PODCAST | Something New In Christian Publishing (feat. Len Wilson)

Resources:

https://www.inviteresources.com/

Transcript:

Christa Neidig:
Welcome to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Neidig, Senior Marketing Coordinator here at Vanderbloemen. In today's podcast, our VP of Marketing, Michael Buckingham, talks with Len Wilson, author and executive director of Invite Resources. Len's ministry has helped thousands of churches find more innovative ways of doing ministry since 1996. In this conversation, Len shares how Christian publishing can better share the gospel and make a kingdom impact. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

Michael Buckingham:
I am really excited to be talking to you today, Len. I've got to give a little history, because this is cool. I get saved. I come back to the church. I'm frustrated the church isn't telling the story as much as it needs to, as fully as it needs to. And I complain about it for a year. Well then I hear of this conference, really a day workshop, of these people that can breathe life in the church. And I'm like, oh, someone else that understands and feels the pain that I've seen and things of that sort. So it's so exciting because you were the man that, you and Jason, were running that. And I tell you, it was really, really cool. It was. Because it was, seriously. It was like, am I the only one? Why does anyone see this?

Michael Buckingham:
This is back a long time ago where churches didn't have church marketing people. There was nobody on their staff. It was probably the assistant to the assistant that was taking care of stuff, you know? And so it was... It's such a cool... And now I get to be here. And it used to be, we could have lunch together because we were both in Atlanta. You were at Peachtree. I was at Victory. And now we're both in Texas a little further away, but now we're both. You're back in Texas. Is Texas home for you originally?

Len Wilson:
Texas. Well, I've lived a lot of places, but middle school, high school, college. And then in my thirties when I was running midnight oil, when we first met, those were all Texas years. So yeah, Texas is the home state by virtue of most years, I guess.

Michael Buckingham:
That is great. All right. So now you are digging into Invite Resources. Talk to me about that. And give me the origin story because this is your origin story, right?

Len Wilson:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. As you know, from the time we first met, that was like '03 or something. '02 or something like that. I had begun writing and speaking around the use of screens in worship and communicating the gospel more interestingly and more effectively and had begun writing mostly for the United Methodist publishing house. Had nine titles. Did all this history with them from as an author. And then I went to work there inside that house in Nashville and the Christian publishing industry for a bit, and discovered a lot of kind of frustrations about how Christian publishing was working. And at first thought it was just me. You know, I was just like, I just don't understand this.

Len Wilson:
But then I got inside there and I realized that I acquired 55 books. My title was senior acquisitions editor over leadership. And so I acquired a lot of books and to a person, everybody was saying the same things that I had said. Like it was like, publishing's a black hole. You just, you send something in, you don't know what happens. No one markets the book. No one helps me cultivate what I'm doing. No one cares about the platforming. They want you to already be platformed. It's like this weird catch 22. Like they won't publish you unless your platformed. They won't help you platform and all this kind of weird stuff. And so I left there in 2012 to go to work at Peachtree in Atlanta, as you've mentioned. And then came back home to Texas in 2016 in a role as a creative director for a large Methodist church here in Plano called St. Andrew. In fact that's the-

Michael Buckingham:
Oh, there is.

Len Wilson:
Yeah. But from the day I joined staff, one of the associates there had also published a couple of times. And so we commiserated over how bad Christian publishing is. And just talked about how we would do it better. And then in 2018 we were invited to consult on this panel for this. It was going to be a competitor to RightNow Media that was going to launch. We were going to do some things. And so we were on this panel and basically everything we said not to do, they wanted to do. Everything we said do, they didn't want to do. And we were like, it could not be this hard. So we came back and we were like, we really need to start something. Day to day, you know how it goes.

