Disqus - Latest Comments for Al Hsu

Re: Why I like Keller more than Piper

Al Hsu — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:56:27 -0000

Have you heard the "John Piper Is Bad" clip? It's hilarious. Go to:

http://www.foolishblog.com/2006/09/15/john-pipe...

Re: Where is our Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson?

Al Hsu — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:33:37 -0000

I'm not sure any one AA Christian really has emerged as our "go-to representative," but Soong-Chan Rah might be the closest we have right now, among others, like Ken Fong, Dave Gibbons or Peter Cha, depending on which circle(s) you're talking about. Soong-Chan has certainly been one of the most visible and vocal in recent public controversies, and he has wielded his influence well.

Re: Behind the Curtain of Bestseller Lists

Al Hsu — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:13:32 -0000

Hmmm . . . well, I don't know that I have any brilliant insights here. I agree that CBA stores are in crisis. What seems to have happened in recent years is that the smaller ones have died off while the stronger ones have retooled themselves and found ways to keep themselves in business. The problem is always shelf space and backlist; it's very expensive to have a book sit on a shelf for months if it doesn't sell. I remember that my wife and I couldn't find her seminary textbooks at the local Christian bookstore, but they were in stock at the local Borders. (Though Borders has also recently cut back on how many religion titles they carry.)

The increasing reality for all bookstores (Christian or not) is that their market share is being eroded by big box stores on the one hand and online booksellers on the other. As much as I want to support local mom & pop bookstores, in a long tail world, all too often they don't carry the niche titles people are looking for, and it makes no sense to most customers to special order them though a local store when you can just order them online from Amazon.

That being said, I think online bookselling is making smaller books and authors more viable. The kind of publishing that my company does is quite different than what Hyatt is doing at Thomas Nelson - their economics are such that they need big hits, which means that they need front table placements in Borders or encaps in Wal-Mart. But niche publishing and viral marketing and blogging provides more opportunities to all the authors that the big publishers just can't publish viably. Smaller publishers can do specialized books with targeted audiences. Though ideally we need a mix of niche books and wider-audience books to keep things financially healthy.

(BTW, I suspect Hyatt might say that the Lucados of the world let them take a chance with the Blue Like Jazzes of the world, but it's also true that if Blue Like Jazz had not become a huge surprise hit for them, there's no way they would have continued to publish more books by Don Miller.)

As I've said elsewhere, I think Christian publishing will continue to get bigger and smaller at the same time. Big publishers will keep on trying to make big hits and more Purpose Driven Lifes and Your Best Life Nows, while at the same time more independent and alternative Christian books will bubble up from the margins. Again, I don't think I have a whole lot of brilliant insight to share here, but I'm optimistic enough to believe that Christian book publishing is sustainable enough to keep me employed in the years to come!

Re: Behind the Curtain of Bestseller Lists

Al Hsu — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:52:42 -0000

Oops, I meant "endcaps," not "encaps." Even editors need editors . . .

And Christian bookstores and Christian publishing grew up together in the 60s, 70s and 80s, so you could say that CBA stores are at least partially responsible for the growth and maturing of the Christian publishing industry, in a mutual kind of way. It's certainly been a chicken-and-the-egg kind of partnership. Alas, physical retail in general (not just bookstores) has been reeling from the advent of online selling.

Another lament I would add is that the qualitative nature of bestsellers has dramatically shifted in the past thirty years or so. IVP's bestselling titles over the decades have been classics like Basic Christianity by John Stott, The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer, Knowing God by J. I. Packer and The Universe Next Door by Jim Sire. Substantive stuff. I'm thrilled that we've sold well over a million copies of Packer. What's interesting is that The Universe Next Door was originally a "general trade" book as we classify them, but in recent years, we've recategorized it as an academic book. So what used to be standard reading level for the general public is now perceived as too heady and too academic for the masses. (The funny thing is that when we try to publish "popular" books, they usually flop miserably!)

Re: Make Your Readers Love You

Al Hsu — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:29:19 -0000

One of the biggest ironies in publishing is that the best writers are often quiet introverts who are averse to self-promotion. And the most marketable books are by big name celebrities who are too busy to write books.

