Publishing Disrupted

Exploring the ways in which book publishing is changing and how writers can best meet the challenge. A conversation between two publishing veterans and friends, editor Mick Silva and publisher and literary agent David Morris.

MickSilva.com / DavidRMorris.me

All Episodes

Publishing Disrupted

Why Reading Is Fun (and Sexy)

August 07, 2025 • Mick Silva and David Morris • Season 1 • Episode 8

0:00 | 50:08

In this wide-ranging conversation, Mick and David dive into their personal reading habits as men, as book-lovers, and as supporters of great independent publishing. They explore their current reads—from Austrian history and Michigan ghost ships to literary fiction and classics like The Little Prince—discussing how reading can serve as both intellectual pursuit and spiritual practice.

They examine the stereotype that "men don't read" (spoiler: they definitely do), and share their preferences for physical books over screens, not just because it's "sexier" (according to a recent NYT headline), but because it takes us "out of ourselves" in ways that feel deeply meaningful. They also touch on the changing landscape of book publishing through the rise of independent voices on platforms like Substack and Tumblr, answering the challenge of finding thoughtful analysis in our chaotic political moment.

Whether you're looking for reading recommendations, curious about the evolving book industry, or just want to eavesdrop on two literary professionals shooting the sh#t about their favorite escape from daily life, this episode offers plenty of food for thought—and a good reminder that reading is sexier than staring at a phone.

Publishing Disrupted explores how the book world is changing and how writers can adapt to meet new challenges.

Mick Silva is at micksilva.com

David Morris is at DavidRMorris.com

Lake Drive Books is LakeDriveBooks.com

New episodes every other week.

Publishing Disrupted is at PublishingDisrupted.substack.com

Mick Silva is at MickSilvaEditing.substack.com

David Morris is at dvdmorris.substack.com, LakeDriveBooks.com, and Hyponymous.com.

Intros

Mick 0:01

Hey everybody, this is Publishing Disrupted, and I'm editor Mick Silva.

David 0:05

And I'm publisher and literary agent of great acclaim. Because that's what you're supposed to say,

Mick 0:14

David Morris.

David 0:15

Well, I could say that. Everything is supposed to be puffed up in

Mick 0:17

publishing. I need to set you up better. Yes, literary agent extraordinaire, David Morris. There you go. Thank you. Yes. Publishing Disrupted is exploring ways in which the book publishing world is changing and how writers can best meet that challenge. So we are here to discuss what's new, what's new in our lives and what's going on. And we're two former Christian publishing industry professionals is learning to navigate the massive independent book market. And that's just a little bit about us. But we realized recently you don't know a whole lot more about us because we haven't really been forthcoming about. I mean, we said what we didn't in past lives. I don't think we've been hiding anything. No, certainly not. Except for maybe

David 0:59

things that could get us into trouble. I

Mick 1:02

do feel a little bit clandestine most days because I come out of a place where you have to be very careful about what you say. And you're representing a publishing house. And I tend to be a little squirrely. And I can just say stuff sometimes. and make it into trouble. So I do still feel a little bit of that inhibition. And then just the natural introversion that inhibits us all.

David 1:25

I parked in front of a bookstore this morning on the way into our... Plumfield over there? Yeah, exactly. And I feel clandestine when it comes to going in a place like that. I feel what you're feeling, but also on the other end of the spectrum, you go into a broad market. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Regular people. That's the thing. I just like, where's the balance in all this? Regular non-readers. Yeah. Yeah. Or just regular readers. Well, sure. Yeah. They're just there for like fantasy fiction. Genre readers. They don't want to read Joel Osteen. Yeah. Maybe they do, actually, because what's the difference? Yeah. What's the next Fifty Shades Gray or

Mick 2:24

whatever? Well, true. Yeah. Okay. See, we're already getting squirrely. Yeah.

David 2:29

And

Mick 2:29

disruptive.

Unknown 2:31

Yeah.

Mick 2:32

But like, so in terms of just like the big picture of what we're talking about, the recent changes that have disrupted book publishing, I do see a lot of crossover and anecdotally, I mean, certainly parking in front of Plumfield and going in as like, you know, a publisher and trying not to be noticed. Like I think there's just, there are a lot of ways in which these worlds are sort of merging and blending and almost becoming indistinguishable from each other. And not just in terms of markets, but in terms of book genres. That's another thing I think we could probably spend a whole episode talking about. It's like crossover genres. There's always been talk when I was in Christian publishing about crossing over into general market, right? Does that really happen? And sure, sometimes it does, and it's mostly an accident. And

David 3:22

what does that even mean?

Mick 3:23

Right, what does that even mean? And any more, of course. I mean, if you're just buying the book online, I mean, you don't know necessarily whether it's a Christian publisher or not. Right. Right, right. Which I guess is good and bad. depending on what kind of reader you are. So anyway, but yeah, I think when we're talking, especially like last time we talked a little bit about like the progressive Christian struggles, books that tend to fall between categories and like where do you put them? How does that then translate into, you know, ideally better sales or just better recognition in general for our books? And we're, of course, concerned mostly with the progressive Christian market And yet, if you only have to have a certain number, we talked about the article, 1,000 True Fans, which was... In our last podcast. Our last podcast, check it out. 1,000 True Fans. The idea that the mainstream is no longer relevant, that you just have to find 1,000 unique followers, and you can make a way for yourself. Basically, create your own tribe. And I love the idea of that. Of course, that's the independent spirit that we're trying to capture here. And then of course that dovetails into talking about progressive stuff, topics and markets and ideas.

