Planning Primary
5. Keep Your Staff Lean (But Not Necessarily Mean)
6. Protect Your Assets

III. Functional Organization: Strategy and Techniques
7. The Editorial Process (part one)
7. The Editorial Process (part two)
7. The Editorial Process (part three)
8. Production and Manufacturing
9. Sales . . . and More
10. Subsidiary Rights
11. Direct Response Marketing
12. Operations, Fulfillment, and Accounting
13. Electronic Publishing and Marketing
14. Returns
Conclusion

I’m not at ICRS this week because I just got back from our oldest son’s wedding in Colorado. At 9,200 feet, it was definitely a high point for our family this year. Stephen is the last of our four children to get married. He and Kristen are a great couple and very much in love. But after having been father of the groom three times and father of the bride once, I have come to the conclusion that weddings are not about romance. They are about logistics.

Transportation to meals, events, housing and the airport for dozens of family and friends. Schedules to make sure the right people are in the right locations at the right times for rehearsals, pictures, fittings, hair appointments and, oh yes, the wedding. Arranging for invitations, music, flowers, tuxes, returning tuxes, programs, locations for rehearsal suppers, receptions and, oh yes, the wedding.

Robert Fulghum once wrote, “Weddings are high state occasions run by amateurs under pressure.” He got that right.
While you don’t want the logistics to crush out the romance, however, good logistics can create the environment that allows the romance to bloom.

There’s a lot of romance about publishing–dreams of literary fame and bestseller status, elegant meals full of sophisticated conversation and interviews on PBS. Even without these dreams being fulfilled, there is an aura that surrounds publishing that is found in few other endeavors. But bad logistics can crush the romance right out of any publishing venture.

If you can’t be on time with the right copyediting, with the right publicity for the right people, with the right ads, with printing and shipping the book to the right places in the right quantities, then the luster of publishing can shine as brightly as a black hole.

By all means, celebrate the love. But every so often, celebrate the logistics too.

The key personnel gathered. “Listen,” said the publisher. “A publisher went out to publish. And as he published, some books fell on deaf ears. And the remaindering houses came and snatched up the excess stock at a fraction of its cost. Other books fell on hard-headed readers where the ideas were not able to root deeply in their minds. So as soon as the readers’ preconceived notions arose, the ideas from the book withered away. Other books fell among a huge glut of other new books and choked out the shelf-space, so the books were not seen. Other books fell into fertile minds and grew there, making a difference in the readers who in turn touched the lives of thirty, sixty or even a hundred other people.”
Continue reading “Publishing Is Like . . .”