Re: Behind the Curtain of Bestseller Lists

Al Hsu — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:34:27 -0000

Online publishing is certainly affecting print book publishers now. Quick example - one of my authors wanted to make significant changes to her book at the second printing. When we're used to an immediately revisable and updatable blogosphere and Wikipedia world, it's counterintuitive for a book to be static. Authors and readers are coming to expect more fluid updating of print resources. Another example of this is the fact that Friedman's The World Is Flat came out in hardcover in 2005, and then came out in hardcover again in 2006 with expanded and updated material. The changes didn't wait for the move to paperback. It happened while the book was still in hardcover.

Something else is that we're having more and more books with online supplemental material that goes beyond the print book. One of my authors had so much more stuff that he wanted to say that we posted a 70-page PDF online for free. Other books have free bonus chapters, others have extension blogs or sites. In a Web 2.0 world, everyone has to think book-plus, beyond the book.

Re: Make Your Readers Love You

Al Hsu — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:09:10 -0000

At many of the bigger publishers, they actually make a distinction between the "author" and the "writer." The author is the celebrity or personality; the writer is the ghostwriter/wordsmith that interviews the author and repurposes sermons and transcribes stories and edits them into readable prose. Often the publisher works primarily with the writer, and at some point they run the manuscript by the author who approves or disapproves and says, "yeah, that sounds like me."

It's common to see something in a book's acknowledgments like on p. 600-something in Billy Graham's autobiography Just As I Am where he thanks Jerry Jenkins for his editorial assistance in assembling the manuscript. Christian publishing is much better now than it was fifteen years ago or so when writers were rarely acknowledged. Now it's more often to see "So-and-so with Such-and-such." It was a big deal in Christianity Today some years back when Chuck Colson started crediting his cowriters in his columns. (Though most of his BreakPoint radio commentaries don't have the byline of the actual writer/researcher, even online.)

I read an article in Publishers Weekly a few months ago about agents for ghostwriters who work with big-name celebrities through New York publishers. Some of them, say a Paris Hilton book or something, can pay a ghostwriter as much as $100,000 to write a book!

I should say that for the most part, in the kind of publishing I work with, having an outside writer/editor is still fairly rare. An exception is when we developed some Bible study guides based on Michael Card's books with us, and we enlisted some professional Bible study writers to adapt Mike's material into Bible study sessions. And in a few other cases we've published books that started out as audio tapes or transcripts of sermons. But for the most part, our books are written by our authors. The author is the writer.

Re: Five Tips for the Writing Dad (or Mom)

Al Hsu — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 09:11:19 -0000

I've found that some of the most productive writing times for me are at three in the morning. I have insomnia anyway, and I'll often wake up and have ideas in my head that keep me awake unless I get up and write them all out. I may or may not be able to get back to bed after that, and often it wipes me out the next day, but it at least provides me with quiet, uninterrupted writing time to get stuff down that can be revised and polished later.

John Grisham wrote his first books at four or five in the morning, longhand on yellow legal pads, and then go to the courthouse and practice law all day because he was still a working lawyer. Ken Taylor translated what would become the Living Bible during his daily train commutes from Wheaton to Chicago. Whenever or wherever works for you.

Re: In Chicago? Go to SOBcon 07!

Al Hsu — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:58:04 -0000

Registration is $350? Are you kidding? What are they going to tell me in person that I couldn't read on various blogs for free?

Re: Why Writers Must Enjoy the Game of Writing

Al Hsu — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:17:58 -0000

I love these. I remember a few years ago I came up with a list of book title mashups that resulted from funny juxtapositions of IVP books on my office shelves. So "Should I Home School?" + "God the Almighty" ended up being "Should I Home School God the Almighty?"

Let's see if I can come up with anything . . . how about:

The Daredevil Wears Prada
A radioactive dirty bomb sent to a Manhattan magazine blinds the editor but grants her supersensory powers. She becomes an urban vigilante, dressed to the nines in red leather, kicking badguys' butts with her Manolos and thwocking them with her enhanced Prada handbags.

Okay, that was kind of lame. Best I could come up with off the top of my head.