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The Steve Laube Agency

Helping to Change the World Word by Word

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Home » Archives for Dan Balow

Dan Balow

First Published Book in America

By Dan Balowon June 26, 2025
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The publishing industry in the United States is about $30 billion per year, covering all kinds of books and materials. Traditional book publishers account for about 10% of the total number of books published in the US and about 95% of the revenues.

Where did it all start?

Two hundred fifty years ago this week (June 23, 1775, to be precise), the first book printed and published in America was available to purchase in Philadelphia. It was the beginning of a self-sufficient American publishing industry. Before that, books were either created overseas (mainly in England) and printed here or printed overseas and exported here. The publishing industry was dependent on and controlled by England, like every other part of society in the Colonies.

The Impenetrable Secret, a novel by an unknown author, was advertised in The Pennsylvania Mercury newspaper by the publisher Story and Humphreys, who also operated the newspaper. That’s all we know about it. No copy remains, and there is little or no information about the author or story. Some books with that same title were published later, but they are not this one.

June of 1775 was still before any independence declaration from England, but there were rumblings. Within a week or two, the Continental Congress was taking steps to avoid an armed rebellion, but it wasn’t looking good.

I would guess that being identified as a book writer who broke the shackles of the governing authority wasn’t a good thing to do, career or healthwise! Hence, the “anonymous author” label isn’t a surprise.

The book publishing industry is not very old in the broad scope of world history. If we hold to Adam and Eve showing up in the garden about 6,500 years ago, the less than 600-year age of the printing press accounts for about 9% of that time. Mass printing of books wasn’t a thing until much later.

One of the oldest publishers is the Christian company Thomas Nelson, founded in 1798 in Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s a long way to Nashville, Tennessee, where it is now part of the HarperCollins Christian Publishing conglomerate, which also owns Zondervan.

The rest of the major Christian publishers are much younger, with some starting this century but most in the 20th century.

Christian publishing in its current form in the US has existed for about 1 percent of the time since the Genesis account.

If we look at the ability to distribute Christian content broadly by digital means, it is even less, like one-half of 1 percent of human history.

With satellite internet, no corner of the earth is out of reach of the Gospel.

All this could be explained by the Daniel 12 prophecy of knowledge increasing as the end of everything nears, or the natural growth of technology and progress. Still, when you consider the opportunities we have now to affect the world for Christ through the written word, we are at the apex, with tools no one had for 99.9 percent of human history.

No pressure.

 

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Category: Book Business, Historical, Publishing History

Three Nonfiction Books Any Christian Writer Can Write

By Dan Balowon June 12, 2025
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Agents routinely receive proposals from aspiring authors that are the only creative writing they have ever attempted. At the same time, someone who is eventually published successfully likely has a half dozen other things in a file they’ve never shown to anyone. If you are an experienced or aspiring writer and are a disciple of Jesus Christ, you have the opportunity (or responsibility?) to …

Read moreThree Nonfiction Books Any Christian Writer Can Write
Category: Encouragement, Inspiration, The Writing Life

Publishing Without a Platform

By Dan Balowon May 22, 2025
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I spent much of my early career in publishing, working with authors and publishers to market their books. It didn’t take long to experience the number one complaint of all authors working with all publishers: The marketing department didn’t do enough. And even when we did a good job, once the book launched and the initial marketing plan completed, the author and book were abandoned to sail across …

Read morePublishing Without a Platform
Category: Platform

Writing for Others

By Dan Balowon May 8, 2025
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Failure to be published traditionally or unsuccessful self-publishing often results from writing what you want, rather than what readers want, to read. This is common in book publishing, where the market’s randomness and subjectivity create a disconnect between authors, publishers, and readers. Every step along the publishing process attempts to predict the desires of the next step. More …

Read moreWriting for Others
Category: The Publishing Life, The Writing Life

A Month at the Center of History

By Dan Balowon April 24, 2025
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April 1945 might have been the pivotal month in all world history, considering all of the historical events and people who eventually ended up in books, articles, photos, and movies—likely thousands, both from a Judeo-Christian and a secular perspective. Looking day by day, this was April 1945, eighty years ago. April 1 – Easter Sunday. The Battle of Okinawa, Japan began. It was the largest and …

Read moreA Month at the Center of History
Category: Historical

Every Christian Book Is About Easter

By Dan Balowon April 10, 2025
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As we near Holy Week, I know the assertion that every Christian book is about Easter won’t change anything in publishing. The seasonal best-seller lists, bookseller promotions, online keyword searches, and publishers require marketing hooks to advertise. But let’s face it: All Christian books are really about Easter Sunday morning. Christian books all have a key pivot point of their message in the …

Read moreEvery Christian Book Is About Easter
Category: The Publishing Life, Theology

Foreign Intelligence

By Dan Balowon March 27, 2025
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In 2017, I wrote about The Challenge for American Christian Authors. I asserted that great care needs to be taken when American authors want their message to be understood by anyone outside of the US Christian subculture. Today, I am reversing that position and looking at what writers from other countries might have to say to the North American believer. Two things brought this to mind: First, I …

Read moreForeign Intelligence
Category: Book Business, Career, Theology

What Are You Saying?

By Dan Balowon March 13, 2025
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Before telling someone, “You should write a book,” be sure you know what you are encouraging them to do. If you are the one told to write, I am sure you quickly discovered that it wasn’t as easy as you were led to believe. And you either just put the suggestion on the back burner or took a lot of time to learn about how things work and then proceeded with your eyes wide open. If you are the one …

Read moreWhat Are You Saying?
Category: Fun Fridays

Commercial Writing (The Word Count Question)

By Dan Balowon February 27, 2025
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One of the common questions I get as an agent relates to how long a book should be. Many aspiring authors think about a target number of pages and chapters when they need to focus on word count. Using pages as a metric for book length likely comes from those who self-publish and are accustomed to being charged per page for their book. Depending on the type of project, there is an optimum word …

Read moreCommercial Writing (The Word Count Question)
Category: Book Proposals, Pitching, The Writing LifeTag: word count

Upon Further Review

By Dan Balowon February 13, 2025
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Every author or publisher assumes that the response will be positive when they send an about-to-be-published book out to professional book reviewers in the media. This is partially correct since many media outlets won’t comment on or publish a negative review. To illustrate, years ago I recall hearing from a book reviewer at a major Christian periodical that they would not publish a review because …

Read moreUpon Further Review
Category: Reviews, The Writing Life
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