Growth in the Christian Market

Reading the first few chapters of the Writer’s Market Companion helped me understand the growing and declining categories of books and magazines. I found it interesting how the Christian market is growing: “In 2001, for the first time, religious titles sat atop both fiction and nonfiction Publishers Weekly best-seller list”(12). I have been witnessing the success of religious titles in my church. The church that I attend owns numerous Christian bookstores and tries to promote the titles by new authors. I even remember the minister suggesting that we buy Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, which the book refers to as the longest-running nonfiction best seller on the Publishers Weekly 2003 charts. In the table labeled “Category Growth and Decline in Trade Publishing” in page 16, the titles published in the religion category doubled from 432 in 1992 to 834 in 2002.
I found that there are Christian Resource websites such as www.christianbooks.com. When I entered this website, I saw different columns for bestsellers, fictions, children’s books, music, etc. Among the bestsellers were works by well known authors like Rick Warren, Tim LaHaye, and Karen Kingsbury. The bestselling books and other categories are said to be updated weekly. It says in Writer’s Market Companion that books seem to fragment into niches. I found this evident in the website since the book titles are categorized into smaller niches: Church, Pastoral, Theology, Philosophy, and others. Browsing through this site made me realize once again the growth in the Christian market.

[Note: corrected link -- David]

Tried to post these as comments, got a word verification pop-up box that said "Loading..." and never loaded, so posting these as a separate post that will hopefully show up.

Reply to lauren: I agree that this course is completely different from other class in the university, but the lack of regulations is a bit daunting. There are no set topics to post on and no real rules imposed. While those are limiting, they can also guide lost posters (including me!) to post something, even when it feels more obligatory rather than the need to share something insightful or interesting. Plus, this blog is so different from personal blogs, including liverjournal which you mentioned, that the difference is kind of jarring. Basically, open is good, open is freeing, but too open is...too much, with so many possible topics to post on and finding the proper blog voice as Abbyz said. For me, the prompt is a very welcome thing as I hope I can use it like a crutch to get more comfortable with posting here and then, posting prompt-less posts.

Reply to AbbyZ: Definitely, I'm also struggling to find both topics and the proper voice to use in this blog/forum thing. While I too, want to be informal, I want to sound informed and insightful too, rather than blurting out my reaction to the reading or something else. There's this disparity between the want to be informal and/or spontaneous and the need to contribute to the blog, that creates tension.

how deep is your voice?

I’ve always had some kind of website- when I was 11 it was expage.com (a juvenile web-page builder that presents the user with many choices of how to terrorize any accidental viewer- my personal favorite was a pink-cloud background), then I moved on to getting “hosted,” and finally just resorted to simple blogs that I visit every 2-3 months. At first I was really into the whole website craze and spent a lot of time and consideration making my website presentable and interesting. Believe it or not there was a whole network of teenagers (mostly girls) who built sites similar to mine, but the goal was not to sell something or commemorate any particular interest. Our pages always were centered around a blog we wrote in about our daily teenage lives and would have an accompanying “about me” section and “guest-book.” These websites were a sort of social connection to the other website owners, but mostly it was just a hobby for us. Since the blogs would have mostly similar content (i.e.: the latest cd I bought and fell in love with, how unfair my parents were, and what a b*tch my best friend was being) I did feel some “pressure” to make mine as interesting as possible. This was done with added snarkyness and endless teenage angst. Not sure how effective it was, but it seemed to work.

My blogs now are abandoned 350 days of the year, and every so often I go back with enough rage or unusually high-pitched happiness and write something down. Sometimes it’s out of boredom. But what I write in those blogs now is mostly for myself, since I no longer really care if I have any “friends” or have other blogs that I link to or read. I think in that way I have less of a target audience, but I still catch myself trying to express an emotion in an overly showy way, as if keeping with the illusion that anyone will stumble upon and read it.

