From Where I Sit

Half Marathon 2008 Testimonials

In late December of 2007, I issued the 2008 Half Marathon Challenge. An amazing 135 of our employees participated in the event and participated. It was my second half marathon, and I enjoyed it even more than last year.

Last week, Lindsey Nobles, my Director of Corporate Communications,invited everyone who finished to write about their experience. Like last year, we were overwhelmed. It seemed that the majority of runners wanted to share their experience. As a result, I have included them below in full. (They are listed alphabetically by last name.) I found them truly inspiring.

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12 Reasons to Start Twittering

I originally committed to using Twitter for 30 days. So far, I have enjoyed the service and intend to keep using it. My wife, Gail, and three of my five daughters are active. I have sure this is one of the reasons I am still using it.

Don’t know what Twittering is? Read my original post on this topic. If you want to know how to get started, read The Newbie’s Guide to Twitter.

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Finishing My Second Half Marathon

One week ago today, I was running the Country Music Half Marathon. It was an incredible experience. I enjoyed this year’s race even more than last year’s—which is saying a lot.

Amazingly, some 32,000 people participated in either the race. According to various media reports, another 32,000 or so spectators attended. Regardless, it was a sea of people. Unless you run these types of races, you can’t imagine the energy.

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10 Reasons to Send a Letter Rather Than Email

Last time I checked, I was getting about 800 emails a week. That sounds like a lot, but it’s manageable. I never have more than a hundred in my inbox at any one time. My goal is to get to empty, every single day. Usually, I succeed.

Conversely, I usually get about three traditional letters a week. You know what I am talking about, right? It looks similar to an email, but it’s printed on actual paper, neatly folded and inserted into an envelope, with a real, honest-to-goodness stamp on the outside.

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Choosing Which Books to Publish

My post, Too Many Books, Too Few Shelves, raised a lot of great questions about how we determine what we publish at Thomas Nelson. Therefore, I would like to address a persistent issue that was raised in the comments section of that post.

Let me say at the outset that I appreciate the robust dialog. It is very helpful to me, and I hope to other readers. Not only does it help me to clarify my position, but it may actually help shape my position. My thinking is not static, and neither is our strategy. It is a “work in progress.”

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Too Many Books, Too Few Shelves

If we can’t stop the presses, we should at least slow them down. U.S. publishers produced almost 300,000 new titles last year, a number that Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly referred to as “a ridiculous number.”

With bookstore sales rising a modest 3.6% in the last five years, we have more and more books competing for what amounts to the same exact shelf space. Clearly, something is wrong.

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Layoffs at Thomas Nelson

I hesitated about blogging on this. But it’s kind of the “elephant” in the room. I think I owe it to you, my readers, to blog about the good things as well as the difficult.

As you may have read in Publishers Weekly or the Tennessean, yesterday we laid off slightly less than 10% of our workforce. This was not an easy decision. It fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say this was one of the most difficult decisions of my tenure Thomas Nelson.

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Why I Am (Still) Excited About Christian Retail

Last Saturday, April 12, I spoke to Christian Retailers at our inaugural Open House event. It was video-taped, and you can watch it here if you are interested.

Because the file was so large, I had to upload it as five separate videos. The total length is 40 minutes or so. However, if you click on the link above, it will play all five videos as a YouTube “playlist,” with each video playing one after the other.

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A Change in Our Trade Show Strategy

Today, we announced that we will no longer be participating in the two major trade shows in our industry: Book Expo America (BEA) or the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS). As I said in our press release, we have been discussing this move for some time. In fact, it’s a conversation we have had every year since I have been at Nelson (ten years).

But the current economic downturn is forcing us to re-evaluate every marketing dollar we spend. This is not the reason for our shift in strategy, but it is the catalyst. The reality is that these trade shows provide very little return to us on a hugely significant investment.

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The Growing Interest in Spiritual Things

If the New York Times bestseller lists are any indication, people are more interested in spiritual things now than ever.

I can’t remember a single time when there have been more Christian books on the New York Times bestseller lists. The April 20, 2008 list, which is published on the Internet one week in advance of the print version, has eleven Christian books on the various lists. This is huge. I can’t remember a time when there were more.

Here are the books. Disclaimer: The fact that I list the book is not an endorsement of the book. Caveat emptor. (If you want to purchase a particular book, visit your local Christian retailer.)

