Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Hot and chance of showers

One of the big assumptions we make in this new age of digital publishing is that we will have the power to make the technology work. I haven’t seen anybody addressing that issue, but it seems we should in this age of brown-outs and computer crashes and having to back up our writing “just in case.”  I am reminded of the saying about what assumptions do to all of us.

What is your principal concern as we head full-scale into the age of electronic publishing? Here are three that come to mind for me:

1. What will the traditional publisher do with and for my writing?

2. How will an author explain the publisher’s decision to produce her/his writing electronically to his or her long-term audience, some of whom use e-readers and some of whom don’t?

3. What kind of promotional support will the author need to give electronic publications, and how will that best be done?

I’ll be eager to read your thoughts. We’re all groping at this point. In the meantime, I want to read Lane Smith’s new children’s book due out in September, It’s a Book. The review says it’s an exchange between a jackass (the digital version) and a gorilla (the print version). Sounds interesting.

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Weather: Low 90s and muggy

A sentence on page 20 in Publishers Weekly’s recent July 19 issue on children’s books for this fall caught my eye: “…It’s unclear whether parents will fork over the money for kids to use a $499 iPad that might easily fall into the toilet or sandbox.” I hadn’t thought of that!

It’s one thing for a child to leave a $14.95 hardcover or even a $6.95 paperback out in the rain or let the dog chew it, but it’s quite another for him/her to do the same with the expensive hardware needed for an electronic app, no matter how cheap the app. I should have thought of this because one of my young grandsons is not the most careful, and I bet lots of parents will have the same thoughts.

Regardless, it does seem clear that creators of content for children–that’s you authors–must at least try to think of interactive product. The closest we have come at this point is in  lift-the-flap books, cut-outs with texture (think Pat the Bunny) and multi-novelty creations like Paul Zelinsky’s The Wheels on the Bus. Now, the emphasis seems to be on converting formerly published titles with sales vitality into something that “comes to life” through technology, puts children in the content and to some extent lets them have control over it.

The writing in the sand points to a reinvigoration of content for all readers, but not necessarily new content. Rick Riordan’s 39 Clues Series, launched in 2008, is telling in this regard. The series included books, cards and online games with a designated website. But the series, written by four different authors, all had some reference to historical characters. It was new technology applied to conveying existing knowledge. Incidentally the final book, Into the Gauntlet, will be published at the end of August with a print run of 750,000. I’d like to see the number of hits the website gets.

One more quote from the article: “Publishers will focus on producing the best possible stories–and then making them ‘discoverable.’” And we know who writes those stories, don’t we?

How do you feel about making the shift from writing for the page to writing for the screen?

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Hot and cloudy

Being a kids book’ advocate, I don’t think you can start little ones too early in grasping new experience from a book. Well, maybe I draw the line with prenatal reading, but I’ve had too many lovely experiences holding those six-month-old cherubs and sharing books with them not to think it’s valuable.

Of course the question comes to mind about their ability to absorb meaning from the page versus the feeling of being loved while wrapped in the arms of a caring adult. Does it really matter if the love a child feels at this stage carries over to a love of reading? The book and the love can become indistinguishable.

But what about all this talk and some evidence that kids of today have become adapted to and enamored with electronic formats? At what stage of a child’s life does that take place?

We’ve read about and perhaps seen preschoolers at computer keyboards where they may be cued to an electronic picture book or cartoon. No adult needed there. The e-book makes the reading/viewing even easier for smaller and perhaps younger ones. We’re getting there in regard to making content and format accessible for very young children.

However, even with all these technological breakthroughs, I hope we don’t lose the opportunity to connect love and reading for the preschool child. So many of them need it. Nobel author Pearl Buck’s children’s book, One Bright Day (1950), seems pertinent to this question. (And maybe I need to read again The Good Earth.) Born in 1892 and taken to China by her missionary parents before the start of WWII, Buck escaped indescribable tragedies by her mother’s reading to her and then by reading herself at an early age. How did she come to know love when she was finding mutilated body parts in her yard if not through books?