Len Wilson:
And so then we're moving along and then we get to COVID and first day of shelter in place was Friday the 13th, 2020. It was like the end of the world, right? So we talked to one another that day, and then that Monday made the decision. We're like, let's start this thing. There's no better time than this time, because no one's going to do anything. And I could just dive in and focus on this new startup. And so we did that. So we like to say that while the world pressed pause, we pressed play. And we just went for it and did a new startup and have been rolling since. So now it's two years and a quarter that we've been rolling out.

Michael Buckingham:
That's great. I mean, as hard as COVID was and still continues to be a pain in everyone's side, it also brought some really neat opportunities. I've seen a lot of things grow out of that. It's the whole desperate times mean desperate measures. You're like, all right, you know what? Everything else is falling apart. Let's just go into it. If we're going to fail, let's fail now. And so it's really cool by people digging into that and just saying, let's go. Let's use this as an opportunity to start a new business, to write a new book, or whatever types it is. The churches that are going online, all that kind of stuff. And so what a great opportunity to be able to start. So how starting something like this, what are some of the initial hurdles that you had to get over?

Len Wilson:
Well, publishing, a lot of people said the timing is kind of interesting. But they were like, why would you get into publishing? Because no one wants to read books. And there's a level at which they're right. We did a survey once at Abingdon that the average, this was 90,000 people on this mailing list, and we learned that the average church leader bought 11 books a year and read two of them.

Michael Buckingham:
Oh, that's not a good return. No.

Len Wilson:
So we're like, there is this phenomenon. I don't know if you've ever done this, Michael. But I'll buy a book and it'll sit on my nightstand for three months. And I think I've read it because I've been staring at the cover the whole time. But I actually haven't. So we were kind of joking about that. We were saying there's definitely this trend. But on the other hand, you look at stats at the broader level, like Publisher Weekly stats and New York Times stats that actually show book sales and book readership is up over the last two to three years. So just like how eBooks were going to take over, but then print came back. It's kind of the same phenomenon. I do think people still value and love the experience of a tactile book. So there's that. That's kind one of the hurdles we began to ask and we really felt like it's a both/and thing.

Len Wilson:
The biggest need though, is that there is a need, especially in our kind of Methodist or larger Wesleyan tradition, there's a huge need for a new platform for ideas. If you look on the reform side of our, like the Protestant... Actually at a much broader level, I'd say in American life. What I like to say is that you can divide religion into four quarters. The fourth of the country are the none's and the done's. They don't care anymore. Or they never cared. They just... Nothing, whatever. And then you have a fourth that are Roman Catholic in their orientation. Either they attend church or don't or whatever. Then a quarter are more Reformed Protestant. And then a quarter are the Wesleyan Protestants and all their... Because each one of those buckets have tons of denominations.

Michael Buckingham:
More buckets within them. Yeah.

Len Wilson:
Yeah. Now the Reformed side have The Gospel Coalition. They have this amazing site. 4 million hits a month go to this site. Lots of attention. Very formed, very kind of structured. And I would characterize, and there might be some Reformed listeners who can make me better at this than what I'm going to say. But, I would say that a lot of the Reformed theological, the worldview is the life of the mind. Like hoping to understand theologically what's happening in scripture and kind of like that whole thing. Whereas the Wesleyan view is more like lived, more practical. How do you live like Jesus? And there's really no kind of central space for that. And so we said, we need that. And the press is our first pillar to start that out. And so we're starting to put out books monthly. Now we'll do two books a month starting in the fall. And then our second pillar is going to be kind of that online hub of content to help people understand what it means to live like Jesus in a very practical kind of way.

Michael Buckingham:
That's exciting. That's really exciting. Now, you mentioned the process of writing a book and how you guys are doing it differently. And it was kind of interesting. You and I talked a couple weeks ago and about maybe doing a book myself and things of that sort. I've never written a book. I can write, but I've never done a book. And I was really taken in by the process that you really follow. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Len Wilson:
One of the things that I discovered with the editor hat on, someone told me one time early on. I'd been at the publishing house like three or four months. And they said, you're a cultivator. And I couldn't tell if they meant that as a compliment or a slam. I didn't know. I don't know how this works. I'm trying to work with people. And what I learned was that a lot of people in publishing are kind of passive. And what they like to do is they like to sit and wait for a perfect proposal to appear. And so it meets a need. The person's got a platform. They can write well, all these things. And I was like, that doesn't really happen. It's very difficult to find that.

