Lauren Winner on alcohol in Christian books: "…the increasing willingness of Christian publishers to show casual imbibing may be another step in the direction of depicting, rather than sanitizing, ordinary American life." I love the way Lauren says this, distilling the distinction (so to speak). "Depicting rather than sanitizing." If art reflects life, isn’t including real depictions of ordinary American
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Just came back and read the final line of my last post… What in the world? Why don’t you people tell me when I don’t make a lick of sense? That wasn’t right. I think I was saying something about preserving the hope that edgy books will become safer publishing bets…oh, Max Perkins. Where have you gone? Let that be
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"You can possess all the ‘must haves’ publishers talk about—an uncommon topic, writing chops, proven interest in your subject, a ‘platform’—but none of it matters if what you’re saying is not what people want to hear." Ran across this nice reminder today from Linda Konner in the June 30th edition of PW: "No Room for ‘Edgy.’" Konner eventually gave up
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Sales conference at CBA all this week, that hallowed time of torch-passing that happens with the turn of the season. It always makes me ponder afresh the end of Ecclesiastes. But one thought had us talking around the tables last night–the fascinating strategies different-sized publishers employ. And today, looking through the various reports and news items that came through this
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Here’s the thing: It’s getting late. When a person starts thinking of how long he has left, he starts asking himself a lot of questions. Naturally, one thinks there are some things one might like to do a little differently. What exactly is the purpose of some of this extraneous knowledge we carry around? Do I really need to know
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