MSI Press Blog

  Their stories made headlines across America. Now, the original series Oprah: Where Are They Now? tracks down the Oprah Show guests who made you laugh...and made you cry. Find out where they are now, plus see what happened to the biggest newsmakers of all time and how their lives changed after sudden fame and notoriety turned their worlds upside down. As the year begins, we are taking a look back at some of our popular authors last year. The first in this series is Betty Shaw, whose book,  One Simple Text . . . ,  written together with Dave Bown has just recently been released as an audiobook (in addition to earlier ebook and paperback editions).  The trip down memory lane "news" we focus on today is the second part of the telling of the story of Betty Shaw and her daughter Liz on the Oprah Winfry series, "Where Are They Now?" Watch it here:  Texting While Driving Changed Liz Marks' Life: Part 2   About Where Are They Now  (according to OWN, Oprah Win...

  When Betty Shaw’s daughter, Elizabeth Marks, distracted by a text message, was hit by a truck, the world tilted. The crash shattered bones, fractured her skull, and left her fighting for life. Brain surgery. Facial reconstruction. A long, uncertain road back. A potential modeling career derailed. But the heartbreak ran deeper. Elizabeth had been answering a text from her mother when the car struck her. That detail added a layer of guilt to Betty’s grief — a cruel twist that could have silenced her. Instead, it fueled her. One Simple Text… isn’t just a book. It’s a reckoning. A warning. A lifeline. Betty didn’t write it to wallow — she wrote it to wake people up. Her daughter’s story became a movement: more than a million views on social media, an invitation to the Oprah Winfrey Show, and a ripple effect that continues to save lives. This is what maternal resilience looks like: not just surviving the unimaginable, but transforming it into testimony. Betty Shaw turned guilt in...

  Today's book back story provides inside information about  One Simple Text.. . (Shaw & Brown).  From the publisher -  Betty Shaw and Dave Brown brought to the press a great story. One of tragedy that through patient fortitude, medical skill, and great faith turned into triumph. Of a life almost lost because of one simple text while driving. The what and who of that text I will leave readers to discover. A story that had propelled the author and the protagonist of the story, her daughter, to Oprah Winfrey's TV show. They had, however, not yet written a book. (Advice here: if you have the opportunity for world-class publicity, get your book done in advance; it is so  helpful for book promotion to have the publicity come after the book and not afterward.) They needed some help in refining the story into a book that works. That is where MSI Press came in. We do this all the time with first-time authors. We help turn their wonderful but seemingly unmanageable s...