Good Faith from Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman

Back in October 2007, Gabe Lyons, Founder of Q, and David Kinnaman, President of Barna Group, partnered on a book entitled unChristian. At the time, Gabe and David had a growing sense that the public perception of Christians and Christianity had shifted, and a research project by the Barna Group bore this out. unChristian presented this research to Church leaders in a compelling way, presenting a sobering look at how Christians were perceived by many outside the Church. That book became a bestseller and must-read for Christians everywhere seeking to understand what the public perception about them was.

Almost ten years later, Gabe and David have partnered again on Good Faith. Many Christians today feel overwhelmed as they try to live faithfully in a culture that seems increasingly hostile to their beliefs. Politics, marriage, sexuality, religious freedom--with an ever-growing list of contentious issues, believers find it harder than ever to hold on to their convictions while treating their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even family members who disagree with respect and compassion. Good Faith seeks to offer a way forward.

We're excited about the release of Good Faith today and hope you'll check it out.

The Importance of a Book Proposal

Your proposal is not only the tool by which you will obtain your literary agent, it's also the tool your agent will use to shop your book and, hopefully, get you a publishing deal. This is not a post about how to put a proposal together. There are tons of resources online to help with that including this one and this one. I do, however, want to share some tips on things you should and shouldn't do when putting your proposal together.

Your Book Proposal Is Your First Impression!

Just like when you are meeting someone for the first time, you put extra care and attention into what you wear and say in the hopes of impressing the other person. The same extra effort should be poured into your book proposal. Put your best foot forward!

When I first started working in publishing, the lens through which I reviewed book proposals was as a publicist. Seven years later, my role, and therefore my lens, changed to that of an acquisitions editor. While those roles were different, there were still so many similarities in how a book proposal is ultimately reviewed. Now as a literary agent, my previous experience in book publicity and acquisitions plays a large role in how I review a book proposal today. The first three things I look for are (1) strong and fresh concept, (2) phenomenal writing, and (3) a well established or growing platform. Following are some tips to consider when developing your book proposal. 

Your Book Proposal Should:

• Have a strong title/subtitle
• Have a very clear and fresh idea or concept that can be conveyed in 1-2 sentences
• Include why you are the best person to write on the topic
• Have a well thought out and developed outline with well written chapter synopses that convey the full direction/flow of the book
• Have absolutely stellar writing
• Include previous sales history, if applicable
• Convey the size and power of your platform, and show any major growth that's taken place, and explain how you will use your platform to help sell books
• Include an author photo, as it personalizes the content
• If possible, include a short video (2 minutes or less) sharing your heart behind the book
• Convey your overall style and personality. While there are items of a proposal that must be included, feel free to be creative in how it conveys who you are

Your Book Proposal Should Not:

• Contain incorrect or inflated information
• Be more than 50 pages (Shorter than that is even better)
• Be a rough draft of an idea you have
• Be off brand from the niche or area of expertise you've built your platform on
• Contain multiple misspellings or grammatical mistakes

The more excellent and thorough your proposal is, the better impression you will make when publishing houses review it for the first time.

In the words of Jerry McGuire, you might hear your agent say:

Have a question you want us to consider for our Ask An Agent series? Submit your question here.

Launching Ask an Agent Blog Series

This year our desire is to regularly post articles not only about what's going on with the Agency, but also information that is helpful and useful to you. To that end, we're launching a new "Ask an Agent" series.

While we have a number of topics we'll be talking about over the coming weeks, we want to make sure we address what you want to know, so we've created a Contact form where you can submit your questions. You'll also see an Ask an Agent button at the top right of our website that will also take you to this form. In addition, Angela and Jana have a lot of experience as editors and working in publicity, respectively, and we want to provide an opportunity to address questions directly geared toward those topics as well. In the Contact form you'll have an opportunity to choose the topic for your question.

We look forward to hearing from you! What do you want to hear from us?

Become Part of the Remarkable! Movement

Our clients Randy Ross and David Salyers have just released their new book, Remarkable!, an entertaining and enlightening business parable that has the power to turn any team around. But they're up to so much more.

