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The Steve Laube Agency

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Home » Archives for Dan Balow

Dan Balow

The Mission of Older Christian Writers

By Dan Balowon July 10, 2025
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Few things are more critical than knowing one’s purpose in life. For unbelievers, finding their purpose is a daily struggle, constantly blowing them about from here to there, anxiously searching for anything that makes sense of life.

But for a disciple of Jesus Christ, this is easy, as we are called to be his ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20). The role has broad implications, but it is an important job and a great calling.

I am no longer a young man, so writing about the mission of older Christian writers is likely something that naturally comes to mind, given my experience working with authors at all stages of life, along with the growth of my eyebrows and the appearance of age spots on my hands and face.

But what brought this to mind was an event about a year ago at a breakfast meeting with the leadership of a ministry at my church. As the meeting wound down, one by one, the younger men had to leave to catch a train or get to the office for an early call or another pressing event with their young families.

A few of us remained. All are retired, except me!

We chatted for 30 minutes about our special role as older guys in the group. The conversation naturally wandered into “keeping these young whipper-snappers in line.”

Okay, I made that part up, but the conversation had the vibe of sharing our experience of how things were done in the past.

Something didn’t sit right to me since that wasn’t what I thought of our special role working with the younger guys; instead, I viewed it more as being a spiritual example.

Maybe I am fighting the inevitable aspects of aging, but I have an adverse reaction when the urge arises to start a sentence with “When I was your age.”  Likely, it comes from a fear of someone responding with “Who cares?”

The mission for older Christian writers is the following (from Titus 2):

  • Show others what it means not to be anxious, but to pray about everything.
  • Exercise self-control, be worthy of respect, and live wisely.
  • Remind younger believers of God’s long-term faithfulness, care, and sustaining grace.
  • Live and work with love and patience.
  • Encourage younger believers to live in a way that honors God.

More specifically, older Christian writers should write humbly, meaning that while something is clear now, it took a while to get there. Admit that. Everything they write should be characterized by:

  • The trustworthy promises of God.
  • His faithfulness can be relied on.
  • While sometimes it feels like God is far away, readers can grow more daily to believe their beliefs and doubt their doubts.
  • The depth of your faith and understanding, not with condescension or arrogant authority, but with humble care.

This isn’t a heavy load to bear because it isn’t dependent on your insight or creative prowess. The Spirit of God who has dwelt in you for so long will do the heavy lifting, and the results will be up to God.

Just like for everything else we’ve ever done.

 

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Category: Career, The Writing Life, Theology

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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
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