Shelby Foote: The Civil War: A Narrative (3 Vol. Set) If you like David McCullough (1776, John Adams, Truman, etc.), you will love this history of the Civil War. I could not put it down. As is the case of most history, the book is full of leadership lessons and insights.
Dr. Bob Rotella: Golf Is a Game of Confidence From time to time, I enjoy reading books on golf psychology. This is one of the best I have read. It basically focuses on directing a golf ball like you direct any ball—you focus on where you want it to go!
Eugene O’Kelly: Chasing Daylight A remarkable by the former CEO of KPMG. Diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer, O’Kelly figures out life only when he is faced with his own imminent death. Must reading!
Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I'm reading this now for our book club. I haven't read it since high school. It is an amazingly well-written book. It gives you a peak into pre-civil-war America.
Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory We just read this book in our book club. I wanted to through it across the room after three chapters. But I stayed with it. I'm glad I did. It is an amazing novel with some powerful, redemptive themes.
Jeff Gomez: Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age If you are in the publishing business, this book is must reading. Gomez explains why print is dying and why content providers need not fear—provided they don’t get too attached to the delivery mechanism. I found it to be very compelling.
Wallace Earle Stegner: Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics) This is one of the best novels I have ever read. It is an insightful story about the relationship between two couples over several decades. We read it in our book club, and it stimulated an amazing discussion.
“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”
–Paulo Coelho
“Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.”
–Timothy Ferriss
“Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.”
–Karl Weick
“Anyone can count the seeds in a melon. It takes vision to count the melons in a seed.”
–Unknown
“Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.”
–Jack Welch
“This coffee falls into your stomach . . . sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink—for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.”
–Honore de Balzac
“You see, when there is danger, a good leader takes
the front line. But when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back room. If you want the cooperation of human beings around you, make them feel that they are important. And you do that by being humble.”
–Nelson Mandela
“Our job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of a commitment and belief in the what.”
–Jack Canfield
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s forthcoming attractions.”
–Albert Einstein
“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”
–Gaius Petronius, AD 66
“Now if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.”
–George S. Patton, U.S. Army General, 1912 Olympian
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
–Wayne Gretzky, as quoted by Steve Jobs in his keynote speech at MacWorld 2007, San Francisco
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, as quoted in Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick, p. 28
Today, Christian Retailing ran a story about Thomas Nelson pulling out of the International Christian Retail Show (i.e., “ICRS,” the show formerly known as “CBA”). The article was entitled, “Thomas Nelson: ICRS Pull Out.” Unfortunately, it is not available online, so I can't link to it.
For the most part, CR got the story right. However, there are two items I’d like to correct. Both of them are near the end of the article. The first item is a simple omission. A few weeks ago, in response to our decision not to attend ICRS, CBA issued a press release. The last paragraph said,
I began blogging in April 2004. (I actually began writing articles and posting them on my Web site in 1998, but that was before we used the term “blogging.”) Since that time, I have posted 344 entries. At an average of 800 words per post (which, for me, is conservative), that is 275,200 words—almost four 256-page books.
During this time, I have learned a good deal about blogging. I’m sure I still have a long way to go, but I thought I would summarize what I have learned so far:
In late December of 2007, I issued the 2008 Half Marathon Challenge. An amazing 135 of our employees participated in the event and participated. It was my second half marathon, and I enjoyed it even more than last year.
Last week, Lindsey Nobles, my Director of Corporate Communications,invited everyone who finished to write about their experience. Like last year, we were overwhelmed. It seemed that the majority of runners wanted to share their experience. As a result, I have included them below in full. (They are listed alphabetically by last name.) I found them truly inspiring.
I originally committed to using Twitter for 30 days. So far, I have enjoyed the service and intend to keep using it. My wife, Gail, and three of my five daughters are active. I have sure this is one of the reasons I am still using it.
One week ago today, I was running the Country Music Half Marathon. It was an incredible experience. I enjoyed this year’s race even more than last year’s—which is saying a lot.
Amazingly, some 32,000 people participated in either the race. According to various media reports, another 32,000 or so spectators attended. Regardless, it was a sea of people. Unless you run these types of races, you can’t imagine the energy.
Last time I checked, I was getting about 800 emails a week. That sounds like a lot, but it’s manageable. I never have more than a hundred in my inbox at any one time. My goal is to get to empty, every single day. Usually, I succeed.
Conversely, I usually get about three traditional letters a week. You know what I am talking about, right? It looks similar to an email, but it’s printed on actual paper, neatly folded and inserted into an envelope, with a real, honest-to-goodness stamp on the outside.
My post, Too Many Books, Too Few Shelves, raised a lot of great questions about how we determine what we publish at Thomas Nelson. Therefore, I would like to address a persistent issue that was raised in the comments section of that post.
Let me say at the outset that I appreciate the robust dialog. It is very helpful to me, and I hope to other readers. Not only does it help me to clarify my position, but it may actually help shape my position. My thinking is not static, and neither is our strategy. It is a “work in progress.”
