Category Archives: Publishing

Publishing, Writing

More Ghostwriting Wanted, More Ghostwriters Needed

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A growing demand for celebrity books has created an increased demand for ghostwriters or collaborators.

Madeleine Morel, a literary agent for ghostwriters, tells Publishers Weekly this type of writing, while still going largely uncredited, has swelled naturally. “A number of writers … have, in the past five to 10 years, turned to ghostwriting as other avenues have dried up—former midlist authors, former long-form journalists whose newspapers or magazines have closed, and former editors who’ve lost jobs to consolidation.”

These collaborators rarely get named on the cover of their book. Perhaps publishers don’t want to break the magic with readers. Publishers want to you to believe you are holding the honest thoughts of one whose face is on the cover. Readers want to hear straight from Alan Cummings, Hayley Mills, Julianna Margulies, or Ron and Clint Howard, not their interpreter, but any of these movie people that I just picked off a list of recent memoirs may not have the skills or time to put together a full book. That’s no smirch on them.

More celebrities appear to be willing to acknowledge one way or another that they needed writing help. Maybe all of society is more willing to acknowledge the little people behind the stars.

Bookselling, Non-fiction, Publishing

Black Friday Sales and Wangerin First Editions

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Black Friday has become synonymous with the spirit of Thanksgiving and growing corn by planting fish in the ground. It’s as American as a payday.

The Rabbit Room is holding a Black Friday all month for the sheer joy of it. Of particular interest to our readers may be these first editions of author Walter Wangerin.

Not to be outdone by a warren of artists, Banner of Truth is offering good discounts on many Puritan paperbacks and other fine volumes.

Publishing, Uncategorized

Sweet and sour times

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As we enjoy the collapse of Western Civilization, there are at least a few consolations to be found in the gradual reduction of lockdown restrictions. In Minnesota, our venerable governor has graciously eliminated occupancy limits in restaurants, and allowed us to go maskless out of doors, as long as we aren’t too friendly about it.

So I went crazy on Saturday and ate at a Chinese buffet for the first time since the Troubles began. Chinese buffets had come to occupy a disproportionate portion of my consciousness, such as it is. Many had already closed even before the pandemic; I feared the lockdown had wiped them out completely. I have an idea the place I went to had been open for a while, actually. But one of my great horrors is having someone tell me, “You’re not allowed in here,” so I waited until I was fairly sure it was OK now. (If you’re in the area and wondering where I went, it was Ocean Buffet in Brooklyn Center. In my experience, the majority of their customers are always Chinese. I tell myself this means something.)

And it was good. Not as good as one imagines after a year of abstinence, but good. I had to wear plastic gloves, provided at the door, at the steaming tables – the cheap kind of gloves made of the same plastic they use for produce bags in the grocery store. Prices have gone up, of course, but that’s a given. I felt a sense of closure. (Or anticlimax. I always get those two confused.)

Reduced restrictions means it looks like there should be some Viking events this summer. I need to take final action on getting my dead tree edition of The Year of the Warrior printed. The printer was going to get back to me, and hasn’t so far. I suppose I’ll have to call him. That book is loooooooong, you know, like something out of 19th Century Russia. It will be expensive to print.

My great fear is that I’ll sink a bunch of my savings into a stock of books, and then the lockdown will return and all my venues will vanish. And I’ll be left with a basement full of stock.

And my basement leaks a little.

Publishing, Writing

Writing pains, prolonged

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Demonstration of Proper Writing Position, from Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms. Wikimedia Commons.

Nearing the end of my formatting/proofreading of The Year of the Warrior text, in hopeful pursuit of a new paperback edition.

I approached this project with some trepidation. I had fond memories of writing the book, and I didn’t want to be disillusioned by the reality. I had an awkward idea that parts of it must be pretty bad, and I didn’t want to stare into that void.