Men don't read?

Mick 4:40

But recently I was reading that article, I guess Maureen Dowd in New York Times was talking about how men need to be convinced to read or like this is kind of a trope that I was familiar with and I'm sure you heard it too, men don't read. And so you kind of have to convince them or you have to make them, it feels like it's helping them in their career in some way or it's giving them something that helps them feel superior to others. I mean, there's just all kinds of ways that we have to use reading as sort of a way to help people progress maybe in their careers or their sense of self. And yet, I don't know that, I don't really know if you agreed with the article or not, but like, I mean, men read, obviously. We're men, we read. A lot of people that I know are men who read, so... I don't really know if

David 5:31

that's true. There's different kinds, but perhaps men skew more toward reading for a sense of purpose. Sure. Whether it's like business books and leadership books. Those are really big in the

Mick 5:44

Christian market, by the way. Right, productivity. I mean, podcasts and things lend themselves to that. Yeah, we don't really... I don't know. I mean, just you and me personally. I think productivity can be. Right. I don't read productivity. Great. I did at one point. Or like how to build your business. I mean, I suppose if you're looking for that, there's plenty of stuff available online. I'm not sure I'd get it from a book. I don't know. maybe investment advice, I guess, but financial stuff maybe. But like, see, we're not even, that's not the kind of stuff that I want to publish or read necessarily. I'm much more into fiction and stories and memoirs. you know, relational dynamics and things like this history. I love, you know, I know you're reading some of that recently. I kind of just wanted to ask what you're reading.

We read!

David 6:37

Yeah. So what do we as two, let's, let's do like a, like as two guys, what are we reading? A self, self ethnographic study.

Mick 6:44

Yeah.

David 6:46

Yeah.

Mick 6:47

That makes it sound way more important.

David 6:48

That's good. Yeah. I mean, I read a lot for work for one thing. Yeah. Um, You know, just whether it's like fragments of chapters in book proposals or whole manuscripts that I'm helping to edit or I'm actually outright at doing a developmental edit on. And that keeps my brain pretty busy. But I also read for myself. And I tend to do perhaps two kinds of reading. One would be... Reading in the scholarly area that I grew up in, books about psychology and religion, about understanding religion from a social scientific point of view, a psychological, sociological, even historical point of view, just continues to fascinate me. I just got into a really great stream of intellectual history where we're talking about How does religion fit into society? It's not confessional from within religion, it's more looking at religion. from the outside, which is very strange to some people. They don't understand why you would even do that, but it's just a beautiful discipline. So I still am reading, I'm kind of rereading some things even from graduate school from like 20 years ago, where I feel like I've kind of lost touch with them and I wanted to get back into it and seeing things from that perspective. I was actually reading a very well-known historian of American religion just this week. I was dipping back into a book of his that I had gotten probably 20 years ago. It was from early 2000s. It was really interesting to hear. to hear, it was sort of a, I would say it was like a hagiography of evangelicalism. Oh, wow. Protestant evangelicalism. Yeah, yeah. I don't think this author would say that that's what that is, but looking back.

Mick 8:46

Maybe looking back, it feels that way. But it was

David 8:47

sort of like, you know, where's evangelicalism going? And Protestantism will be, you know, where is its next step in American life? And it's like, okay, you totally did not anticipate what happened in 2016. How could you? Yeah. Or the deconstruction movement or anything. Right. Completely whiffed on that. And, you know, And that was just fun for me to kind of see that more critically. And it was talking about how... A lot of people complain about megachurches. I'm sorry, I'm kind of going off on a tangent. They complain about megachurches as being sort of like entertainment-focused. And that was sort of the complaint then. And I was thinking, you know, that just feels like a very surface-level analysis from this PhD of history and not really getting into the long history of sort of the blurring of the line between pop culture popular culture and popular technology methods of communicating about faith and religion and spirituality that have been used by evangelicals since the beginning of time in the United States. It's always been very connected to emotions

Mick 9:59

and entertainment. Yeah, emotionalism. Yeah, if you think about the Billy Graham Crusades, I mean, there was just a lot of whipping people up.

David 10:08

So that just kind of gets into my head and what's fun for me to read and what I kind of get engaged by. The other kind of reading I do lately is... Probably historical reading, if not outright just fiction of whatever anybody else might be reading. Like if my daughter or my wife are reading a great novel, I'll get into it too. It's fun to talk about them together.

Mick 10:32

Yeah, what are some of those that you've read recently? I read Station Eleven.