If we can’t stop the presses, we should at least slow them down. U.S. publishers produced almost 300,000 new titles last year, a number that Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly referred to as “a ridiculous number.”
With bookstore sales rising a modest 3.6% in the last five years, we have more and more books competing for what amounts to the same exact shelf space. Clearly, something is wrong.
I hesitated about blogging on this. But it’s kind of the “elephant” in the room. I think I owe it to you, my readers, to blog about the good things as well as the difficult.
As you may have read in Publishers Weekly or the Tennessean, yesterday we laid off slightly less than 10% of our workforce. This was not an easy decision. It fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say this was one of the most difficult decisions of my tenure Thomas Nelson.
Last Saturday, April 12, I spoke to Christian Retailers at our inaugural Open House event. It was video-taped, and you can watch it here if you are interested.
Because the file was so large, I had to upload it as five separate videos. The total length is 40 minutes or so. However, if you click on the link above, it will play all five videos as a YouTube “playlist,” with each video playing one after the other.
Today, we announced that we will no longer be participating in the two major trade shows in our industry: Book Expo America (BEA) or the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS). As I said in our press release, we have been discussing this move for some time. In fact, it’s a conversation we have had every year since I have been at Nelson (ten years).
But the current economic downturn is forcing us to re-evaluate every marketing dollar we spend. This is not the reason for our shift in strategy, but it is the catalyst. The reality is that these trade shows provide very little return to us on a hugely significant investment.
If the New York Times bestseller lists are any indication, people are more interested in spiritual things now than ever.
I can’t remember a single time when there have been more Christian books on the New York Times bestseller lists. The April 20, 2008 list, which is published on the Internet one week in advance of the print version, has eleven Christian books on the various lists. This is huge. I can’t remember a time when there were more.
Here are the books. Disclaimer: The fact that I list the book is not an endorsement of the book. Caveat emptor. (If you want to purchase a particular book, visit your local Christian retailer.)
At the recommendation of my friend, Randy Elrod, I decided to start “twittering.” I have now been engaging in the practice for about a week.
What is twittering? Twitter’s home page says it best:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
On January 4th, I set a goal of enrolling 158 of our employees in one of two half marathon races this spring. This represents roughly 25% of our workforce.
I knew this was a big goal and, frankly, it was a little daunting. However, I am happy to report that we now have 160 employees registered. In addition, we have 32 spouses, and 14 authors or agents registered for a total of 206 people. Wow.
I don’t know what it is about snow, but it always gets me excited. It probably stems from my childhood, when snow meant the possibility that school would be cancelled. Or maybe it was just the shear joy of playing outside in the snow.
Regardless, on the way home from San Jose yesterday, I checked the weather widget on my iPhone. It had the little snow icon next to Friday and Saturday. I next checked Weather.com. The meteorologists there were predicting 3–5 inches for Nashville. My heart lept!
In 1991 I, along with my business partner, suffered a financial meltdown. We had built a successful publishing company, but our growth outstripped our working capital. We simply ran out of cash.
For a while our distributor funded us in the form of cash advances on our sales. But eventually, their parent company wanted those advances back. Although we didn’t officially go bankrupt, the distributor essentially foreclosed on us and took over all our assets.
Three years ago, I was in New York City on business. I was having a relaxing dinner with David Dunham, one of my colleagues and a dear friend. Suddenly, as we were finishing our meal, I started to have chest pains. Initially, I tried to ignore them. But then I began to quietly panic. I felt that the room was closing in on me.
Embarrassed, I blurted out, “I think I may be having a heart attack.”
David immediately took control. He paid our bill, hailed a cab, and got me to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which happened to be the one closest to our restaurant.
Last night, my daughter Mary and her husband, Chris, came over. The weather was unseasonably warm, so we sat out on the porch and talked. We reminisced about their wedding among other things. We laughed. We even cried. It was a rich, full time.
Before long, I opened a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc. It’s my very favorite white wine, and I was eager to share it with Mary and Chris. They had never had it before. We savored the hints of peach, passion fruit, and, most of all, grapefruit. We delighted in each drop.
Three weeks ago, I got out of bed and noticed that my right heel was really sore. That’s strange, I thought. I wonder if I stepped on a stone. Over the next few days, I kept running and noticed that it was getting progressively worse. Then it dawned on me. Could this be the dreaded Plantar Fasciitis?
I immediately looked it up on Wikipedia. It said,
Plantar fasciitis, formerly known as “policeman’s heel,” is a painful inflammatory condition caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia of the foot or biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation of the foot. The pain usually is felt on the underside of the heel, and is often most intense with the first steps of the day.
I have written much about planning and goal setting. It would be easy to get the idea that if you just plan well enough or persist long enough you will succeed. Frankly, I don’t think this is enough.
I was reminded again this morning of a Bible verse that has become very important to me in recent years:
Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. (Psalm 127:1)
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