Friends in the Business

I had the joy of making two new friends today. Both are Christian authors, and I met both of them in different writer forums I subscribe to online. Spending the time I do on some of these forums, I'm struck by the sheer number of little known, or unknown, authors out there. We all have our favorites, but we seem to hear the same few names bandied about, depending upon the niche in which we're interested. Readers immersed in the Christian publishing world know Francine Rivers, Brock & Bodie Thoene, Jan Karon, Karen Kingsbury, and a handful of other names--and well we should. These folks are prolific writers of quality Christian fiction (C'mon, Francine! Still waiting for the next one!). They're at the top of the heap and deserve to be so.

But...

The proliferation of self-publishing opportunities and small publishing firms now in the marketplace has given the "common" author (such as myself) an inroad to the industry. This is both good and bad. The bad is that, without the quality control imposed by the traditional publishing houses, there's a lot of pretty lousy self-published books littering both online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. The good is that there's also a lot of really good books there, too; books that would never have found sponsorship taking the traditional publishing route.

As I encounter these authors, I'm going to link to their homepages from this blog and from my Web site (www.brucejudisch.com, for those who didn't see my previous announcement). I'll note their genres along with their names, so you don't waste time clicking links only to find yourself at a Christian romance writer's site when what you really wanted was a good fantasy.

So, having said that, there will be a slowly growing list of links at the left of this page. You might not recognize their names (yet!), but please take a moment to peruse their sites. You may find something interesting. I'm sure they'd love to hear any feedback you may feel led to provide, whether it's a guestbook signature or e-mail contact on their site, or a reader review on Amazon.com.

Oh, and I wouldn't mind any of those things, either! :-)