David 10:37

Yeah, yeah. Have you heard of that? I did, yeah. We watched the show too. It was pretty good. Okay, we just started watching the show now that I'm the third person to finally read the book. Yeah, it was good. I think they did a good adaptation. And then we... We've been getting into Michigan history a little bit, and I'm reading a book that my daughter got me at Christmas called Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes. Okay, yes. And it's fun. It's a little boring. It'll put you right to sleep, but it's great. Oh, come on. It's not boring. And then I've really been into, I might have mentioned this, I've been into Austrian history. Yes. for a number of reasons, which I won't go into now,

Reading is spiritual!

David 11:14

but I've been reading a book about Franz Joseph or Francis Joseph, pretty much the last well-known Austrian emperor who lived from the mid-1800s through just after World War I or just before it ended. Yeah, he died, I think, in 1916 or something. But yeah, and that's fun. It's just fun to get... You know, I was thinking I was even thinking recently that, you know, that kind of reading sometimes is more spiritual than the pastor's book. You know, it's talking about God. I love that. I love digging deep into like Habakkuk or something like that. But this is actually connecting me to a sense of history, to a sense of the continuum of the human condition. I had no idea how much. how much jostling went on, especially during the 1800s, between monarchies and nation states struggling to become democratic, parliamentary-run countries. And it just tells you a lot. In America, it's kind of like, well, we fought the British and we became a democracy overnight. And there's much more to that continuum when you read in history. And I find that spiritual because it connects me to... It just makes me feel more grounded. It helps me understand the human condition better, how we're evolving as a global society. I don't know what it is, but it's something about having insight and understanding feels spiritual. It helps me be more sensitive to the world, understand the world around me better. Whereas I was kind of brought up, we'll just read the Bible all day long, and that's what will help you be better connected to God. And that's just artificial

Mick 12:59

quite often. Yeah, you're trying to come out of yourself. I was just having this conversation with sort of a family kerfuffle that we're having about relational dynamics and differences in opinion about how how faith orients us in the world. And, you know, you just need to read your Bible more and go to church more. Speaking of reading,

David 13:20

what

Mick 13:21

we're all reading. Yeah, no, right. Like, you're going to say that the Bible isn't right about this? Well, it's not the Bible. It's more your interpretation of it that's the problem. And that if we will just get with the program and change ourselves, allow ourselves to be changed, I suppose, then everything will be hunky-dory. And this is what church people are always saying. Our whole lives, people telling us this, right? And And yet when you're talking about other books and getting into the, I guess, empathizing with a character or understanding what even an author is trying to put forth as a historical record and understanding what the people were living through at that time, you're coming out of yourself, right? You're basically sacrificing your own point of view, I suppose, in a manner of speaking, in order to take on someone else's. And that's just, there's something spiritual about that. Yeah. something that is is very much um in line with what i think you're hearing from church pulpits and a lot of these christian books that are talking about like that that's such a spiritual thing and it's so hard to do and you have to give your heart to jesus and all this stuff and i'm like well maybe you just read a book right maybe just do that crack a book like try it out and in fact like if if you're just looking at the bible maybe that's a detriment to you because you're not like relating to a lot of other types of people who are alive now i had

David 14:43

the urge to post on threads yesterday, the social media platform, about how much I missed the Jesus seminar. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. From the 80s and 90s? Right, right. A collection of scholars who voted on how much the words in the Bible, in the New Testament, the gospel stories in particular, were actually things that Jesus said, I believe, and did. And they came out, they voted down to like maybe 10% of what you read there is probably the actual words of Jesus, and the rest are by the writers. And so if you're spending all your time thinking you're reading Jesus' words, you're really reading about the writers. Well, you know what you ought to do? Go read some biblical history

Mick 15:23

books. You really

David 15:25

want to understand the Bible.

Mick 15:26

Jewish heritage and Eastern mysticism and all the things that did come out of the Jesus way. It's just not in the interpretation of the American Christian. Yeah, there's many ways to come at this. And I guess, yeah, go ahead. So what are you reading? Oh, I was going to say, what I enjoy the most, I guess, about reading fiction, and that's my primary love, is just that... you

Reading requires sacrifice

Mick 15:51

do have to sort of, there's almost this 50-page experiment that I take in most of these literary novels that I'm reading, and to just name a few, like Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow was like this. A couple others I was reading. Well, Station Eleven, I think, was kind of like this. It's a shift in the way you're thinking, in a way. I don't really know how to explain that. Yeah,

David 16:15

that book definitely

Mick 16:16

makes you shift. It takes a while, right, to get into the voice, the characters. I mean, even if they're not jumping around a whole lot in the beginning in terms of timeline or even character, if you're sticking with one character's voice, sometimes it's a little bit of a... I mean, there's some work to be done independently as a reader in order to get with the voice that's being put forth. And I think I like that process. A lot of people, I think, just check out and go watch TV because it's easier. But I enjoy having to give up the way that I'm thinking in order to think like someone else. I don't know how to put that in another way. But it's just a fun practice. And in that process, I find that there's like... There's all kinds of things that I hadn't thought about before, and now I'm available to other thoughts or other just ways of thinking, I guess. and this can get really meta really quickly, but just to bring it down to practical level, I enjoy reading because it takes me out of myself. And in a way, I feel like that is largely what the Jesus message is asking us to do, to identify with the other people out there that you don't know anything about. And you might think of them as beneath you or above you or just different from you, and so they're weird, and so you never reach out. But like in fiction, I'm kind of doing the opposite of that. It's like intentionally coming into contact with a life that I have no knowledge about before. And now I'm learning about it, not just from the outside, but from the inside, from behind that character's eyes. I don't know. I mean, you can do that to some extent through the visual mediums of documentaries and, you know, great series on Netflix. I mean, that are amazing. They're really great, but they're not like a book, right? Not like a memoir. Um, That's different in some special way. I'm trying to put that to words, I guess,

