Mick Silva
- Writer, Publishing Disrupted (Newsletter)
- Co-Host, Publishing Disrupted (Podcast)
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Publishing Disrupted (Newsletter)
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Articles by Mick Silva
A Sustainable Author Life with Katherine Spearing
What does it mean to be a successful author? Is it getting a big publishing deal? Selling lots of books? Building a following on social media? In our latest episode of Publishing Disrupted, Mick Silva and I talk with Katherine Spearing, author of A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts: The Subtle, Insidious Nature of Spiritual Abuse and Life on the Other Side, published by Lake Drive Books. Katherine’s been very intentional, deliberate, even taking slow steps in how she approaches her writing career.
How Christian Publishing Promotes the Status Quo
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.
Religious Ethicist Liz Bucar on Being Curious, Slow Writing, and Going Viral
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.
What We Can Learn about Editing and Publishing from My Intern, Ellie Silva
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.
Facing the Disruption with Honesty and Healthy Skepticism
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.
Find Your Book’s Hidden Interest, with Audrey Clare Farley
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.
When the Anxiety Narrative Becomes a Trap.
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.
The Story You Didn’t Choose
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.
Go Where the Big Publishers Don’t Show Up (shrug emoji)
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.
The Art of the Almost Said: A Conversation with Editor, Writer, & Publishing Poet Bob Hudson
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.
Can We Forget Platform, Please? Calling All Pathfinders and Waymakers.
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.
Embracing New Cultures, New Languages, & the New Ember Gathering
I’ll be honest: I still haven’t fully recovered from last weekend. Not because anything went wrong — quite the opposite. But if you’ve spent the last five years slowly re-acclimating to the world after the pandemic reshuffled everything, you know how even the good stuff can leave you wrung out.
Connections, Creativity, and Chicken Scratch, with PW Religion Writer, Ann Byle
If you want to understand where book publishing was, is, and where it’s going, you could hardly do better than to spend an hour with long-time journalist, author, and writing coach Ann Byle. She recently joined us in the library sound studio for a wide-ranging conversation that included all the usual industry analysis, career review, and opinionated takes on relevant themes, particularly getting creative in modern Christian publishing.
The More Authentic Way to Do Author Marketing, from an Independent Publishing Perspective
The independent publishing world is more vibrant than ever—and it’s teaching us something crucial about an author’s authenticity that could be a significant advantage over the marketing from big conventional publishers… David’s recent trip to the Independent Book Publishers Association conference in Minneapolis revealed something remarkable: a third of all books produced in the US now come from independent publishers.
The Joy of Discovery
Why four publishing professionals decided to break free from big corporate publishing, and how they rediscovered their love of books in the process. So, incredibly, there are four mics in the remarkable local library podcast room where we record this show. And we finally got to use them all for this long-awaited conversation that quickly got to the heart of why we love what we do and what’s going down in book publishing today.
What Two Sexy Guys Are Reading (And Why)
In this more personal (and meandering) episode, we dove deep into something that might seem an obvious topic for two book industry professionals: what we actually read, when we read it, and why. What started all of this was talking about Maureen Dowd’s recent NYT article, “Attention Men: Books Are Sexy (But Staring Into a Phone Is Not”) about male reading habits. This headline quickly led us to admit that we, as publishing dudes, are probably atypical readers. We read a lot, maybe too much.
Why a "Bestselling Book" Can Be Meaningless
The publishing world hides a sneaky little secret: those “bestselling books” we all hear about and that every writer covets? They’re not what they appear to be. In fact, when almost any book can be a “bestseller,” we have to wonder if the moniker is important at all. And for authors, one thing is sure: chasing the bestseller status can do more harm than good.
Do Big Profit-Driven Publishers Produce a Positive Predicament?
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -33:20 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. Welcome back to the discussion of the evolving publishing landscape and how authors can respond to these ongoing shifts. It’s important for all writers to reckon with the influence of digital platforms, and, the rising importance of authors who engage in marketing and publicity. And this, of course, gives rise to an even more challenging balance between profitability and artistic integrity.
