For Authors Wanting to Send Your Project to Windblown

By Wayne Jacobsen, Publisher

To be honest we’re overwhelmed by lots of enthusiastic writers who want us to consider their projects, and we have yet to add a staff member to even initiate that process. That may change in time, but right now we are not accepting any unsolicited proposals or manuscripts. 

Please remember, that we are an accidental publishing company that formed to publish THE SHACK when we couldn’t find another publisher to take it on. We have long believed there is a ‘missing middle’ long underserved by the Christian and secular publishers, who in their own way pander to core audience demographics in their respective audiences.  It is tough for Christian publishers to do a good job on books that challenge the status quo, and almost impossible for secular publishers to deal in positive terms with the reality of Jesus.  I have published a number of books with a variety of publishers and always found the process incredibly self-serving (for them!) and frustrating in the kind of changes they wanted of me.  

I started publishing and distributing my own books years ago, so it wasn’t complicated for us to begin a new company to take in THE SHACK and some of my more recent works.  As you might imagine we have ended up on a roller coaster with THE SHACK and are doing all we can just to keep up with it right now.  Our hope over time is that the success of THE SHACK will allow us to help create a collection of provocative, creative, trustworthy literature for this missing middle, people who have spiritual hunger, whether or not they are yet followers of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  

As you might imagine we’re currently being inundated with authors who are interested in Windblown and share our publishing passion.  We’re not sure how quickly we will have the time or staff to consider other possibilities.  It’s all we can do to keep up with THE SHACK and other projects we’re involved in at the moment.  In time we hope to include a section on the Windblown Media site that will encourage a creative community of writers, editors, cover designers and others who can find each other and mutual encouragement in this often-difficult journey of satisfying your creative passions. 

So let me encourage you to move ahead on your own.  Don’t wait for a publisher.  The publishing industry is in great flux right now and it is harder than ever for a new writer to attract their attention.  But I think we’re in a transition that will allow the Internet to become the acquisitions editor for the publishing industry.  If you can’t find an audience for your passions and content on the web, a publisher is not going to be able to find it for you.  Never before have writers had such options to inexpensively put their ideas before the public and let their audience grow organically. 

Hopefully what THE SHACK demonstrated is that just about anyone can put a book out there in this viral world and it will find its audience in time.  Today, especially with new authors, it is the author that sells their own works through the contacts God has given them and the range of their own influence.  We can help in that process, but we cannot be a substitute for it.  Books sales and reputations best grow organically, rather than through the artificial hype of press releases and interviews.  

How Can That Happen? 

First, as to the writing process, follow your inner critic. Don’t stop working on a piece until it is something you would be excited to read.  Read Simple and Direct a great book on writing style, and let that shape your style.  Books sell well because of two realities—compelling content and an engaging style.   That can be done with humor, if it’s your gift, or by telling powerful, honest stories as a way to connect with others.

One thing we’re finding is that people love a story far more than they love a teaching book.  My SO YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH book is outselling HE LOVES ME now even though I consider the latter the most significant book I’ll ever write.  Why?  Because it is a story. People are engaged with stories that straight teaching doesn’t tap.  I’ve begun to seriously wonder if the best way to do a teaching book is to tell it as an autobiographical story, not just what I believe, but the roads that took me there. That way it can be told more horizontally than sounding like it comes from a pulpit.  People are engaged by stories and they are pretty much tuned out to ‘teaching.’  

Second, as to the editing process, pass your work out to your friends. Ask them to be honest and give their gut-level opinion.  Demand it of them. Most will be nice and want to be encouraging.  Tell them you’d like to know what they loved and what they didn’t like about the book.  Rewrite and reshape the book so that the reader’s interest in captured on page one and carries them through your entire book. 

Third, when you find people you know resonating with what you write, then you’re ready to post some things on line to see if other readers find it helpful and if they want to pass it on to their friends.  Post a few chapters online at a website whose URL has a catchy link to you or your book title.  Put up some sample chapters and see if it catches a following.  You can do snippets of it as a blog, or even put the whole thing on as I have done.  This is the best way for anyone to begin a writing project.  It involves others in what you’re doing.  It begins to build an audience of interested readers, and people can pass it along to others easily.  

Fourth, if there’s a growing demand, you can publish it in book form on your own. The most important factor here is to have a compelling, contemporary book cover designed by a professional.  People who don’t know you will not read a book that looks like it was produced in a garage.  It needs to look like a real book. Then, depending on interest and financial realities, you can print your own copies or use a a Publish On Demand service like Lulu.com, Page Free Publishing, Llumina Press or Aventine Press.  Even Amazon has a POD service that will also get you listed on their site.  You won’t make much per copy, but it will get your book out there.  

Then if you begin to sell a significant amount, you’ll want to print your own copies when you can afford to print at least 1500 at a time. Depending on length that should cost between $1.00 - $2.25 per book.  But the return on a $12-$14 dollar book to you is substantial.  You only have to sell a tenth of them to break even.  You can sell them from a website and handle transactions with PayPal.

You can also join Amazon Advantage as a small publisher and have their books available on Amazon.com. Now you’re ready for the book’s readership to grow organically, which in our view is a far better way to grow than the artificial audience generated by publicity and media.  

Finally as your audience grows you may want a publisher that can take it to the next level and save you all that time packing envelopes and printing books.  Believe me, publishers are not reticent about contacting authors of self-published titles to help them with distribution.  Just realize you will be giving up a lot of income for them to do that and you will want to ensure that they will actually grow the audience and not just take the income off of your book.

Will Windblown Media be looking for future authors?  At this point we do not have the time or staff to look at any outside manuscripts.  We’re sorry, but we did not plan to be on this roller coaster ride and it is going to take us time to catch up.  In time, we would love to be helpful to those authors that are writing to our audience and doing it in new and creative ways.  Who is our audience?  We are writing to people who are spiritually hungry, intellectually honest and willing to consider the claims of the God of the Bible.  But we are not banner-wavers for the ineffective and irrelevant trap that a much of Christianity has fallen into.  We are convinced that the life of Jesus is lived out inside a relationship with God, not by becoming an adherent of religious rituals or obligations. 

So in time we’ll want to publish other creative stories that do not pander to the religious mindset of our day and fall into predictable plots and plastic characters.  We will want books that are honest, deep, compelling and creative. We will also publish nonfiction titles that focus on a given topic with the same attributes. 

I’m not sure how quickly we can work through all of that, but we don’t ever see ourselves becoming a traditional publisher. 

Our motto is ‘walk don’t run.’  So if you’re looking for something that has to happen in a hurry, we’re probably not those you need to be talking to.  We believe God brings his works to fruitfulness over a process and our rushing only messes that up.

We’re about friendship first and business second.  For us to work together we would want to get to know you as a fellow sibling in Christ and know your heart and passion.  We want to meet face-to-face and see how the friendship melds and whether or not we all sense that God has it in his heart for us to task together.  This is obviously different than just reading a proposal or deciding on the merit of someone’s work.  We want our relationships to produce a way to work together.