Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
“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”
Of all the shticks on NBC’s The Office, one of my favorites is the rivalry between Dwight and Jim. The pranks Jim plays on Dwight are priceless–and perhaps a bit too reminiscent of actual jokes played by some of my colleagues on other colleagues (never by me, of course).
Linda Doll and I included one of my favorite stories in our anecdotal history of InterVarsity Press, Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength. It highlights the friendly rivalry between the staff of Campus Life magazine (some thirty-plus years ago when it was run by Youth for Christ) and the staff of InterVarsity’s HIS magazine.
Continue reading “Abercrombie & Fitch, Attorneys at Law”
Do you have a favorite book title? One that is memorable and interesting, all the while telling you just what the book is about?
Here’s another perspective on what makes an ideal nonfiction book title. Previously I wrote that the ideal title employed two elements: content and creativity. You can also think of them as the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Continue reading “The Familiar and the Unfamiliar”
What’s the ideal nonfiction book title? In my mind it has two elements.
Continue reading “The Ideal Book Title”
If one of the most difficult tasks in publishing is coming up with a good concept for a book, surely a close second is coming up with a good nonfiction book title. It’s so hard that even when you are trying to do a good job you often end up making a baboon out of yourself. I’ll be saying more about titling in upcoming posts. For now, here are two opposite and equally bad directions to go in titling a book.
Continue reading “Bad Title Strategies”
I was at a conference last week with many excellent, well-known speakers. They made presentations at plenary sessions of over a thousand and at seminars with fifty to hundred people. Regardless of the notoriety, prestige or quality of the speaker, or the intimacy of the group, those who attended felt free to walk in and out of the sessions at will–perhaps several times in a session for a single individual.
This is not a new, of course. I’ve noticed it for some time in a wide variety of settings. Thirty years ago, however, it was not so.
Continue reading “Walking Out on the Speaker”
Mark Twain is without a doubt one of the most colorful characters of the American literary scene. Here is an episode (found in John Tebbel’s Between Covers) recounted by Twain’s publisher, Frank Nelson Doubleday, in his The Memoirs of a Publisher. I reproduce it here for your enjoyment without comment, as no comment is required.
Continue reading “To my friend, Samuel L. Clemens”
Two recent pieces on the digital future of publishing don’t so much disagree as they do look at the world through very different lenses. While both lenses are important, it is easy in our fast-paced, do-it-now, do-everything-now, ADD culture to lose track of the one in light of the other.
Continue reading “Two Digital Lenses”
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”
No doubt publishing is difficult these days. But whatever challenges you and I may face, they are not very significant compared to what Lasantha Wickrematunge faced in the violence-filled country of Sri Lanka over the last fifteen years. There he was a crusading journalist who was not afraid to expose corruption and scandal both in the government and in the opposition. On January 8 he died for his efforts.
He left behind, however, a last editorial to be published on his death. It is a testament to integrity, to humanity, to doing what is right and to looking to the welfare of others before looking out for ourselves. It is publishing with courage.