MSI Press Blog

  (photo by Frank Perez) 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 shares an important reason for a book being turned down by an acquisitions editor. While there are almost as many reasons for turning down a manuscript as there are manuscripts submitted, there is one reason that has nothing (or very little) to do with the manusciprt. It has to do with the author, and it comes across in the proposal, the cover letter, or the enote (if emailed), or in all of them. That trait is arrogance, and it will turn off an editor before the editor even reads the manuscript. After all, a publisher has to work with an author, and if they dynamics are poor, it wi...

  Compassion is one of those words we toss around as if everyone means the same thing by it. But real compassion—the kind that changes relationships, softens hardened places, and restores dignity—has nothing to do with pity and nothing to do with superiority. Compassion is mercy without arrogance. It is humble. We often imagine compassion as something we give from a position of strength to someone in a position of weakness. But that framing already distorts the truth. The moment compassion becomes a performance of benevolence, it stops being compassion and becomes condescension dressed in soft language. True compassion begins with the recognition that we are not separate from the person in front of us. Their suffering is not an object lesson. Their struggle is not a stage on which we get to act out our virtue. Compassion is not a spotlight; it’s a lowering of oneself to meet another at eye level. Humility is the safeguard. Humility keeps compassion honest. Humility says: I...

It is Tuesday. 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 shares some real-life cases (book titles and author names changed, of course) of authors and would-be published authors lost contracts, from before being offered one to even after a book was published. They can serve as warnings of what not to do and, in converse, what to do in trying to secure -- and keep -- a publishing contract . Before being offered a contract (case: Developing School Discipline by Gordan Cruikshank): Arrogance. This attitude is perhaps the primary turn-off to an author being offered a contract even when the publisher is otherwise even very interested in the book. Remember, publisher and author working t...

Today's book excerpt comes from  An Afternoon's Dictation  by  Steven Greenebaum . This book has been in the Amazon top 100 among interfaith and ecumenical books on many occasions. PART TWO: DEALING WITH DEATH AND DYING CHAPTER FIVE   It wasn’t lost on me that the questions that most oppressed my mind and had me angrily demanding answers from God weren’t answered until halfway through the revelations that were placed before me. Still, what I desperately needed at that moment of crisis in my life was some kind of handle on death and dying. So, what I gravitated to first were the revelations about these two difficult subjects. I read them, reread them, and lived with them. In all honesty, being open to it required me to reorient my thinking about God as well as life and death—which is a lot to unpack! But it did comfort me and help me to begin to move ahead. Given how spent I felt, this was no small task. The mind is not the soul. Nor is the body. Sometimes, the mind...