Len Wilson:
And so what I like to say is there's three things I look for. I look for somebody with something to say, the writing chops to say it, and then the platform to stand on. Now in the traditional publishing world, the only one of those that's non-negotiable is the platform. In our world, for me, it's something to say. Because I don't want to just publish books to make money. That's not the goal here, right? The goal is to change lives. And so give me somebody with something to say, and then we can help cultivate the writing chops and the platform building. That is very different than traditional publishing. Because traditional publishers don't get behind the platforming until after. So the way that works... So like Harper Collins and Zondervan are kind of the two biggest Christian imprints. They've both been purchased by Harp... I say that wrong. Nelson and Zondervan are the two biggest imprints. And they've both been purchased by Harper and they work on the best seller model.

Len Wilson:
So the way that works is they have 500 plus titles a year. Like literally one to two a day. They're just chunking them all out. And maybe five to ten of those, 1 to 2%, might organically kind of take off. And it's not until after that happens that they put any marketing money behind it. Unless you're Stephen King and they just pre-order 500,000 then otherwise they don't. And you look at some of the biggest titles in publishing, Christian publishing, in this century. Like, Blue Like Jazz, for example. That was three years on the market before it took off, just all word of mouth, before it happened. So the model there is just turn and burn. Content, content, content. And then if you hit a couple of them that go, then those become the tent poles that feed everybody and keep the business running.

Michael Buckingham:
That's fantastic. Yeah.

Len Wilson:
The average book in that, the rest of the world, you got these couple that are doing great. You got the rest of that average is really low. So Publisher's Weekly says the average nonfiction title does 500 copies lifetime. New York Times says 2000. So somewhere between there, like basically not much. So we're like, wow, you could beat that average easily with a little bit of attention to... Say you've got somebody who's in a network already. They market to their network. They do a good job with launch. You can beat that average at launch, by launch. So we're like, let's focus on good ideas to people who are actively in ministry or in the world in some capacity in their job and help them get their books out. And at that very low level, you don't have to have the Stephen King's of the world to make it work. You just, yeah. So that's kind of one of the ways that we're trying to... And that means being in a relationship, means understanding who you're working with. It's not transactional. To me, it's more covenantal. I like to say we publish people, not products. I like to get to know how you are, what you're about. And then we come alongside and if it's a good fit, we're in ministry together. I see it as a long term partnership.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. And it's not just, okay, I got my first book in. Now I'm people know about me, now I'm going bail on. You're like, no. We did this together, so we're going to continue to do this together. And you kind of, you earned that right to keep going for the next one.

Len Wilson:
Yes. Yes. And what's happening is that we're... What we said early on, Michael, is we said, how would you do publishing in the Kingdom of Heaven? And one of those things was ultimately it's about relationships. And just speaking with a purely business hat on for a second, like if you do it, well, anybody who's been in business successfully understands it's all about relationships, right? So our authors have enjoyed this experience so much, they're bringing their networks to us and we're exponentially growing because they're saying this is different than any other publishing experience we've ever had. Everybody wants to be a part. And I had 40 proposals last week. I've never one... Well, one time on my Facebook while I asked for proposals, because I was frustrated about discipleship. But other than I've never asked for proposals. And last two weeks ago, we had 40 in a week that came in. So that's just all word of mouth and networking that's happening.

