My Treasured Bookshelf
By Terry Whalin @terrywhalin
In my office above my desk, I have two shelves of autographed books. The majority of my days are spent working at my desktop with my fingers on the keyboard. My treasured bookshelf is a simple glance upward. With only one or two exceptions, I’ve personally met each of these authors. At my request, they have signed these books. During my decades in publishing, I’ve had the opportunity to interview and meet some remarkable authors. Many of these authors I interviewed them for a magazine article. Through the years I’ve interviewed over 150 bestselling authors about their books and how they practice their writing craft. During many of these interviews, I asked the author to sign their book and brought them home to my bookcase. Each one of these signed books stir my memories of those circumstances and provide inspiration to my continued work.
For this article, I’ve selected three of these authors to tell about their books. Then I will give you some ideas of how you can create your own treasured bookshelf.
The first is a colorful hardcover My First Bible by Ken Taylor. I interviewed Dr. Taylor who at that time was the chairman of Tyndale House Publishers. He had a much celebrated career including being the translator of the Living Bible. My First Bible was a new release and we were surrounded with new books on the floor of the Christian Bookseller Convention. I asked him, “Dr. Taylor, don’t you feel the competition for your book with all these other books targeted to the exact same audience?”
With a knowing smile, he said, “No, Terry, I’m not concerned about the competition. If it’s a book based on the Bible and parents are reading it to their child, that’s all that matters.” Dr. Taylor gave me a wise perspective about bookselling.
Another treasured book on my shelf is The Professor and the Madman. It’s an unusual story about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary which is the largest dictionary in the English language. I met the author Simon Winchester during a meeting of the American Society of Journalists and Authors in New York City. I’m always fascinated about how Winchester found this story in a footnote of a book he was reading. The Professor and The Madman became a New York Times bestseller. I encourage you to follow this link to see the details I wrote about this book a couple of years ago. Winchester’s story gives me hope that any of us could hear such a story and write a bestseller.
I want to highlight The Success Principles from Jack Canfield as my third book from my treasured bookshelf. During several different conferences, I’ve had the opportunity to hear Jack speak. In 2007, Mark Victor Hansen invited me to come to Mega Book Marketing University. I was a literary agent and took pitches throughout the event. At that point in my life, I had written about 50 books for traditional publishers but they were not selling. In fact, I was getting negative royalty statements which means the books received an advance but were not earning beyond that advance. It was during that workhop I understood how little I was doing to tell people about my books. I heard the first success principle which I continue to follow to this day: I will take 100% responsibility for my own success. It changed my actions and turned around my bookselling results. In fact, several years ago I blogged about that effort in this article.
These stories are only a few examples of the treasured books on my shelf. Here's a current photo:
Each book on these shelves holds importance and memories for me. Do you have a collection of signed books? Because these signed books are special to me, I understand when I sign a book for someone else, I’m creating a keepsake for that person. Each time, I make a point to write the date, the person’s name and a few words just for them along with my signature. It makes that book personal for that person.
From time to time, when I meet a new doctor or someone, I will bring a copy of my Billy Graham, A Biography of America's Greatest Evangelist. I will offer it to the person and if they want it, I will quickly sign it to them. A couple of weeks ago, I gave one to a new doctor and he told me, “This is my first signed book.” It was fun for me to hear that information about the special nature of a signed book.
Do you have a special place on your bookshelves for signed books? How do you sign books as an author? I look forward to your comments.
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Labels: author, bestselling authors, Jack Canfield, keepsakes, Ken Taylor, My Treasured Bookshelf, signed books, Simon Winchester, Terry Whalin, The Wrting Life
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