| 
Many years ago Maurine and I came up
with our company motto: Have Fun! Oh yes, we have all the deeper
mission statements attached to our hearts and minds (and business
plan), but in all we do we want to enjoy our work because we know
that if we do, you probably will too.
So, something fun is in the works at
Meridian—again. A natural outflow of all that we’re
doing at Meridian is to form a print-publishing arm—and so
we have: Meridian Publishing (clever name, don’t you think?).
We have had so many authors come to us wondering if we could possibly
act as publisher for a book they want to write, we decided to do
it. We’ve been authors or editors to more than a dozen books
ourselves and some of our Meridian writers have authored a dozen
or even two-dozen titles. What a team we can make!
New Technology
Let’s face it: we live in a new
world of fast-breaking technological advances. Meridian is a great
example of that. We run a company with a small staff, and over a
hundred writers (with over two hundred correspondents) and everyone
works out of their home (or works from their vacation in Tahiti,
Florida or France) or from wherever they have an Internet connection.
Meridian is a miracle (of course, I still think a telephone is a
miracle).
So, how can we afford to warehouse
all the books that we are going to publish (it costs a lot to publish
a book using old-school approaches)? Well, we start by not
building a warehouse and we completely side-step the old-school
approach. With the new technology we publish books “on-demand.”
That means your book is not printed until someone actually orders
it. Shortly after you press “Confirm Order,”
a print signal is sent to our system and a book begins printing
in real time. This means that within a few hours of receiving the
order the book is being printed, bound and packaged for delivery
to the buyer’s address. We never have to store one extra book
anywhere, except for in our computer servers. Our computers are
the new “warehouses.” It’s amazing. We can handle
as many orders as you give us. Our technology partners are capable
of fulfilling hundreds of thousands of orders per month and will
expand to our growing needs. They have recently opened a satellite
operation in Amsterdam so that we can fulfill orders directly to
the European Continent without the overseas shipping costs. Is that
wonderful? There are plans for other satellite operations in Australia,
Asia and elsewhere and our needs increase. Sound unbelievable? Well,
it is to me.
Once a book is completed (written,
edited, re-edited, proofed and pored over) and the cover designed,
we can literally have that book ready to publish in a matter of
a few days. And this is just the beginning.
Our First Title
You have to start somewhere and so
we have engaged Trish Manwaring, our assistant editor at Meridian
Magazine, and Bill Farnsworth, a very talented artist/illustrator,
to compile our first book: Cheerios in the Chapel.
This is the illustrated version of the VERY popular Latter-day Laughs
on Meridian that thousands of you read each week. We are thrilled
with the results—and you will be too. In fact, before you
finish reading you can just go right to the site and look over the
book (and order it)! Click
here to see.
Cheerios in the Chapel
is a book by you—the contributors of Meridian Magazine. Have
you ever submitted a latter-day laugh to Meridian over the years?
It may be in our first book, Cheerios in the Chapel.
Has someone in your family submitted a laugh? It may be in Cheerios
in the Chapel. We’ve had so much fun publishing
this book (and we plan to do many more of this same genre), we think
you’ll have fun reading it.
More Titles Coming
We have no less than eight more books
in various stages of development—which will soon be available.
As many of you already know, the mysterious Dr. Bridell will soon
be releasing his book through Meridian Publishing (I would buy it
for the cover alone, but the insides are even better!). The very
popular and very important Brain Gone Wrong series (with
much-expanded writing) by Dr. W. Dean Belnap will soon be available.
Dr. Wally Goddard’s amazing series on the first principles
of marriage is scheduled for release. We’ve even engaged New
York Times best-selling author, Richard Eyre to do a book later
this year (that we’re very excited about)!
What is our goal? We want to become
the most author-friendly publisher anywhere. Period. We think we
can offer authors a contract that is unheard of and that will reward
them fairly for their extremely hard work. Authors are paid notoriously
small percentages of a book’s retail price, and we can substantially
beat the old-school-contract prices and allow the author the freedom
to produce great quality works without thinking his or her efforts
were in vain.
Because Meridian is already a platform—a
giant variety store, if you will—we are just formulating an
aisle for books. That’s all it is right now, an aisle (perhaps
better said, we’re starting with a small display). But with
scores of thousands of people passing through our “store”
every day, many people will see the display and many of those will
want to buy those books. What a boon for authors! And what a boon
for you as Meridian readers who are looking for great materials
to have in your homes! Is this fun, or what?
Another Goal—Perhaps
the Most Important One
Maurine and I have had the immense
privilege of traveling all over the world and meeting with the Saints,
in their homes, in diverse locations and countries. One thing we’ve
noticed outside the United States is that the libraries, in the
native tongues, of “church books” are very, very sparse
or, in most cases, non existent. Also, running Meridian for the
past eight years has taught us that there are many, many Latter-day
Saints all over the world who are hungry for great material to enrich
and inspire their lives. Meridian has played a great role in filling
some daily needs for those who are Internet-connected and can speak
English.
What viable business model is out there
where we can possibly afford to get wonderful “church books”
out to our precious fellow Saints in Germany, Russia or Brazil?
There just is not one—until now. Think of it: What if we translated,
for example, Lucy Mack Smith’s History of the Prophet Joseph
(one of our favorite books in the world) into Russian or Swedish?
How about Wally Goddard’s book on the first principles of
marriage? And how about a hundred or a thousand other titles added
to the list? What if we could only sell a few hundred copies a year
or a few hundred copies total? Is that worth our time? YES! A thousand
times YES! Because once we have the translation (and there are ways
to get works translated for an economical price), we can then offer
the book or product to our audience and as the need is there, the
books are published—on demand only. And with our satellite
office in Amsterdam, we are able to ship, in a timely and cost-effective
manner, to our friends throughout the European Continent. The same
thing will hold true for Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, Japanese,
Korean, French, Finnish, and, of course, Mandarin, or any other
language. This is very, very exciting. Our hearts yearn to do this
and bless the Saints with this technology.
Can you imagine if you had access to
say, only ten church books for your entire library? Or maybe you
could only have three (not counting the scriptures or official Church
materials, of course)? How would that feel? We here in the United
States (and especially those in Utah) are very, very spoiled. We
have access to mounds and mounds of church-related, faith-promoting,
powerful, wonderful books. But that is just not the case elsewhere.
This new approach and technology, through Meridian and our publishing
partners, will change all that.
Support Meridian’s Model
This is a bold initiative. We’re
not a mega-conglomerate corporation, but we have a global company
that is in hundreds of thousands of homes in more than 196 countries
and territories and we can bless the lives of a lot of people—with
your support. Let’s start with that first title. We’re
going to pour the profits right back into Meridian so that we can
continue to bring you what Meridian has been giving you for the
past eight years. Click
here to go check out Cheerios in the Chapel. Thank you!
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 2007 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