This blog is a part of a whole different universe of blogs- it forces us to write and think about our potential audience in a far different way than I had with my website or neglected live-journal. There is so much out there in the blog world that I’m really unfamiliar with- political blogs, blogs about gooey but diet-busting food, ones that rip apart Angelina’s latest baby announcement or how Jennifer Aniston really cannot get over it (I don't buy that, by the way). The point is blogs can be anything, really, because there is no moderator. I guess as students we’re not really used to this kind of forum, but this class is already so far apart from the other college courses I’ve taken that I’m open to the newness. And I'm happy that it’s a trial and error process, because that is as close to experiential education as I’ve gotten so far.

finding blog voice that sounds authentic

I'm struggling to be as informal as possible. I think the whole point of blogging is to write on the fly--to write your thoughts as they come. Because blogging is a conversation, I think it should be unedited, no copy & paste, no refining your words.

I think part of the problem with this format has been the idea that I'm writing for other writers. I want it to be good, something to make people think. But at the same time, I want my "blog voice" to be how I speak.

Plus with blogging, I think the tone of one post affects another. When someone writes something intensely formal, we all feel like we should do the same.

Kindle 2: Kindle Harder

The Boston Globe recently published this article about the clamor surrounding the new Kindle. As the article notes, "Seldom has a new product that isn't really new created such excitement." Increased thinness and decreased weight are among the improvements the new Kindle has upon its predecessor. Fueling buzz for the product are endorsements from names quite familiar to our class: Stephen King (looking rather extraterrestrial in the photo) and Oprah Winfrey.

The article really isn't about the Kindle, but rather what it represents - the future of publishing, and more specifically, books. I think the position the article presents is probable. "Will the convenience of electronic reading make the experience of curling up with a book a thing of the past? Most authorities on the place of books in society doubt it." As is noted in the article, new technology often doesn't completely replace old - the comparison drawn to the emergence of photography technology and its effect on painting was very fitting, I thought.

Another issue raised by the Kindle and other electronic book devices is the question of royalties for authors. Electronic books sell for much cheaper than print books, and if royalties stay at present percentages, authors won't be making very much at all. A resolution to this is not clear at present. If the industry becomes mostly electronic, production costs should go down, allowing authors to stake a higher royalty. With enough fame, fortune, and tech savvy authors may even be able to go it alone without publishers - a la Radiohead and "In Rainbows." As for print books, maybe book contracts will come standard with separate sections for the two mediums, and a proportionate royalty for each.

A final interesting note about the Kindle 2: Stephen King has written a short story specifically for the device, and in that story, a character uses the Kindle. Could we call this product placement? I would say so. A clever marketing move? Maybe. It raises an interesting question about advertising in literature, a subject which has been mentioned by others on this blog. I don't think that we will ever see banners or pull out ads in our books, but I do believe product placement has the possibility for wide prevalence in some areas of fiction and non-fiction. Something tells me that the avant-garde won't take to it (without irony, at least), but I could see genre fiction and non-fiction using it. Obviously, product placement treads a fine line and must be used sparingly and with precision. Assaulting the reader with a tirade of real life products would probably have the same effect as the overuse of adjectives and adverbs has on the pace and feel of a story. But a few spots here and there - why not? Many popular authors have inadvertently done this in attempts to provide realistic detail: for example, Tom Clancy's novels are quite specific about vehicle and weapon brands. The appearance of the iPod, as opposed to the generic mp3 player, in many pieces of popular writing is also technically product placement.

The Adventures of A Writer

For all you writer’s out there, you should check out this blog: http://lynnmcc.blogspot.com/

It is a wonderful site about a writer who loves to write and hopefully can be published one day. She wrote a great article today, that was kind of reminiscent of Stephen King’s On Writing,, but it had me thinking about character development for stories and how people go about expressing there stories thorough there characters. Here is an excerpt of today’s entry called “Living, Breathing Fake People”:

“Any writer who goes about things through her characters is well familiar with the notion that fictional characters become almost real to those of us who conceive them and spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about them and then writing about them. These people who are nothing more than figments of our imagination become as real to us as people we know who actually move and breathe, even if we keep this little fact to ourselves. We can hear voices, imagine what a character will do in a given situation, even attribute a runaway plot to a character who isn't doing what we expected him or her to do.

