Eight Years of Energion Publications

In a post on our Facebook page at the end of July I mentioned that Energion Publications is eight years old this month. I would have to describe our survival and growth as a company as both providential and surprising. There have been many upheavals in the publishing world, but while we have had some very tough times here, Energion has continued to grow overall, and right now we’re experiencing some of our best months as a company.

When I originally bought the books that would start this company, I had no idea where it would go. It was just that I didn’t want some of those books to go out of print permanently. The largest stock of books I bought was nearly 5,000 copies of the 4th edition of Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. At first I wondered how I was ever going to sell all those books, but eventually that book became our bestseller and still leads sales overall.

There’s an interesting story about that edition. The group I was working with that originally published it used a local printer here, and we had considerable trouble getting the cover designed and also understanding who was doing what with corrections and layout. While there were very, very few errors in the text, the cover did not look good, and the margins were way too narrow. The author and I both took to referring to it as “the unfortunate edition.” The printer went out of business within a week after delivering the books. I won’t name them. Besides, I’m sure the blame was shared!

In any case, we were delighted to be able to release a new edition that we like much better. It’s the one you see featured to the left. It has real margins and we think the lightning on the cover is much more realistic.

Over the next few days, and perhaps running into September, considering that I haven’t posted on this topic earlier in the month, I’m going to give away copies of some of our very early titles. Some of these are slated for new editions, just like Who’s Afraid? We’ve learned things as we go along. But this one book is the first re-do, and we’re very happy with it.

So I’m going to give a copy away. I will look in the following places for notes:

1. Comments to this post
2. Comments on Facebook
3. Retweets
4. Google +1

Each action will be an entry, so if you comment here, on Facebook, retweet, and +1 this post on Google+, you’ll have four entries. You might drop me an e-mail (pubs@energion.com) to make sure I don’t miss any of them. Sometimes when posts get shared around on Facebook, I don’t find all the comments, and I’m a little shaky on finding everything on Google+.

While you’re at it, consider LIKE-ing our Facebook page, following us on Twitter, or on Google+.

— Henry Neufeld