publishing

“It was not enough to publish books,” says Deep Vellum founder Will Evans. “We needed a place to invite people in, to put literature at the core of the cultural community.”

Stephen Prothero’s biography of Eugene Exman reveals how the bestsellers he acquired taught people to be spiritual but not religious.

A new design, a new publishing schedule, and a deep commitment to a very old technology

The “newspaper” I produced when I was 11 had simpler economics than the Century does.

It's hard to know what to do and what not to do on the Internet. These are new forms of communicating, so we're trying out different rules of engagement. Often our social behavior forms by what gets on people's nerves. 

The book publishing world depends on buzz. The best kind of book buzz is created by readers who tell their friends about the books they love. Anyone who is part of a circle of reading friends knows that, despite dire predictions about the demise of book publishing, the appetite for reading books is alive and well. But readers have to find out about a book somehow, and that is where promotion comes in—either by publishers or by the authors themselves.

I understand the growing need for writers to promote their own work.

Our intellectual architecture is being dismantled. But it is also being reassembled. I use the architecture metaphor because I believe that what we are creating will be in place for many decades to come. 

Remember that authors are responsible for marketing. Whether you’re on a small press or a big press, if you want people to read your book, then you’ll have to sell it. Unfortunately, even as deeply spiritual people, we are not above marketing. So how do you do it? Here are a few suggestions.

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about how to get published, how to build a platform, how to become a speaker. So, I'm dedicating this week to some of the questions that people ask me. Yesterday, I looked at why a platform is important. Today, I want to talk about the the big ideas. All of this, of course, is just how I do it. There are many others who will give you different advice.

So you have this book bursting within you. You really, really want to get published. You start lingering at the bookstore tables at major conferences in order to talk to people in publishing about how to do it and they say, “It’s all about the platform.”

E-books have their critics, but sales are on the rise. One thing seems certain: people will go on reading books, in what­ever form.

As we’re all in the midst of Advent longing, I realize that I’m turning 40 in a couple of days. Which puts me in an odd position, since I write and speak about ministering with people in their 20s and 30s. 

After a couple of years of sweating over each syllable, I suddenly needed the words. I hungered to write them. On vacations, my family urged me to take a break and I
became cranky. What happened? How did the words begin to grow like wildflowers
that I no longer had to coddle?