Wherein our intrepid hero, writer/blogger Real Live Preacher, explains why he means that question quite literally.

Yeah, I’m serious. Would you publish my book?

I published the one book, RealLivePreacher.com. It’s a collection of essays I wrote mostly in 2003. The book sold okay. Well, that depends on how you look at things. To me 3500 copies is a LOT. But not so much to a publishing company. I have nothing bad to say about Eerdmans. Their affirmation and encouragement was great. But after 3500 sold, they didn’t want to do much with the book. I bought the last 1300 copies for 25 cents each because even the discount book houses were uninterested in a book of some guy’s essays.

Now that I have the rights to the book, it has sold pretty well. I’m down to about 400 copies, having sold 900 online since last Fall. Not bad. Actually, it’s pretty amazing if you consider that I signed them and mailed them myself with little surprises stuck between the pages.

That’s a lot of work. That kind of thing will reintroduce you to reality. 900, as it turns out, is a helluva lot of books!

But I’m kind of tired of that book. And I’ve written a lot of stuff since 2003. I got to thinking that I would like to do a second book of collected essays. But no publisher seems interested in this. I was contacted by 3 publishers who were all very flattering and said nice things about my writing. I just beamed inside. But all of them want me to either write a novel or a non-fiction book about how to do something. Non-fiction “how to” books being the best selling kinds of books out there right now.

Unfortunately for me, I’m not ready to write a novel. As for the other, I’m too busy writing and blogging to write a book about writing and blogging, you know? Plus, I truly dislike “how to” books, even the good ones. I don’t claim that as a virtue or as a way of saying those books aren’t helpful to people. I just personally hate them. I haven’t got the attention span to read 250 pages of serviceable prose to get information that could be written on a few 3x5 cards.

“Well, call us if you think of a novel or a book about how to do something,” one of the publishers said. “Okay,” I replied, knowing in my heart that day will never come, so I’ll probably be pressing flowers and candy corn between the pages of my books of essays and mailing them myself forever.

THEN I HAD A CRAZY IDEA. Why don’t YOU publish me? Yeah you, the guy behind the computer screen. You could publish me. And I know how we could do it, he said, rubbing his hands together with an excited gleam in his idealistic little writer’s eyes.

If you want to find out more about my crazy “the hell with everyone I’m just going to publish the thing with some friends I met online because they are the only ones whose opinions matter to me anyway” idea, Go to Consafo.com

You will be taken to a page with a lot of information. I didn’t put it here because I wanted to be kind to the people who just came to read a blog and weren’t counting on getting involved in a whole “stick it to the man” kind of publishing thing. If that’s you, check back later. I write stuff here all the time.

rlp