How ‘a couple of yahoos and a garage’ have helped refire Christian publishing

At a recent Christian publishing industry seminar, top executives on a panel were asked, “What is the biggest mistake you have made in publishing in the last ten years?” Unashamedly one of the panel experts answered, “Passing on The Shack.”

With The Shack sitting atop the New York Times best-seller list for 20-plus consecutive weeks, more than 4 million copies in print and still climbing, and being translated into more than 30 different languages, we have been told that we have taken the publishing world by storm.

We’ve been touted as the new self-publishing marketing gurus. Our phones ring off the hook. Our inboxes are crammed full with people asking, “So, how did you do it?” as if we had discovered a new, secret formula. We’re sorry, but we don’t have one.

We are simply two friends who believed in someone’s story. We spent 16 months helping him rewrite it so it was clear and compelling. When we took it to the publishing world no one wanted to take a chance on a potentially controversial book, written by an unknown author with no platform. So, we pooled our money, printed it ourselves and thought we’d sell it online and see what happened.

We had no plan to sell 1 million books out of a garage in 13 months, having purchased one $200 ad on a Web site. We had no idea how to interest bookstores, let alone engage a distributor. This has truly been a one-step-at-a-time journey, asking friends for help and responding to opportunities.

But clearly this could not have happened five years ago. The technology now exists for ordinary people to find a huge audience through the dynamics of the Internet and friends passing on what has touched their lives.

Are we the publishing wizards some would make us out to be? Doubtful. Is this just “lightning in a bottle?’ We don’t think that quite says it either. The truth lies somewhere in between.

In the end we are storytellers, with a passion to re-present the gospel of Jesus Christ to a world that may have missed it, or could not hear it the way it has been traditionally proclaimed. Are we innovative? Yes. Were we willing to do things differently? Yes. Were we willing to abide by the status quo and settle for what we had been told about the reading public? No.

This book was the fruit of our passion—for a story and an audience we felt fell through the large crack between Christian and secular publishing. We affectionately call that audience, the Missing Middle. These are people who are hungry, searching, though not all of them may know that Jesus Christ is the object of their pursuit.

They are disillusioned with the arrogance, excesses and plastic answers of religion and religious leaders in our day, including the religion that calls itself Christianity. We hoped if we could present a story that would capture the simple claims of the God of the Bible, they might give Him fresh consideration.

We don’t think we are describing something new. We are just identifying an audience that defies the customary demographic profiling. Because no one knows how to market to that indefinable space, they stick with products, content and formulas they do know.

Perhaps that is why readership has been in decline. People are tired of the same old, same old. But, when dollars are on the line, the currency of courage tends to get ignored. We think this audience is vast. For us, it was simply an irresistible holy hunch that they were out there. The Shack was our little experiment.

After 20-some industry rejections, we were asked by one of the editors whose company passed on the book, “You know why we can’t publish this?”

No, we really didn’t. The answer we were given was astounding: “It’s tough to talk publishers into doing something unusual. I call it the Catch-22 of publishing. If somebody has done something like it, then we can’t do it. If nobody has done something like it, then we can’t do it.”

Perhaps it is the birthright of the new, independent press to be able to break new ground. It takes something like Windblown Media (a couple of yahoos and a garage) to publish a book like this. We don’t think that means something fresh and new can’t come from within the ranks of the establishment, but it has caused a lot of industry veterans to rethink their strategies.

We are blessed that our Cinderella story has captured the hearts of so many and seems to be inspiring a number of others to return to the writing passions of younger days. It has rekindled the fires for why they went into publishing in the first place—to tell great stories that can capture hearts and imaginations and dare to dream that such things can help change the world.

Why do we think The Shack has caught on so? It is an engaging story, willing to tackle the toughest issues about God and does so with God as an endearing character in His own story. People get to see theology inside a relationship where it all makes sense. God is a person, not a mere doctrine. For too long, we’ve been preaching principles instead of unveiling a personality.

We have tried to master the mechanics of marketing the message instead of getting lost in the majesty and wonder of it all. Principles and formulas give the illusion that this life of faith can be reduced to a regimen of propositions people must follow: If I will just do these four things, and follow these five steps, voilà, it works.

Besides being false advertising, it simply makes for boring reading. In the end, we believe this book represents a conversation God wanted to have with our culture.

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