IVP - Andy Unedited - Writing Archives

Self Publish? You Bet.

Do I, as the editorial director for a traditional print publisher, encourage and support self-publishing--even self-ebook publishing? Yes. I do. Here's why.

First, just as I encourage people to read most anything (magazines, blogs, newspapers, websites, books, journals and more), I think it is good for people to write most anything (articles, fiction, nonfiction, letters). Reading stimulates the mind and writing clarifies thought. Writing and reading are foundational to a good society--not only for entertainment but to transfer information and wisdom from one generation to another. So self-publishing? Of course.

Second, there are far more books people want to write than traditional publishers can absorb. The explosion of self-publishing in the last decade has put an exclamation point on that.

Third, successful self-publishing can lead to successful traditional publishing. Consider the case of Amanda Hocking. Fifty literary agents turned down her paranormal romance manuscripts. So she self-published an ebook. She writes fast (finishing a book in about a month) and her ebooks caught on, and now she is $2 million richer. As a result, not surprisingly, a traditional print publisher is now releasing her Trylle series.

Why go to a traditional print publisher when she was doing so fantastically well on her own? Amanda said she did it for a couple reasons: "E-books are taking up more of the market, but it's still somewhere between, like, 10 and 30 percent of the market. But also, I was kind of overwhelmed with the amount of work that I had to do that wasn't writing a book. I was writing more when I worked a day job than when I was writing full time because of how much time I devote to the whole publishing part."

I have friends who are self-publishing biography/memoir. And they are doing the right thing--for now. There may come a time, though, when they need the help of a traditional publisher. If so, I may be able to help them with that too.

There's No Such Thing As Good Writing

As fellow editor Gary Deddo likes to tell the story, his ninth-grade English teacher was the perfect stereotype. Glasses, tight face, hair in a bun, outdated dress that came up in a tight collar around her neck, leaning over her desk and in a crackly voice exhorting her students, “There’s no such thing as good writing. [Dramatic pause.] There’s only good rewriting.”

Dramatic Non-Fiction

Even if you have the most profound truths, you can still be profoundly boring. I was once on the pastoral search committee for our church and heard a sermon from a prospective candidate who delivered fourteen points. Yes, count ‘em, fourteen points! There has to be a better way, and there is.

Please Don't Use Google!

Do you know how important artichokes are? A Google search generated over 9.8 million hits! Astonishing. But that is nothing compared to crochet, which gives over 20.3 million results. So if you are going to crochet an artichoke, well, you are clearly in the forefront of a massive cultural phenomenon!

Giving Them Takeaway

How do you keep a reader reading? Inquiring writers and editors of nonfiction want to know. There are many ways to do so. No one single formula should always be employed, but one that many writers and editors use effectively is to provide takeaway.

What’s takeaway?

The Man's Man of Letters

My latest excursion in literary tourism took me just fourteen miles from our offices in Westmont when I recently visited the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway with some friends. The house in Oak Park, Illinois, has largely been restored to its original condition.

Here young Ernest joined in prayers with his grandfather Abba, a Civil War hero for the Union who led a “colored brigade.” Here he was entertained, along with his siblings by the stories spun by his father. Here he heard his mother, a veteran of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, offer music lessons. And so pieces of the influence on Ernest as a writer begin to emerge.

Please Don't Use the Dictionary!

It’s one of the most common and one of the dullest tools that writers or speakers pull out of their toolboxes—quoting a dictionary definition when trying to make a point. It happens every day whether it’s a blogger, a teacher, a preacher or a speaker. Webster gets quoted to define some painfully ordinary word like professional or accidental or addiction. Why is this such a problem?

The Shallows 2: A Brief History of Reading

In Phaedrus, Socrates muses on the merits of writing. Surprisingly to our minds, he is skeptical. Why? It is a recipe for forgetfulness. We won’t have to exercise our memories anymore. Knowledge of a subject, after all, is much more valuable than a written account of the same thing. The only virtue of writing was as a guard against the forgetfulness of old age.

So Nicholas Carr, in The Shallows, introduces us to the first Luddite in his book on how the Internet changes our brains. (See part one of my review here.) In chapter four he offers a fascinating overview of the history of the written word and how each change created changes in us and in society.

The Shallows 1: A Change of Mind

Nicholas Carr made a splash with his Atlantic cover story "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which I discussed here. Now in The Shallows he brings a full-length book to bear on the question, and it's a dandy.

The subtitle, "What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains," is very descriptive. In this serial review, I'll touch on some of the evidence he offers, a mix of anecdotal and scientific.

Dedicated to the One I Love

Those who know my wife, Phyllis, know that she is a larger-than-life personality. Those who know me, know that I am not. We are the poster children for Opposites Attract. I've often said that Phyllis can strike up a conversation with a fencepost, and get the post to do most of the talking!

That's Unheard Of!

Everybody does it. Besides that, it's not wrong. In fact, sometimes it can be a beautiful thing. No, I'm not talking about that! I'm talking about ending sentences with a preposition.

Miss Whitebread Was Wrong

“Always make an outline before you start writing.” Isn’t that what your fifth grade teacher told you? Well, I’m sorry to break this to you, but Miss Whitebread was wrong. In my continuing series of Stupid Things You Were Taught in School (see here and here), let me deconstruct this bad boy.