Monday 30 January 2012

What is Christian Fiction?

Believe it or not, there is no clear definition of what is (or what is not) Christian Fiction.


However, there are fairly clear definitions of what consitutes Christian Publishing. The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) is an international organization of companies that are involved in the publishing and distribution of Christian content worldwide.

Content published by ECPA members must be consistent with their Statement of Faith, which is essentially the same as the Statement of Faith of the National Association of Evangelicals. 

The Statement of Faith of the Association is as follows:

I. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
II. We believe there is only one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
III. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
IV. We believe that for the salvation of the lost and sinful, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
V. We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
VI. We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
VII. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Further information is available at the ECPA website.  Other relevant industry organisations are the Christian Small Publishers Association, a network of over 100 small Christian publishers in the US and internationally, and the CBA (formerly the Christian Booksellers Association), the trade association for approximately 1,700 US Christian retail outlets. 

Thursday 26 January 2012

Is Your Novel a Bestseller?

Well-known Christian agent Steve Laube posted a link to The Bestseller Code, which takes the first 1,000 words of your novel and gives you a score out of 20 to tell you whether your work could be a bestseller or not.

Steve tried it on a couple of proposals, and there are comments on his blog page from other authors who have tried it.  He does point out that this is not how agents and editors work, though!

Saturday 21 January 2012

Introduction to Christian Editing Services

I offer freelance editing services, specialising in:
  • Christian fiction (all genres):
  • Christian non-fiction;
  • General Human Resources, management and leadership;
  • Magazine or newspaper articles;
  • Web pages (including website, blog and Facebook pages); and
  • Curriculum Vitae.
Good fiction, especially Christian fiction, is my passion.  As a reader, I am most interested in reading a good story, not in the grammatical correctness of the sentences. But often when I am reading, I find errors. These are not usually spelling errors, but using the wrong word (heroine vs. heroin), factual errors (Windsor Palace vs. Windor Castle) or typographical errors.

Some errors are amusing, some are annoying - but too many will take me out of the story, will affect my enjoyment and may well be commented on in a review. These errors might be in self-published fiction, but all too often I find them in traditionally-published books too. Why? Apparently, this is because the publishing houses don't edit books like they used to. If your publisher is not going to edit your book and correct your mistakes, then someone else has to.

Let me.

As I said, Christian fiction is my passion.  My personal library has hundreds of books, across all genres.  I understand what sells, what readers want, and I can share that knowledge with you.  As your fiction proofreader or editor, my job is to help you make your manuscript better, to polish it so you tell your story in the best way possible so that the reader is caught up in your characters and plot, not your errors. 

If you are interested in finding out more, leave a comment below or contact me at igoulton@kinect.co.nz.