Merry Christmas + 09 Books

We've published some outstanding titles this calendar year, and here's a sneak peek at a few of our favorites.

Fiction

The Manufactured Identity by Heath Sommer

A Dragon’s Tale by Long Lee

Tribe of Shadows by David Fergusson

Embryo House by Phil Rigsby

Day of War by Cliff Graham

Nonfiction

Dancing on My Ashes

by Heather Gilion and Holly Snell

Dead Man Living

by Ira Andrus

Who Really Wrote the Bible?

by Clayton Howard Ford

Books to watch for in 2010 (some pre-release copies available now):

Fiction

Family Portraits by Ken Carroll

Wake Up, O Sleeper by Jed Wright

The Fallowfield Carol by Andrew Smith

Covenant of War by Cliff Graham

The Grand Delusion by Heath Sommer

Dismissed with Prejudice by Christopher Meyerhoeffer

Nonfiction

The Other Side of the Jackie Robinson Story

by "Big" Ed Stevens

Dinner with a Terrorist

by James Rosone

I'll expand this list as we get closer to the new year. From all the staff at Tate Publishing, Merry Christmas to you and yours. May the God of our redemption bless you and keep you over the holiday.

3 Traits of a Good Author

We had productive and enjoyable meetings with author Cliff Graham today about the future of his Lion of War series. He’s got several traits of good author, and I want to briefly touch on a few:

1. He works hard at the craft of writing. Cliff understands that good writing is the soul of everything, and that because word of mouth plays such a massive role in modern marketing, a book won't get far without the goods inside. He’s not afraid to put in countless hours rewriting—a process even more important than the first draft.

2. He’s humble. Some authors come to their publisher believing they can skip the conceptual editing process because their story is flawless. Good authors are not afraid of criticism, they understand the publisher-author relationship--i.e. that we like the book or else we wouldn’t be working on it to make it even better--and they want us (rather than their readers) to poke holes in their manuscript until we can’t find any more soft spots.

3. He works tirelessly to promote the book and the brand. There is never downtime when you are an author. It’s like owning your own business—you must constantly think of ways to get better, to sell more, to get your product into more hands, to create more products, and to produce a better experience for your customers (readers).

At Tate Publishing we have a staff of skilled editors who are dedicated to one thing--working with our authors to create, shape, and mold books of all genres that readers will both enjoy and be inspired by. You can read more about Cliff's work here and here.

Poll Results - How many books have you read this year?

Below are the official results of my poll on the amount of books read in 2009. Of all the English-speakers in the world who visited my blog between November 16 and November 23 and decided to click the poll, the stats are mind-boggling:

40% read 1-9 books in 2009

30% read 10-24 books

10% read 25-49 books

10% read 50+ books

Interpretations of the data are welcome.

New poll up about Christmas movies.

While we're at it, what's your favorite winter-time read? For the last two years I've enjoyed revisiting the historical novel Morality Play by Barry Unsworth. Not a Christmas story by any stretch, but snow and cold set the scene for most of the book.

You Will Own an eReader

All talk in the book industry right now is about ebooks and learning from the music industry’s revolution. Since the ebook technology has been developing, I have been one of the Luddites arguing that the paperback would remain the medium of choice and the ebook would prove to be the bicycle to the book’s car. Though they still represent 1% of all book sales, I’m starting to change my mind on the ebook for two reasons:

1. Barnes & Noble came out with an ereader last month. There are now three competitors in the market (Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle), with more in the works. With so many bright minds working on making this technology a reality, they’re going to come up with something readers want. And my money is on one company in particular:

2. Apple. The guys in Cupertino have already destroyed one medium and thereby revolutionized an industry. The “cool factor” and fluid functionality of their products is undeniable, and when I started hearing the rumors about the iTablet (name still a rumor as well), I finally conceded. In ten years, we will all have one of these, just like we all adopted the technologies of the last two decades—desktop PCs, laptops, palm pilots, cell phones, smartphones. These things we believed we could live without indefinitely when they were $250 and rarely seen.

Stories will survive. The written word will survive. And ultimately, though it pains me and many other book lovers to say it, the medium is trivial; content is king.

One of the things we’re doing at Tate is testing the waters and being aggressive about these new technologies. With ebooks available on the Kindle and iPhone and the book trailers, audiobooks, and author websites we’ve been producing for years, we’re strategically crouched so that when these ereaders hit $99, and when Apple’s new device is all the rage, we’ll be poised to continue getting great books into the hands of readers.

Check out this take on what your Saturday reading may look like in 5-10 years.

A few nice notes from recent authors:

"Briana gave me the direction and encouragement needed to improve upon my skills as a writer. I learned many things about writing and how a manuscript should be presented. She was kind, competent, supportive, quick to respond to questions, always cheerful, and a delight to work with on this project. I really gained more knowledge in writing and the publishing procedures with her help."

"I feel that both my book and my writing have improved as the result of some of Amanda's suggestions. Sometimes simply relocating a single word can alter or enrich the entire meaning of a sentence. Also, someone skilled reading your work for the first time, not already knowing the plot, characters, etc., can more easily spot areas that may need clarification, revision. During this process I discovered there were traits within some of my characters that I'd failed to develop fully, some things had been left unsaid in the dialogue, dialect needed work, some parts needed clarification. Even subtle changes can make a huge difference and this is the time to catch them."

"We were thrilled with the suggestions Katie made, and both feel the book is far stronger because of her. She had great insight into how I could develop a certain twist in the plot. She also had sentence structure suggestions that improved the message I was trying to get across.  I will be a better writer because of her input. The editing dept also came up with the title, and we love it! Once again Tate Publishing exceeds expectations."