www.andrewmackay.net:

Rich Mullins was an incredible musician / writer / believer. He inspired a generation of musicians and artists to aim for a higher level of artistry in their work. He may have rubbed shoulders with people who wrote cheesy, useless songs, but he didn’t cut corners when he wrote. He died over ten years ago, before I knew anything about him other than that he wrote Awesome God and Step by Step.

My favorite album of his is titled A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. It is the most album-like album I’ve ever listened to. Each piece fits. I never feel like a song is out of place. I never want to press skip. (My wife disagrees with me, there’s a track she doesn’t like and skips every time… but variety is the spice of life? Or she’s wrong. Right… Spice of life.)

So, I’d encourage you to go buy the album if  you don’t have it already. While you contemplate that purchase, here’s The Color Green from Liturgy, Legacy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGOosxTLrY]

Scraping the bottom of the barrel creatively is tough. I’m sure it happens to everyone, I just dislike it most when it happens to me. This week, in particular, I’ve been having a tough time overcoming the drought. I guess I’m looking for an oasis. Not the band though… because if I found them, I’d probably just end up in the middle of an argument.

So I’m turning to you, dear audience… how do recharge your batteries? Tips? Suggestions? Thanks. I appreciate it in advance.

Today, I am running behind. So, I’m pointing you to Sam’s post about C.S. Lewis. I think my favorite is probably going to remain The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I don’t think anything will ever compare to the wonder that I experienced when I first read it. Go comment on Sam’s post. See you tomorrow.

Kevin Deyoung is a blogger and an author. He’s got a couple of great posts with advice from one of his friends (also a published writer) about how to go about getting published.

I guess the most important tip is probably the first one (… oh, so that’s why they put the number one in front of it! Go figure!):

LEARN TO LOVE WRITING FOR THE SAKE OF WRITING NOT FOR THE SAKE OF PUBLISHING…
We encourage you to grow as a writer because you love to write. If you love it, you will do it. Also, if you feel God is calling you to write, go for it. No matter what else happens, you will have been faithful to the Lord, and this matters most of all.

I think we’ve probably talked about this before, but your actions prove what you love. My problem is, often I love petty things instead of important things. Trying to focus on the important things instead. Go read those articles. They’re good.

Blognotes: apologies for the lack of a post on Saturday. I’d be lying if I said anything other than… I forgot completely. Also, the slow loading times will hopefully be alleviated this week when the image server I’ve used thus far comes back online. I hope. Of course, if they manage to scramble the URLs, the images might not match at all what I originally posted.

Another Monday… I’m awfully glad to see it come, I’ll be glad-er to see it go. Does Gladder get two Ds, as in Ladder? I guess probably… otherwise, it’d just be Glader. And that’s something you plug in to your bathroom outlet.

Seriously, though, if you want some motivation for your week, I strongly recommend the parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30. The Bible is certainly not short of motivators, and this one is so multi-layered it hurts. Believers say that everything we do has eternal consequences. The parable of the Talents expounds that a little. There’s a man who delegates authority over large sums of money to three of his workers, according to their abilities. Two of them work hard and receive joy and reward. The third buries the cash and returns it as it was to the master and gets thrown in the street.

That’s heady stuff. What are you doing with what you’ve been given?

Everyone has a best, most honest critic. For me, it’s my wife. She’s seldom wrong either. When she came to me Wednesday evening and said, “I have no idea what you meant in your blog post today,” I went, “oh darn.”

So, I’m going to take another stab at it. Most likely, if you read the post it pointed to, you already figured this out, but just in case… here goes.

Basically, every time a publisher prints a book, they take a couple of things into account.

First of all, the more copies they print, the less they pay per copy. So, the economy of scale comes into play.

Secondly, they take an estimate of the demand for the book. This part, I gather, is mostly guess work. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think it’d sell. But, a lot of books don’t sell.

Lastly, I’m sure the break even point is involved somewhere in the calculations… “Okay, as long as we sell 4,506 copies of the 8,000 we print, everything will be covered.”

So, they print the book. They undertake a marketing push, they hope that Barnes and Nobles, Borders, and Amazon all care.

Suppose they do? They each order 2,500 copies of our hypothetical 8,000. The other 500 are spread amongst some independents. The publisher invoices for the books. The invoices get paid.

Everybody is happy, right?

Then, the book doesn’t sell. Now, if I’m the widget store selling widgets, I sell all the widgets I bought. Maybe I sell some at a loss, but it doesn’t matter because I own all those widgets — I bought them and paid for them and I’ve got to get my money out of them.

