Give with Joy: Day Two

As noted yesterday, I have decided to share something I found online that talks about giving, generosity, and sharing. While these audio episodes focus on Christian giving, I believe we can all learn something from these short lessons on how to live a good life, whether we are Christian, agnostic, or believers in another religion.

In my experience, you always get more than you give. It's just the way it is with the laws of life. If you can't wait for me to share these stories over the next 40 days, you can always go here to listen in or read at: http://www.givewithjoy.org/true_stories_all40.htm.



Day Two: African man saves children going blind

http://www.givewithjoy.org/radio/GWJ-002.mp3

While ministering in Africa, I met a Christian worker who raised his 6 children on $10 a month. He told me the story of how children in his village were going blind because of a disease that could be prevented with medicine that only cost 50 cents. He began to pray and ask God to send a rich person to their village to help give the money for the medicine, but no one ever came. As he kept praying, the Lord told him he should give the money to buy the medicine. But with 6 children and only a $10 a month salary, he couldn’t see how he could do this. But he and his family prayed and decided that every month they would buy the medicine to help one child. When I last spoke with him, he'd been doing this for 7 years and had saved 84 children from going blind. And his family saw God meet all of their needs.

HarperCollins New Venture: Good for Authors?

Bob Miller, founder of Hyperion, is moving to HarperCollins to start up a new program that will publish about 25 books per year, pay no advances to authors, and sell to bookstores only on a nonreturnable basis. They plan some sort of profit-sharing model instead of a traditional royalty. They also intend to focus on online publicity, advertising, and marketing.

Will this be good for authors? Not really. Here's why:

1. The books will get very little bookstore distribution, the one true strength of the major publishers, because they won't be offering returnable terms.

2. No advances mean the authors will have to write their books totally on spec with nothing to finance their efforts until well after the book is published.

3. A profit-sharing plan can mean anything. Since publishers currently make no money on three out of four books they publish, a profit-sharing plan is meaningless. So it all depends on what this plan really means.

4. While HarperCollins is probably the most innovative online marketer of the larger publishers, the emphasis on online marketing only leaves authors with very little to measure to tell whether or not the publisher is actually doing anything substantial for their books.

5. I believe authors would be better off self-publishing. They could offer better terms to bookstores than HarperCollins will be offering. They will have to pay some money upfront. Their profit-sharing plan will be very clear since they will be sharing the profit only with themselves. I know many authors who are doing more effective jobs marketing online than any major publisher.

I do think new authors would be ill-served to sign a contract with this new division of HarperCollins. At least according to the terms reported in Publishers Weekly. Authors should watch to see how this new division develops before committing the life of their books to an uncertain future.