David 18:13

airingly. No, that was beautiful. I don't have much to say or comment on that. To read is to get us out of ourselves. Yeah, yeah. Some of us really want to escape ourselves. That's why we read. Sure, sure. I mean,

Mick 18:25

there are

David 18:26

times. Maybe we need to. Some of

Mick 18:28

us really need to. There are times. I'm like, I'm sick of myself. I want to be someone else right now, you know? Yeah.

David 18:34

The same reality all day long.

Mick 18:36

Right, right. And I guess novels are just an easy way for me to think, oh, well, that's a good way to do it. Yeah. You know, maybe rather than drinking or... doing something else they shouldn't be doing. But yeah, so Susan Sontag says about novels that they enlarge your sympathies. And I really love that idea. And I know that's not a new thought, but I'm remembering Kafka quote that novels are like an ax to the frozen seas inside us. And it's a way to kind of like get at these things that you would maybe rather not think about. You know, some of the realities that people live with all the time. And it's not just literary fiction that does that. Obviously, in genre novels are doing that, too. And to some extent, I think every story that's out there that's not your own. you know, as an opportunity to converse with

When and how do you read?

Mick 19:32

someone else's life. So when

David 19:33

do you read? Like what time of day do you

Mick 19:35

read? Yeah, that's a good question. A lot of it's before bed, honestly. Drive times, you know, I have audio books. And I'd say that the balance for me, and you might be different, but I think audio book is probably like 25 to 30%. of the total and you know obviously on planes and you know if I'm traveling or something I get more audio time in but I generally will take hardcover novels. I'm one of those that goes ahead and packs the heavy books. Do

David 20:08

you listen to audio through the... Or is it library versus buy? Let's start with audiobook.

Mick 20:13

I mean, audio, yeah. I will always look at the library and see if there's a copy available. And often with new stuff, there's not. So I subscribe to either audiobook.com or go on... I don't know what I'm using these days. I had been using... Audible, but I don't want to support Amazon anymore. I was using something else. I can't remember the service. But there's Hoopla. Hoopla's a great app, too, and if you just check on there for the library copy, usually you can find something. But yeah, what about you?

David 20:48

Yeah, I've gone through phases with audiobooks where they kick in for me, but I'm not really driving a lot these days, as you are, too. Yeah, not as much. Yeah. And yeah, so I think I'm probably mostly print of whatever stripe and then maybe a little bit of e-book. Like I'm reading an e-book right now that I got from the library. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because you can get too many books in your house, and you're like, why not? You ever buy a book, and then you're like, man, I bought that five years ago, and I never read it. Oh,

Mick 21:26

yeah.

David 21:27

Like, okay, that's not good.

Mick 21:28

Yeah, no, we have accounts at all these bookstores. Can't be good. Just give them back. Yeah. Yeah, we have credit at all these bookstores. But yeah, if I'm driving, I'm listening more, but if I'm needing to just escape, and because we read so much already on the screen, I'm not doing a lot of e-books. Right. I generally want the physical pages. And that's

David 21:53

true for me at night especially. Yeah. If I'm reading, yeah, which is frustrating because the history that I'm reading right now is an e-book, and I don't want to have a screen on my eyes right before bed.

Mick 22:04

Do you use a Kindle? Do you use your iPad?

David 22:07

Kindle. Kindle, yeah, but I'm actually in the Hoopla app for this particular e-book. Yeah,

Mick 22:12

I think, I mean, the Kindle, what is that, like Paperwhite? It's nice that it doesn't feel like a screen. That's true. I use

David 22:21

a tablet, so I don't know if I can justify getting yet another device. I know. There's probably a lot of used Kindle readers

Mick 22:31

out there that I could get pretty cheaply. I think you have to get one that's fairly recent. We had a fire for a while. I don't use it. But then, yeah, I guess to e-books, I'm probably like, I don't know, 5% to 10%. And I tend toward more practical stuff on e-books. and I'll do novels and memoirs in hard copy. I don't know why that is. It just feels more real, I guess. I'm Gen X, what are you gonna do? But yeah, I think if it was a classic, like so Frankenstein, I listened to last summer with Charlotte because she, my 18 year old, now 19, was wanting to read some of the classics and we kind of read it together, which was amazing. Yeah, it was one of my favorite reads. Really? Just because getting back into the language of that time was part of the pleasure. And every time I turn on that audio and I hear the voice, it was totally an escape. I mean, I'd be cleaning the pool or I'd be like mowing the lawn and I'd like be somewhere else. Yeah. It's not just the story. It's amazing. that

David 23:44

gets you out of yourself, but it's the language itself.