But in the interest of creating three-dimensional characters who are able to engage a reader and draw them into the story, I have to wonder when a writer has gone too far. When the character becomes a little too real.

I'm sure each writer has his or her own particular line.

I have an entire village worth of characters who populate my brain, each person as unique and familiar to me as my own family members. And I've done some crazy things in my efforts to get to know the ins and outs of these folks.

I've interviewed my characters. Inserted myself into a scene, asked questions like a reporter and responded to the answers I was given, just as if I were as fictional as my character. I find this is a great way to fine-tune my character's voice. It also helps me dig deep, to follow threads that reveal motivation and deep seated feelings I'd never before considered. I have a lot of fun with this, and often it threatens to take over the actual writing of the story…” (Read More Here)

After reading this blog entry and a few others, I though about the question that was brought up. I think it can be hard to do a response for these blog because I think many of us are torn to do our academic duty and respond because its part of our grade. However, it seems that many of us are familiar with how blogging works and feel the ease of being able to express ourselves differenly. Since, we don’t have such a specific subject we have to keep addressing. Many of us have went as far as submitting our own work or bringing up Publishing News. All of this helps us get a sense of what this class is suppose to be about. I don’t think any of us have crossed the line in making anything too personal. It has all been opinion which is health for discussion and commmeting. In my own opinion, I think that we all have done a great job finding out own blog voice. I try to do the responses in away where it is something that I will enjoy reading as well as sharing. My last few responses have personally strayed away from our readings, just because I think many people tend to response on the readings and it has just been away to bring a sort of diversity to our blog. But I love reading comments about Lukeman, King and others because it gives an insight on what people think of the same textbook that is being read. It’s hard to find a blog voice for an academic class, but I think for this experimental case we succed.

Question of the Week: How do you manage your blog voice?

First I want to thank George for suggesting that I prompt students with a question each week. This seems like a great idea. Thinking about my distractedness in class yesterday brings to mind a general principle of life:

We are always on view.

It's tempting to think that we can just be ourselves in social, professional, and academic settings, but it's just not so. We are always on stage, always on display, always potentially being scrutinized. (Facebook candor provides an endless set of lessons on this issue.) By its presence and accessibility, this blog is a public document. We all, students and instructor, continue to build public presences through our postings and comments. Potential employers and professional references might very well chance on this blog.

This leads to my question of the week:

How do you manage your blog voice?

I don't want this question to limit topics: feel free to avoid it. But if you're stuck, this might be a place to start.

On the whole, the blog posts have had the feel of "weekly responses," resembling the kind of informal responses that might be submitted individually in a traditional class. Here's a reading; here's my response. Here's another reading; here's another response. As such, a number of them have the informality (one might say carelessness) of private writings, with little attention to formatting or style. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach: it's one way to proceed. And I'm not going to urge you to be more dialogical again -- you know where I stand. What I'd like this question to generate, rather, is a conversation about blogging versus "private" forms such as diaries. Informality can be a kind of voice, including inattention to error. However, if such informality is not deliberate, it runs the risk of mistaking a blog for a private forum.

Respond, or not, as you wish.

For starters...

I'm aware I've not gotten off to the greatest start this semester. A lot has been distracting me (not just senior-itis) and blogging has often fallen victim to the back burner as a result. I apologize for that and hope this first entry of mine can pave the way for all those that are to come. I'll keep this brief, so as not to waste too much time when I could be posting about more class-relevant items, but there is something I would like to address. Last Thursday, I sort of had a breakdown during class. Not "sort of", so much as "a blatantly uncontrollable" breakdown. I have known for some time that my best friend is sick, but found out shortly before class that the diagnosis is two kinds of cancer. The odds clearly aren't good and for 3o seconds in class I was finally able to begin processing it. I'm not really taking the news well. In fact, it kills me someone so wonderful is being dealt such an unfortunate set of cards. I have since had more time to deal with it and wanted to appologize for not being more, for lack of a better word, "professional" during class. I meant to take the day off, but was convinced going to class was for the best. I'm sorry for distracting everyone and causing a scene. I know the issue was dropped shortly after my departure, but I didn't want there to be an awkward air around me in the class like I'm some ticking emotional time-bomb. It's extremely rare that I cry at all, so in a way you were all lucky to see a hidden human side to me. In any regard, thank you for understanding and not making me feel like an idiot today in class. I'll be more composed from here forward.

