My Adventures in
Publishing
I have recently had my first book, The Ego and the Bible: Stories of Divinely Intended Ego, published. I thought I would write about my experience
as a way of sharing the experience as well as giving my thought is some kind of
perspective.
It has been a process that has been both less and more
involved that I had anticipated. I had
not given much thought to getting the book published when I began writing it so
I guess I didn’t really anticipate much about it. On reflection I don’t think I had any
particular thoughts about this other than I would start to investigate the
publishing process once I had the book written.
I could say that writing was what really mattered and that I had no real
desire one way or another for it actually being published. However, that is not the real truth as I have
wanted to have a book or books in print for quite some time. It was however, a ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ idea
rather than something I had actively pursued to this point.
After my most recent retirement—this one from parish
ministry—I thought one of my retirement projects would be to actually work at
writing a book. I had a few ideas that
didn’t develop into anything specific until the idea that resulted in my book
began to take shape. I was asked
recently how I come up with the idea and I must admit my memory is rather fuzzy
on this point. The best I can say is
that it didn’t come as a ‘road to Damascus’ experience in a flash of
inspiration, It was more of a process
which brought together two of my abiding interests; the bible as the inspired
word of God, and the psychology of Carl Jung.
In my reflecting on my own life and studies in Spiritual Direction I
have become more and more convinced that the ego is both the greatest gift of
God to humankind. However, it is also
the greatest challenge (I won’t say curse even if it sometimes seems that
way). The idea or concept began to come
together that, if the bible is comprised, in part, of stories of God’s
influence and inspiration for people—which I believe it is—then the stories
would be influenced to a lessor or greater extent by the egos of the people in
those stories. I understand egos to be an integral part of
people being created in God’s image.
All this is by way of context for my purpose—which is to
write about the process in getting my book published. One I felt the manuscript was in shape to
begin the publishing process. I began to research publishers that might be
interested. I checked the books that
were in my bookcases that were of similar focus to see who had published
them. Once I had a list I started to
check them out on line and discovered that, I can safely say, all of them
wanted the author to do a lot of things which I guess I had considered would be
done by the publisher e.g. do a lot of initial editing and come up with a
detailed marketing plan. As editing and
marketing are not my strengths, as people who know me will attest, I was rather
discouraged. However, I persevered and
considered what I might do in this area.
I got together the details of what one publisher required and sent off
the material to what seemed like a good possibility—and waited a bit. Patience is a virtue. However, a response did not come out of that
void. I will end the account here and
continue the rest of the story in Part 2.
Readers of my
sermon might enjoy my book The Ego and The Bible. It
is available on Amazon.com:
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