Michael Buckingham:
Through your relationships that you have and people are know that, Hey, this is a different way to do things. That it is interesting. A good friend, Matt Nizi wrote a book, and I don't remember who was publishing it. Mostly because they kind of the same thing. They didn't do a whole lot. It was a fantastic book. Matt's brilliant. But it is. I'd love to of focusing more not on becoming rich over selling a book. Because I think anyone that wants to become rich by writing a book is going to be very, very, very disappointed.

Len Wilson:
That's right.

Michael Buckingham:
But if you've got a message and you want to get it out there, I love that that is the core of what you guys are looking for and doing. And that really makes all the difference. Especially in the faith world. Like we've got something that's put inside of us that God wants to get out of us. And they're like, okay, let's do that. Let's get it out of you and things of that sort.

Len Wilson:
Yes. Yeah.

Michael Buckingham:
Now it is interesting. It's called Invite Resources, not Invite Publishing. How come?

Len Wilson:
That's right. Yeah. Yep. Invite. So the reason is that's an umbrella. So Invite Resources is the title over several pillars. So Invite Press is the first pillar, we're now entering our third year. Invite Media is our second pillar, which we're in the process of launching this calendar year. And then we have opportunities to do other things. I've got crazy visions, Michael. I'm thinking about Invite Events, Invite Conferences, Invite Films. So yeah, all of those things down the road as God leads. But yeah, we're starting with the press. And the reason I started with the press is because I think writing is the only medium that forces you to think deeply enough that you really do have original ideas to contribute in the end.

Len Wilson:
Now part of this idea comes from, and that may be a bit of an overstatement. But as a writer, I'm going to kind of stick with that. And part of that kind of comes with my experience. I used to be a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. Still like I'm okay, but I don't follow everything the way I used to. And the shift for me happened, I read several of his books like Outliers and Tipping Point. And then I was listening to his Revisionist History Podcast. And then I thought, oh, new book coming out, Bomber Mafia. This is going to be great. I love Gladwell books. I bought it. And I was actually a little disappointed, Michael. It felt like a series of podcast episodes that were put into a book.

Michael Buckingham:
Oh, yeah.

Len Wilson:
And it felt like the podcast was driving the writing. But it's really hard to get in depth in short form media. Like long form content, like books, allows you to kind of really explore topics and come up with new solutions. And then out of that comes everything else. And so that's like I said, that's probably an overstatement. Not fair to either Malcolm or to a lot of people. But I'm convinced that writing is critical to that. And so we've started the press for that purpose.

Michael Buckingham:
So what are some exciting projects that you are even working on right now, or that you see coming up?

Len Wilson:
Sure. What we're currently doing one a month. We're starting with two a month in the fall. Several great projects on tap. One, the couple that your readers might, or your listeners, might know about Len Sweet and I are co-writing a book. In fact, I'm doing the last read on the manuscript right now. He just sent it back to me a couple days ago. And it's called, The End. The subtitle is, The Present Age and the Age to Come. So we're taking on kind of like what's happening in the world today. Like kind of just analyzing everything from the perspective of faith. So I'm so excited.

Michael Buckingham:
Talk about timely. Yeah.

Len Wilson:
Oh yeah. It's going to be a good one. So we're doing that. We're doing a project with Steve Snider who runs Authentic Manhood. So this was the largest men's ministry program over the last 20 plus years. We're doing a new book with him. Comes out in the spring. Greg Atkinson who runs First Impressions Conference.

Michael Buckingham:
Oh yeah, I know Greg.

Len Wilson:
Yep. Doing one with him. Several projects that are coming down the road that are... We've kind of got these categories. We've got a lot of our submissions and inquiries and conversations are around healing and wholeness. It's kind of a hot topic right now in terms of not just mental health, but just kind of understanding brokenness and healing. So doing a lot on that. We're doing a lot on theology, what it means to be the church today, how to understand scripture properly. There's been so much change that's happened in the last couple years.

