Earlier this week I began introducing you to the people who will be involved behind-the-scenes in bringing you my book The Next Story. First I introduced you to Ryan the Editor who will (obviously) be responsible for editing the book. And today I’d like you to meet Chris Fann the Marketing Man. His job is to try to convince you that your life will be incomplete if you do not own at least one copy of this book (and, preferably, many more than that). His job will be complete and successful if and when every Christian in North America knows about the book’s existence. Here is Chris’ bio:

Chris will market and position Tim's book in such a way so it will sell more copies than Harry Potter and Twilight while having the longevity of Homer and Plato. (Nothing like over-promising, right?)

The vast majority of his efforts go toward creating awareness of the books given to market. According to Warren Bird, author and Director of Research at Leadership Network, "The average book in America sells about 500 copies a year. Only 10-25 books sell more than a million copies in a year. Fewer than 500 sell more than 100,000. Nearly 200,000 new titles are published each year." There are thousands of books published each month, and even more content than that put up on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. There is a great deal of noise in the world today, and Chris' job is trying to find ways to speak uniquely, not louder.

Writing a book is a team effort. Of course I’m the one who has to spend endless hours hunched over an endless success of books, tapping away on a keyboard and staring pensively out the window. So let’s be honest—I do most of the work. But still, there are lots of other people involved. I figured it would be fun to introduce you to some of the people who will play a role in getting my next book into your hands.

First up, I’d like to introduce you to Ryan Pazdur, a.k.a. Ryan the Editor. An Acquisitions Editor by trade, he has already helped convince the good people at Zondervan to take a chance on my next two books. And as we put together The Next Story, it will be his job to make sure that the book I write is worth the $12 or $15 I’m hoping you will spend on it. To him will fall the inevitable but thankless task of reminding me of a little thing called deadlines (I’m going to be late for everything, Ryan. Deal with it!). He will also be reading what I write and telling me what’s good, what’s bad and what’s just plain awful. He’ll work with me on content, on tone, on voice, on all of those things that make a book what it is. If the book stinks, you’ll blame me, but his boss will blame him.

So world, meet Ryan the Editor:

What does an editor really do? Sitting around reading books all day may sound to some people like the best job in the world. And certainly, that's an important part of an editor's work. An acquisitions editor (AE) spends quite a bit of time reading book proposals, attending conferences, and looking for worthwhile books to publish [in Canada we know this as schmoozing]. As the primary contact with an author, AEs typically work with authors to help them refine their proposal, structure their book, advise throughout the writing process, and make revisions to the manuscript. They serve as an advocate for the author and communicate the expectations of the publisher back to the author. From the proposal stage to the completion of a revised manuscript with solid content, AEs work back and forth with authors, clarifying ideas, altering the tone of the writing, and strengthening the content of the book. It's a pretty amazing process, filled with lots of prayer, conflict resolution, and creative thinking. There is nothing quite as satisfying as holding a printed book in your hand after months of editing and revisions.

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a doer when it comes to the convergence of technology and theology, media and Christian living. I do not want to write a book full of prescriptions that I choose to ignore. And so, as I’ve dedicated increasing amounts of time to research, I’ve begun to examine my own life, my own use of technology and ultimately, its use of me.

Today I’d like to give three quick examples of the ways I’ve had to change my own life as I’ve thought about what it means for me to live in a distinctly Christian way in this media-saturated world. Maybe in the book I’ll write about some of these in greater detail. For now, I will be brief. Each of these is simply a way I’ve found that I can step just a little bit outside the torrent of media and information that always seems so close to overwhelming me.

I recently came to the realization that email owns me. A good technology that should be at my disposal has instead taken over and put me at its disposal. And if you’ve read Postman you’ll know that technology is very good at this. No sooner do we put a technology in our service than we find that it has so changed our lives that suddenly we have become enslaved to it.

When I find myself compulsively glancing at my screen every time I walk by, hoping to see an icon telling me I’ve got a new message, when I unthinkingly pull out my iPhone to check to see if I’ve got any new email, I realize I’ve got a problem. When I sit in meetings with email open, glancing as often to the screen as to the person speaking, I understand that something has gone wrong. Somehow I’ve given email more than it deserves. In my mind I’ve made it into something it is not and something it should never be. Email was never meant to be the first thing I look at in the morning or the last thing I look at before bed.

Hear me when I say that email is not a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either, really; it’s just a thing. I wouldn’t want to say that email is somehow innately destructive. It is an excellent medium for communication and one that serves many purposes very well. It is exceptionally efficient, at least when at its best, and gives us amazing levels of instantaneous access to one another. I wouldn’t want to cut it out of my life and certainly do not intend to.

