On Community, Conversation, and Life is Great

I'm here at Novelists, Inc. and I'm struck once again by the power of community. We're here to talk about books, authorship, publishing models and the future, and the most exciting thing is that we're here to create the future together.

Every author here has a unique path to success. Every author we publish at Sourcebooks has a unique path. A couple of days ago I read this marvelous blog post from Emma Dryden.

Yes indeed comparison is the killer of joy.

Every quarter at Sourcebooks we have a managers meeting and we all read a book on leadership or about our industry. Some time ago we read Tribal Leadership and what stayed with me all this time is the "five levels" of attitudes in a tribe or group (I'm paraphrasing).

1. Life sucks. (This is where people "go postal")

2. My life sucks. (Well, at least there's some hope.)

3. I'm great. (Implied: uh, you're not)

4. We're great. (And implied: but no one else is)

5. Life is great.

This last is where you're in it for the love of the game, the competition doesn't scare you because you're having such a great time exploring and innovating and learning.

This is where I want to live, don't you?

I'm with Sourcebooks, I'm at NINC this weekend with some of the most brilliant minds in our industry, I'm looking for everything I can bring to being a best-in-class publisher, I adore my authors, life is great.