Well, that’s history, and we live in the 21st century. Thank heaven we have children and love and books to share in so many forms. What affect do you think reading an e-book might have on children?

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Hot and muggy

A recent quote in Newsweek from Anna Quindlen caught my eye: “Well, what is a book really? Is it its body or its soul?” I think that was her way of asking the question many of us have about the relationship between content and format. The two have been considered one for so long. Reading automatically meant holding and turning bound pages, but that was before the digital age. This revolution is certainly noticeable in the area of kids’ publishing.

We’ve had electronic gadgets related to kids’ book content, usually called “novelties,” and in some kind of book format with page-turning features for some time. Remember the Play-a-Tune books of the 1980s? But the web has brought newer interactive digital formats onscreen into existence. Quoting from an article entitled, “Technology Alters Concept of Literary,” from an LA Times article: “Sound, animation and the ability to connect to the Internet have created the notion of a living book that can establish an entirely new kind of relationship with readers.”

“Living book”–now there’s a great phrase. It is this relationship with readers made possible electronically that is so astounding and so breathtakingly new for those of us who think of reading as turning pages. The texting, chatting, YouTubing kids of today will expect a different kind of connection with the content that enters their consciousness. They will associate new information and entertainment with moving sound and color as much as text in fixed format on a page of paper.

This is not alarming to me, even though I’ve been looking at words in type on pages for years. Why? Because I see so many options for resurrecting great art and stories of past generations and keeping them alive online for kids today. We all know the sadness of discovering a bound book has gone “out of print,” but the electronic book is more accessible for infinitely longer–or at least as long as we have a power base for our computers. I also see an expanding world of listening opportunities for the blind as Intel and Amazon convert text into speech immediately available through computers.

Ask any children in your life where they access their reading material: libraries, computer, physical books, etc.

Location: Books & Such Nashville Office

Weather: Hot as you-know-what

The title for this post has a broader meaning than at first may come to mind. As I read the summer movie listings, review publishers’ offerings of games, and receive inquiries about film rights-all based on children’s books, I can’t help thinking what terrific influence authors of children’s books have.

Beverly Cleary’s classic books about Ramona Quimby have just hit the big screen in the full-length film, “Ramona and Beezus.” For an older audience, Stephanie Meyer’s third book and film, “Twilight Saga:Eclipse,” is playing, though it’s questionable whether the book or the film was birthed first. And if you think kids books include comics, you’ll want to know about ComicCon, the annual San Diego conference devoted to that format that took place last week. I heard it was awash with trailers for viewing.

All of which may cause us to ponder which comes first with kids now:  words or pictures? The time-honored approach developed in a world where reading was a great achievement was first the picture book, then the all-text chapter book, followed by the longer novel and nonfiction book. But things have changed in the last 20 years, thanks to declining levels of classic education, the rapid spread of computer and texting culture, and the lure of entertainment.

I don’t mean to indict any of those changes–just saying that they have happened and that kids learn in different ways now. And even in all this change, some things are universal. That’s why it’s encouraging to see a major movie being made of “Ramona and Beezus.” Beverly Cleary is 93 or 94 years old, and she clearly remembers her father losing his job when she was a child. The Ramona books began in 1968, developing out of Cleary’s success with books about Henry Huggins. Read the Ramona books and see the movie–with a child.

What experiences are universal themes that children still respond to? How much time do the children in your life devote to reading?

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It used to be that, for first-time writers, the best way to break into the publishing world was through writing nonfiction. Yet without a platform, today it’s difficult for writers to find traction in the market, and without a recognizable name, their personal stories, even if wonderful, are less likely to be purchased.

Let’s do an informal survey on nonfiction books.