But email is demanding, especially when given the reins. Recent scientific studies show that there may well be some kind of a correlation between the psychology of email and the psychology of slot machines. A variable interval schedule, as psychologists might know it, draws us back time and again, hoping for the occasional payout. Though most of the time there is no payout when checking email, just like there is usually all cost and no payout when playing slots, there is always the promise of something great. Occasionally we may win a jackpot and occasionally we may get a bit of very good news by email. But most of the time there is no payout at all. Yet our brains seem hard-wired to keep searching, to keep driving us back to the inbox, hoping against hope.

So what have I done? I’ve made email something that I’ve scheduled into my life. Let me back up just a little bit. Thinking about the nature of email and the kind of messages I receive via email, I realized that my mind had been tricking me. Really there was only very, very rarely any exceptional good that could come to me via email—the news that my book proposal had been accepted, the news that a friend had safely delivered her child. Far more often than not my email varies between junk and normal—spam and interesting yet ultimately non-urgent and non-life-changing communiques from friends and family. Such emails are easy to schedule into certain times of day; there is no reason to monitor them on a constant basis. And so I now check email only occasionally—two or three times a day seems to be sufficient. So far I don’t see that it’s had even the smallest amount of negative impact. I do not access email at all in the evenings and have cut far back on the weekends (by way of example, I checked once this past Saturday and not at all on Sunday).

It has shocked me to see that the world keeps turning even when I don’t constantly monitor email. Who would have thought it could be possible? Life goes on.

So much for email. I’ve also stopped gratifying my urge to instantly search for anything that interests me. Very often I find my mind wandering to a person or a topic and before I know it, I’m sitting at a computer and typing the search into Google. Just this evening I had the urge to search for information on Elizabeth Edwards, a book titled How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read and feedback on the new Facebook upgrade. I would then have blown fifteen minutes satisfying these impulses. I have seen that in this wired world knowledge about has become far more important than knowledge of, that the great virtue is in instant access to information. I’m going to try to stop catering to that desire. Instead, I’ll scratch things down in a notebook and look them up later. Or, more often than not, I’ll forget to look them up at all and be no worse off for it. I want to spend far less time searching out new information and more time reflecting on the information I’ve already got.

And this feeds into the third change I am making. Yesterday I went looking for books dealing with distraction. As I did so, I had a video clip playing in a different window and found that I was constantly flipping back and forth between them. The irony was not lost on me. For a long time I’ve been conflicted about A La Carte. It is a feature of this blog that has become quite popular—when people talk to me about what they like about the blog, it is probably second from the top of the list (immediately after book reviews). When I began it, some 1050 posts ago (the first one was in the summer of 2005 and I’ve been quite regularly updating it five times a week since then) I saw it as an opportunity to share a few of the things that had caught my attention the day before. To be honest, it did not evolve much beyond that. It continues to be a bit of a brain dump, or a link dump, if you prefer.

Two things have come to bother me about it. The first is the regular juxtaposition of information. Here I’ll have a story about a terrible natural tragedy that brought about massive loss of life, and right below it I’ll have a link to a silly video parody of something completely unrelated. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me. The second thing that bothers me is the way it has become a force for distraction. I don’t think any of us really need most of the information we can find through A La Carte. It’s mostly just mindless entertainment, even the best of it. The messages implicit in A La Carte are that we can skim lots of things, but really read nothing; that all news is really just a form of entertainment. It downplays thought and reflection at the expense of immediacy and variety. The messages get lost in the medium.

So here is the plan for A La Carte. It is not going away; it is just changing. What I want to try is to post a single link every day through A La Carte. Rather than posting a list of links that caught my eye, I’ll post a link to a single story along with an assessment of why it is important. If I haven’t found anything particularly important, I won’t post at all. I do not want to be another force of distraction. I want you to know that if I link to something, it is worth your time and attention. Stay tuned tomorrow for the first iteration of the new A La Carte. We’ll see how it goes.

So those are the three changes I’ve already made. They are small things, I’m sure, but they are not without significance. Like so many people, I feel as if technology owns me as much as I own technology. More so, even. I’ve got amazing gadgets and gizmos available to me and each of them plays its own role in my life. I just need to make sure that they are in my control, rather than handing them the reins and following blindly behind them. I think I’ve done far too much of that already.