Overall, I’m pleased. Where the book is good, I think it’s pretty good. Sometimes my prose can soar. I make interesting use of poetry, both original poetry and psalms, and I think those passages function a little like a movie score, raising the emotional level of the whole exercise. I am my own John Williams.

But there are flabby spots. I’m way too preachy toward the beginning of Part 2, The Ghost of the God-Tree. I don’t think I’d make that mistake today – I wrote this more than 20 years ago, and I hope I’ve learned a few things about my craft. I think I won’t be entirely ashamed to sell this book. A little ashamed, yes, but also proud, overall.

Today was a beautiful day in Minneapolis, 70 degrees and sunny, as we all watch reports of the Chauvin trial from the corners of our eyes. We hope for the best, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario that isn’t pretty awful. A Chinese restaurant I patronize quite a lot opened for indoor dining again today, and I was there for lunch. It was nice, but I had a sense, as I sat there among a multi-ethnic crowd, that we were all uneasy.

At times like this, one is tempted to ask, “Does novel writing matter?”

And I answer, “Of course it does.”

I have a delusion that somewhere in Heaven, Erling Skjalgsson is pulling for me. And Father Ailill, or someone like him.

Publishing, Writing

The return of ‘The Year’

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I hope I’m not raising cruel hopes among my millions thousands hundreds dozens (!) of longsuffering fans, but I guess I can tell you I’m in the process of trying to produce a new paper version of The Year Of the Warrior. Ori Pomerantz helped me out in the early stages, and now I’m proofreading a file to submit to a printer. (As you may be aware, Baen Books continues to sell the e-version, but our contract gives me the right to produce a tangible book. I note that the cover above was designed back in 2018, so this has been a long time coming.) It’s always a little awkward, when I’m selling books at Viking events, to tell people that the one Erling book I have for sale in dead tree form is Number Two in a series. TYOTW on paper will mean I’ll have books One and Two both (or One, Two and Three if you count TYOTW as a double. Which it is.). I think that’ll go over well.

Assuming there is a Viking Season this summer. If there isn’t, the money I plan to pay a printer will be sunk costs in my basement for a while.

So I’m re-reading The Year Of the Warrior for the first time in… a decade? Two decades? A long time. What do I think of it?

All in all, I’m pleased. There’s some weak spots, some sentences I’d recast or streamline. And the plotting, especially at the beginning, is occasionally forced. But a lot of the prose reads just fine to me, even moving in spots.

There are errors of fact. Some things I got wrong about Viking life, which have been clarified for me in the many years since. I wish I’d known that Erling’s father, according to a saga I’d never seen when I was writing, was killed in a thrall uprising while he was a boy (I spackled that story over in West Oversea). Other errors I won’t mention, because I’ve already repressed them.

I’m not fixing any errors in this version. “What I have written, I have written,” as a not-so-great Roman said. I think I need to own my mistakes along with my successes. It’s all on the record.

I’d forgotten some details. Erling’s shield shows two eagles (I need to mention that again; it’s thematically important). Father Ailill has a box bed in his house.

Anyway, I haven’t gotten an estimate from the printer yet, but I expect it won’t be cheap, especially with that beautiful cover by Jeremiah Humphries. So that’s where my stimulus money is going. Which is too bad, because I just got brake work done on the car…

Authors, Publishing

Baen Books under attack

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As you may be aware, I have been and am one of Baen Books’ authors (in electronic form in recent years). Going back to the time of the late Jim Baen himself, Baen Books has always honored the classic view of First Amendment freedom — they publish authors who run the political gamut from me (a Christian conservative) to Eric Flint, who is a Communist. All Jim ever cared about was telling a good story, and his successor Toni Weisskopf has carried on that tradition, in a way every American should approve.

