We consider ourselves a niche publisher. While we do not discriminate on genre, per se, we are very picky with regards to content. That is because it is important, as part of our mission, to publish materials that in some way raise awareness of important public issues. There may be any number of ways an author or artist can do this and we will embrace the intent, regardless of the form. With the upcoming 2010 season, we have some great projects planned and exciting authors that we believe represent our mission.

Our mission to “raise social consciousness” may come across as a bit vague to the some or lofty to others, but for us, it embodies a broad, yet focused mission. There is ample access to media and multi-media that either purely inform or simply entertain. Those are essential products of our culture and should not necessarily go away, however, it is part of our strategic direction to embrace media and multi-media that in some way calls attention to our social situation and increases our understanding of the world we live in. This mission is more than only educational and does not necessarily exclude entertainment, it is an attempt to create movement within our social stratosphere and elevate our perception of reality.

Ultimately raising social consciousness is about understanding “the way things are” in its true form so that we can better understand our own lives and become better for it.

Stay tuned over the next three months as we announce the components of our 2010 strategic direction, including the authors we have partnered with and their own role in fulfilling this mission.

Posted via email from waythingsare’s posterous

November 1st marks the first day of National Novel Writing Month, a ten-year institution that has become a worldwide novel-writing movement. Starting with humble beginnings in 1999 San Francisco, National Novel Writing Month has taken the literary world as the hallmark of self-discipline and an intense sense of community. With a rising roster of accomplished novelists, NaNoWriMo (as it is affectionately called) calls upon anyone and everyone to write 50,000 words in one month.

Tall order? 20,000 annual winning participants don’t think so. As a matter of fact, many in the professional writing community have swooped in to endorse the program and provide weekly “pep talks”.

In addition to encouraging the greater world to write novels in November, NaNoWriMo does a great deal for the community as well. This year, donations will benefit their Young Writer’s program benefiting 1,000 schools.

So grab your hard-earned time, sit down, and pound the keyboard. Who knows where it will lead – The Way Thing’s Are’s own Kathleen Kaufman wrote her debut novel The Tree Museum for National Novel Writing Month. She’s not the only one: look at all the other NaNoWriMo authors that have been published.