Publishing Disrupted (Newsletter)

Publishing Disrupted How Christian Publishing Promotes the Status Quo 1× 0:00 Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -42:10 -42:10 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. How Christian Publishing Promotes the Status Quo Takeaways from this week’s episode of Publishing Disrupted Every few years, someone declares that Christian publishing is dying. Mick has heard it for his entire 26-year career. The Christian bookstore chains closed.

When Liz Bucarwas titling her new book Beyond Wellness (Tarcher, 2026) with her agent, their initial idea was “The Religion Factor,” using a word that many folks tend to avoid. She spent months arguing with herself about the subtitle, since “Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices”sounds, on its face, like an invitation back to religion, high-control, and guilt-inducing memories. As a University of Chicago–trained religious ethicist and Northeastern professor, she knew this.

Podcasting keeps surprising me. When David asked if my oldest daughter Ellie would be up for coming on and sharing about interning with me for the summer, I had no doubt I’d love this episode. Ellie’s spending her senior year internship learning the guts and glory of editing and publishing with me, so David and I asked her to share her impressions so far, how she sees the editing process, and what we might glean from her fresh, Gen Z perspective.

Sometimes conversations seem to turn into working sessions to try and evaluate what the hell’s wrong with you both. You ever have those? Like, what’s happened to us? You can try to make sense of it, or maybe just embrace and accept a bit more. My chats with David always seem to help me do one or the other. For this episode, as usual, we tried to step back from our own perspectives and share what we observe about a couple of things happening in book publishing right now.

The first thing you notice when talking to an accomplished and gifted author like Audrey Clare Farleyis how perceptive and tuned-in they are. Beyond her role as a Hyponymous Literary agent, Audrey is a celebrated author, editor, and literary scholar with a PhD in English literature. Her two nonfiction books, The Unfit Heiress, and Girls and Their Monsters, are both standout stories of suffering, injustice, and betrayal, the latter of which became a New York Times Editors’ Pick.

In our latest episode, we shared our reactions to a couple Publisher’s Weekly articles. But first, we shared updates and David did his level best to keep me on point. I like to think we’re more personable and fun than your average publishing industry podcast. And no, that’s not just a cover for being scattered and completely unprepared. Never mind that.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -47:07 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. There’s a poem from spiritual writer Jeff Foster I’ve been returning to lately: For professional writers, those who make their living doing this, that little suggestion can feel downright threatening. We’re supposed to have a platform, a proposal, a hook, a takeaway. And we’re supposed to know what we think before we publish it.

We’re just back from the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, and we’re still processing. But it was good. Maybe you heard. Most writer conferences buzz with pitch anxiety, business cards crammed in your pocket, and a vague sense that you didn’t schmooze hard enough. In contrast, the Festival of Faith and Writing leaves you up at night replaying conversations—real ones about ideas, books, and why any of this matters in the first place.

After 35 years, editor, writer-poet, and indie publisher Bob Hudson retired. Now he and his wife Shelley run the tiny Perkipery Press out of their home, doing print runs of 10 to 50 copies at a time at the local printer. Just our kind of quiet disruptor.

Ivy Zeller wears many hats. Editor at Microcosm Publishing. Literary agent at Hyponymous Literary. Author of Disabled Witchcraft and Undead Faith. Substack writer. Zine maker. Pitch witch. We learned that last one may be her favorite. “Pitchwitch sessions” (or, for the less charmed, “publishing resourcing conversations”) are what Ivy offers writers who come with book ideas and questions about what to do next. She sits with them, looks at their manuscript, and maps out what’s actually possible.