• What are you interested in reading in the nonfiction realm?
• What have you liked in the past and why?
• What would you like to see published?
• What holes are out there, and what types of writers should fill them?
• How helpful has nonfiction been to your personal life?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I’ve always loved memoirs. I’m interested in the personal, how and why people do things, and so a memoir provides me an opportunity to examine the writer’s life through his or her eyes. I even wrote a spiritual memoir several years ago and felt honored when one of my readers said, “I really appreciate how you just tell the story and let me draw my own conclusions.”

Testimonies have been a mainstay of Christian witnessing and publishing. Perhaps the most famous early book was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, first published in 1563, which detailed the lives and deaths of the early Christians. More modern Christians made Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor, the story of her husband’s martyrdom with four others in Ecuador, a best-seller in 1957.

A memoir allows the writer to recount events through his or her own understanding. While you can argue with the author about what his or her life meant, you really can’t argue with what happened to that person. In his 90 Minutes in Heaven, author and survivor Don Piper doesn’t even bother trying to explain why he had no vital signs for an hour and a half. He believes he went to heaven, and while it doesn’t make logical sense, since we weren’t there, how can we argue with him?

Memoirs are of perennial interest to publishers, though their popularity can wax and wane with the public. The secret is the quality of the writing. Memoirs aren’t the same as an inspirational story of narrative nonfiction that recounts the events in someone’s life. Memoirs are more about the writer’s interior terrain rather than about the events that occured. What changed in the person from the start of the memoir to its conclusion is the question the book answers.

Some of the best memoirs pull no punches in exposing the author’s life. I enjoyed Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God, and many have commented about the strength of Mary DeMuth’s Thin Places. The author’s ability to express the near-unthinkable makes these works of special interest and value to a reader trying to make sense out of life. (My favorite memoir of all is not from the Christian canon, but it reflects Christian truth: Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy.)

Long ago my honors English teacher said, “I don’t know why you kids bother to read fiction. You should read nonfiction. Not only is it even more amazing than fiction, but it’s also true.”

Reading memoirs, particularly spiritual ones, enables me to catch a glimpse of the unusual way God works in the lives of his followers. It encourages me, gives me ideas about how God might be working in my life, and shows me that each individual relates to life in a different, and often entertaining, way. Difficult circumstances remind me of people’s resilience and how I can trust God with my life, too.

And they’re frequently really great reads.

What memoirs have you enjoyed? Why?

What made you chose them in the first place?

What do you look for in a spiritual memoir?

Are you drawn to a famous person’s book more than an unknown with a fascinating, true story to tell?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

When I was in high school, I attended the local Lutheran church to play volleyball on Friday nights. Soon they invited me to Bible study, presented the gospel and encouraged me to read about Christianity. One of the kids recommended I start with Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth. Midway through, I prayed the prayer of salvation. I didn’t buy it all, but I sure didn’t want to be left behind if everyone was raptured and armed conflict broke out in the Middle East.

The pastor later recommended Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, and I took a copy of that green paperback  to Europe my second summer in college. From Bonhoeffer I learned what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and my life hasn’t been the same since.

Quite an extreme choice of books to read–and therein is the breadth of theological interest in the book-buying public. Guess which book has sold more copies?

I’ve come a long way in 40 years of mostly light-theological reading. While I appreciate the rigor a good book about God requires, my brain is not philosophical–I need more simple and concrete concepts–and theology is not my preferred reading material. Still, I’ve managed to keep up with classics like J. I. Packer’s Knowing God and C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, almost always because some Christian I admire recommended them.

Which brings me to my major problem. How do you find quality theology books today for the simpler reader?

Christianity Today magazine regularly publishes a list of the best books published each year. This year I didn’t recognize a single title in the nonfiction category.

Publishing theology, with the possible exception of apologetics, is a small field in the Christian marketplace. While many theology readers exist, outside of seminaries and classes, it’s not a big mass market unless the author has a significant platform or publishes at a timely moment. What else would explain the success of Lindsey’s book which came out during an oil embargo in the Middle East?

If you are not a professional, how often do you read theology?

What elements draw you to a particular book?

