{"id":20,"date":"2010-04-13T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html"},"modified":"2010-04-13T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T08:00:00","slug":"addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html","title":{"rendered":"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned Kevin Hendricks<\/span> before<\/a> on this blog. He’s been a full-time freelance writer<\/a> for as long as I’ve known him, which is several years now. He edits Church Marketing Sucks,<\/a> founded Color4aCause<\/a>, maintains his own blog<\/a>, and has kept a very entertaining Twitter feed<\/a> for more than a couple of years, which is pretty much a lifetime in the Twitterverse.<\/p>\n

\"\"Right before some good friends of ours began the process of adopting from China, Kevin and his family adopted their son, Milo, from Ethiopia. I followed the lengthy process on Twitter, and was thrilled to hear that Kevin had decided to turn the whole journey into a book by republishing his Twitter feed.<\/p>\n

It’s called Addition by Adoption: Kids, Causes & 140 Characters<\/a>.<\/i> Part of the proceeds from the book go to fund a clean water well in Ethiopia. If you like quirky families, quality writing, good causes, and heart-warming adoption stories, this is the book for you.<\/p>\n

With the book ready to launch and a special preorder week kicking off today, I asked Kevin if he was up for an interview.<\/p>\n

————–

Jason: <\/span>At what point during the process did you start to think these Twitter updates could be turned into a book? Did it then change the way you tweet? <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span> Kevin: <\/span>I think the response from people, both on Twitter and Facebook, influenced me more than anything. I had an instant gauge for what tweets generated a response and I probably tweeted with that in mind. That\u2019s what first gave me the idea for the book\u2014realizing that people got such a kick out of my breakfast time songs or Lexi praying for the bus.<\/p>\n

I started pulling the tweets together last summer, but I was never really certain the book would happen, so I don\u2019t think it influenced me that much. I did realize that certain things would need to be in the book, like the court date last October when we finalized Milo\u2019s adoption, but I would have tweeted that anyway.<\/p>\n

As a writer, what is it about the 140-character limit that is so freeing (rather than being restrictive, as you might think). <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"There is a certain challenge to crafting something in 140 characters. You have to figure out exactly what you want to say and boil it down to its very essence. Sometimes as you\u2019re trying to do that you realize there\u2019s a better way to say it or a different way to go about it or you see it in a new way.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also an experiment to see how concise you can make a statement and still retain meaning. That\u2019s kind of fun.<\/p>\n

Plus you have instant results. It\u2019s a lot easier to throw out 140-character statements when you\u2019re wrangling two kids under 4 than it is to, say, write a novel.<\/p>\n

Tell me about your self-publishing experience. Did you ever give any thought to trying to package it for a publisher? What are some things you learned in the process of self-publishing the book? <\/span><\/p>\n

One of the reasons that I went the self-publishing route is because I had an offbeat idea that I thought would be a hard sell. I did ask a few people but the response was kind of mixed\u2014\u201cgreat idea, good luck with that.\u201d Rather than taking the time that kind of effort would require, I just wanted to get the book out there. If any book is ideal for self-publication, this one seemed like it.<\/p>\n

The self-publishing experience has actually been pretty easy. Print-on-demand publishing makes the act of getting a bound and printed book in your hands relatively simple. Anyone can do it. Of course you also need a manuscript. And you need to edit that manuscript. And proofread it. (Good thing I do those things for a living). You also need to lay it out (I had incredible help from Ronald Cox<\/a> on the layout). Then you need to design a cover (Again, I turned to Brian White of TriLion Studios<\/a>). Then you need to spread the word\u2014books don\u2019t sell themselves.<\/p>\n

So except for all that hard work, it\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard of a few Twitter-update books over the last couple of years. Which ones are\/were on your radar? <\/span><\/p>\n

There are a few:<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>The first example I found was James Bridle. He took two years worth of his tweets and dumped them into a hardcover book as an experiment: My Life in Tweets<\/span><\/a>. But he\u2019s not selling it and he didn\u2019t make any effort to curate his tweets or clean them up for a book format.<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>Nick Douglas put out Twitter Wit<\/a>,<\/span> a collection of humorous tweets and David Pogue did The World According to Twitter<\/a>,<\/span> a collection of humorous tweets clustered around topics (like phony Chinese proverbs, spam from the future, etc.). Both came out around the same time last year and both are essentially collections of other people\u2019s tweets. Fun fact: Lexi and Milo\u2019s godfather has a tweet in The World According to Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>There are also services to turn your tweets into a book, like the full service TweetBookz<\/a>, the PDF creator tweetbook.in<\/a> or TweetNotebook<\/a> that lets you create a notebook with a tweet at the bottom of every page. But those are more for creating your own personal scrapbook of sorts\u2014they don\u2019t set you up to actually publish and sell your book.<\/p>\n

\u2022 <\/span>There are also plenty of Twitter-feeds-turned-books, like @Sh*tMyDadSays<\/a>, @FakeAPStylebook<\/a> and @HistoricalTweet<\/a> though those are more books launched form a Twitter feed, not necessarily straight collections of tweets.<\/p>\n

