Crying Hope
I have a nineteen-month-old daughter who decided she didn’t want to sit in her high chair for dinner last night. She threw a fit. My Australian friends refer to this as “chucking a wobbly,” and somehow that seems a better description. I forced her body, which she had stiffened straight as a board, into the chair only to watch her throw the food we’d lovingly placed before her all over the floor. She wasn’t having it. In fact, she didn’t stop crying until I took her out of the chair and set her on my lap, and that’s how we both ate dinner last night. I’m not in the habit of relishing my daughter’s cries, and last night was no different. But when I place last night’s experience next to the unspeakable events of Newtown, Connecticut, it doesn’t take long for me to see my daughter’s cries as pure gifts of heaven. At church recently I was reminded of another, strangely parallel tragedy—what’s known historically as the Slaughter of the Innocents, when Herod the Great preempted his ouster by ordering the execution of all the young boys in Bethlehem. He had heard from men in the know about the birth of a baby who one day would be king of the Jews. “King of the Jews” was Herod’s title, and he wasn’t about to give it up. That night the cries of children went silent as Roman soldiers swiftly carried out their orders. Earlier a young couple had been warned by a strange apparition to flee. “Go to Egypt,” the voice said. Joseph and Mary sneak away with their infant son in the dead of night, trudging across the desert as fast as their legs could carry them. And somewhere along the way, it stands to reason, the baby would have been hungry. He would have moaned and grunted and wrenched in search of Mother’s milk. And when it didn’t come fast enough, this child would have thrown his head back and cried. Even as Herod silenced the cries of hundreds if not thousands of young boys, in a far off land a baby cried. Even as those beautiful children in Newtown lost their lives so senselessly, in a far off land a baby cried. Even as the powers of this world try their damnedest to scare us into weakness and submission, in a far off land a baby cried. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how unjust, how oppressive, how murderous, how unfair, how painful it gets, this cry reminds us that good wins in the end. Merry Christmas.
How to Come Up with a Great Book Concept
Let me start with three reasons working on a book with a lousy concept is a bad idea: Beautiful, compelling writing is terribly important to publishers, but if your beautiful writing is in the service of a concept that no one will buy, publishers will have a hard time getting excited. A far-reaching platform is also a huge asset, but again if your concept bites, what’s the use? What’s the point of leveraging a massive platform for a book that people are not interested in? Throngs may flock to you, but if you hand them SPAM, they will be less likely to come back, and they will not send others to you. What’s the point of investing a massive amount of time and energy into a concept that won’t sell? Your time and energy are more valuable than that. I have been in pub board sessions where I could literally see the tension in our bodies. We fairly writhe in our seats when we love the writing or the platform, or both, but dislike the concept. We writhe because we see all that potential going to waste. And yes, sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we turn down a concept that another publisher picks up, and it becomes a big success. But that is the very rare exception. Far more often we give a concept the benefit of the doubt only to wish we hadn’t later. Often we dislike a concept because we have seen similar concepts fail. By the way, the reverse of all the above is also true. It’s pure magic when beautiful writing and a good platform work together with a sweet concept. That’s the stuff that gets us up in the morning! That’s the stuff that changes lives and makes a real difference out there. Needless to say, this up front work of coming up with a great concept is really important. I want to recommend a two-step process for developing a compelling topic: Find the need. Brainstorm a title. Step 1: Find the Need It’s important to isolate the impulse to buy. This isn’t about getting rich or helping the publisher get rich. It’s about the fact that you and I don’t plunk down money for a book unless we really want it. That’s just reality. Ask: What is the need to which your book will be the answer? What’s the itch you’re going to scratch? What’s the pain you’re going to take on as your own? This isn’t necessarily about clever concepts, either. We see a lot of clever concepts that reflect genuine creativity, but don’t scratch an itch. And here’s what we say when we see one of these: “Clever concept, but will it sell?” This isn’t about the need you think people have. It’s about the need they think they have. Social networks can be key here. Talk to friends. Do some surveys. Ask, “Would you buy a book on…? And if you wouldn’t, what would you buy a book on?” Spend some time on this. Read books and articles and blogs to help you develop your idea. Be willing to change your concept. Sometimes a subtle change makes all the difference. Sometimes a change means more work for you, and this work is worth doing. Step 2: Brainstorm a Title Some proposals reassure, “Don’t worry. I’m not married to this title. We can change it.” Make no mistake. The title you use in your book proposal has a significant influence on how publishers will respond to it. We know it’s not final, but your title still affects our reception. Again I would point to the great power of a community here. Enlist some friends—friends you trust, friends whose opinions you value. Throw a brainstorming party, get one of those big 3M pads of paper, and go crazy. Consider doing three of these sessions. Use the ideas that come from these team sessions as fodder for brainstorming sessions you do later by yourself. You may want to brainstorm not just titles but subtitles too, and eventually title and subtitle combinations. Then, in your proposal use the best title and subtitle you came up with, but include a list of ten to twenty alternatives too. Titles are essentially concept labels, so if you include several, we’ll see various possible angles for the concept. By providing a list, in a sense you’re helping us brainstorm with you. We’re seeing the possibilities alongside you, and we may be able to add an additional possibility or two. [callout]Bonus Content: I hired an artist to design an infographic that presents the information in this article in an easy-to-use visual format. I also created a video training that walks you through the infographic step by step. Access the infographic and video.[/callout] [Tweet “A simple step-by-step method for coming up with a great book concept via @ChadRAllen”] This is my best shot at helping you come up with a great book concept, but do you have other ideas? What has worked for you or people you know?