Randy Ross is a master of cultural transformation, with a unique understanding of employee engagement. As a professional consultant and coach, he offers practical solutions for increasing both the morale and performance of your teams. David Salyers is the VP of National and Regional Marketing for Chick-fil-A. As a passionate student of life and business, he has spent over thirty years seeing the principles in this book play out corporately and in over 1,600 Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country. Together, they've launched the Remarkable! Movement.

Check out the book, and join the movement.

Live Free from Margaret Feinberg

Margaret Feinberg is not only an incredible writer, but a savvy marketer. When she approached me about doing some adult coloring books, I'll confess I was scratching my head. But she simply saw what was happening in the marketplace, and knew she could bring her own special brand of Bible teaching to the hottest trend in publishing.

Live Free released last week and quickly become a #1 bestseller in devotionals. This is the second in a 3-book series. Live Loved was published last November and has sold incredibly well. The final installment, Live Fearless, will be out this April.

Do yourself a favor and check these out. And if you're wondering what all of the hoopla over adult coloring books is, you can check out The New Yorker's thoughts here.

January Round Up

We've had a lot of things going on over the past month and wanted to make sure we shared and celebrated everything! From clients' publishing books this month to the addition of new agents, check out the links below. 

Client New Releases

Beginnings by Steve Wiens

Be You. Do Good. by Jonathan Golden

New Faces at the Agency

So thrilled to welcome Angela Scheff and Jana Burson to the team. Check out the press release to read more, and you can read more about our agents here.

New Release Giveaway!

Congrats to client Steve Wiens on the release of his new book, Beginnings!

We'd love to give a copy away to one lucky reader to celebrate. 

To enter, fill out the contest form by February 5, and we will randomly draw a name and contact the winner via email.

New Year Giveaway #3

Our third giveaway of the year is here and it was just released last week!

Are you interested in doing work that matters but not sure how to make a difference? Jonathan Golden is living out his unique calling to promote social, spiritual, and economic justice while providing a living wage to 2,500 farmers in Rwanda. Now the founder of Land of a Thousand Hills coffee company reveals how to embrace the meaningful life you were meant to live.

To enter, fill out the contest form by January 29 and we will randomly draw a name and contact the winner via email.

Find out more about Be You. Do Good here.

Check back next week to see what our final giveaway will be!

New Year Giveaway #2

Are you ready for our second giveaway?

Next up is a Bible that will provide you with a full year of daily scripture reading. Authors such as Shauna Niequist, Margaret Feinberg, Phileena Heuertz, and Leeana Tankersley share their thoughts on topics ranging from cultural issues like social justice, economic inequality, and social media addiction to personal needs like prayer, decision-making, relationships, infertility, career, and calling.

To enter, fill out this Contest Form by January 22 and we will randomly draw a name and contact the winner via email.

You can read more about the NIV Bible for Women here.

Check back next week to see what our next giveaway will be!

New Year Giveaway #1

Happy New Year from The Christopher Ferebee Agency!

We'd like to celebrate by giving away a few of our clients' resources.

Looking for a devotional to start the year off right? Our first giveaway is Savor by Shauna Niequist, who reminds us the importance of enjoying every day.

To enter, fill out this Contest Form and we will randomly draw a name and contact the winner via email.

You can read more about Shauna and Savor here.

And make sure to check back to see what our next giveaway will be.

Cheers!

How to Register for Writer's Boot Camp

No matter where you are in the writing journey, you can always improve. If you take your craft seriously, you are striving to get better. And for today's writers, it isn't enough just to be serious about writing, you need to be serious about marketing and platform development as well. If you're just starting out, you can often feel overwhelmed with where to even begin.

Over the past few years, Jonathan Merritt and Margaret Feinberg have developed an exclusive, boutique event called Writer's Boot Camp. I’ve been a part of it since its inception and it’s the best writing training I’ve seen. Over the course of three intensive days, they provide training to help you:

• Identify your audience
• Develop a pitch-perfect voice
• Hone your writing skills
• Interact with an agent and publisher
• Increase your effectiveness on social media
• Become a power blogger

What makes Writers Boot Camp different from other writing conferences?

