"The Christian Writer's Market Guide 2012" (Jerry B. Jenkins)

TITLE: The Christian Writer's Market Guide 2012 - Your comprehensive guide for getting published.
AUTHOR: Jerry B. Jenkins
PUBLISHER: Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2011, (556 pages).

This is both a resource as well as a reservoir for anyone interested or involved in the Christian publishing market.  It is comprehensive as it covers the A to Z of Christian publishing. Though written with the American Christian publishing market in mind, it is an extremely useful resource to help any budding writer or anyone interested to know about Christian book publishing market. Part One covers a huge list of resources for book publishing. Part Two contains lots of useful information on periodical publishers. Part Three dives into the 'Specialty Markets' like greeting cards, DVDs, games, software, and other things not covered in the book or periodical list. Part Four is a useful compendium of resources for budding writers as well as established authors, or simply anyone interested in writing. It gives a list of Christian writers' workshops throughout the United States, with a small list of Canadian-based writing organizations or writing clubs. The book is filled with contact information about literary agents, publisher addresses, email contacts, and very specific niches each organization offers.

Every Christian writer serious about getting published needs to get this book. With more than 380 publishers, 550 periodicals, and plenty of contacts for literary agencies, and so on, this is the encyclopedia of Christian publishing for North America. What makes this edition stands out is not only the updated contacts of the players in the Christian publishing market. There is market analysis of how each publisher is doing broken down into how many books have been published per year. This enables the reader to discern which publisher is the one to choose. There is a helpful listing of current topics popular with publishers. This helps the reader to gather a snapshot of trends in writing.

Even with the rising popularity of ebooks, and the continued rumors that publishing is going to be dead sooner than later, this book proves once again that publishing is very much alive. The electronic age has not diminished the traditional ways of publishing. It has only altered the WAY publishing is done.

As a quick reference, this book gives me access to information super fast. As a collection of current market trends, this book gives me ideas about which are the popular topics that I can write about. At the same time, it gives me an idea of what topics have not been covered.The main peeve I have is that the softcover tends to be easily worn out. Apart from this, this book is a treasure house of information. Not only does it give a huge array of choices, both large and small publishers, it gives anyone with a writers' block lots of ideas how to kick start and progress the writing journey.

This book makes an excellent Christmas gift for people whom you know loves to read, to write, to blog, or simply to get ideas for literary appreciation.

Rating: 4.75 stars of 5.

conrade

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This book is supplied to me free by Tyndale House Publishers without any obligation for a positive review. The comments provided above are freely my own.