Mick 23:47

The way in which it's written. Yeah. Because it's older. Right. I noticed that with C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or people who do have something of an arcane way of speaking. Compared to today. Sure. Yeah, and it can be obtuse. I mean, it's difficult sometimes. You have to weed through sometimes and even keep a dictionary nearby.

David 24:06

And sometimes you find things in there like, ooh, I wouldn't say that today. No, right. Even from someone like maybe a C.F. Lewis. Exactly, yeah.

Mick 24:14

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that seems a little dated, but weeding through and then giving grace to people who lived before. I don't know that I would have been any better if I didn't know any better. But to just get with the type of human that that was previously is just such a mental exercise that I love. It's almost like getting back into English class. I just really loved my time just exploring different texts and literary interpretation, I guess, right? Writing essays about the differences between two types of writers and kind of compare and contrast. We just don't have...

Reading invites comparisons

Mick 25:00

I don't know that I have the capacity, I don't have the time for that so much anymore. So when I'm doing, you know, reading a classic or something, it's a way for me to sort of do that, compare and contrast with myself now and that character then. You know, there's this difference in history and way of seeing the world.

David 25:17

I think it was really instructive. Do you think, onto sort of a different way of talking about this, do you think you're spending more time reading now, or less time, or about the same?

Mick 25:29

Yeah, I mean, overall, more, just because of work. Things I'm reading in order to understand, like I'm working with a memoirist right now and she recommended these other two books that were kind of influential. So I'm reading those just to get with what she's doing. But yeah.

David 25:46

That's nice. That's really good background research on part of you. I'm

Mick 25:49

interested in it. Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm interested in it. And I love, I love memoirs. And I think in order to love them, you kind of have to understand like there's just different ways to do it. There's different ways to write one. And someone was asking me, what's a memoir as opposed to an autobiography or something recently? The quick answer is a memoir has a theme. It's just a particular time, and you're talking about a topic basically within your life rather than telling your life story. Or an episode or a snapshot. This is how I overcame anxiety or whatever.

David 26:23

Or just one relationship in your life. Exactly. Not your whole autobiography. The Texas

Mick 26:28

years.

David 26:29

Yeah,

Mick 26:29

exactly. My trip to Ireland. There's

David 26:33

overlap. People use interchangeably those words. Oh, sure. Or autobiography and

Mick 26:37

memoir. Well, and obviously, like memoir, there's a lot of flashback and interrelationships that you're bringing into to have weight on the story. Sometimes in memoir, there's a little

David 26:46

fiction

Mick 26:47

thrown in. There's often a lot of fiction. More than you'd like to admit. Memoir is memory. It's storytelling. It's not facts. Exactly. Every time you pull up a memory, it changes, apparently, according to science. So what is a memoir, ultimately, is just the story we're telling ourselves. Yeah. And I think there's a good exercise to that. There's obviously some drawbacks if you're going to take that as gospel truth, quote unquote. Yeah. But outside of work, are you reading more or less? Probably these days, more. Really? More than I was any time I was employed in book publishing.

David 27:24

Because you don't have the full-time corporate job. Right. You've got a little bit more... Flexibility with how you spend your time. Everything

Mick 27:31

is competitive titles when you're an acquisitions editor. Everything is reading what they're publishing.

David 27:38

I once worked at a publisher, and I had a coworker who would go to the conference room for his lunch break, and he'd be reading a novel. Completely unrelated. Oh, yeah. No, that's for mental health. How do you do that? That's right. You're probably the healthier person. That's

Mick 27:51

right. That is for mental health. I would do the same. I'd just take it to my car. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. I think what's so difficult is about being a book person. You start to see this as a business and then it becomes less fun. Yeah. It's less of a personal pursuit. Yeah. More of like this professional

David 28:07

thing. Definitely. But sometimes I will have nights. I had one just a couple of nights ago where I was like, I can't bear to read anything right now. Totally.

Personally, these men read TOO much

Mick 28:15

Me too. Yeah. I'm just full up.

David 28:17

Even the stuff I want to read, I can't

Mick 28:19

read anything. Like it's not going to get retained anyway. So you may as well just do something

David 28:24

else. Yeah. So I have word finds. Uh-huh. I bought one of those where you can buy like a pack for like $10. You get like, you know, 12.

Mick 28:33

Yeah. Are they like crosswords or are they just like? Just straight up word finds, which are

David 28:37

some of the most mindless. Yeah, I know. Take very little actual thinking.

Mick 28:42

Yeah. I have one of those on my phone. That's like a mental break for me. Like it's just a word find. Yeah. And I think in some ways like that feels more relaxing than, you know, even genre reading sometimes. Yeah. I'll read just like YA novels once in a while. Yeah. It feels a little lighter. Yeah. But yeah. I just watch Scooby-Doo. I don't read YA

David 29:06

novels. I just find Scooby-Doo somewhere.

