Exploring Books, Life, and Writing
Most people know the title of a book matters. It can make or break the success of a book. A wrong title can confuse readers about the content or mislead readers to think the book is not for them.
In publishing, everyone wants a piece of the title–editorial, marketing, sales, design and, oh yes, the author. So what makes a good title?
Continue reading “A Book by Any Other Name . . .”
It may surprise my coworkers (though not my wife) that I don’t like conflict. I like to make nice. Tension among people is very uncomfortable for me.
The hard lesson I have learned over the years is that dealing with conflict is like that old commercial about changing the oil in your car–pay now or pay later. It is much less painful regarding conflict and oil changes to pay now. If you let conflict simmer or fester (to mix metaphors), it can only get worse.
Continue reading “Good Conflict, Bad Conflict”
Forget everything you learned about English in grade school. None of it is true.
Want to find out why? Read what I’ve got to say in Behind the Books.
One of the most dangerous problems a publishing house (or any business, organization or church) can face is success.
For a publisher, that success could take the form of a massive bestseller. What’s wrong with selling one, two or ten million copies of a book? Isn’t that what every publisher wishes for? Money solves so many problems, doesn’t it?
Continue reading “The Dangers of Success”
Just for fun, check out my May 6 blog Blowin’ in the Wind in Addenda & Errata, the IVP Academic blog.
Since I’m writing a blog, I suppose it is obvious that I think they have value. But how valuable are they for publishers and authors in particular?
Continue reading “How Valuable the Blog?”
Reading history is a favorite hobby. And I have happily returned to David McCullough’s books time and again. His 1776 was not a disappointment. An informative, interesting read, as you would expect. One expectation I had that turned out not to be the case was that I thought it would have more on the Continental Congress and the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Instead it followed the less worn path of the military history of that year. Not a bad choice, I would say.
Perhaps the most surprising thing in the whole book however was the following statement:
Continue reading “Entitlement”
Here’s a typical publishing news item, this one from www.comicbookresources.com posted on February 18, 2007:
“Thomas Nelson Incorporated and Realbuzz Studios would like to announce an exclusive multi-year contract to release a minimum of 26 manga titles, immediately making Thomas Nelson the market leader of faith-based manga content. ”
Regularly we hear about a publisher employing a new marketing strategy, a new way of handling fulfillment, a new internal structure or a new line of books. Whenever someone in publishing hears something like this, the temptation is to say, “Oh, we ought to do that too.” There are several reasons to resist such urges.
Continue reading “The Imitation Temptation”
The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman is quite a good book about the rapid change in world economics. No longer are the US and the West at the top of the hill looking down on everyone else. The world is flattening and the advantages of the West are rapidly eroding. To put it another way, everyone has an increasingly equal opportunity to succeed due to a variety of very significant technological, systems and political changes. He explains the changes by example and description.
Continue reading “The World Is Flat”
The new Sony ebook reader is now in stores. But . . .
You can’t search it.
You can’t write notes in the margin.
You have to have Windows XP.
There’s a half-second delay when you press the turn-the-page button.
You can’t skip directly to a particular page.
There’s no backlight option for those who want to read in the dark.
It costs about $350.
What’s Sony thinking?
Here’s what engadget.com and Time magazine are thinking.