I graduated from college in 1997 (Or so. To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly what year it was and didn’t bother attending the graduation ceremony or picking up my diploma which undoubtedly recorded the date). My history degree did not open up the world of possibilities I had obviously thought it might when I first chose history as my major three years before. With few options available to me, and suffering from a lack of motivation, I decided I had better find some kind of employment, even if it did not incorporate my training. I learned that a new Starbucks was opening nearby and quickly made my way through the interview process. The day the store opened I was there, and I stayed at that job, putting in my forty hours a week, for what must have been a year—possibly more.

I’m not sure if this is still the case, but back then every store was required to select one “Coffee Expert,” the one person on staff who would receive a bit of extra training in the world of coffee and who was required to know more about the various flavors of coffee than anyone else. This person had to be able to identify the differences between the types and to teach others how to do the same. He was responsible for brewing different kinds of coffees in order to educate both the employees and the customers. Through some strange twist of fate I was appointed to this position by the manager.

There was just one small problem. I hated coffee. I still do. I am convinced that it is a vile, evil concoction and one that has cruelly enslaved much of the human race. I despise the stuff, even in what I am assured is its finest form by the hoards of brainwashed Starbucks robots. I can barely stand even the smallest taste of it. It curdles my tongue, makes my eyes water, and leaves me gagging. I find it utterly revolting.

And yet I was the coffee expert. When customers wanted to know about the different kinds of coffee we offered, it was my job to lead them through the various options available to them and to help them select the coffee that was suited to their tastes. A customer would choose a package from the counter and I would say, “Oh, now that’s a great choice. It’s a delicious, full-bodied roast that you can taste all over your tongue. Look for the flavors of oak and a subtle hint of the spring flowers that grow in the mountains of Peru.” I had the routine down pat and helped sell a lot of coffee—more than anyone else in the store, I’m sure. The facts were all true; it’s not like I was some kind of used car dealer covering up a vehicle’s flaws and hoping to make a sell to some poor sap who would be stuck with a useless hulk. I simply relayed information I knew was true. But I hated the product. Had I been entirely forthcoming I would have said this: “It mostly tastes like cigarettes. When I drink it I detect mostly the flavor of charcoal mixed with dirt—and not the nice dirt I used to eat as a kid, either. It tastes like burned, charred, nasty, ugly hot dirt. It’s loaded with caffeine and I’m sure it’s going to shorten your life. If you enjoy the smell or taste of manure, I’m sure you’ll love it. Would you like me to grind it for you?” It always struck me as just a little bit odd that I would champion something I disliked so much.

Since I wrote my first book I had quite a few people ask when I would begin a second one. My response was that I’d write another book when I had lived another book. When it comes to writing it is always a temptation to relay information I know is true, even if I have not incorporated it into my life. I’ve had to confess that I’ve done this in the past right here on this blog. I can sometimes content myself with knowing that something I am writing is true and biblical, even if it has little resonance in my life.

When I worked at Starbucks I had absolutely no passion for coffee. Though I could talk a good line, I always felt a bit like I was lying. Customers would ask, “What’s your favorite?” and I would just blurt out a flavor based on my favorite packaging. I had no favorite coffee anymore than I had a favorite flavor of cough syrup or a favorite kind of kick in the teeth. I don’t want my life to be like this. I want what I say and what I write to be a reflection of who I really am—or who I really want to be through the power of the Spirit.

I want to be a Christian who doesn’t just do a smooth job of selling the Christian life. I could probably sit down and write a book that would say all the right things and make me feel very happy when I had typed out the last word. But it wouldn’t satisfy because it wouldn’t be genuine.

Recently I read through a part of Michael Emlet’s book Cross Talk and came across these words. Though targeted specifically at ministers, I think they are applicable to any of us.

A temptation in ministry is to think that just because we prepared a Bible study, a sermon, or a discipleship appointment (or wrote a book like this!), we are deeply engaging with the God of the universe. But that’s not necessarily true. It’s easy in ministry to live more as a ‘pipe’ than a ‘reservoir.’ That is, it’s easy to live merely as a conduit to others of the transforming truths of God’s Word, rather than as a changed and transformed reservoir who overflows with lived-out gospel truth. You wouldn’t imagine cooking meal after meal for your family without sitting down to enjoy that nourishment, would you? To paraphrase James 1:22, let’s not merely be hearers or speakers or counselors of the Word, but doers, first and foremost.