What’s in Your Toy Hospital?
This is a picture of what I call our toy hospital. It’s a collection of things in our house that are broken–mainly toys, but also books, dishes, jewelry. Whenever something breaks at our place, we add it to the collection. And here and there, as we can, we pick up one of the items and try to glue it together or otherwise fix it. Oftentimes we’re successful, but sometimes we’re not, and we have to throw something away. I have brokenness in my life, and I need a personal toy hospital–a place where I keep the pieces of my life that need further attention. And here and there, as I can, I need to work on them. It takes some time, and often I need help from others, but if I’m diligent to work on the pieces, often I can fix them. I can make them right. But sometimes I simply need to throw something away. It’s just broken–a grudge I’m holding, a shame I have been nursing, a remorse whose time has come. I have to look at it one last time. And I have to sigh. The sighing is very important, because I’m going to miss this thing. And then I have to throw it away. The problem is that I sometimes pretend I don’t have a toy hospital. I fake it. I try to get you to think I have it all together. And I don’t. I really, really don’t. And so, that’s what I’m adding to my personal toy hospital today: my pride, my reluctance to be real with you. There it is. I need to work on that. How about you? What patients do you need to admit to your personal toy hospital?
New Data, New Insights
Earlier this year Baker Books sent a survey to about 15,000 of our readers, and we were pleased to see a solid response. I want to share a few findings from one of the questions that I hope others will find as interesting as I did. (Special props go to the brilliant Scott Belsky for encouraging us to conduct a survey in the first place and to analytic wizard Kurt Wilson for shedding light on the data, to say nothing of the pie chart below!) The findings have to do with how our readers self-identify when it comes to their beliefs. Here’s the question we asked: How Would You Categorize Your Faith Tradition (Check all that apply)? And here’s how the responses came in: While “Evangelical” and “Reformed” are dominant, as expected, the number 3 category was “Other,” which arguably could be combined with “Spiritual but not religious.” That alone is worthy of some reflection. One of our largest constituencies is made up of people who selected a nontraditional category for their beliefs. Also, remember the question’s prompt to “check all that apply”? What this pie chart does not show is that just over 27 percent of participants selected two or more categories. In other words, a third of our readers essentially told us, “I do not fit into any single category.” Single category, shmingle shategory. Or something like that. Several observations: The readers we serve are a complex group who in many ways mirror the complexity of America’s religious landscape. Our most dominant constituency by a large margin is people who self-identify as evangelicals. Our focus to serve them first and foremost is well placed. We welcome all readers, of course, but our core readership is evangelical. We have a solid Reformed constituency—a readership that goes right back to our founder, Herman Baker, and his own tradition, not to mention that of a substantial subculture here in West Michigan. Let’s hear it for the mainliners! (I write as an evangelical Episcopalian.) And finally, if our mission is to serve all our readers, and it is, we should be willing to paint outside traditional lines from time to time. To my knowledge this if the first large-scale reader survey Baker Books has ever conducted, so we don’t have data to which we can compare the current data. But my hunch, for example, is that as recent as thirty years ago we would not have seen resistance to a singular category like we see above. My hope is to conduct future such surveys, and if we do it will be interesting to see how our reader base changes through time. We can rest assured it will. But here’s the most important thing for me to say, perhaps. When I look at data and pie charts like those above and consider the very real people they reflect, I do my best to glean all I can about the people who read the books we publish. I study and analyze, calculate and consider. But eventually my analytical eyes close. And I pray. I say a prayer of gratitude for the privilege to do what we do. I pray for the strength and wisdom we need to serve our readers well. And I pray for the kingdom of God to continue spreading, now and forever. Amen.