Do you only read within your denomination?

Can you call it a pleasure read, or are you reading differently–for information?

And if you could write any sort of book with a theological theme–remember, theology means the study of God–what would you write about?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Most Christian nonfiction is about Christian living–self-help books, advice on a myriad of subjects, or a manuscript on how to apply the Bible to life. A cursory glance at Christianbooks.com’s website today shows ten of the twenty-five top sellers as nonfiction projects.

What makes a project attractive to the nonfiction reader? One that identifies a “felt need” and provides advice on how to live with that need. This can range over the gamut from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World–how to live a more spiritually-focused life within the context of our frenzied society– to No More Christian Nice Guy–a clarion call for men to stick up for themselves even at church.  While many of us would agree our lives are too busy and we really would prefer to be more like Mary who chose “what is better,” in Jesus’ words, Paul Coughlin’s title, No More Christian Nice Guy, probably piqued the curiosity of some of you.

And that’s the key to Christian living–either plainly declaring the subject (Where Have All the Good Men Gone?) or using a catchy title to draw the reader to a concept (How to Keep Your Inner Mess from Trashing Your Outer World). It can include humor (Getting Old Ain’t for Wimps), how to’s (Prayer Walk), and general reflections on life (Horse Tales from Heaven).

It also was the key to my early walk as a Christian. Growing up in an academic, non-church-attending family, I didn’t have a clue about how to diaper a baby, much less how to raise one in the Christian faith. I started with Dr. James Dobson’s The Strong-Willed Child, and from there became a regular reader of Focus on the Family materials. I could not have successfully raised my children without those important Christian living books.

These days my child-rearing is behind me, and my radio-listening is done in short spurts. While I used to learn about Christian nonfiction books that could help my life from friends and the radio, these days the avenues are not as broad. With so many Christian magazines truncating their content and book reviews, it’s harder than ever to find books that might pique my interest or fill a felt need. Which brings me to my questions:

Where do you find nonfiction book suggestions?

What types of Christian living books appeal to you and why?

What books have you recommended over and over again?

And what Christian living-type book made a difference in your life?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Among the things our agents noted while at the International Christian Retail Show last month (and shared with me–so now I’m sharing with you) was some editors continue to struggle with what will sell in the Christian nonfiction market. I find that ironic since long ago Christian fiction was anathema; only polemical works and staid commentaries were ready sales to the churchgoing public.

About 50 years ago the Christian reading market, which was almost exclusively nonfiction, began to expand significantly. The pastor of our home church, Larry Christianson, was one of the first big sellers with his The Christian Family. For our wedding, Pastor Larry and his wife Nordis gave my husband and me an autographed copy of their then-latest best-seller: The Christian Marriage. It worked; my husband and I are still happily married 32 years later!  :-)

Both these books would fall into the Marriage and Family category, along with a crucial book we took on our honeymoon: The Act of Marriage. (That one worked, too.)

Because I mainly read books from the public library, I didn’t see a lot of Christian-themed material again until we attended the military chapel at Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The Baptist chaplain understood the necessity of extra-source material and kept a box of books beside the Bible study door, free for the sharing. I read them all over the 15 months we were stationed at the sub base.

I clearly remember the one thing they had in common: They were all published by Chosen Books. Titles included The Hiding Place, The Cross and the Switchblade, and Chuck Colson’s Born Again. Astronaut Jim Irwin also wrote an unusual book for them: More Than an Ark on Ararat: Spiritual Lessons Learned While Searching for Noah’s Ark.

All of them were testimonies of some sort. The writing quality was uneven, but I took away encouragement and spiritual insight from reading about the practical way God worked in others’ lives. Isn’t that what good Christian nonfiction should be?

What type of Christian nonfiction do you like? Are you a hunter–specifically tracking down the answer to a question? Or a browser–randomly picking up whatever looks interesting?

Have you seen changes in what you read, or what you want to read?

Did any one nonfiction book change your life?