“Making the List” Oprah’s Book Club and What It Means to the Publishing World

Many readers have come across the occasionally book in the bookstore with the big letter O written on it and have know what it stand for, Oprah’s Book Club. A club that in its own right is a Bestseller’s list that rivals the New York Times. Authors, publishers and editors know that if this woman – Oprah – chooses your novel then it is a guaranteed gold mine for you. As Kate Pickert described it in her TIME magazine article, Oprah’s Book Club “is not so much a club as a ruthlessly influential marketing vehicle, with the power to fundamentally alter best-seller lists, Amazon rankings and royalty payments” According to Pickert the Oprah’s club has 2 million members and has its own website that helps readers interact with each other and have reading tools on the chosen books or just advice on reading.  Many authors, publishers, and editors believe in the power of Oprah’s Book Club because of “its influence on sales, which has been known to increase a print run fivefold”

Take for example the latest book that was chosen by Oprah Winfrey back in September; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a book by a first-time novelist. The publisher who “had already ordered 750,000 "Oprah versions" from the printers…[and] were already on their way to bookstores across the country” when the announcement was made. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle “debuted at #14 on the New York Times fiction bestseller list with an initial print run of 26,000 and crept up to #2; it will be #1 on the list published October 5”. That is the effect that Oprah’s Book Club has on the publishing industry.


Pickert brings up the point that being branded by Oprah is not always a good thing for many publisher, especially authors. Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections was picked to be on Oprah’s Book List in 2001. Franzen thought this made his  “book [have] ‘that logo of corporate ownership on it’ [and] dismayed him. "

On a side note, Pickert lets us know that “since her club debuted in 1996, Winfrey — who personally chooses which books to endorse and does not financially benefit — has invited 66 titles into her club.”

Based on the article, what do you think of Oprah’s Book Club? Does it stay true to literature? Is it a marketing ploy? How is it beneficial to the readers and the authors? Thoughts?

Response to Ian's post on the publishing industry

While the rise of technology is directly correlated to the death of the publishing industry, it does not necessarily have to put an end to publishing and editing industry altogether. Most people say they do not read because they do not have time, not because they do not want to. If technology is going to make reading an experience of convenience for these readers, perhaps more people will begin to read again. In this case, books sent directly to media still need to be edited and go through most parts of the publishing business. The ability to obtain free things to read online, however, is worrisome. I enjoy nothing more than the smell of a ‘real’ book and the sound of freshly opened binding, but I can easily understand why readers are choosing to go digital. Theoretically, if reading is more convenient, more people should read, and the demand for books online should go up. Once again, this is only a theory, and, in practicality, it will probably make people lazier than they already are. However, the possibility for a ‘new’ type of publishing world exists. It’s up to current and future readers to decide where and when to read.

