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A La Carte (12/11)
- 12/11/09
- 5
Ten Awful Truths About Book Publishing
This article outlines ten facts about book publishing that may be surprising. For example, over 560,000 books are published every year in the US alone. And of the books tracked, the majority sell fewer than 99 copies.
The End of Book Publishing As We Know It
Speaking of books, Michael Hyatt looks to some amazing new technology and proclaims [what people have been proclaiming for years] that this is the end of book publishing as we know it.
Overcoming A Spouse’s Sexual History
Boundless has a pair of articles that deal with a tough subject—overcoming a spouse’s sexual history. Zach Bradford: “I forced myself to wrestle with the old memories, the old emotions, to put them to rest once and for all. Through these times I had to think deeply about her past and my past. I had to fight with my theology of forgiveness and with my whole understanding of what it means to be forgiven. And I am glad to say that God was exceedingly gracious.”
Free Christmas Music from iTunes
iTunes is offering a free Christmas music album with 21 tracks. The artists are rather an electric bunch and range from Amy Grant to Weezer.
100 Billion
“The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified.” Filter out some of the big-bang speak from this article and film and you can see some amazing things.
34 GB Per Day
Feeling overloaded? This may be why: “The New York Times highlights a a report published by the University of California, San Diego claiming that the average American consumes 34GB of content and 100,000 words a day. How is that possible, you ask? It’s all about bathing in the data.”
It’s a Christian Man’s World
Whatever happened to Promise Keepers? This article provides some answers. “In the 1990s, the evangelical men’s ministry the Promise Keepers packed 50,000-seat football stadiums and even stuffed the Mall in Washington, D.C., with close to 600,000 sweaty, Jesus-loving males. Marshaled by Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach, the group took the evangelical world by storm. But P.K.’s star fell as rapidly as it rose, particularly after McCartney departed the organization in 2003 to establish a group that brings Christians and Messianic Jews together. Now McCartney is back, and he’s trying very hard to resurrect the Promise Keepers.”
This article outlines ten facts about book publishing that may be surprising. For example, over 560,000 books are published every year in the US alone. And of the books tracked, the majority sell fewer than 99 copies.
The End of Book Publishing As We Know It
Speaking of books, Michael Hyatt looks to some amazing new technology and proclaims [what people have been proclaiming for years] that this is the end of book publishing as we know it.
Overcoming A Spouse’s Sexual History
Boundless has a pair of articles that deal with a tough subject—overcoming a spouse’s sexual history. Zach Bradford: “I forced myself to wrestle with the old memories, the old emotions, to put them to rest once and for all. Through these times I had to think deeply about her past and my past. I had to fight with my theology of forgiveness and with my whole understanding of what it means to be forgiven. And I am glad to say that God was exceedingly gracious.”
Free Christmas Music from iTunes
iTunes is offering a free Christmas music album with 21 tracks. The artists are rather an electric bunch and range from Amy Grant to Weezer.
100 Billion
“The new Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken the deepest image yet of the Universe in near-infrared light. The faintest and reddest objects in the image are likely the oldest galaxies ever identified.” Filter out some of the big-bang speak from this article and film and you can see some amazing things.
34 GB Per Day
Feeling overloaded? This may be why: “The New York Times highlights a a report published by the University of California, San Diego claiming that the average American consumes 34GB of content and 100,000 words a day. How is that possible, you ask? It’s all about bathing in the data.”
It’s a Christian Man’s World
Whatever happened to Promise Keepers? This article provides some answers. “In the 1990s, the evangelical men’s ministry the Promise Keepers packed 50,000-seat football stadiums and even stuffed the Mall in Washington, D.C., with close to 600,000 sweaty, Jesus-loving males. Marshaled by Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach, the group took the evangelical world by storm. But P.K.’s star fell as rapidly as it rose, particularly after McCartney departed the organization in 2003 to establish a group that brings Christians and Messianic Jews together. Now McCartney is back, and he’s trying very hard to resurrect the Promise Keepers.”
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Comments (5)
Hey Tim, your link on Christmas music says “Christian music”. I bout collapsed when I thought that Weezer moved to CCM. :)
I was just reading “Ten Awful Truths About Book Publishing.” A lot of writers might find the statistics in this article alarming, but they are somewhat skewed by the inclusion of print-on-demand books.
I’m not sure if they’re including “self-publishing,” which often but not always means “vanity presses.” Amazon carries a lot of self-published books, which can also be bought from self-publishing websites like Lulu.com. But they are usually not carried in traditional bookstores (thus the “1% chance” figure), often have very small print runs, and the author covers most of the publishing costs, having “started their own publishing company.” I also haven’t seen many self-published books in my city library—and in Canada at least, libraries stocking their shelves account for a very significant percentage of book sales. A large, multi-branch library system in a big city might buy 14 or 15 copies of a novel if it’s by an author who’s already in demand.
In the case of self-publishing, of course the author is responsible for any marketing and promotion, which they often are in traditional publishing as well. I was under the impression that this has already been the case for quite a while, at least for fiction.
The article also focuses on nonfiction. Some of the points made may not be as true for fiction, where some genre niches have loyal and voracious readerships. For example, historical adventures set during the Age of Sail. It’s a small niche…but for the loyal readership (count me in) having a ship on the cover is the mark of the “brand,” just like having a particular author’s name on the cover in other genres.
OMG, as a single person I’d give my eye teeth if Boundless would just stop publishing. On the topic of a spouse’s sexual past, it is SIN(!) to hold that against them and allow one’s self to marinate in fantasies of them with someone else before you. Look, if someone’s sexual past is something that is going to be a stumbling block, then for God’s sake (and that of the other, forgiven, sinner) PLEASE only date other virgins!
There are so many problems with that article I hardly know where to start (I feel a blog post coming on). It says…
“Sure, you forgive your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband, but the pain lingers.”
Absolutely, totally, unbiblical, Sure, it may have Christian lingo, but it is completely without Biblical support to “forgive” a spouse of a sexual sin not committed against you. The only person who that spouse wronged was God and their former sexual partner. But that’s just the first of many problems with the article.
Promise Keepers should stay dead. It was nothing more than event Christianity. It was the event that moved the men to come, like going to a game with your buddies. The high was great, but it was forgotten in a short time.
I find it strange that Boundless — a blog for people in their “single years” — posts so much stuff for spouses. Overcoming a Spouse’s Past Sexual History is not on the top of this single’s list of things to be concerned about.
Bring this complaint up to Boundless and be labeled “bitter.”
I guess singles are supposed to realize from this article that creating a sexual history will have some kind of impact on a spouse and steer clear. I dunno. It just seems silly to me…