What will publishing be like in fifty years? Will we be reading books from our brain implants? Will people still love print books but be printing and binding them in their home or office? Will reading increase because people will have more time as they travel in self-piloted personal drones?
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Grace and Truth
After decades of sending quarterly newsletters to authors, I sent my last one last week. I received many encouraging responses to it. So I thought I would post it here for the rest of you.
Dear IVP Author:
Not Last, Maybe Least
I began my first post at Andy Unedited with these words: “To write a blog, you need to have an interesting personality or provocative opinions. I have neither.”
Nine years and over four hundred blogs later, it’s still true. My kids nicknamed me Eeyore. I reckon I have the emotional range of a turnip. And I am at my most passionate when it comes to commas.
Although February 12, 2016,
is my last day at IVP after over forty years as a full-time employee and thousands of IVP books published, by the good graces of folks here at IVP, I shall continue Andy Unedited. I will, however, now don the guise of a guest blogger.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to inflict such opinions as I have on an unsuspecting public. So if there are topics you think I should address, continue to let me know. Books, ideas, publishing, writing, history, editing, leadership, scholarship–all these and more continue to be important to me, and I think important to society.
But blogging needs one other element–fun. And as long as that lasts, so shall Andy Unedited.
Photo credit: Cindy Bunch. My IVP office before I packed up my library of 2,500 IVP books and shipped them off to Christian students and seminary libraries in the Majority World.
The Future of Editing 3: Flexibility
Tech savvy, design savvy, globally savvy, multiethnically savvy, networking savvy and professionally savvy–in my previous post that’s what I said editors will need to be in the future.
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The Future of Editing 2: Who Editors Need to Be
For me, editing has always been about loving words and loving ideas. Learning and thinking will always be important. Yet in a technology-saturated world with an ever-accelerating rate of change, we don’t know exactly what books and reading will be like in the future. We have a better idea, however, of who editors need to be in the future.
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The Future of Editing 1: Everyone Needs an Editor
Jim Sire, my predecessor at IVP as editorial director, loved to tell the story of a book review he had drafted. He showed it to Paul to look over before he sent it off to a journal.
Paul told him, “Here you say the book has merit but wasn’t evocative enough. What you actually write, however, is, ‘The book isn’t suggestive enough.’ That actually has a very different meaning than the one I think you intend! I doubt you mean that the book fails to contain adequate sexual innuendo.”
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Books That Can Change Lives
On November 3, I was honored at the annual InterVarsity Fall Leadership Meetings in recognition of my 42 years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and my upcoming retirement in February. About seventy key people from across the country in InterVarsity attended. After hearing some generous comments from Interim President Jim Lundgren and IVP Publisher Bob Fryling, they let me offer a few words. Here is what I said.
Getting a Job in Publishing
A college senior told a friend of mine, “I think I’d like to work in publishing.”
So the friend asked me, “Do you have any suggestions I could offer her?” Here’s what I said.
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Lighting a Candle Instead of Cursing the Lack of Reading
Once again another survey has emerged noting the decline of book reading among Americans across all formats–print, digital or audio. The new Pew Research Center Survey confirms a long-term trend. As more forms of entertainment arise and as education levels decline, reading goes down.
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Questions Academic Authors Should Ask (4)
Here are two final questions in my series (see here and here and here) of questions that scholars should be asking about publishing.
What about self-publishing?
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