Today we learned, via bestselling author Larry Correia, that Baen has come under attack as a threat to national security. (Cautions for language.) The precise target of the attack was Baen’s Bar, a free-wheeling online forum in which readers and authors interact. The Bar has always been an unrestrained sort of place, where people felt free to engage in hyperbole and “hold my beer and watch this.” Today, of course, you’re only allowed to hyperbolize if you have a government-issued Hyperbole Permit, so an effort is being made to close it down.

Because nothing is more offensive to a Leftist than any talk of revolution.

Anyway, if you’d like to stand up for free speech, you might want to buy a book from Baen. One of my e-books, even.

Publishing

The work of a translator

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I’ve told you of my woes enough in this space; I owe it to you to report my good days. I had a good day on Monday, and I’ve been upbeat all week. Which is an excellent thing when you’re my age and approaching a birthday.

I told you a while back that I was out of the script translation business. Well, I’m happy to say that I’m back in it. My outlawry has expired. I shall be cagier in the future about telling you what I’m working on, but working I am. Or will be, when the next job shows up. I am, as Bertie Wooster would say, “chuffed.”

While I wait for script work, I’m working on promotional material for my friends at Saga Bok publishers in Norway. I’ve told you that they’ve been translating the massive Flatøy Book of Icelandic sagas into modern Norwegian, the first time in history that’s been done. That project is complete now – six big, leather-bound volumes, copiously illustrated by the artist Anders Kvåle Rue, all on the market and selling well in Norway. Did I mention their next project is an English translation?

Before you ask, no, I’m not doing that translation. That’s being done the right way – by an Icelandic scholar from the original language. But they’ve asked me to translate some promotional material. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. A fun project. I hope there’s more. You can read about the English project here, though the interview comes from 2016. Now it’s underway. If you’re interested in the project, and have money to donate, I can put you in touch. Just saying.

Non-fiction, Publishing, Religion

Book notice: ‘Fifty Thousand Evangelists’

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This is not a book review, but – what shall I call it? – a book notice. You may be surprised to know that there’s a book out there about an aspect of Lutheran history in America, which mentions me.

The book is Fifty Thousand Evangelists, by Jonathan D. Anderson (whom I have met and assisted a little with a different project). I’m sure it will be a surprise to many, in view of the state of Lutheranism today, but there was a time – not so awfully long ago – when an estimated more than 65,000 young college-age Lutherans, mostly from mainline church bodies, went out to preach the inerrancy of Scripture and the importance of having a personal encounter with Jesus. At least at the beginning, and for a long time.

It was part of the wider Jesus Movement, and I was there. And so my picture and name, along with that of the group I sang with, is in Fifty Thousand Evangelists, on page 83.

I was motivated to buy the book, but I won’t be reviewing it. I’m pretty sure reading it would be painful for me. Subsequent events have poisoned all my memories of what was, in the experience, the happiest time of my life.

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing, Religion

Book plug: ‘Post-Christian’

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Probably my most eminent friend (though I only know him online) is Gene Edward Veith. Veith is possibly the most prominent Lutheran among today’s well-known evangelicals. He may be best known for his book, Postmodern Times.

Now he has a new book out, called Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. Amazon says:

We live in a post-Christian world. Contemporary thought―claiming to be “progressive” and “liberating”―attempts to place human beings in God’s role as creator, lawgiver, and savior. But these post-Christian ways of thinking and living are running into dead ends and fatal contradictions.

This timely book demonstrates how the Christian worldview stands firm in a world dedicated to constructing its own knowledge, morality, and truth. Gene Edward Veith Jr. points out the problems with how today’s culture views humanity, God, and even reality itself. He offers hope-filled, practical ways believers can live out their faith in a secularist society as a way to recover reality, rebuild culture, and revive faith.

Publishing

Freedom to Give an Answer

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Hunter Baker does think we should treat or regulate social media companies as we would publishers. “Treating social media companies like publishers and broadcasters would result in a diminution of freedom and the enhancement of corporate elites’ power to monopolize news and opinion.”

Instead, he says, we should confront lies and gossip with better answers like the free citizens we are.