Faith Works 1-10-25

Faith Works 1-10-25
Jeff Gill

Two decades in newsprint, actual and virtual
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This is an anniversary of sorts. Jan. 8, 2005 was my first "Faith Works" column for the Newark Advocate. You're reading what's just past the 1040th entry I've had the privilege of adding to these pages.

My first column here was written in the aftermath of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, devastating coastal areas of Sri Lanka, Indian, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia along with other countries from Africa to the south Pacific. Over a quarter of a million people were killed that day, and millions of survivors displaced along those distant shores, yet already in less than two weeks a number of church organization and faith-based agencies had started offering direct assistance in the areas affected, and I listed a few of them who had ties to local faith communities.

Those are the sorts of stories I've tended to hunt up and tell here in this column: how "faith works," the ways in which our beliefs held individually and in common have had practical import in our community, and farther afield. Just as our area is known for the expansive earthworks built by Native Americans two thousand years ago, our local works of faith have built some interesting connections worth talking about.

Truth be told, my personal intentions twenty-some years ago were to write a book or two in my spare time. There were and are a few things I wanted to say to a wider audience than a sermon on a Sunday, of which I've preached quite a few, but writing for publication is slightly different thing. I still have some chapters and rough outlines in mind on the subjects I have interests in, and that dream is not entirely behind me.

Still, I've spent my time preaching, and writing columns, and have never gotten a book written, which feels like the thing I really ought to get done. But a friend in publishing some years back pointed out some things he thought I should keep in mind.

First, how many books come out each year, let alone are there in total? Major publishers put out 10,000 new titles annually; niche or academic titles included bring the number of new published books per year up to a few hundred thousand, and with self-published volumes added in you can find annual totals around 2.2 million new books (an exhausting number to contemplate, cf. Ecclesiastes 12:12). The folks with the ISBN system (International Standard Book Number) said at the end of 2023 there were roughly 158,464,880 unique books in the world, so add another 2.2 million to that.

But of those new books, their sales come to an average of 1,000 copies a year apiece (Publisher's Weekly said 500, and they oughta know); only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year (nine that aren't called "The Bible"), and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.

The average traditionally published book will sell about 3,000 copies over its entire print lifetime, and who knows how many of those go to the remainder bin, unread and unloved? Today there are ebooks, but what data we have suggest half of those buying them never complete them, which may have been true with print books, to be perfectly honest.

Here's the thing: looking at novels and non-fiction works in general, the average length of them is 75,000 words. I've submitted and seen into print about 730,000 words in twenty years of "Faith Works," which adds up to almost ten books.

That's not all: I have been writing another column since this same week in 2002, starting in the old "Community Booster" which was merged into the "Granville Sentinel" weekly, a shorter piece running about every other week. Those columns add up to date to about 330,000 words, or another four books.

So I can say I haven't gotten around to writing a book yet, or I could say I've written fourteen, and the readership of what I've published is possibly three times the average book audience. Thank you for reading this far, and I plan to keep on adding chapters here for some time to come.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's just a writin' fool. Tell him what you think he should be writing about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Blue Sky.