The Not-Very-Sexy Essential to Your Book’s Mind-Blowing Success
I had just done my best to present a proposed book, and now I was sweating it. This has to be one of the most nerve-wracking duties of an acquisitions editor—presenting book projects to pub board and then responding to colleagues’ onslaught of comments and questions. All fifteen or so people in the room understand that if we say yes to a book and publish it, we will invest significant time and energy, not to mention company dollars, into making the book successful. And if a book is not successful, we all feel like our efforts were for naught. We mope around depressed and cranky. We don’t like to mope, so we resist saying yes to a book unless we are confident it will be successful. I had given my best presentation, and now it was my colleagues’ turn to speak up. That’s when the question came, a question I had better have a good answer to for any book I present. “Yes, but what need is being met here? Why would anyone want to pick up this book and buy it?” You thought the key to your book’s success was Oprah or fifty thousand Twitter followers or a foreword from Tina Fey. But in many cases it’s this: purpose. Hence this post’s title. Not very sexy. But the importance of knowing your book’s purpose and delivering on it cannot be overestimated. In other words, what’s the why of your book? What end does it serve? What need does it address? Reasons for having a firm grasp of your book’s purpose are numerous. Doing so: Makes it much more likely others will want to read (i.e., purchase) what you’ve written Will provide a guiding principle from chapter to chapter, paragraph to paragraph, sentence to sentence, so everything holds together and flows well Gives you a “north star” to return to when in the course of writing you get stuck in the weeds Will help you stay motivated when the going gets tough Will make it that much easier for you and your publisher to market what you’ve written Will make it easier for your readers to talk about it with other readers In other words, defining and adhering to your book’s purpose (you could call it your book’s “mission”) can well make the difference between mopey failure and mind-blowing success. So tell me: What need is your book meeting? Or: What need of yours is being met in a book you’re reading right now?
Why Asking Why Is So Important
In 1939 Herman Baker was twenty-eight years old. He had a young family and a steady job working for his uncle, Louis Kregel. Everyone would have expected him to continue in that job, providing for his family and moving up the company ranks. It was, after all, the Great Depression. Herman was lucky to have a job at all, let alone one in the sweet spot of his passion—books. If I was his friend back then, I would have told him to relax, to enjoy his work and his family. And what Herman Baker actually did would have floored me. He quit his job, loaded two hundred books from his own library into a storefront, and placed a sign in the window: “Baker’s Book Store.” The rest is history. Seventy-some years later the company Herman founded is called Baker Publishing Group, and it is one of the largest Christian publishers in the world. As grateful as I am for Herman’s bold move, I’m haunted by this question: Why? That question sent me on a quest. I talked to people in the know, namely his son, his grandsons, and employees who worked with him. Here’s what I learned: Herman founded this company because he saw a need that wasn’t being met. Seminary students and others did not have access, either because of price or availability, to the books they needed to be educated and nurtured in the faith. This was Herman’s driving concern: to cultivate believers in the faith. And his passion lives on in our mission statement: Baker Publishing Group publishes high-quality writings that represent historic Christianity and serve the diverse interests and concerns of evangelical readers. I can testify that this mission statement is near and dear to the heart of our current president, Dwight Baker (Herman’s grandson). He regularly quizzes us about it in staff meetings. I love telling this story not least because my colleagues and I are now characters in it. Every day we invest our lives into its continuation, and may it live long into the future. But the other reason I tell this story is to challenge you to ask this question: When it comes to your work, why? What need are you meeting? What pain are you helping to heal? What itch are you scratching? What concern are you engaging? A strong answer to why will take you a long, long way.
What Happens When We Write Down Our Dreams
About a year ago I read a book that had a massive impact on the way I do life. It’s called The Accidental Creative (AL) by Todd Henry, and if you’re a friend who sees me regularly, you’re sick of hearing me talk about it. Among the practices Todd commends in the book is that of weekly, monthly, and quarterly checkpoints. These checkpoints are basically way stations on the road of life where you step back and assess where you are, where you’re going, and what your priorities should be in light of such. For the quarterly checkpoint, Todd recommends spending some time answering this question: What would blow your mind if it happened? The idea behind this is that if you take the time to write these things down, they are much more likely to happen. I’ve answered with activities like running the Chicago marathon, starting a microbusiness, jumping out of an airplane, and going to Switzerland with my wife. And then there’s one that I get to check off today. Here it is: guest posting on AccidentalCreative.com It really is a dream come true. I’ll leave you with two things. First, I hope you’ll check out my post at AC. Second, I encourage you to begin writing down a list of things that would blow your mind if they happened. Because you just never know . . . And why not get started here? What would blow your mind if it happened?
