“One of the dangers of evangelical publishing is the desire to say something novel,” Tom Schreiner observes. “Our evangelical publishing houses could end up like those in Athens so long ago: ‘Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new’ (Acts 17:21, NASB).”
He says this in relation to the many books producing in support of egalitarian relationships.
Harper Lee has taken over the Internet for a few hours with a press release about a new book. From the AP story:
“In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called ‘Go Set a Watchman,'” the 88-year-old Lee said in a statement issued by Harper. “It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman, and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel (what became ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’) from the point of view of the young Scout.”
Gregory Peck could not be reached for comment.
Digital Book World’s new survey of just under 1,900 authors found fairly low annual earnings. Dana Beth Weinberg tells the Guardian, “We see for the third year in a row – even though we made a strong effort to get representation in the survey from successful indie authors – that most authors aren’t making much money and most books sell very few copies. We also find that traditionally published authors and authors who combine traditional and indie publishing have higher annual incomes on average than indie-only authors. Last year, we took a lot of heat for these unpopular findings, especially from the indie community.”
Authors publishing through both traditional and independent methods earned $7,500-$9,999 per year, thousands more than authors who published with either method exclusively.
Author Mike Duran takes on conventional wisdom for indie publishing success: “write faster and publish often.” He says writers should consider the quality of their craft and how fewer, better books will make a stronger career than many adequate books.
In another post, Mike suggests we not discount near-death experiences entirely, but take a cautious approach to them, believing the jury is still out on their validity.
Industry insiders could probably make several lists of twenty-four secrets or misunderstood facts or contentious minutiae about publishing, but here’s a good list on the writing life from Curtis Sittenfeld. I like this one most:
10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.
The publisher of the book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven is saying it knew nothing of Beth and Alex Malarkey’s complaints about the book until recently when Alex finally got through to the world that the book didn’t tell his story.
Tyndale says they tried to meet with the family and the agent who largely wrote the book, but Beth would not agree. Phil Johnson interprets the situation as being less than supportive.
“The thread that runs through all their correspondence with Beth is that they wanted to corner her before they would be willing to investigate her concerns,” [Johnson] wrote to the Guardian. “They kept pressing her to agree to a meeting where she and Alex would have to face Kevin and a phalanx of editors who were determined to press ahead with the project, no matter what objections Alex and she might have.”
We saw the same thing in Beth’s account from her blog. Company men had their own ideas, like journalists with a template, and kept pressing Alex to give them the details they wanted.
Warren Throckmorton notes Tyndale doubled down on this book last year when they released a pocket edition. These are not the marks of a Christian ministry. These are the marks of a purely market-driven organization.
The subject of the book The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven has released a letter denying his claims in the book (link defunct), something his mother has been doing for a few years.
“I did not die,” Alex says. “I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention.”
Publisher Tyndale has responded by pulling the book and related materials.
If you read the accounts from Alex’s mother, Beth, you may ask how a publisher of Christian books for the body of Christ could railroad her and her son (apparently with the father’s permission) to publish a book with such terrible theology. In a post from September 2013 which offers a timeline of details following the accident, Beth tells us some of her interaction with people wanting to turn her family’s story into books and a movie.
I neither verbally nor in writing gave approval for any quotes. In fact I instead verbally gave my desire to not have any quotes by me put in any book. There was a time that I was sitting in PICU and told over the phone that some words from a webpage that no longer exists (prayforalex.com) that were written by me were going to be placed in the book. I was sitting in PICU with Alex! I told the person that they could not do that, to which they said they could and that that site was public. GRRR….the best I could do was to tell the person that they had better get every word correct. I have documentation of what is written in the book and that post from the webpage. The two do not match up 🙁 It saddened me more to learn that that interaction that was twisted is part of a Bible study…what? I certainly have witnessed some shocking things!
Money, she says, was the driving factor for these people, and they promised money to her for Alex, but she has not seen any of it.
NPR’s Jordan Teicher reports, “Historically, a majority of books in Iceland are sold from late September to early November. It’s a national tradition, and it has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the ‘Christmas Book Flood.’
“‘The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday,’ says Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association. ‘Normally, we give the presents on the night of the 24th and people spend the night reading. In many ways, it’s the backbone of the publishing sector here in Iceland.'”
Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, and new CEO Guy Vidra apparently don’t care nothing for the history and style of their magazine or the people who have worked for it most recently. Both men are relatively new to the organization. Last Friday, the two arrived at the Washington office, having previously announced its closure and moving to New York, and were greeted by the mice and a few orphans.
I’m joking only a little. Ten contributing editors resigned over the firing of leading editors Franklin Foer and Leon Wieseltier. Foer had been given repeated assurance that his job was secure until the day he read in Gawker.com that he had been replaced.
According to multiple sources, Hughes came to think of his writers and editors as “spoiled brats,” and especially disliked the flamboyant, feud-prone, white-maned Wieseltier, who was more than twice his age. Much of Hughes’s distaste was telegraphed in his body language; he strikes many TNR staffers as passive-aggressive and averse to confrontation.
The friction escalated with the arrival of Vidra, who is said to have complained to Foer that the magazine was boring and that he couldn’t bring himself to read past the first 500 words of an article. According to witnesses, Vidra did little to hide his disrespect for TNR’s tradition of long-form storytelling and rigorous, if occasionally dense, intellectual and political analysis—to say nothing of his lack of interest in the magazine’s distinguished history—at an all-hands meeting in early October.
Vidra said to someone in the room, “Your brain is as dry as the remainder biscuit after voyage.” To which that someone replied, “There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.” They saw the writing on the wall at that point but did not leave until last week.
Hughes has been described as “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.” I didn’t get any sources for these quotations. In fact, you could say I made them up, but let’s keep it nice, thou cream-faced loon.
Author Ursula Le Guin received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this week’s National Book Awards and inspired the crowd by holding up freedom as an author’s best prize. “We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”
She said many things needed to change, and that change often begins in art, specifically the art of words. Writing books according to marketing formulas for corporate profit is a rotten idea, she said. We need artists.
Her speech was short, so you can easily watch the whole thing here.
In an interview, Le Guin said, “If you’re going to create a world out of whole cloth, that is to say, out of words, then you better get the words right.” You can read about her and her many books in The Guardian.