Mick 29:09

I miss Scooby-Doo. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot of stuff that I was realizing I need to do just for my own personal mental health. And to come back to our topic as men, I think sometimes there's not enough outlets for just being a regular human being. And mowing the lawn is fine because it's physical and it's not behind a computer screen, but it's still not fun. So I need to actually look for something that's enjoyable as well. Or like being on my phone and doing a word find. That's a good brain break, but it's still not connecting with people and refilling my battery, basically. So I need to have good conversations like this. This is very helpful to me, just to be able to shoot the shit with somebody.

David 29:52

Same.

Mick 29:53

David 29:53

hope someone's listening, or maybe I hope they're not listening, because that's all we're doing.

Mick 29:59

That's all we do. No, it's good, because I think particularly as men, when you're talking about reading as a pursuit or as something that, do you use it as escape, is the question that I like to ask people. Yeah. Right? Because there's almost an embarrassment factor. And I feel that as a man, right? Use it to escape. Well, that feels like, are you like...

David 30:24

Because men need to be going out and hunting and killing animals. So reading has

Mick 30:29

to be for a

David 30:29

purpose. Do

Mick 30:30

you need counseling? What's wrong? Why are you just reading? Well, no. I'm probably fairly on the far end of the introvert spectrum. So I do enjoy reading. But I don't enjoy going out and killing things. I enjoy thinking about other people's lives and what I can learn from them. Or times in history, like you're talking about. Or even just topics. Right. That I knew nothing about before. The way it can fire the imagination. There's nothing like it. Yeah. Yeah. And yes, that is an escape to me, but it's an intellectual pursuit as well, I guess. Right. Right. And I don't know if that's better or worse, but that's the way I like to live. Yeah. Yeah.

David 31:13

The article's title, I said something, what was the article's

Mick 31:16

title? Yeah, yeah. Attention men, reading is sexy. Yeah, see? You're a very sexy man. Books are sexy. Oh, but staring into a phone is not. Yeah, staring into a phone is

David 31:25

not. That

Mick 31:26

was the extra part of that title. I do need to remember that one.

David 31:28

Yeah. Like, I'm going to put the phone down when my wife walks in the

Mick 31:30

room. Oh, my gosh. My wife is so on me about it, too. I'm like, you know what? I'm actually responding to a friend right now.

David 31:36

I'm

Mick 31:37

not doing some stupid game, I promise. Oh, okay. You know? I'm not

David 31:40

going to get into this too

Mick 31:41

heavily No, she is on me about it. I think she's

David 31:43

sending you a message.

Mick 31:44

Yeah. She's like, everybody in the house needs to put their phone down right now. She's not wrong. Yeah. I don't argue too hard.

David 31:52

Yeah. Yeah. Well, social media arguably has replaced a lot of the reading. Yeah. I did do a little bit before this podcast, did a little bit of online searching. I don't want to comment on it like I'm an expert or I have real facts and data to share. But I do think it's... I didn't used to think, I mean, I used to from inside publishing, we tend to puff ourselves up. I said that earlier. Yeah. We tend to, we tend to overstate our case about books that we're buying. The world is buying, the U S is buying as many books as it used to. It's reading as much as it used to things like, well, we're reading social media, you know, we're reading the captions in social media. So we're reading as much as we used to. Well, is that immersive reading? You know, right. Is it, is it getting out of yourself? Some of it is. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

Reading books may be declining

David 32:40

I think that people are reading books a little bit less than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago, before the digital era really kicked in. I think so. I did see one statistic of people are spending, like, two hours on social media a day. Yeah, a day. Oh, my gosh. I'm like, that's not me, even though I actually work on social

Mick 33:02

media. Or it's probably even less than some people.

David 33:04

which is extraordinary. I do think that we do this podcast very much so for aspiring authors, current authors, publishing colleagues, but I do think that it's not said enough and we need to learn how to say it more that some of these digital platforms are ways to be a writer and that is just as valid Right, right. And there's a lot, I think there's also a lot of online media outlets. They don't pay necessarily, so that's part of the challenge. The world has changed. It used to, it talked about, some of the research I saw talked about how people used to sort of split their time between watching network television, not streaming, but network television and reading the newspaper and books. to stay informed. And I think those systems as they were set up in the past were monetized a little easier if you could get into it. If you could get into being a reporter or a journalist or an opinion writer for a news outlet or a major magazine or something like that. If you could get into book publishing, which was arguably harder in the past than it is now. Or if you could get into television and and film, which was arguably harder back then as well. I mean, if you think of all the programming that goes on now, it's probably easier, but it pays less, which I think is probably the true across the board. So I think as book publishing people, that's what we struggle with sometimes. Whereas authors, is the infrastructure there like you may think it used to be? But it's constantly been evolving. You don't see mass market paperbacks like you used to, for example. Really inexpensive paperbacks. Smaller size books with the prints almost never. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that changed a while back, actually. You know, so what where where are we now with with with these mediums and how do we how do we as writers and publishers. find a way to have it be a place of creativity, also one that you get rewarded for financially, hopefully.

