The preliminary edition of Liberal Pilgrims: Varieties of Liberal Religious Experience in New Bedford is now up on lulu.com. I call it a “preliminary edition” because I’ve never worked with lulu.com before, and I want to see a physical copy of the book before I decide it’s really OK. I’ll let you know when it’s really ready for release
The back cover copy reads:
Here are the stories of real-life religious liberals from New Bedford, Massachusetts. These liberal pilgrims have seen the world from different perspectives, using different symbols, language, and actions to express their religion, as they move onwards in their pilgrimages through life. Some of these liberal pilgrims often got lost or confused in their pilgrimages, but they also sometimes found new and exciting paths to follow. These stories from the past challenge those of us who are liberal pilgrims in the present day to seek out our own new and exciting paths to follow.
Some of the stories in this book have never been told before. There’s the story of Rev. William Jackson, the first African American minister to declare himself a Unitarian, who addressed a meeting of the American Unitarian Association in New Bedford. There’s the story of North Unitarian Church, a church of immigrants, and there’s the story of Centre Church, which had been almost completely forgotten. There’s the story of Rev. John Murray Spear, Universalist and abolitionist, minister of an interracial church in the 1830s, who was driven out of New Bedford when he helped free a slave. And there’s the story of Mary Rotch, perhaps the most original Unitarian theologian to come out of New Bedford, a confidante of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.
By hearing how these people and religious communities of the past lived out their religious ideals in their times, we learn more about our own liberal religion in the present day.
Just curious — why self publishing?
Congrats! Just creating a book is a big accomplishment. This kind of thing is a stepping stone which expands your horizons and can make other accomplishments possible, even probable.
Jean @ 1 — (1) Because I can’t think of a publisher that would be interested. (2) After watching Carol self-publish three books, all of which have sold at least a thousand copies, I trust myself to market the book more than I trust a publisher.
Ted @ 2 — You write: “This kind of thing is a stepping stone” Yes, that’s what worries me.
Dan – I get it. I just know your writing well enough to know that some publisher somewhere would love to have your work. And, of course, I’m so warped by academia that the notion of self-publishing is like, well, self-publishing. In my world colleagues use that word in a way that it becomes a mix of cursing and dismissing all at once. You know how academics are: something is only worth something if someone other than the maker says it is. Even our students have swallowed that; they hate it that I don’t grade their creative writing at all during the semester. I remind them that all the comments they get back from me — hours of my life, kids — are a lot more valuable than a letter grade. And then at the end of the semester, I ask them to evaluate themselves, argue for the grade they think they have earned. Self-grade, as it were.
Anyway — congratulations on the book!!
Jean, it’s all self-publishing. The age of the term “vanity press” is long gone. With my first book and third books, a publisher wanted to publish it. But in that arrangement, I get 10-20% of the selling price. With most books sold to resellers at at 55% discount, that’s not much money. By self-publishing, I get 70% and I can sell the book directly too at cover price. Under that arrangement, I made about $10k/year on the first book and have sold about 15,000 copies. The only reason I regret self-publishing the last book is that the publisher would have set a deadline and provided a professional to edit and design it. I had a pro copy edit it, but formated the book myself. Never again! (Well… probably.)