Not so in the book industry. The bookseller either packages them up and ships them back or, in some cases, tears off the covers and sends just the covers back. The publisher counts them and refunds the cost of all the returned books.

Wait… you mean, the copy of The War of 1812 I thumbed through at Borders might get returned to “Poor Man Publishing, LTD”? Indeed. And the publisher will send back the money for it. Of course, it’s not likely that they still have the money they were paid. It’s far more likely that they’re sending you back money from the orders on the next book they’ve done, likely shipping at that time.

Oh yeah, the book(s) that are sent back? They get destroyed. Believe you me, if you’ve ever spent an afternoon tearing covers off books and throwing them into a gigantic box to be shredded — well, if you liked the book when you started, you won’t by the time you’re done.

So, the point of the original post was that there’s some validity to the estimate that, on average, 40% of the books printed by publishers end up getting destroyed. It’s a crazy business model. It presupposes that at some point, a book will sell all of its copies, creating actual cash flow. As long as that continues to happens at a certain frequency, the publisher will stay open.

I wonder if that made any more sense. Probably not… but darn it, it was worth a shot.

This is a preview of a book I’ll have a thorough review of in a couple of weeks. Prior to this book, I have only read N.D. Wilson’s children’s book, Leepike Ridge. It was quite good. I enjoyed it and can’t wait for six or seven years from now when I can read it to my son.

I started in on Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl not knowing exactly what to expect. So far, I’m thrilled. It’s good.

Mr. Wilson posted a little intro / taste of / teaser video over on his blog. Go watch it. Prepare for a thorough review. If it’s an eighth as deep as the book, it may still be over my head.

Moonrat at Editorial Ass(istant… get it?) has a brilliant post up about return rates. He is so insightful about publishing that I’ll forgive him the occasional language slip up.

He was asked if it was true that on average, 40% of the books that are printed by the publishing industry are destroyed because they didn’t sell. The best part of the post:

Publishing companies like to put out huge quantities of a book because they get paid by the vendors right away. The vendors send them cash for all the books they buy. Alas, remember, book publishing is a returnable industry–which means those vendors can (and will) in 4 months or so return all their unsold merchandise–which might be up to 100% of what they originally bought. And the publishing company will owe them the dollar value of every book they have to take back.

But hey! They solve that cash flow problem by paying back their debt with money they make from overselling NEXT month’s title. The hope is somewhere along the way, a book will actually sell THROUGH to customers, thus helping us overcome our own stupid cash flow cycle.

I’ve watched the return cycle at a very small publisher. I know that the books that come back are not at all necessarily in a sellable state. Nevertheless, the bookstore gets their money back and the publisher eats the cost.

It’s when I remember details like these that I get more excited about digital distribution and the future of the publishing industry in terms of short runs, etc. I don’t know how it will work, but I do know that the present model is in some ways broken. Beautiful, but broken.

After all, can you imagine if Starbucks had to give you back your money after you sat holding your cup for four hours, perhaps even taking a sip? Yeah… wouldn’t work for them, why should it work for anyone else?

Off-topic note: the website I’ve used for royalty free images since I started this blog is currently down. This will make it look like a) there should be a photo, but it never loads, and b) like this site is taking forever to load. They do expect a fix to be in place before too many more days pass. Until then, my apologies.

I’m watching a thunderstorm that feels like it’s right on top of my head.

It’s fairly spectacular. I wish I could put into words just how small I feel when this kind of a storm is going on. It’s huge, loud, and powerful.

Six foot two, a few too many pounds… I got nothing on this. It makes me think of my good friend (and my son’s namesake) Luke. This is the ultimate opportunity to yell respect me in a futile manner.

You see, no matter what I do, I can’t change this thunderstorm. It’s got me beat. I can run out there this minute and scream at the sky, tell it to stop, whatever I happen to think of — it will simply soak me. It is unmovable. I get cold and I hate being wet, so I’m pretty far from immovable. I’m a wimp.

The only experience I can compare it to is standing next to a helicopter carrier belonging to Her Majesty’s Royal Canadian Navy. That ship was huge. I was 13 or 14 years old. In a battle of power, I’d take the carrier.

Sometimes a little reminder of powerlessness can be good for you.

Some Mondays come quicker than others — I know that in terms of the actual passage of time, that’s impossible. Sometimes it sure feels that way, though. This weekend was one of those.

In these cases, I think it’s okay for four o’clock on Friday afternoon to take on almost mythical proportions. It is the giant I see lumbering my way. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the silver lining in the cloud.

It’s certainly not my sole motivator. But it can be a useful one. Because until your Monday starts, your Friday will certainly never arrive.