So I haven\u2019t seen anyone doing exactly what I did. At least not yet. The Internet\u2019s a big place.<\/p>\n

What does Lexi think about being the “star” of a book? <\/span><\/p>\n

At 4 years old, it\u2019s hard to know how much she understands about it. I\u2019ve told her I\u2019ve got a book coming out and I\u2019ve told her what it\u2019s about. She agreed to sign her name in the pre-order copies, but until I have the actual book in hand I\u2019m not sure she\u2019ll get it.<\/p>\n

In general
\nshe rolls with this stuff. She loves watching videos and looking at pictures of herself on the computer\u2014and to those who say I\u2019m raising a narcissistic child, she also likes to see her friends on the computer. Well, anybody on the computer: Daddy as a little kid, Grandma and Papa, kids in Haiti.<\/p>\n

How are things going with Milo? Was the adoption process smoother or more difficult than you expected? <\/span><\/p>\n

Life with Milo is amazing. In the past few months he\u2019s started walking and he\u2019s talking more and he\u2019s just exploding into this little kid. He\u2019s very much a boy\u2014likes to be loud, throw toys down the stairs and destroy things. So that\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n

The process has been about what we expected. He came home so young that the transition was pretty easy. It also helps that the care center he was at in Ethiopia takes amazing care of those kids. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s always easy when they\u2019re young or that we\u2019re \u201cin the clear,\u201d so to speak. Being adopted is part of who Milo is and that\u2019s something that will always be a part of him and always be a potential speed bump.<\/p>\n

Do you think you’ll ever do anything like this again? (A Twitter book, I mean.) <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll ignore your parenthetical and say that we are planning to adopt again<\/a>. So we\u2019re thrilled about that. We just made the decision and haven\u2019t figured anything out yet, but we are leaning towards older kids. It\u2019s fun to be launching this book and diving into adoption again at the same time.<\/p>\n

And back to your parenthetical, I haven\u2019t thought of doing a sequel to the book. We are adopting again, so there\u2019s certainly the potential. As with any sequel I\u2019d want to be able to tell a new story in a new way, so that might be difficult (though the funny things teenagers say would have an entirely different vibe). Even if it\u2019s not a huge published book, I do like the idea of collecting and archiving tweets in a printed book. My original thought behind this idea was that it was something my Grandma would love to see, so even if it\u2019s just for Grandma it\u2019d be fun to do again.<\/p>\n

—————–<\/p>\n

Thanks, Kevin. <\/span>I’m reading Addition by Adoption<\/a> <\/i>right now, and it’s a lot of fun. Kevin’s a thoughtful guy, a creative writer, and the best kind of weird dad, which makes his Twitter feed worth following and this book totally worth buying.<\/p>\n

Beginning today, Addition by Adoption<\/span> is available for a limited one-week preorder for $12.99 <\/a>through April 20. If you preorder, shipping is included, twice as much money goes to charity: water<\/a>, and Lexi will personally sign your copy. Win all around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve mentioned Kevin Hendricks before on this blog. He’s been a full-time freelance writer for as long as I’ve known him, which is several years now. He edits Church Marketing Sucks, founded Color4aCause, maintains his own blog, and has kept a very entertaining Twitter feed for more than a couple of years, which is pretty…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,2,13,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awesome","category-conversations","category-interviews","category-publishing"],"yoast_head":"\nAddition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks - O Me of Little Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve mentioned Kevin Hendricks before on this blog. He’s been a full-time freelance writer for as long as I’ve known him, which is several years now. He edits Church Marketing Sucks, founded Color4aCause, maintains his own blog, and has kept a very entertaining Twitter feed for more than a couple of years, which is pretty…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-13T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/finalcover200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks - O Me of Little Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks - O Me of Little Faith","og_description":"I’ve mentioned Kevin Hendricks before on this blog. He’s been a full-time freelance writer for as long as I’ve known him, which is several years now. He edits Church Marketing Sucks, founded Color4aCause, maintains his own blog, and has kept a very entertaining Twitter feed for more than a couple of years, which is pretty…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html","og_site_name":"O Me of Little Faith","article_published_time":"2010-04-13T08:00:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/finalcover200.jpg"}],"author":"Jason Boyett","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html","name":"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks - O Me of Little Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/finalcover200.jpg","datePublished":"2010-04-13T08:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-13T08:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/finalcover200.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.kevindhendricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/finalcover200.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/04\/addition-by-adoption-interview-kevin-hendricks.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Addition by Adoption Interview: Kevin Hendricks"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/","name":"O Me of Little Faith","description":"A blog by Jason Boyett about Doubt, Christianity, Culture & Writing","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7","name":"Jason Boyett","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","caption":"Jason Boyett"},"description":"Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, and the author of several books, including O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan), and the Pocket Guide series (Jossey-Bass). His work has appeared in Salon, Paste, The Daily Beast, Relevant, and a variety of other publications. He has also appeared on the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. Jason lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. Follow him at twitter and jasonboyett.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/author\/jboyett"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}