Over at Cynthia’s Place…
Had a lot of fun in this interview with novelist Cynthia Herron. Check it out.
21 Ways to Promote Your Book without Being a Scuzzball
With some regularity I hear from authors who say something like, “I don’t want to promote my book because I don’t want people to think this is about me.” I understand the sentiment, and actually I deeply respect it. But there are two problems: 1. Book promotion is not about the author; it’s about the book. And 2. if the author does not help promote the book, it likely won’t sell, which diminishes the author’s chances of working with a publisher in the future. Following is a list of ways to promote that keep the focus where it should be: on readers. Help people. Cultivate a tribe. Do speaking engagements in which (again) you are trying to help people. When you are leading a tribe of people who already care about what you’re doing and want to support you, give them the opportunity. Be careful, gracious, and polite when you do this. Make it about the content, not you. Avoid blasts and forms and automated whatevers. (Ask your publisher to do this.) Instead, focus on your tribe. For God’s sake have fun. People want to be around people who are having fun. Let’s say you have 100 people who subscribe to your blog. Anybody who allows your posts into the inner sanctum of an email inbox is a fan to the core. Amen? How can you serve these 100 people? Do that. Then see where it leads. Brainstorm by yourself or with friends all the different kinds of speaking engagements to which your book lends itself. Pursue those engagements. Is there some way you can turn the content of your book into a free web-based seminar? Team up with other authors and do something together. Make it less about you and more about we. Join a community of writers. Submit guest posts to blogs that attract the same kind of folks you want to attract. Study what your favorite bloggers and social media movers are doing. Do your own version of what they do. Repeat. Did I mention helping people? Can you turn the content of your book into an event of some kind and then offer that event for free or cheap? Do you have some content that you can give away free with the purchase of your book? Sometimes people just need a little bit of incentive to make the buy. Make your next book better than the last. Craft. Concept. Content. Remember the give part of give-and-take when it comes to social media. Social media, as I understand it, is about connecting with people. Make time for that. Social media is not the equivalent of your free broadcast network, but let’s say it was. Networks understand that most of their content has to be stuff people actually want to watch. If all CBS or NBC did was show commercials, they’d make a lot of money for about two days. Then they’d go bankrupt. Every once in a while, just for the fun of it, do something crazy generous and sweet for one of the people in your tribe. Be honest. We have mixed motives. We do want to help people, but we do want people to buy our content too. Acknowledge that, accept it, and then do your best to be a kind, decent person that others want to be around. How do you promote your book (or blog) without being a scuzzball? Your ideas could end up being really useful to someone else.
What Giving Does for the Giver
Dedicated to those affected by Hurricane Sandy “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. . . . If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.” –C. S. Lewis Data According to the World Bank Development Research Group, if you make: $30,000 a year, you are in the top 7 percent richest people in the world $50,000 a year, you are in the top 1 percent richest people in the world $100,000 a year, you are nearly in the top ½ percent richest people in the world The vast majority of the world’s population (more than 80 percent) lives on less than $5,000 a year Benefits When I give, I . . . Stand for something that will last longer than a fairly useless diversion Remember that I am part of something much larger than myself Am doing what I should as one of the richest people in the world Remind myself that there is so much more to life than money Recognize tangibly that nothing matters more than people Am beginning to grasp this thing called philanthropy Empower others at the same time I feel empowered Give the middle finger to selfishness and greed Am opening up instead becoming closed off Become more of the person I want to be Provide a good example for my children Stand for the real American Dream Remember how truly blessed I am Emulate the people I admire most Am doing what I can to help I put my beliefs into action Am doing my part Help somebody Follow Jesus Am happy Grow up Story We all have a story, and we either did or did not grow up in a home where giving was valued—not just as a good thing to do but as a vital part of what it means to live well. My wife and I have been living out our own story when it comes to giving. It’s been at times very rewarding and frankly, at times very scary. But as we talk and pray about it, deciding what to give to various causes, we repeatedly come back to this realization: Giving is an important part of what it means to be human, to say nothing of being some of the richest people in the world. Our story’s not over, we have a long way to go. But I will say this. We have never regretted a decision to give. To give to the Red Cross and help the victims of Sandy, click here.