MSI Press Blog

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic deviates from our usual "conversation" topics of pragmatic and technical advice for authors and would-be authors, as well as those trying to be their own publishers. Instead, we want to bring to you information about a new MSI Press program that has the potential to help authors directly in significant ways: MSI Affiliates.  An MSI affiliate is an author whose book(s) the MSI Press editorial staff has accepted for inclusion in its webstore as a "friend" of the press. The high quality books of affiliates benefit in a number of ways: They are listed in the MSI Press webstore. While MSI

  Jim Ostdick is a retired Earth Science teacher who lives on the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Ohlone near the central California coast. In Walks Far Man: In Step with History on the Pacific Crest Trail , Ostdick recounts his Pacific Crest Trail hiking experiences in the context of a larger, more vibrant story, thousands of years in the making. His intentions are threefold: to identify and honor the indigenous tribes who occupied and traveled the lands traversed by today’s Pacific Crest Trail; to draw appreciation and respect for the cultural traditions of these tribes, and to describe, with humor and humility, his 2,650-mile walk from Mexico to Canada. Ostdick began hiking the Pacific Crest Trail at Campo, California in 2001 and crossed the Canadian border in 2009. Along the trail, he became increasingly introspective. He gradually began to feel empowered by the synthesis of self, the Earth, the Sun and wind and stars, the raging rivers, the trickling creeks, and the effects of

  Betty Lou Leaver's book, Transformative Language Learning and Teaching (see affiliate books), published by Cambridge University Press, recently received the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages book prize for Best Book in Pedagogy 2022. Leaver, Davidson, and Campbell’s  Transformative Language Learning and Teaching  is a groundbreaking volume on the theory and practice of transformative teaching in the language learning context. The world language education field has experienced many methodological upheavals corresponding to theoretical or practical paradigms over the past century. The editors of this volume distill these changes into three large patterns whose practices are based on educational philosophies the primary paradigm of which encompasses three elements: transmission, in which information flows unidirectionally from teacher to learner, resulting in rote memory, reproduction, and accuracy; (2) transaction, in which information flows bi

  Omar Imady, author and poet, has produced a new book, The Celeste Experiment , to be published November 17 by Villa Magna Press. The book is available on pre-order from Amazon. We welcome this new book as an affiliate with MSI Press.  For more posts on Omar Imady, click HERE . For more posts on affiliated books, click HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .

Andrew's Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brain by Kristin Wilcox and Andrew Wilcox has been  listed as a resource in CHADD's (Children and Adults with ADHD)  National Resource Center Library which provides a wealth of evidence-based information on ADHD. The NRC library is an affiliate member of the Network of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, and United States Department of Health and Human Services. Check it out: NRC Andrew's Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brain About NRC BOOK AWARDS Literary Titan Gold Award Best Indie Book Award Readers' Favorite Book Award Read more posts about the Wilcoxes and their book, click  HERE . Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in publishing with  MSI Press LLC ? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Planning on sel

  DEADLY SINS “Jesus now called the Twelve together and gave them power and authority to overcome all demons and to cure diseases.” --Luke 9: 1   “The unexamined life is not worth living,” proclaimed Socrates two and a half millennia ago. That timeless wisdom is an unfailing guide to happiness and fulfillment. The examination entails an honest assessment of both our strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, many of us tend to have an unbalanced view of our innate tendencies, exaggerating or diminishing one or the other. We also tend to take the moral inventory of others to avoid self-reflection. We have an astute awareness of others’ faults, while being blind to our own. From an early age, I learned to make a nightly examination of conscience. As a child, I used the Ten Commandments, the list of what is forbidden, as my guide. I focused on the “thou shalt nots.” I tried to avoid doing what was wrong, fearful of punishment. When I sinned, I went to confession and performed the prescribed

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic focuses on what to do if a publisher tells you that your book needs work. Editors will rarely tell you this. It takes time for them to write back to you, and it takes time for them to give you specifics about your book's lack of merit for publication. How should you interpret their words when they actually communicate with you? If a publisher says that your book needs work (and nothing more), there are a few responses and interpretations: Generally, this is a kind (though it may not seem so) comment, helping you to understand why the book is being rejected rather than the typical "does not meet ou

  I am going to deviate a bit from the normal format for the publisher's conversation because what I have to say is short and simple -- and there is a longer, typical post HERE that describes the affiliate program. This is simply an addendum, providing another option for authors unknown to MSI Press to become affiliates and have their books listed in the MSI Press webstore catalogue with links to the author's own sales source (Amazon, author website, etc.) If your book has received at least 25 5-star reviews, we will consider your book, any genre, for including. The reviews may be cumulative: 10 on Amazon, 10 on Barnes & Noble, 7 on Goodreads, 1 on Readers' Favorite, 1 on Kirkus, etc., as long as they total 25 or more.) To be considered, send a link to the reviews to editor@msipress.com , as well as to a description of your book on Amazon with the LookInside feature. (If there is no look inside feature, we may need to receive an actual copy of the book.) The cost is $

  Today, Dr. Betty Lou Leaver and co-editors, who published the MSI Press affiliated book with Cambridge University Press, Transformative Language Learning and Teaching , were awarded the premier book award in the foreign language field, the Modern Language Association's Kenneth W. Mildenberger award. The citation for the award was given as: Betty Lou Leaver, Dan E. Davidson, and Christine Campbell bring together well-known and up-and-coming scholars in language teaching and learning to provide a thorough, coherent treatment of the concept of transformative learning in Transformative Language Learning and Teaching. Each of the twenty-four content chapters outlines relevant theoretical approaches and supplements them with successful examples from institutions around the world to illustrate theory into practice. With a broad range of examples and end-of-chapter discussion questions, this book is certain to become a go-to resource for teachers, teacher educators, administrator