Rachel Starr Thomson

Attention, world: I have an announcement! My fantasy series, The Seventh World Trilogy — Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day — has a website of its own!

Featuring artwork by my sister Deborah Thomson (nicely worked into the site design by my sister Becky Thomson), character profiles and world-building info, reviews, and more, the site is live today. I’ve also included a section on Christian fantasy and other speculative fiction that features other authors. The URL is www.worldsunseen.com. Check it out!

I’m excited about books because…?

“Because learning (and as a result, books) is at the heart of human consciousness and experience. Books connect us to the world. That’s the BIG picture, but ultimately finding and reading books is fun and the internet, despite all the doom and gloom talk, has made publishing more fun, more open and expansive. The web is bringing more people into the publishing process, redefining what publishing means and giving everybody new tools to write, publish and sell them. So what’s not to like? It’s a great time to be in book publishing, despite the fact that everything is changing.”

–Calvin Reid, Senior News Editor, Publishers Weekly

If you have much of a finger on the publishing industry (and you should, if you want to write for a living), you know that the electronic age has caused all kinds of panic in the hallowed halls of trade publishing (print books are going to become obsolete! people won’t read anything longer than two paragraphs! self-published trash is taking over! the sky is falling!). There are some good reasons to worry, but overall, I’m pretty optimistic.

Digital Book World, a site/community at the forefront of modern publishing optimism, recently asked cutting-edge thinkers in the industry why they are still excited about books, and why we can (and should) be optimistic about the future. Read it!