Mick 35:59

Right, right. It's a good question. And we've talked about it before, making your marketing into an extension of your, I mean, obviously your platform, but an extension of your writing. And saying, okay, it's not just that you're putting your great ideas into your book. You're actually putting them into the Substack and into your socials and sharing things that way so that there's quality engagement. And then that's how you build an audience and a following.

David 36:30

And even all the Substack posts, for example, and this applies to even social media, You can specialize in ways that maybe you didn't used to before. I'm amazed that some people, like when people subscribe to my Substack, I'm amazed where it tells you how many other Substacks they're subscribing to. Some of them are like well over 100. I know. Or hundreds. I can't be reading all that. I know they're not reading all that. There's something about it. It's more like social networking for them. Okay, yeah. But I do think that there's some folks, you're reading a certain substack because you're getting your political news that way. Because you're tired of what the New York Times is doing. You're fed up with some of the articles that they've done. You might still go there, but not as much as you used to. And you've got this one commentator who always is talking about this one topic and keeping you informed on it, which might be of big interest for you. So I think that's actually pretty powerful. I think that's pretty powerful. If you can find that, if you can be that writer who can write about that

But Substack is still growing

David 37:39

one thing, really, really well. Yes. There might be a dozen or two dozen or maybe 50 dozen other people who are doing it as well, but maybe that's not a bad calculation, actually, if you're looking for just your 1,000 true fans. Absolutely, yeah. If you could be that one writer really being good at that, yeah, do a Substack blog and a Substack post, newsletter. It is like blogging of old, though. I do worry about it sometimes because it's sort of like, well, you know, how many... like how many of these blogs can people read? Right. You know, I know. Why would you keep up with all of these people way back when? Yeah. But I do think that there's something there, uh, where, where we can, where we can get like more ground grassroots information. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I, that's what I look to for social media because I feel like, so I feel like the New York times reports about what it reports about. Yeah. But you don't see, you don't see the videos of masked police officers. Right.

Unknown 38:39

Um,

David 38:40

abducting people from public spaces. And I don't know why the New York Times doesn't report on that more. That's interesting to me. Right. And so I'll tune in for that. Not that I can handle seeing that all day long.

Mick 38:51

No, but you need to know. I just can't believe it.

David 38:54

Yeah. Right. I mean, that's just extreme. Yeah. Behavior going on in our society. Exactly. I won't put words to it. Other people are doing a really good job of that, but it's just it's it's. But yet mainstream media won't necessarily. You are not going to see conservative or progressive necessarily report about it.

Mick 39:11

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that that is interesting. There's again, the mainstream is dead. long live the unique tribes right

How independent publishing thrives

Mick 39:18

and i do think the unique tribes are bringing something substantive to the table that just isn't available otherwise right so so if you are one of those sort of independent minded people you're listening hopefully to this podcast and learning that there is a place for you that you can that put your voice forth drill down into your special niche and and find an audience and that's right that's being proven over and over again and eventually I do think there's still this like I don't know what the force would be called but like the force that brings the cream to the top or like allows that the people with the the most balanced voices or the most extreme voices either way to rise to the top and then that usually points to well What else do you have? What else do you have that's available? Maybe you just collected a bunch of your substacks together and published them in a book or something. But then that gets attention, and then you eventually find a publisher, and it gets bigger and bigger that way. And then you become a brand unto yourself. I mean, ideally, this is what we're talking about. You grow just organically and naturally that way. I don't think that was available before. You would have had to be... Well, at least educated. And I still hope that most people are getting some sort of basic liberal education. But the humanities are going away. in a lot of institutions that are not being supported in the way that they used to. So where are they getting their information? And increasingly, my kids are on Tumblr and getting their information from their friends or from people that they follow or YouTube videos and stuff like this. Like the things that you missed in class. And they're actually substantive. They're right. Talking about classics and reading some of the masters and these things that I even missed in my liberal education. So those people who are the voices I think can come along and hopefully build an audience and get noticed that way.

David 41:23

So you need to tell your wife, like, I'm looking at Tumblr. Most of the time, that's true. I learned from my daughter some important information, and now I'm reading Tumblr.

Mick 41:32

But maybe I don't need to be on there all the time. And

David 41:33

that's

Mick 41:34

sexy. Isn't that sexy? Yeah, no, if it was a book, she'd be fine. It's true. So maybe it's as simple as that. More endowed is all right. I just need to read more books.

David 41:45

I find, too, that with books these days... There's so much political stuff. I just wish there was more. There's been so much news in the last 10 years. So much change. And I need somebody to help me make sense of it. I don't want another explanation about where Christian nationalism comes from.

Mick 42:08

I kind of know. I'm just kind of clear now.

David 42:10

And they're usually not always the most expansive analysis. It tends to do some very helpful reporting about what's going on and what's happening. It's like, oh, I had no idea. That's horrible. But on the other hand, I need to find the meaning in it. And where do I point my head other than just go pick it somewhere, which is fine too. Sure. I need to find hope. Yeah. And that's, that's what I'm struggling with is, you know, and you, there's, there's hope in social action without a doubt. That's not what I'm saying. Um, I feel like I need somebody to help me make better sense of it. Right. And that will, that will spur, I think even more action in that regard. Yeah.

