My Journey Begins

Last week I spoke to my friend Rabbi Wayne Dosick who is a published author. I called him, as I've called other friends who have published books, to ask for advice on getting out my first book, Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem. What do you do if you're on a mission to get your story out to as many people as you can, but this is your first book and no one in the publishing world has ever heard of you?

Wayne said, "The publishing world today is completely different from what it was 10 or 15 years ago. It has totally transformed."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"It's all about the Internet," he said. Basically that means that everyone in the world is potentially an author. The number of people who are publishing, or attempting to publish, or hope to publish, or blogging, and self publishing electronically in some other form, has exploded.

On the other side of the equiation, there has been a huge global consolidation in the publishing industry. "There are now only seven important publishers in the world," he said. "Most book labels are either subsidiaries or imprints of these seven."

What was particularly depressing was that Wayne, even though he has published several books, is now having to work harder getting publishers to pay attention. He said the market for spriitual books that existed a decade ago has also changed. If you are writing specifically for the Christian Evangelical market you can reach a huge audience. If you are writing for Orthodox Jews, you can reach a smaller but still significant audience. But if you want to reach a group that crosses religious lines, such as spiritual seekers from diverse backgrounds, he said that the market is no longer there.

"Why?" I said.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe people have drawn inward. Maybe they're less interested in the universal, and more interested in their particular tribe."

I am left to ponder what this all means for me, and what it says about the world.

Later in the day an idea strikes me. I'll start a blog to keep track of my efforts to get my book out to the world. Maybe others will be interested and want to comment. Maybe there's some kind of meaning in all this. Let's begin and see what can be learned!