DISQUS

Marcus

You are a blessed man!

Great family - beautiful kids, loving wife and the grace of God upon your life. Priceless.

"Keep a credit card for emergencies. But put it inside your freezer in a bowl of ice. "

Marcus - I've heard of a lot of ideas to mitigate impulsive spending but this is a new one! Have you actually done this?

"And we’ve decided not to let that depress us. God is good. Life is good...Our lives can glorify God even when we don’t keep up with the Joneses."

I want to encourage you about this - there is God glorifying faith in possessing that outlook. When you live with joy and contentment even if others have more material possessions, you're saying that God is a treasure better than material wealth. You are honoring Him by saying "there is nothing I desire beside you" (Psalm 73:25)

Mark

I think of your blog as a context for writers to learn, gather, inspire and encourage each other. You are generous in your spirit and a good writer.

The truth is I'm humbled when reading the comments of those who are successful in driving traffic and building a readership...like Bill G. in a yesterday's post who has over 11K hits in 2 months of blogging. That's very impressive.

My blog is not well read but do blog with a purpose - it's to discuss how to engage our work and culture with a gospel centric view. I'm trying to connect the dots between Sunday morning preaching and Monday morning living. I guess I should work harder at building a readership or be better at writing but...

I think LL has opened a window to a very interesting point. You are drawing conclusions about how a blog generates traffic and deriving associations with rankings.

However, a blog tour is a unique setting which may account for how traffic gets routed to its intended destination (HighCalling). It'll be interesting if there is an "effect" based on the order of listing of blogs on the tour.

Mark

Thanks for sending some link love my way!

And, thanks also for the links to these other great posts - I look forward to reading them.

Marcus

Thanks for this - I'm definitely a vision type guy and your post is a reminder of the focus required to execute.

Mark

The hardest thing to change in the buying/selling process is the user behavior. In other words, you can change the packaging, the pricing, even the product but if you're selling something that requires a change in human behavior, it's a difficult sell. If a change is afoot, then it's a telling sign.

I think for many of us that are older than 30 (for the record, I'm a lot older than 30) , there is no substitute for the physical hardcopy book. Old habits are hard to break. However, increasingly I get my news, and a lot of information online. It's become a secondary source for information. I find my behavior changing.

For those who literally grew up in the Internet age - (Bill Gates called the Digital Generation everyone born 1984 and later), the answer may be different. For them, it may online first and physical, printed content second. They've grown up with portable devices - iPods, Nintendo Gameboys, etc... If that's true, it may spell trouble for the traditional publishers.

It'll be interesting to hear what Michael Hyatt has to say

Marcus

I think I've said it before - you do indeed make my articles look good! I think that you have the right disposition for an editor.

"...criticism is my job. I’m not a critical person by nature. And certainly, I’m not criticizing you as a person."

I think the best kind of editors are the ones who aren't critical by nature. They recognize their much needed contribution but do it humbly.

Your ground rules for interaction are a great reminder.

Thanks for taking your work seriously and doing it for God's glory.

Well, it's my theory anyway... hard, crushing stories of human suffering tell us that we live in a fallen, broken world... as we all know that's only half the story...the other half is that there's hope of redemption. That's beautiful....perhaps not the way I described it, but I'm sure a skilled writer could bring that view into sharp focus.

I think there's so much to delve into on the topic of beauty. It's a very culturally relevant topic. Ted G. posted something a couple of weeks back.... I'm going to think about it some more ...might be an Every Square Inch post in the making.

Wow, what a discussion. LL, raised such a compelling question about whether all truth is beautiful.

As Musing Mom says...truth and beauty are both needed for good words.

But perhaps, beauty is revealed in what is true and also redemptive. To tell a story of abuse is truth but to see the redemption of God is what makes it beautiful.

I think a key design principle is to design with a particular audience in mind. We redesigned our corporate website 3 years ago and one of the things we wanted to achieve was a website friendly to prospective customers...we wanted to make it easy for them to find the information they need to make a buying decision.

We even won an ADDY award for our website..more a credit to the website design firm than us but it was still nice.

Charity, my last comment was partially intended to be a little provocative, but mostly musing out loud.

For the record, I don't believe that books are commodity products, the way say, bottled water or toilet paper are. There are too many nuances in what constitutes good writing for that to be the case. And, good writers should never feel like commodities. :-) There are far too few of them around!