Mick 42:58

And, and you're finding that where, I mean, is there a book or a source that you've Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

David 43:16

I don't find I'm attracted to any one book that's helping us make sense of our time right now. Whether it's a spiritual, religious book or a political book, which I'm less connected to that kind of stuff. I'm not the authority on those kinds of things. Especially, we've talked about this in regard to spiritual writing. I don't feel like there's anybody who's really impressing me with... okay, this is deeply thought, deeply considered, well-examined writing that's saying some things. Maybe they're repeating things some people are saying, but on the whole, there's like, wow, this is... I do have a Lake Drive author that I feel like is somebody I'm curious to hear what this person has to write more about. And that gets me excited. That's exciting. I'm glad I have that. That's hard to get. No, it is. But... Yeah, that's I think the thing is someone is going to really slow me down and say, have you looked at it all this way? Right. And

Slowing down to find meaning

David 44:19

also because we're just so amped up all the time. Yeah. And where do you find something that gives you like a rudder?

Mick 44:27

Yeah, that's a good thought.

David 44:28

I mean, there's people complaining about conservatives. There's people, progressives, complaining about Democrats. And it's like, okay, well, where's the center here? Even if there is no center, let's talk about that.

Mick 44:43

Sure, sure. Yeah, no, I'm thinking of... Well, we talked about Annie Dillard, you know, and in a previous generation, it felt as though maybe there was an easier way to get your arms around things. It feels a little bit like too much these days. Yeah. But Gilead author Marilynne Robinson, she comes to mind, someone who can kind of get their arms around things pretty well. But yeah, I mean. Frederick Buechner, I used to go to him a lot. Presbyterian minister and kind of literary writer. And then I don't anymore. I mean, I don't know what he's writing recently. Wendell Berry, maybe. I guess he's still around. I'm not sure what he's writing these days.

David 45:29

Definitely some of the writers of color. Oh, yeah. Riders on the margins. There's definitely clues there.

Mick 45:35

Yes. Bell Hooks, I've been reading a lot from. That's probably

David 45:38

where I get the most excited.

Mick 45:40

Yeah. I need to dig into more of that. Howard Thurman. I mean, so again, but like earlier generation, right? People today doing this or just interpreting what existed before for today's audience. because I don't know that there's anything new necessarily. I think it's really just reinterpreted and reapplied.

David 46:00

Right, right. One of my agency authors, I'll mention him by name, Randy Woodley, he was a professor for many years at a well-known evangelical university, but was an anthropologist and historian and taught all kinds of courses on American history, but also has indigenous roots. both personally as well as especially in his wife's family history and that's what he's writing about more these days and you know I think I think I think there's some real exciting stuff there. I was just actually working on publishers to pitch a new proposal from him this morning. Very cool. And you know what was interesting was that there's a lot of children's books with indigenous interest. Oh, yeah. You bet. That was kind of interesting to me. Yeah. And I couldn't quite figure out, is it because Native Americans are... are generally something children are interested in, or is it adults making Native Americans into a caricature? Which is it? There's probably some of that,

Mick 47:09

some of both there.

David 47:10

But I was encouraged to see what I saw and feel like I've been missing out on some things, and I'm really glad to be working on this book. It was a book I started reading the proposal in a sample chapter, and I'm like, I want to keep reading this, except I've got to get to work and get this publisher list

Mick 47:26

done. That's great. You know what I started reading last night? The Little Prince.

David 47:31

Mick 47:33

you remember that? Oh, yeah. St. Antoine at Exupéry. So, yeah, it's for kids, right? But, I mean, I forgot how it started. And he's talking about being a kid and drawing. And then the parents or the adults saying, like, oh, that's a drawing of a hat. And he's like, no, it's a snake with an elephant inside. And he's saying, you have to explain things for adults a lot. And it's so tiresome. So he's talking to kids as an adult. But he's doing it in this, like, kind of tongue-in-cheek. way and it's it's so delightful it's like this is a kid's book yeah but it's not yeah I think there's something to that that that maybe in the Native American way of thinking I think of the Great Spirit I think of you know the way that that's very nature centric and that's what children are we are we are basically out in the woods playing And escaping is just a normal thing you do. And Mr. Rogers, I have like this amazing

Becoming like children again

Mick 48:31

mentor in my mind from him growing up watching him that I'm working toward the point of like basically we need to get back to this sort of childish idea or at least childlike maybe, not childish. A sense of curiosity. Jesus talked about that a lot too, but I don't hear a lot of Christians talking about it. Why don't we get back to this idea of being connected with nature, reading children's books for pleasure, understanding that there's not a lot of difference. In fact, there's probably very little difference in terms of the consciousness that's alive in the world there. We should be more like children than children should be like us sometimes. And I love being reminded of that. So as a man in the world, having to be a professional and having to be a dad and do all the responsible things, it's a real lovely pleasure to be able to read The Little Prince as I'm going to bed. You know what I mean? I feel like I needed that.