The Steve Laube Agency is committed to providing top quality guidance to authors and speakers. Our years of experience and success brings a unique service to our clients. We focus primarily in the Christian marketplace and have put together an outstanding gallery of authors and speakers whose books continue to make an impact throughout the world.
Our Service Philosophy
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To help the author develop and create the best book possible. Material that has both commercial appeal and long-term value.
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To help the author determine the next best step in their writing career. Giving counsel regarding the subtleties of the marketplace as well as the realities of the publishing community.
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To help the author secure the best possible contract. One that partners with the best strategic publisher and one that is mutually beneficial for all parties involved.
Recent Posts
What Entered the Public Domain in 2026?
I try to post something about this topic every year. This year is no exception.
In the United States, under U.S. copyright law, works published in 1930 and earlier are now in the public domain. One can publish them or use them without securing copyright permission. In case you are wondering about the specifics, the Copyright Term Extension Act (passed in 1998) gave works published from 1923 through 1977 a 95-year term limit. They enter the public domain on January 1 after the conclusion of the 95th year.
This law applies not only to books but to everything under copyright, like films and music.
Notable titles are on this year’s list:
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version)
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (in the original German, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men (a relatively unknown science fiction novel. Some suggest that C. S. Lewis wrote his space trilogy, in part, as a response to Stapledon’s agnostic and amoral philosophy found in this story)
Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Benson), the first four Nancy Drew books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock
Noël Coward, Private Lives
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could (the version illustrated by Lois Lenski)
William H. Elson, Elson Basic Readers (the first appearances of Dick and Jane)
Two rather well-known characters are now on the list:
Rover (later renamed Pluto) from Disney’s The Chain Gang (as an unnamed bloodhound) and The Picnic (as Rover)
Blondie and Dagwood from the Blondie comic strips by Chic Young
Musical compositions include:
Four Songs by Gershwin: “I Got Rhythm,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for Me,” and “Embraceable You”
“Dream a Little Dream of Me,” lyrics by Gus Kahn, music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt
This means you can write a novel with Nancy Drew and Blondie as the protagonists looking for a murderer at the vicarage while singing “I Got Rhythm,” and use them all without permission.
Please don’t.
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Fun Fridays – January 23, 2026
The picture below made me start playing a word game in my mind. What words can be created by adding new letters? Some possible answers are beneath the photo. But before you look, play the game yourself! Then the thought dawned on me that each answer to the puzzle creates a story, in and of itself. The potential for a short story of your own is ripe for creation. See my 300-word attempt below. If you post your story in the comments, please keep it under 1,000 words. 🙂 Photo by Josef Hoflehner Possible answers: MONEY MOVED MOTEL MOPEY MOVER …
What I Am Looking For (Lynette Eason)
(Updated 1/22/2026) Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is no friend as loyal as a book,” and I’ve always known that to be true. I grew up reading mysteries and suspense—Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Sweet Valley High, Alfred Hitchcock, Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, C. S. Lewis, and others. Later, I discovered Christian fiction through writers like Dee Henderson, Terri Blackstock, Colleen Coble, and DiAnn Mills. Through every season, every stage of life, books were the friends who never let me down. Needless to say, as a child and teen, I was never without a book in hand; and nothing’s …
Who and What I’m Looking For (Bob Hostetler)
(Updated 1/21/2026) As another year dawns, much has changed—and much remains the same—in the world of Christian publishing. With all that in mind, let me offer an updated answer, as up-to-the-minute as I can make it, to the frequent question I field from aspiring, developing, accomplished, and skilled writers: “What are you looking for?” Influence Aspiring writers often imagine, “Once I have a book published, people will listen to me.” That’s exactly backwards. I’m looking for people who are already having an impact, people whose influence is expanding, people who aren’t waiting to reach people with their message. Like every …
Bring the Books (What Steve Laube Is Looking For)
(Updated 1/19/2026) “Bring the books, especially the parchments,” is a sentence in 2 Timothy 4:13 that has teased readers for 2,000 years. What books did the Apostle Paul want to read while waiting for trial? Theology? History? How-to? (Maybe a little escape reading? Pun intended.) Another writer chimed in a while ago by saying, “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). And if we read the statistics, he wasn’t kidding: 300,000+ books are published in the United States alone each year. Yet there is an allure to the stories of great novelists and a fascination with the …