I know that in writing a book I could easily be a hearer and speaker but not a doer. But that isn’t who and what I want to be. As you know, I’ve begun work on The Next Story. And already I’m seeing how I have to make changes to my life based on what I am learning. Some of these will be experimental, trying to live out different ideas on a trial basis. Though totally unrelated to the book, I did this with vegetarianism recently, going two weeks without meat just to try it out and to see what life is like with a whole new set of tastes and flavors. There are things I will try out just for the sake of the book, with no intention of maintaining them long-term. But other changes are going to be permanent, coming on the heels of necessity or conviction. I will introduce you to a couple of these in the days to come. (Hint: you may have noticed I didn’t post an A La Carte today…)

I’ve put it off long enough. I’ve blocked off a few days in my schedule, I’ve prepared myself mentally (I hope) and I’ve gathered the things I need. Today I begin in earnest on my new book, The Next Story, and by “in earnest” I really just mean I’m going to start for real; all I’ve got so far is a proposal. (Click here if you’d like an overview of the book). This gives me just about six months to write a 200-250 page manuscript. That may seem like a long time but I know the weeks will race by, leaving me scrambling by the end. It’s pretty much inevitable and unavoidable.

I have very limited experience in writing books, with only one to my credit so far. The second time around I feel somewhat more prepared for the experience, maybe like a mother heading into labor with her second child. She knows it’s going to be brutal but she knows as well that there will be joy when all is said and done. That’s probably not quite a fair analogy, though, because I do enjoy the writing process far more, I’m sure, than a mother enjoys being in labor. Plus, a man can never use childbirth as a metaphor without arousing the wrath of women who have actually been through it. So scratch that analogy. Suffice it to say that I’m at once looking forward to and dreading the experience. I know it is going to have huge highs and deep lows.

Here is my office where I’ll be spending my days, tapping away on my computer.

(Click through to see an annotated version of the photo)

I may well also migrate occasionally to Artisano, a local bakery cafe that serves the most outrageously delicious steak and portobello sandwich along with pastries that are actually worth eating (a rarity, I find) and a wide selection of overpriced drinks ($4 for lemonade? Are you serious?). Best of all, they have free WiFi and don’t seem to mind people who hang out there for hours at a time.

I would really like to use Apple’s Pages to write the manuscript, both because of its less-cluttered interface and its handy full-screen mode that blocks out all visual distractions. So I will begin with Pages but may have to eventually transition to Word, especially once we get to the editing stage and the tracking function comes into play. That is not a happy thought since Word on Mac is somewhat less than wonderful.

I’ve done the important work of selecting my font (11pt Palatino) and my line spacing (1.4). These things are important to me to the point of being silly. But I figure that if I have to stare at a manuscript for hundreds or thousands of hours, it may as well look the best it can. It leaves me with a screen that looks really black and white:

To the other side of my desk, behind my chair, is all of this:

(Again, click through for the silly annotated version)

That little cart there is stuffed full of books I intend to read or re-read as I go. Actually, there are quite a few more than you see there since my wife has offered to take on some of the reading and has selected a stack of titles to work her way through, taking notes and getting together some big picture ideas. She is good to me.

In the coming days I intend to do little writing, lots of reading and massive amounts of note-taking. Though I have prepared quite a detailed proposal for the book, I want to start afresh, at least to some extent, to ensure that my approach to the topic is really the best it can be. I will first seek out the themes that will appear through the book, look for a biblical framework to understand the human heart and technology, and then go looking for the topics of the individual chapters. Even as I write this I am excited to get to work.

In the weeks to come I’ll introduce you to the cast of characters who are going to help make this book come together. But for now, I had best quit procrastinating and start this book. It’s not going to write itself, is it?

But first, one more item. As I began writing The Discipline of Spiritual Discipline several years ago, I specifically asked the readers of this site if they would commit to praying for me once a week. It was a tremendous encouragement to me to talk to readers, often people I had only just met at a conference, who told me “I’m praying for you.” I have no doubt that those prayers were effective and often, when I was struggling and specifically requested prayer, I could honestly feel or sense the difference prayer was making. Once again I would like to ask if you’d be willing to pray for me. This is a book that deals with technology, but even more it is a book that deals with living as Christians in a world that is rapidly changing all around us. It’s not about technology as much as it is about the soul and about the gospel. If I am to write about such things and if I am to do so with any power, I will need God’s help. If you would be willing to ask him to help me, and to do so regularly, I’d be ever grateful.

And here I go…

Today I want to share the long-awaited news about my next book. I write what I do here because I really want this process to be as transparent as possible. I would not be writing books if it were not for you—the visitor to this web site. I feel that I owe it to you to share with you what I’m up to.