Author Marla Taviano on How to Build a Career on Frog and Toad Art, Five Years of Daily Posts, and the Spirit of Abundance
Remember when you thought getting a book deal was the dream? Yeah, Marla Taviano remembers that too. She also remembers when the dream turned into three books going out of print, an agent who wanted her to write to an idea that was not a fit, and the slow realization that publishing (specifically, Christian publishing) often doesn’t serve authors, but uses them instead.
Navigating the New Publishing Maze
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -35:27 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. "Do I need an editor?" "Is my book any good?" "Do I need an agent?" These have been the common questions of hopeful writers for generations. But these days, looking to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of publishing is far more complex.
What (Really) Makes a Great Author Great?
We’ve mentioned the “three-legged stool” of successful authorship before: great concept, great writing, and great platform. But as we dove into this week’s question, David set up our discussion well by arguing there’s a critical fourth leg that every author needs to consider. We agreed the authors we want to work with all have this essential quality.
Highbrow and Lowbrow
Welcome to another episode we could have titled: “Questions Without Any Clear Answers!” Thanks for stopping by. But it was a rousing discussion, and once again these two former big-Christian-publishing professionals discussed how their experience is leading them to explore new learning. After having chased the “largest audiences possible,” we wondered together how much of this knowledge still applies to the ever-diversifying independent market. No easy conclusions were reached, of course.
In this episode of the Publishing Disrupted podcast, co-hosts Mick Silva (editor and book coach) and David Morris (publisher and literary agent) welcome their first guest, author Cara Meredith, for a thoughtful and illuminating conversation about the realities of writing, publishing, and navigating faith-based and independent publishing worlds.
Year-End Wrap-Up, New Year Plans, and Our Favorite Books
Hi there. I’m Editor Mick Silva, and I’m Publisher and Literary Agent David Morris, and welcome to the first season finale of Publishing Disrupted! We’ve explored a lot of ground in our first season. So we wanted to share what we’re aiming to offer when we return in January. We don’t plan to change things up much (let alone, come with notes—gasp!). And we still don’t want to try and come up with the “five steps” to anything.
How to Develop Your Authentic Voice and Give Readers What They Want.
As you know already, the publishing world has fundamentally shifted. You can’t still be writing like it’s 2005 and expect to be published. In our latest episode, we pull back the curtain on what’s changed about book development today—and why the old playbook of “authority from on high” is dead. Every successful book proposal still needs three elements: Platform (your ability to reach readers), Concept (a current, but time-honored topic), and Craft (your “method” and ability to deliver the goods).
The Mainstream is Dead. Long Live Unique Tribes!
The publishing industry isn’t just changing—it’s completely fragmenting. In our latest episode, we talked about why two former Christian publishing professionals (Mick Silva and David Morris), have shifted so strongly toward a new model of authors aiming not for everyone, but for the readers that specifically fit them. Based on Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans“ concept, this episode, as usual, gave us plenty to discuss.
Breaking Out of the %$*# Box
Welcome to the messy middle, friends. You know that feeling when you realize the “professional” world of publishing is just a few very full boxes someone else says you have to accept? And maybe—just maybe—you don’t fit in any of them? Yeah. We need to talk more about that.
A Better Publishing Model? Why Higher Royalties Matter More Than Advances
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -1:00:18 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. It’s not hyperbolic: the publishing industry is in crisis. And it’s not just declining readership or publishers or outlets or profits. It’s all those things, for sure. But the business model itself is broken—especially for authors. Five major publishers dominate the industry, and the squeeze is being felt by everyone.
Craft, Community, and Reinvention: An Interview with Author and Coach Jeff Elkins
In this episode of Publishing Disrupted, co-hosts Mick Silva and David Morris welcome writer, teacher, and entrepreneur Jeff Elkins for a wide-ranging conversation about professional reinvention, creative calling, and what it means to build a sustainable life around writing in a rapidly changing publishing ecosystem. As with many conversations on Publishing Disrupted, the discussion begins with a recognition that disruption is not merely an industry phenomenon. It is deeply personal.
Where We’re Coming From: Our Faith Disruptions
As snow falls outside the window in Grand Rapids (“lake effect” snow, as they call it here), it dumps on us, melts, and eventually flows back into Lake Michigan to return again next year in an endless cycle.
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