People always told me that I should write a book. I always laughed – mostly because I couldn’t imagine having anything to say that hadn’t already been said a thousand times over by people who know more than I ever will. So it was more surprising to me than (perhaps) to anyone else when in 2010 God gave me a message and told me to write it.

At the time I didn’t know how it would happen, or even what I would say. I couldn’t imagine how these words could ever find their way into pages bound in a cover and sitting on a shelf. The writing alone was more work than I’d thought possible, but that was only half the journey. In truth, it was more of a first step into a field in which I never imagined I would find myself: self-publishing.

And before you groan in horror at the thought, let me tell you first that I did too. After all, “self-publishing” sent my mind instantly to the horrors of vanity presses and terrible poetry. What I discovered when I looked, through, was a new and developing brand of independent authors – men and women who take their craft seriously and strive for professionalism. Yes, there are bad books being self published today – some of them are, in fact, horrible. But there are also well-written, high quality books out there that have been published by authors who would rather take their work into their own hands than wait to be discovered by a traditional publishing house.

My goal in this blog is to share with anyone who’s interested a little bit of what I’ve learned (and what I’m still learning) about what it takes to write and publish a book. I am by no means an expert. I have learned what I know through trial and error and a whole ton of research. But if it can be a help or an inspiration to other Christian writers (even, perhaps, ones who would never call themselves writers and can barely imagine writing a book of their own) then it’ll be worth the effort.