Len Wilson:
Now the problem with that, Michael, is that you can easily become partisan in your solutions. And we're trying very hard to avoid that. In fact, I've got three core values from an acquisition standpoint that I'd like to talk about. I like to say that we're high, our books are high on Jesus. They're low on partisan politics, and they're biased towards innovation. So not to say that we never have a political opinion, but we're not leading with that. And we try not to be partisan. As a publisher, I try not to create works that can be perceived as primarily partisan. Like to me, I want them to be about Jesus first. And then you have some things that consequently come out either maybe left of center or right of center. But you're not going to think that when you see our titles.

Michael Buckingham:
Like, oh, this is the Fox News book or the CNN book, right? Yeah.

Len Wilson:
Right. Yes, exactly. That would be like the worst. Like if I did that, I'd be missing my target entire. And then lastly, that biasing innovation is critical because I do think, and you may know this from some of the work that we've talked about in the past around creativity, I do think new things and innovation are vital to our ability to get through this current cultural moment that we're in. So innovation is a critical part of that.

Michael Buckingham:
How do you think... So many times we see faith based organizations, churches, nonprofits, they're doing great things, but they seem to be behind the trends a little bit. How can you make that shift of saying, Hey, the church should be leading. People that believe in Jesus should be the ones leading the way. How do you think we can make that kind of a shift?

Len Wilson:
It's a completely accurate observation. In fact, it's kind of this old trope that the church is five to ten years behind business no matter what we do. What I try to do in our publishing is to look for our trends progressively getting more important or less important over time. And so I look to something and say like mental health, for example, has been hot for 6 to 12 months. So the question as a publisher is, do I start a new project today? Will it be hot in 18 months? Or will it be done, played out in 18 months? So that's kind of one of our core questions. And the way I talk about that in house is to say, is the thing trending up or trending down?

Len Wilson:
And so we try to evaluate that and move. So that's kind of topically how we address that. In terms of business strategies, we are in a mode of constant experimentation. So like when we launch a book, we spent a lot of energy early on doing marketing strategies, which we're like peak 2018 marketing strategies. We would try to... We were like, we're going to create a landing page and buy some ads and send them to them and all it's all stuff that worked great pre COVID. And now we're like that doesn't work anymore. And so we're trying new things. And it seems to be working. Three of our last four had hit number one on Amazon in their category. And so we feel like we're starting to get traction on this. I had one guy write me and say, send me your notes and how you're doing it. I'm like, not going to do that. But it's good.

Michael Buckingham:
You can try. You don't get it if you don't ask, but yeah.

Len Wilson:
Exactly. Yeah. So that's just a mode of constant, constant experimentation and being willing to ditch stuff when it's not working.

Michael Buckingham:
It's not working if it's not working. Yeah.

Len Wilson:
Yeah, yeah. So that means being real honest with yourself.

Michael Buckingham:
Well, and I think you're right. I think that five to ten years being behind, I remember I was just talking to some people about, Hey, the church, who's, who's losing people because of the great resignation? And some of them are like, oh, we're not really there. I'm like, well then hold on because it's coming. And it's probably going to get more before it gets less. Which is obviously what Vanderbloeomen's here to do is to hopefully help them not have to hire Vanderbloemen. But if they do, then help them find the right people. But I think we don't see down the road quite far enough. And I think that's exactly what we're talking about. Okay, is this going to be a long standing area of focus? And things of that sort instead of just... I was telling my team, I can chase squirrels real quick. Cool idea. Cool idea. Cool idea. No, let's get an idea and let's bring it home. And sometimes it means, Hey, let's bring in somebody that can really help us take that idea and then put in those little steps along the way.

