A New Subtitle for “Spirituality”
As I announced the other day, my first book, Spirituality, is due to be reprinted this spring by White River Press in Vermont. This is the first time I’ve had a book go into a second edition. The only real change to the text is that we’re removing the acknowledgements page and putting in a new introduction, which I will be writing this weekend. The book itself otherwise remains the same; we’re using the same plates as the first edition which means all the typos will persist (I only know of one or two, but still…).
Part of what’s cool about this is that I now have the opportunity to revise the book’s subtitle. Originally it was subtitled Where Body and Soul Encounter the Sacred, and although I did come up with it, I was never really enthusiastic about it; the original publisher wanted “soul” in the title and this particular phrase was about the only one we could come up that we could both live with. I really wanted the words “postmodern” and “interfaith” in the subtitle, since I thought those concepts were much more essential to the book. But the original publisher would have none of it. Furthermore, both he and I were a bit squeamish about putting the word “God” in the subtitle, afraid that it wasn’t truly inclusive enough (of course this was before Neal Donald Walsch came along and proved that you could write a monster bestseller with the word “God” in the title).
So even though I couldn’t really say I loved it, I settled for Where Body and Soul Encounter the Sacred as the least offensive possible subtitle… until now, when suddenly I have the opportunity to give the book a new name, one more truly consistent with its message. The new publisher has basically given me free rein here, a rare privilege indeed (unless you’re a household-name kind of an author, most publishers typically insist on having the last word on the book’s cover and title). And while it seems impossible to come up with a perfect subtitle (i.e., one that rolls off your tongue like poetry, truly captures the spirit of the book, and is loaded with highly searched-for keywords), what I’ve settled on is, at least to my eyes and ears, about as good as it gets. So (drumroll, please), my first book will now be called:
Spirituality: A Postmodern and Interfaith Approach
to Cultivating a Relationship with God
