A few days ago I mentioned a new project for which I’d need editorial help. The way is clear now to talk to you all about that. The Go Fund Me campaign for the bibliography has produced funding for a new project. I’ll describe that project what follows and what I’m looking for.
During this past year I was able to produce three book manuscripts. I am going to self-publish them (hard copy, Kindle, and perhaps other formats). I don’t want to wait 18 months for them to be available. I will be licensing their content to Logos, so they will also be available as Logos / Vyrso books.
These are trade books — books aimed at the lay person — not academic books. All three are 100 pages in length in MS Word, since they are arranged as readings for 100 days. Each reading/day is 400-600 words. They are not devotionals. Here’s what they are:
Series: The 60 Second Scholar
Book 1 – The 60 Second Scholar: 100 Maxims for Mastering Bible Study
- ca. 38,000 words
- Angle: Get advice from a Bible scholar about studying the Bible
- This is not a methods book. Rather, I talk about do’s/don’ts, important tools, points of encouragement, truisms, and (most importantly) how to think about the task of Bible study.
- 60 Second Scholar Book 1 TOC
Book 2 – The 60 Second Scholar: 100 Insights that Illumine the Bible
- ca. 46,000 words
- Angle: If you grasped these 100 things about the Bible and its content, you’d understand it a lot better.
- 60 Second Scholar Book 2 TOC
Book 3 – The 60 Second Scholar: 100 Observations on Bible Doctrine
- ca. 48,000 words
- Angle: If you grasped these 100 thoughts you’d be thinking more carefully about Bible doctrine.
- 60 Second Scholar Book 3 TOC
So what am I looking for? Well, each book needs:
- A line edit (for clarity and style). To produce these 300 readings while working on other stuff I limited myself to no more than one hour per “day” — so I need a good editor.
- A careful copy edit
- Internal book design (nothing fancy, but something that looks professional)
- A cover (and the covers need to look like all three books belong to each other – a suite – so really one design that would work for all three)
I’m hoping someone out there is looking for PT work from home and has the sorts of skills (and experience) that will help me turn out these books in a timely fashion. They aren’t lengthy projects and the material isn’t dense (no Hebrew and Greek characters, no footnotes with sources, etc.). Now that you have the specs, I’m hopeful I will get some bids on what’s needed. Ideally, the same person would do the editorial for all three, but I’m open to hiring more than one person. I’d like someone who has done this sort of work before for payment and has a resume/portfolio to demonstrate that experience. (Same for any graphic art people with respect to book cover design). I have someone on this end with publishing experience (but none of the above skills) who will help me make a decision on proposals.
If there’s no one out there in my own audience that fits the bill, I’ll start looking at services/editorial job boards (I’ll give it a couple weeks). But I wanted to start with all of you first. Please email me if you are interested.
Now that I have devoured these Tables of Contents I can say that these 3 books will not only be essential to my personal library, but once available should be included in any library of a true student of the Bible! They have already given me ideas for future discussions with other believers as well as non-believers and I can’t wait to have the complete works to go along with these 300 nuggets. As a youth minister I am always looking for material to open the minds and awaken the spirits of the young people the Lord has entrusted me to disciple. Needless to say, once available, these 3 books will immediately be used each and every week to reach the youth in our area (and beyond) as we continue to teach them the importance of Bible study and application! Thanks Mike for another treasure trove!!
I’d love to have these out on Amazon by year’s end. (If I was more cynical I’d say before Unseen Realm – but as painful as those delays are, I know the result will be significant). Still … 🙂
Lol! If I’m anxious enough to check your site every day for Unseen Realm updates I can’t imagine what you must be going through! But as you said, “the result will be significant!!” Now that you have these new titles in the works I have 3 more reasons to check the site every day. Thanks for all you do for the Kingdom!
thanks.
These sound very interesting and greatly needed. I hope you’ll be able to publish these AND your other works in various audible formats, or MP3s. Maybe audible versions could be bundled with the written.
I’m am not a professional editor or looking for job. However, while looking at Book 3 TOC, number 58 needs edit:-). The books look very promising. Thanks for the preview and diligent work. Always enjoy your stuff. Keep up the good work.
Yep – it’s all rough; I literally put myself on a time limit for each day. Had to in order to get them done.
The table of contents on these look excellent.
I have made space on my book shelves for these volumes between my copy of Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies and Kaiser’s Toward an Exegetical Theology. If you keep this pace up you may get an entire shelf to your lonesome.
I really like your idea of digestible nuggets. I have had a hard time getting people interested in studying Hermeneutics and Exegesis but 100 mini-lessons that show various topics sitz im leben would surely be of more interest than studying Hermeneutics for the sake of studying Hermeneutics.
As an aside, I had (have) a similar idea of vocabulary acquisition. For all the blessings I have been given with memory flash card vocabulary retention is not one of them. Neither is remembering names encountered vocally. Or my wife’s birthday or our anniversary date. But I digress. My project was to take all words that appears 50 times or more in the Hebrew Bible and do small “theological devotionals” as I found I learned vocabulary much better by reading lexical entries. Each entry would have the glosses, common constructions and phrases, graduated diglot weave with previous vocabulary sprinkled in, and the bottom half of the page would be a short study illuminating some element of grammar or theology to help put the word in a memorable context. My thought was this would be a fun/profitable way to learn Hebrew vocabulary and help students get into using a Hebrew Reader. Alas doing this for ~ 600 words is a huge project.
Kudos to you for bringing your own project to fruition! 300 digestible lessons is a lot of material to chew on–not to mention to write, edit, and proof. I know it will be a blessing and look forward to your work being available!
Joshua
Ps. In the TOC of Book 1, number 91 probably should be you (not your) for the first your. And no, I am not qualified to do the tasks you need above. But if you would like some additional “eyes” on the project I would be happy to read/send feedback on clarity, spelling, etc.
Thanks – it’s all rough now.
I like your idea on the vocab (<50x). That would fill a hole. But it's daunting. There are a LOT of words in the Hebrew Bible used less than 10 times, for example. But I like the idea.
Interesting project. I did email you an estimate on editing services.
I hope it all goes well for you in any case.
Mike:
After looking through the TOC’s…awesome, just freaking awesome. I’m going to love reading them, after Unseen Realm and Supernatural!
Thanks!
Any chance we could see the first drafts? I am so excited.
Nope; no prior release for these. All three will be out at the latest by Thanksgiving, but I suspect it will be earlier.
Hi Mike, I was hoping for this release. Any update?
I’m hoping to get Amazon set up for them next week. Not sure how long after set up their processes are. The goal is a week or so before Christmas.