Len Wilson:
Yeah. So to example what you're talking about, vocation was hot in like 2013 to 2015, 2016 range. You were asking a lot of questions about calling. And I think it's kind of emerging again in light of great resignation and I don't think that's going away any time soon. I think that's kind of a question for the next few years because it coincides with the rise of Gen Z and kind of this new world that's emerging. In fact, I looked on my phone at lunch and I read an article. I think it was in Fast Company talking about, are we about to move to a 32 hour work week as the standard portfolio in the country because California is looking at some legislation and so saying, will this be national? And so all those questions that were once like locked in stone, now people are saying, are we doing this differently from now on? What does that look like? So the idea of our time, a work/life balance, vocation, I think that's an example of an emerging topic that I actually think will be hotter in two years even than it is right now.

Michael Buckingham:
Well, and I said that we have the great resignation, but we also have the great I'm not even applying. I'm going to do my own thing. I'll do whatever I want to do kind of a thing. And I think it's definitely not just a story. It's a real, real thing. I mean, we're seeing it all the time and it's-

Len Wilson:
You and I both have young adults, young adult children. So my oldest is 20 and I've got two in college, two in high school. And they don't want regular jobs. None of them want to go work at Chipotle or do anything like that. Everybody's looking for...they're all looking for an angle. They're very entrepreneurial. They're looking for a bigger pay value, bang for their buck. So yeah, that's all definitely a trend.

Michael Buckingham:
Yeah. It's crazy. My oldest son, except during high school, he worked at a little chicken shop called Chick-fil-A. But since college, he hasn't had an employer. And it's remarkable and he is doing fantastic. You know, he is an evangelist, going out to churches and things of that sort. But he is really... Part of it is that's what he wants to do. But part of it also was a calling. I remember when he was going to go off to college. I'm like, well, what if you didn't do college? And just kind of figured out what you want to do. He's like, dad, God's called me to do this. Why would I do anything else? I'm like, okay son, you got it. You got it. And he's killing it. Yeah. I don't know what he would do if he had to have a normal employee/employer relationship. I think that would be a totally... It would be so different. And it's that whole age bracket is just they're... What's cool is sometimes I'm like, what are you doing? No. But they just see things differently and they're like, no, this is where I want to go. And they've found a way to make it happen. And it's pretty cool to see. Pretty cool to see.

Michael Buckingham:
But it's also hard to adjust to. Here at Vanderbloemen, the whole team is here. We love being together. But this is okay, how do we manage being together? But is there some flexibility? You've got to start answering some of those questions and things of that sort. And it's not going to... Remote works for some, doesn't work for others. For me, I'm a big fan of you're either remote all or you're not. When you're some of you remote, some of you aren't, there's going to be too many conversations over here and not enough conversation over there. And there's mismatches and things of that sort. But it'll be interesting to see where everything kind of takes us and what the changes and things of that sort. What are the successes? What are the downfalls of it all? And it'll be interesting to see where it all ends.

Len Wilson:
Yeah, that's awesome. There's been so much change in the...The last two years have been equal to the previous 20 it feels like.

Michael Buckingham:
Right?

Len Wilson:
In terms of what's been happening.

Michael Buckingham:
We're just on auto, fast forward. It's moving so fast. And I think it's good for us to take a breath every now and then. Like, okay, maybe we won't do any change today. Let's just go. But everything's going at a rapid, rapid pace. And then there's something that don't move, right? Books are still books and people are still reading books and we probably always will. Will it always be in paper? I do it more audio than I do paper nowadays. But sometimes I need a book to just, okay, let me dig in. Let's sit down and take that moment and pause, for sure. For sure.

Len Wilson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Buckingham:
Lynn, it is so good to see you, so good to talk. I'm excited of what's ahead for you guys there at Invite. And I love the fact that it's not, we're just publishing. The fact that you've like, no, let's build big walls. Let's extend that tent. I'm excited to see what happens coming from all that.

Len Wilson:
Well, thanks. And thanks for your time today. It's great to spend some time with you here on this podcast.

Michael Buckingham:
Absolutely. Good to see you, my man.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen and our sister company, Christian Teams, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our websites, Vanderbloemen.com and Christianteams.com to learn more. And subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episode. Thanks for listening.