Pub Club

The Pub Club met today. Gary Collins was back in town for our faculty retreat, and he brought us up to date on trends in publishing. He’s published something like 50+ books, so this was definitely familiar territory for him. But a lot has changed since he first got into writing books, and he was able to share with us many of the changes he’s come across and what he’s learned from extensive discussions with editors. We also had a panel discussion that addressed traditional approaches to publishing and changes in the field that will impact academia. It was amazing to hear about the changes on the horizon. For example, it was interesting to learn how many traditional publishers are recreating themselves as places that distribute ideas and messages rather than books as such, and they do so in using increasingly diverse avenues of communication and distribution (e.g., multimedia resources, ‘chunking’ books, ‘virtual’ bookstores, etc.).

In any case, the Pub Club extended the discussion into specific works that each of us is doing. One colleagues discussed an edited book of narratives of Christian psychologists and events that have shaped their lives and professional identities. Another colleague is working on a proposal for a book on marriage. I discussed the book project I am working on with Bill Hathaway titled Integration of Psychology and Christianity.