Jonathan and Margaret have invested more than 1,000 hours formulating a unique audience-centric, content-driven approach to writing that is simply superior to what other writing coaches offer.

• No green room: All presenters are accessible to participants throughout the event.
• Limited participants: Attendance is capped  at double digits. The smaller size allows more interaction and personal coaching.
• Pre-event assignments: You will come prepared to hit the ground running and take your writing and social media to the next level.
• Early morning homework review: During the 8-9 am coffee hour, the entire team makes themselves available to review your boot camp assignments and provide feedback on your projects, proposals, and goals.
• Intentional networking opportunities: Time is set aside to interact and share your stories and writing with other boot camp cadets. You’ll be amazed at who registers for this event.

Writers Boot Camp sells out quick. But as a special, limited time offer, they’re offering you a free dinner and bonus session ($59 value) when you sign up in the next 72 hours. Visit www.writersbootcamp.org and grab your spot today.

When to Self-Publish

I'm often asked by both would be and published authors, if and when to consider self-publishing. For those unpublished, the question often comes from the desire to be published as quickly as possible and frustration with trying to break into the industry. Both are often asking because they've read of significant success coming to self-published authors and wondering whether they even need traditional publishers anymore. As a literary agent, I earn a living representing successful authors to commercial publishers, but I absolutely believe there is a place for self-publishing. However, whether successfully published or looking to publish for the first time, there a few considerations that apply across the board.

Audience 

Most publishers are looking more and more to the author to help sell their book. Publishers are having a harder time than ever successfully breaking out new authors. However, they can absolutely help amplify an existing audience. When you self-publish, there's no amplification. You want to know how big your "platform" is? Self-publish. Self-publishing may be a shortcut to selling your content, but there is no shortcut to building a following and an audience for your work. Self-publishing will expose how successful you've been at this faster than anything else. 

Market 

When you publish with a commercial publisher, your book is generally available anywhere books are sold. When you self-publish, you are typically locked into a specific ecosystem. For example, to sell your book electronically through Amazon, you have to agree to exclusively sell your book on Amazon. Most people don't consider that a big deal because Amazon controls 65% of the electronic book market. But only 19.5% of all books sold in the US are Amazon Kindle titles. In actuality, you're tapping into a small segment of the overall book market. If you self-publish into a different ecosystem, you're reaching an even smaller segment. All the more reason you need to have a robust following for your work to be successful.

Fulfillment 

A lot of authors will decide to sell their book directly from their own website to cut out the middle man and retain as much of their revenue as possible. But this means you'll have to figure out how to deliver your book in the format your audience wants to read it in. Does you audience read on a Kindle, or a Nook, or an iPad? Do they know what specific file format each device uses and how to load that file onto their device once they've downloaded it from you? What if your audience wants your book in a physical format? Do you have the means of producing, warehousing and fufilling physical book sales? When you become a direct seller, you have to take all of these things into consideration.

In short, there's no easy street to publishing, self or otherwise.  But if you decide to take the plunge, there can be significant benefits. For a published author, it offers you the ability to offer your audience something to tide them over between commercial releases. It can be an opportunity to generate revenue off of valuable content that makes sense for self-publishing, but that wouldn't make sense for a commercial publisher to consider. It can allow you to bring a resource to market to capitalize on a trend significantly faster than most commercial publishers will be able to. It can be a valuable tool used to gain fans and followers and build your platform. For a self-published author, when done successfully it can help gain the attention of commercial publishers and prove that you do, in fact, have a loyal following willing to engage with your content. For anyone, it can be an opportunity to try your hand at content that doesn't necessarily fit your "brand," but allows you to introduce your audience to some of your other interests and creative endeavors.

As a few examples, here are some books my commercially published clients have just recently released as self-published works for many of the reasons above: 

Charles Martin - River Road: A collection of short stories from Charles' early writing days. 