Let me finish on a positive note - I actually believe that POD is a good thing and will to some degree, open new opportunities for writers and readers alike. Essentially, POD creates a "direct channel" to the reader by dis-intermediating the traditional publishers and book sellers. You can take your work to the masses and let them decide. Writers like you can now publish CSFF books and if there is an appetite for it in the broader market, presumably the readers will find you.

I may have overstated the "dysfunctional channel" point without explaining - I think the more commoditized a product is, the greater power the channel has.

For instance if there are no essential differences between the products in the market, power shifts to the channel because getting products to customers becomes all about distribution channels and lowest pricing.

The intriguing question is whether that's where the publishing industry is currently at. Has the mass availability of content over the Internet made fiction a commodity?

I'm not in the writing/publishing business so I'm speaking as an outsider but any industry where the channel controls the business is not healthy and needs to be overhauled. I'm not saying this is true in the case of christian publishing but a channel just connects buyers with the product they need....so if there is an appetite in the readership for CSFF, you should eventually get traction with the publishers, otherwise it's a dysfunctional distribution channel.

Also, you used the acronym POD - I'm guessing here...does it stand for publishing-on-demand or something else all together? Because, I think self publishing on demand is one way that you can circumvent a dysfunctional channel.

OK, I'm rambling here and boring everyone...sorry.

Marcus

Thanks for sharing the poem. I love this line -

"He runs the register, too,
though he never makes us pay"

What a picture of grace.

Craver,

Thanks for your poem too - how appropriate having been snowed in for the last couple of days. Sure could use some of your coffee as well - sounds like you could give Starbucks a run for the money.

wow, I was first up on LL Barkat's recent post and now on yours. What an honor.

Thanks for all your tips - I think they're great and to some extent I endeavor to practice 2, 3, 4 and 5. 5 is easy to practice because I'm pretty insignificant in the blogging world, so I'm no snob. I'm not registered as part of the TTLB but if I was, I'd probably be some form of plankton.

# 1 isn't practically possible for me due to my day job which keeps me busy during the day and then some...

I've little to contribute with regard to how to build community. However, I think you've done a really nice job in building the goodwordediting community and from what I've observed, it's in great part because you are generous in participating, referencing and linking to other blogs. Couldn't happen to nicer guy and probably a lesson for the rest of us.

Marcus

It takes courage to tell the truth - which you did. Takes loving wisdom to do so kindly - which sounds like you did as well. Very commendable.

When you fish all day and you don't catch anything (unfortunately, I have way too much experience in this) - sometimes, it's because you're using the wrong bait...sometimes, it's because you need be more skilled in fishing...sometimes it's the wrong time of the year...sometimes it's because you're fishing dead waters.

Perhaps, most important of all is that you try - you bait the hook, cast and wait....and recast...again and again. With the help of friends who are willing to provide constructive help, the truth becomes evident after a while.

Per my last comment- when I comment hastily, I run the risk of putting down a string of words masquerading as a sentence.

Sorry about that, Mr. Editor. :-)

Very thought provoking!

I agree with LL as well - everytime we write, we are taking the "risk" everytime we "expose" our writing to readers. We run the risk that someone will think it's subpar or disagree with the content.

Properly viewed, that can be a very good thing for us - it keeps us humble.

Marcus

Thanks for sharing...you don't happen to have a video of you as Jonathan Edwards, do you? It would make great You Tube fodder. :-)

Marcus

Thanks for the post - success, failure and significance. There's so much more that can be said about the topic.

We want to do great things for God...some years ago, in the midst of dreaming of doing great things I sensed what I believe to be a "still small voice" of God asking - "what if I want you to so something small...are you still willing to do that and trust me to do with that what I will?"

Good post, my friend.

Mark

I love Prov 21:31. We have to make the "horse ready for battle" or the "book ready for publishing", all the while, trusting that the "battle belongs to the Lord".

When you get your book contract, I will rejoice with you and marvel at God's goodness.

Marcus

Wow! Do you think he wrote that himself? I understand the President typically has speechwriters. If this was something he believed, expressed and wrote himself, it is indeed impressive.

Thanks for sharing this.

Marcus

I'll miss HillCountryWriter but once you switched over to the new version of blogger, I was unable to comment, so I'm glad to pick up the conversation here.

The site looks great! I'll add GoodWordEditing to my blogroll.

DJ

I wish you the best in your new endeavor. In life, it's just as important to know what you're not called to. Do you think that your initial desire for pastoring was possibly spurred on by a low view of "secular" work? I find many very godly zealous Christians have trouble connecting the dots between their vibrant faith and the marketplace application. It's the reason I started my blog -

www.everysquareinch.blogspot.com

The Lord bless you.