Post by Frank Creed on Apr 22, 2008 8:04:55 GMT -5
Found this cool article:
No traditional publisher would touch the now best-selling novel The Shack by 53-year-old William Paul Young, but after he self-published it, it rose to and held Amazon.com's No. 1 spot in fiction about religion and spirituality for weeks. The book he wrote for his children has now sold close to 400,000 copies.
The book is a parable in which God is depicted as an overweight African-American woman who is almost constantly at the stove cooking. Churches buy his book by the box.
Young, until his book became a recent phenomenon, had a job as an office manager that also included cleaning toilets at a small sales company in Oregon. Just before he started writing The Shack, he and his wife Kim lost their home to foreclosure, and spent several years living with four of their six children in a 900-square-foot rental.
Young says he wrote the book for his children, at the urging of his wife, and printed a few spiral bound copies to give as gifts during Christmas 2005. He also e-mailed copies to a few friends, who, in turn, e-mailed their friends. Soon, Young was hearing from readers around the country.
In the wake of the publishing house rejections, Young and two friends started a company called Windblown Media to print and sell the book. Their advertising budget was $300.
The Shack tells the story of Mack Phillips, a 50-something father who has been haunted by "The Great Sadness," a depression that set in after his 5-year-old daughter, Missy, is killed. In the book, Phillips gets a note in the mail from God, inviting him to spend the weekend in the shack where Missy was murdered. Over the weekend, Phillips meets face-to-face with the Trinity, and together, they hash out their differences.
Much of the book is autobiographical. Young grew up the child of missionaries in New Guinea, and says he was taught that God would take care of him if he was a faithful servant. But Young's life was haunted by tragedy. In his 20s, death began to stalk his family. During a six-month period, his younger brother died in a truck accident, his wife’s mother dropped dead at 55 and his niece Jennifer was killed on the day after her fifth birthday when she was run over by a cement truck.
"The shack is a metaphor. It's the place where you get stuck," he said. "It's a place you keep your secrets. We don't go back there willingly."
One of the keys to finding healing, for Young and for his fictional counterpart, was to realize that the God of the Bible was no stranger to sorrow.
While he relishes the chance to talk about The Shack, Young said he isn't taking his newfound celebrity too seriously. "All I wanted to do was write a book for my kids," he told Bob Smietana of the Nashville Tennessean while promoting the book at a Lifeways Christian Store in Tennessee. "The rest is grace. I feel like I am on ‘The Truman Show’ and keep looking for the cameras.”
The Southern Review, May 2008
No traditional publisher would touch the now best-selling novel The Shack by 53-year-old William Paul Young, but after he self-published it, it rose to and held Amazon.com's No. 1 spot in fiction about religion and spirituality for weeks. The book he wrote for his children has now sold close to 400,000 copies.
The book is a parable in which God is depicted as an overweight African-American woman who is almost constantly at the stove cooking. Churches buy his book by the box.
Young, until his book became a recent phenomenon, had a job as an office manager that also included cleaning toilets at a small sales company in Oregon. Just before he started writing The Shack, he and his wife Kim lost their home to foreclosure, and spent several years living with four of their six children in a 900-square-foot rental.
Young says he wrote the book for his children, at the urging of his wife, and printed a few spiral bound copies to give as gifts during Christmas 2005. He also e-mailed copies to a few friends, who, in turn, e-mailed their friends. Soon, Young was hearing from readers around the country.
In the wake of the publishing house rejections, Young and two friends started a company called Windblown Media to print and sell the book. Their advertising budget was $300.
The Shack tells the story of Mack Phillips, a 50-something father who has been haunted by "The Great Sadness," a depression that set in after his 5-year-old daughter, Missy, is killed. In the book, Phillips gets a note in the mail from God, inviting him to spend the weekend in the shack where Missy was murdered. Over the weekend, Phillips meets face-to-face with the Trinity, and together, they hash out their differences.
Much of the book is autobiographical. Young grew up the child of missionaries in New Guinea, and says he was taught that God would take care of him if he was a faithful servant. But Young's life was haunted by tragedy. In his 20s, death began to stalk his family. During a six-month period, his younger brother died in a truck accident, his wife’s mother dropped dead at 55 and his niece Jennifer was killed on the day after her fifth birthday when she was run over by a cement truck.
"The shack is a metaphor. It's the place where you get stuck," he said. "It's a place you keep your secrets. We don't go back there willingly."
One of the keys to finding healing, for Young and for his fictional counterpart, was to realize that the God of the Bible was no stranger to sorrow.
While he relishes the chance to talk about The Shack, Young said he isn't taking his newfound celebrity too seriously. "All I wanted to do was write a book for my kids," he told Bob Smietana of the Nashville Tennessean while promoting the book at a Lifeways Christian Store in Tennessee. "The rest is grace. I feel like I am on ‘The Truman Show’ and keep looking for the cameras.”
The Southern Review, May 2008