The Kindle: Take Two

Epstein, iPhones, and the fall of the book

I am sorry Epstein; I have seen the end of the publishing business as we know it. I just watched an iPhone commercial in which one of our friendly fingers was paging through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I have to believe, copyright issues notwithstanding, that this marks a crucial step towards the complete digitization of books. On a previous iPhone commercial they demonstrated how the phone could analyze a fragment of a song and connect the user to the iTunes store where the album could be purchased. What’s stopping this from being applied to text? I am greatly anticipating the time when I can read the New York Times Book Review, on their website via my phone of course, and immediately be connected to an online bookstore so that I can purchase the hottest new titles. Given these new possibilities, perhaps Apple should create something like iMedia. Similar to what Epstein conceptualized as a publishing conglomerate, filtered through online marketplaces, the opportunities afforded Apple could lead to the eventual creation of localized sites that cater to every interest of every consumer, be it Peruvian pan-flute music, the newest blockbuster action movie, or digital copies of text books.
What I find terribly ironic is that the iPhone answers Epstein’s complaint, and the subsequent voracity of his belief that printed text will never become an extinct expression of technology, by providing digital books with which a reader can still fulfill some sort of tactile experience. It is true that holding an iPhone loaded with your favorite novels and poetry will never equal the sensory experience of standing in a room filled with those same books. I guess we just have to ask ourselves whether it is a fair trade-off to lose the experience of the smell and feel of a book in exchange for having access to the most extensive library imaginable in our front pocket. For me, the answer is a resounding yes and my interest is piqued as to how these technologies will continue to unfold and change our day-to-day lives.

The First Five Pages, Ch 3-5, post for the week of 02/01 - 02/08

I think The First Five Pages is a good little guidebook for those who aspire to become published writers but may need some help to get there. I like that Lukeman's chapters are short and to the point. He is able to explain concepts basically and although his examples are usually over the top, I think it is good, because it makes it absolutely clear what is unacceptable. I think I like this book because it could be useful to a wide range of writers. For novices, it gives clear guidelines about what one needs to perfect to be successful. For a more experienced writer, I think that it gives clear cut reference points that allow one to reinforce the things they were probably doing already. Lukeman's writing feels easygoing but firm and I like that. I think the most useful chapter out of these three is the one on style. While Sound and Comparison both point out important facets of writing, I think of the three style is the hardest one to alter. I also was amused because while I was reading the five ways to "tell if a manuscript suffers from stylistic errors" all I could think about was Epstein! I don't think number one really applies, but he manages to do the other four! I did feel that Book Business was being used as "an arena for the writer to exhibit his talent," that the writing was "too noticeable," that there was a great deal of redundancy, and that I was "being used as a reader." In the last post I made I tried to articulate just what I felt was wrong with Epstein's book and I don't feel like I quite put my finger on it. With Lukeman's descriptions, I can safely say that what was wrong with Book Business for me was definitely a stylistic problem.

Conclusion of Book Business, post for the week of 01/25 - 02/01

The last 40 or 50 pages of Book Business felt very anticlimactic to me, going back now after finishing the book two weeks ago it is hard to even remember how Epstein wrapped it all up. I think that in theory it is interesting to hear from someone who had such an integral part in making the Library of America book series come to life, but Epstein somehow managed to make this story remarkably dull and flat. I think the most enjoyable part is when he relays the brainstorming Edmund Wilson did to come up with the concept. The story about the founding of the New York Review of Books also felt that way to me. I don't think that the topics he brings up are uninteresting, but for some reason for me the way that Epstein relays information is either irritating or flat out boring. His strength lies in the personal epithets he infuses throughout, but occasionally these are even tainted by a pretentiousness that he has about him. I think of the final three chapters I found the last one the most interesting, with the historical information about independent bookstores, and the transition from small shopping mall retailers to megastores like Barnes and Noble. A big part of the problem with this book I think is the fact that the information is taken from lectures that Epstein gave. It does occasionally have a story-like feel, but overall it reads like a lecture put on paper. The story is not a cohesive one, like I thought it would be. Coming into this book I envisioned a chronological history of Epstein's experience in the publishing industry, with some insight on future innovations. While you do get some of that from this book, I feel it could have been structured/written better. I don't know that I would have finished it if I didn't have to. As I've mentioned before, I don't think much of his book atm idea, and it was so annoying that he had to keep going on about it. The redundancy of this idea really got to me and made it difficult for me to stick it out through the afterword.

I guess I would say that I am sort of disappointed; I wanted to like this book, it sounded to me like something I would enjoy, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Epstein should be an interesting person, considering the life he led, and although I feel I would classify myself as a writer, I still am interested in the history of the publishing industry. I wanted this book to work, but I just found it lacking.