Seeing ‘an unprecedented opportunity,’ Christian micropublishers are taking advantage of the digital wave

Former news reporter Fiona Veitch Smith didn’t plan to start a publishing company.

“It just happened,” she said.

Now Smith has a print series of picture books for children and a range of e-novels for adults. She’s part of the growing phenomenon of “micro-publishers” in the United Kingdom.

Smith realized recession’s impact on the publishing industry and the rise of e-books offered “an unprecedented opportunity” for authors to write their own destinies, so she set up Newcastle-based Crafty Publishing (www.craftypublishing.com) in 2011 with her computer-whiz husband, Rod.

Her colorful kids’ books on young King David are now in Christian bookstores across Britain. 

The e-book process of writing and uploading has its drawbacks. 

“Everyone’s doing it––and most are doing it badly,” she said. “It’s hard for people to take you seriously because there’s so much rubbish floating around.” 

Yet the digital realm does offer opportunities for low-cost marketing.

Another husband-and-wife team, Mark and Mary Fleeson, have created a subculture of “coffee-table monasticism” with graphic-rich books on prayer from their Northumbria-based art and publishing house Lindisfarne Scriptorium (www.lindisfarne-scriptorium.co.uk).

“When Apple produced its free software for producing iBooks, that allowed us to produce a version of our photographic prayer book,” said Mark Fleeson.

To crack the Kindle code, he downloaded a sample e-book and split it into its components.

“Once I understood the structure, I started building a Kindle version of our book Woven Words,” he explained.

The title became their most popular e-book.

Challenges include the abundance of digital formats and customers expecting e-books to be free or a “substantially lower” price than print. The Fleesons still put out print products, too, such as The One Day Creative Retreat Book, selling more than 600 copies since its April launch. 

London-based Manoj Raithatha also never intended to become a publisher. But he believed God drew him into the industry while co-writing a book called Building the Kingdom Through Business. He set up Instant Apostle (www.instantapostle.com), publishing “new voices” for web and print.

“There are so many voices that need hearing—and don’t get heard,” Raithatha said.

So Raithatha takes that risk with such titles as Potholes and Belly-flops by former glamour model Susie Flashman Jarvis and I’m A Christian, So What Do I Believe? by Anglican priest Ken Gardiner.

Raithatha has only positive things to say about his experience with electronic publishing. Focusing on new writers is paying off––a number of their titles are on their way to the 1,000th-sale mark, which is reasonable progress in the U.K. market.

With e-publishing still in its infancy, some wonder if the bubble will burst. Only time will tell. But creative Christians are among the pioneers on the digital frontier. As Smith said, “The rules have yet to be written.”

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