Timothy Willard - Shine So Bright: A beautiful children's Christmas story, successfully funded on Kickstarter and now available for sale. 

Margaret Feinberg - Live Loved: An adult coloring book encouraging scripture memorization, which has since been contracted and published by Bethany House. 

Rob Bell - Millones Cajones: A fun and surprising novel about a motivational speaker that suffers a crises of identity.

Everything Is Spiritual Tour

New York Times bestselling author Rob Bell is a master at making connections that most of us miss. And his latest tour is more of the same.

I had the privilege this week of being part of a small audience seeing the latest iteration of his Everything Is Spiritual tour for the first time. Launching June 24-25 at The Regent Theater in Los Angeles, Everything Is Spiritual is a joyful exploration of our ever expanding universe and what it means for how we live and interact in the world. Over the course of 90 minutes, Rob will make surprising connections between the universe you’re living in and the life you’re living, showing you how science and spirituality are long lost dance partners. Wherever you’re coming from and whatever you’re wrestling with, let the Everything Is Spiritual tour experience inspire, provoke, challenge, and give you hope as together you explore and enjoy this beautiful, mysterious, and endlessly fascinating world.

The first leg of the tour will cover 32 cities from June 24-August 10. You can find all of the tour dates here. And if you're interested in reading up prior to the event, you can find his books available for sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or anywhere books are sold.

Latest New York Times Bestseller

A huge congratulations to Maurice Possley! His book Hitler in the Crosshairs, co-authored with John Woodbridge, found its way onto the New York Times Best Sellers list this week.

Congratulations to the team at Zondervan as well. This book was originally published in April, 2011. It's always fun when a little effort on behalf of a backlist title pays off.

Maury was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for instigative journalism back in 2008.

Pre-order The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero

Peter Scazzero is one of the best thinkers out there when it comes to the importance of emotional health. His first two books, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Church have been significant books in this area and have helped to launch an entire Emtionally Healthy Spirituality movement in churches. 

Pete's latest, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, brings the principles of emotional health directly to leaders, showing them how to develop a deep, inner life with Christ, examining its profound implications for surviving stress, planning and decision making, building teams, creating healthy culture, influencing others, and much more.

The book officially launches June 30, 2015, but if you preorder between now and then you can get access to additional free content through Faithgateway.com. Even better, order the print edition through Amazon and for a limited time you can get the Kindle edition free through Amazon's MatchBook program.

What is Memorial Day?

Photo © John Ferebee

For a short read on the history and meaning of Memorial Day, head over to USMemorialDay.org. And don't forget to pause at 3PM local time for a moment of silence, reflection and remembrance for all who have given their all in service to our Nation. 

Latest from New York Times Bestselling Author Charles Martin

Charles Martin is the New York Times bestselling author of 10 novels. In his eleventh book, releasing May 19, 2015, Charles' protagonist Charlie Finn had to grow up fast, living alone by age sixteen. Highly intelligent, he earned a life-changing scholarship to Harvard, where he learned how to survive and thrive on the outskirts of privileged society. That skill served him well in the cutthroat business world, as it does in more lucrative but dangerous ventures he now operates off the coast of Miami. Charlie tries to separate relationships from work. But when his choices produce devastating consequences, he sets out to right wrongs, traveling to Central America where he will meet those who have paid for his actions, including a woman and her young daughter. Will their fated encounter present Charlie with a way to seek the redemption he thought was impossible—and free his heart to love one woman as he never knew he could?

Here's the trailer for Water From My Heart

Water from my Heart by Author Charles Martin

Bestsellers - May 14, 2015

So proud of both Shauna Niequist and Dale Partridge. Shauna's Savor, released on March 10, 2015, hit the Publishers Weekly non-fiction bestseller list for the 5th week, while Dale's People Over Profit, released on May 5, 2015, debuted on the USA Today bestsellers list and the WSJ bestsellers list. If you haven't done so already, get your copy of Savor and People Over Profit today.