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Twitter-dee, Twitter-dum

At the recommendation of my friend, Randy Elrod, I decided to start “twittering.” I have now been engaging in the practice for about a week.

What is twittering? Twitter’s home page says it best:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

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A Quarter of Thomas Nelson’s Employees Running the Half Marathon

On January 4th, I set a goal of enrolling 158 of our employees in one of two half marathon races this spring. This represents roughly 25% of our workforce.

I knew this was a big goal and, frankly, it was a little daunting. However, I am happy to report that we now have 160 employees registered. In addition, we have 32 spouses, and 14 authors or agents registered for a total of 206 people. Wow.

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Biggest Snowfall in Five Years

I don’t know what it is about snow, but it always gets me excited. It probably stems from my childhood, when snow meant the possibility that school would be cancelled. Or maybe it was just the shear joy of playing outside in the snow.

Regardless, on the way home from San Jose yesterday, I checked the weather widget on my iPhone. It had the little snow icon next to Friday and Saturday. I next checked Weather.com. The meteorologists there were predicting 3–5 inches for Nashville. My heart lept!

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Turning Failure to Your Advantage

In 1991 I, along with my business partner, suffered a financial meltdown. We had built a successful publishing company, but our growth outstripped our working capital. We simply ran out of cash.

For a while our distributor funded us in the form of cash advances on our sales. But eventually, their parent company wanted those advances back. Although we didn’t officially go bankrupt, the distributor essentially foreclosed on us and took over all our assets.

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The Importance of a Leader’s Heart

Three years ago, I was in New York City on business. I was having a relaxing dinner with David Dunham, one of my colleagues and a dear friend. Suddenly, as we were finishing our meal, I started to have chest pains. Initially, I tried to ignore them. But then I began to quietly panic. I felt that the room was closing in on me.

Embarrassed, I blurted out, “I think I may be having a heart attack.”

David immediately took control. He paid our bill, hailed a cab, and got me to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which happened to be the one closest to our restaurant.

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The Perfect Moment

Last night, my daughter Mary and her husband, Chris, came over. The weather was unseasonably warm, so we sat out on the porch and talked. We reminisced about their wedding among other things. We laughed. We even cried. It was a rich, full time.

Before long, I opened a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc. It’s my very favorite white wine, and I was eager to share it with Mary and Chris. They had never had it before. We savored the hints of peach, passion fruit, and, most of all, grapefruit. We delighted in each drop.

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How to Avoid Running Injuries

Three weeks ago, I got out of bed and noticed that my right heel was really sore. That’s strange, I thought. I wonder if I stepped on a stone. Over the next few days, I kept running and noticed that it was getting progressively worse. Then it dawned on me. Could this be the dreaded Plantar Fasciitis?

I immediately looked it up on Wikipedia. It said,

Plantar fasciitis, formerly known as “policeman’s heel,” is a painful inflammatory condition caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia of the foot or biomechanical faults that cause abnormal pronation of the foot. The pain usually is felt on the underside of the heel, and is often most intense with the first steps of the day.

Those were my exact symptoms.

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Don’t Leave God Out of Your Plans

I have written much about planning and goal setting. It would be easy to get the idea that if you just plan well enough or persist long enough you will succeed. Frankly, I don’t think this is enough.

I was reminded again this morning of a Bible verse that has become very important to me in recent years:

Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. (Psalm 127:1)

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TSA Screening at Airports

I am all for the TSA screening system at airports. In today’s world, you can’t be too careful. Overall, I have found TSA officials to be pleasant, professional, and courteous.

However, I continue to be surprised at the inconsistent application of certain screening procedures. I travel a good deal and am in and out of airports all over the country. You would think that a federal program would insure that rules are applied consistently. Evidently not.

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Four Leadership Lessons from the Super Bowl

I don’t watch much football. In fact, I don’t watch many sports other than an occasional golf tournament. But I watched the Super Bowl Sunday night and enjoyed every second of it. When Plaxico Burress caught the winning touchdown pass with 35 seconds remaining, I came out of my chair. It was a thrilling end to a tense battle.

As I was reflecting on the game Monday morning, I thought that the Giants, particularly Eli Manning, demonstrated four characteristics of all great leaders:

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