It has been almost two years since the release of my first book The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment. Writing the book was an unforgettable experience and it was very encouraging and gratifying to see that it was generally well-received. I’m often asked how well it has sold. To be honest, I don’t know. Twice a year I receive statements that include sales figures. The trouble is that I’m not so good with numbers and I really don’t know how to read the reports. I do know that the book has gone through several printings. Beyond that, I’m pretty much clueless. But I have received a great deal of encouraging feedback and am pleased with both the book and the way it was received. I am thankful for Crossway’s partnership as its publisher.

Since I wrote The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment I’ve often been asked the obvious question: what next? That’s a good question, of course. I have deliberately been biding my time. I’ve been in no real hurry to jump into my next project. A few ideas have come and gone, but none have been intriguing or original enough that I’ve wanted to dedicate a year of my life to them. The commitment to a certain topic is really a commitment to spend at least six months reading and writing about it and then a further six months (at minimum) doing interviews about it, speaking about it, preaching about it, and so on. The last thing I wanted to do was find a topic that would bore me and leave me dreading it.

Earlier last year I got myself an agent. I did so primarily because it makes me feel cool (you can command instant respect in any situation by having your phone ring and declaring to the room, “Sorry, I need to take this. It’s my agent.”). But also I knew that a good agent would be invaluable in helping me discover new ideas and in crafting those ideas into worthwhile books. I had several agents who had expressed interest in representing me but eventually settled on Andrew Wolgemuth (who from this point forward will be known as Agent Andrew). Andrew and I first connected during spring training and as long-suffering fans of bad teams (he’s a Royals fan and I’m a Jays fan) we shared an instant bond (which has since been strained by Zach Greinke winning the Cy Young). A few months ago Agent Andrew and I began crafting book proposals and, when we were happy with the results, he sent them off to a list of several publishers.

That led to five publishers sending offers to me. With Agent Andrew I drew up a list of criteria for evaluating them. There were many factors we could have considered: financial (what were they willing to pay and what royalty were they offering?), marketing (how much effort would they put into marketing the book? Did they have a plan for the marketing?), audience (who reads the books from this publisher?) and even physical (hardcover or paperback?). It was remarkably difficult to choose. It was a case of an abundance of riches—each of the proposals had real strengths and very few had glaring weaknesses. But in the end I had to make a decision. And I did. More on that in just one moment.

First, let me tell you about the book. The book’s working title is The Next Story. I’m really pleased with the title, but it does have a downside in that it is remarkably difficult to pronounce (try saying it out loud). It is a book about technology in general and digital technology in particular. Even the least technical among us are being pressed from all sides by technology. Like it or not, we rely upon it in unprecedented ways. Many people feel that they are analog creatures in a digital world. Christians are beginning to awaken to this reality and are trying to think critically and biblically about many new realities brought about by technological developments. Yet, there are few helpful and sympathetic voices for those who wish to do so but have no idea how. I’m hoping to fill this gap, creating a book that will help Christians think well about technology. I do not intend to discuss Facebook and Twitter and whatever will be big and popular next month. I want to discuss technology in the bigger picture so that the book will be applicable today, tomorrow and ten years from now.

If all goes well, the book will be published in hardcover in the spring of 2011. And it will be published by Zondervan. I’m guessing that this will be a surprise to a few people. Frankly, it is a bit of a surprise to me. But in the end it was clear that Zondervan had the best all-around offer, from the financial, to the marketing, to the audience. Zondervan will take the book to a whole new audience, I’m convinced, and will work hard to help me find interesting speaking opportunities. They put together a fantastic proposal and I had no hesitations in signing on with them.

I intend to begin the writing process very early in the new year. While I won’t quite be able to do so on a full-time basis, I do hope that I can spend most of my time on it for at least a couple of months. That should give me a very good start, at the very least. I hope to have the book completed within six months or so. It typically takes 9 months or so from a book to go from manuscript to print and that brings us to early 2011—the earliest date I’m likely to actually have a copy of the book in my hands.

I expect that I will be talking about the book a lot more in the months to come. I will occasionally ask you for help (mostly in your prayer support, I’m sure) and will let you know how things are progressing. I know there is a great deal of collective wisdom represented by the readers of this site and I hope to take full advantage. I also hope to do a few family and technology seminars next year—so let me know if your church or conference would be interested in hosting one. I have found the previous seminars I’ve led amazing opportunities to both teach and learn. Beginning next month I’ll be turning my attention to technology and theology and the convergence of the two. I can’t wait.