By Common Consent, the self-proclaimed Best Mormon Blog in the Universe, is launching a press. BCC Press can be found here. I asked some of the BCC Bloggers behind the launch what they were thinking, and here’s what I found out.
Why did you form BCC Press?
The primary reason is because we need to do a better job of sustaining long-form discussion in our church. Over the last fifteen years or so that I’ve been involved in the online Mormon community, I’ve seen us becoming increasingly abbreviated in our discussions, more willing to jump to conclusions, more willing to simply argue from our preconceived notions of each other instead of seeking bona fide understanding. In some ways blogging sustained this decline, to the point that now I occasionally hear that even blog posts are too long. We have a tl;dr culture that is simply not sustainable. Our real-world connections will fall apart and ultimately our online forums will degrade into worthless echo chambers. I think more reading, and more writing, can fight against that trend. So this is really part of BCC’s overall mission to promote understanding and have powerful discussions about the community in a productive way.
What was the inception story of the Press?
What niche of authors or audience do you see this filling?
We’re looking to work very broadly within the Mormon community (I guess that’s already a niche!). I’d love to have authors from all walks of life, and I’d welcome conservative and more progressive viewpoints. The beauty of working with a book as opposed to brief essays or Facebook status updates or whatever is that the length of the medium forces a certain mode of argument and discussion. It’s hard to write for very long without engaging with opposing viewpoints. Your thoughts need to be more considered, more rational. You need to make yourself very clear and more balanced than perhaps you’d be in 140 characters. So BCC Press hopefully will be a broader sort of place than BCC, and the audience I would hope would also be broader than BCC. The challenge will be finding topics and authors who write interesting thoughts in an interesting way. Beyond that, I’m comfortable that the audience will be there and the discussion will be there.
How does it differ / fit in with the other Mormon niche publishers out there?
Mormon publishing is not a large world and there are some excellent presses out there. We have a lot in common as a group. As a press we’re not going to be super-specialized on, say, memoir or history or one genre. Our identity is not going to be tied to advancing a particular agenda or ideological stripe. We really want to be a service to our community. So we’re a non-profit, a 501(c)(3). We’re run by volunteers and we do all the work ourselves at no cost, other than basic expenses. Once we recoup those expenses in book sales, we want to give as much to the authors as possible to keep the writing community going. That’s probably our biggest difference, but it goes to the heart of why we’re doing this — we really want people to read, discuss and engage with their Mormonism on a deeper and more satisfying level.
Who do you see as your desired authors / topics?

What target audience(s) are you trying to reach?
Ideally? I’d love everyone to read and really love the books we’re going to print. I don’t want to produce books for an echo chamber sort of audience; that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid, though I hope the Bloggernacle community enjoys what we produce. I would want to reach those audiences who feel like they don’t have a place within the community, whether because they feel isolated in their wards or because the progressive culture of the Bloggernacle swings too far left for them. If the goal is to encourage better understanding among us, I want to cast a wide net and bring everyone in.
How can someone submit work to BCC Press?
Email us at info@bccpress.org, and we can go from there. We try to make the onboarding, planning, contracting and all that as simple as possible.
Can you explain the logistics of publishing with BCC Press?
We are a volunteer organization. We aren’t trying to make money for ourselves or for the press. In fact, we are actively raising money to cover production costs so that we can return as much as possible in royalties to our authors. And we are a small enough community that we are interested in talking with authors at an early stages of a project and helping new authors (or authors making the transition from blogging to booking) shape their books from the outset. So, once we decide to pursue a project, we assign an editor who collaborates with the author as much (or as little) as is necessary to bring the book to fruition. Then we have BCC volunteers do the line editing, proofreading, and typesetting, and we use print-on demand technology to produce both print and ebooks. We are working with bookstores on the Wasatch Front to get books sold through their stores, but we will also distribute online, through Amazon, and we will provide books at very low prices for authors to use at signings and events.
Basically, we want to distribute books as widely as possible with as much of the royalties going to the author as we can manage as a non-profit press.
Where can I find out more about the press or buy the books being published?

Tracy McKay’s memoir The Burning Point deals with a lot of serious issues, including addiction, divorce, single parenthood, poverty, welfare, and raising a special-needs child in difficult circumstances. But ultimately it is the hopeful story of a Mormon woman who, facing a lot of difficult circumstances, went back to college and turned her life around. It is also the story of one of the birth of the Tracy McKay Scholarship Award, now awarded annually by the Feminist Mormon Housewives blog to Mormon women returning to school.
Michael Austin’s #BOM2016 is a collection of 45 blog posts written for By Common Consent during 2016, part of the authors attempt to reconnect with the Book of Mormon as a scholar and literary critic. This is the first of a number of planned BCC Press books that will curate and present important material from the blog’s extensive archives–almost fifteen years of posts about some of the most important issues in contemporary Mormonism. Another such volume is planned for this year collecting posts by BCC women and edited by BCC blogger Karen Hall.
I just recently bought my own copy of Steven Peck’s book Science the Key to Theology, and I’m in the process of devouring it. More to follow on that! You can pick up a copy here or on Amazon (but createspace is preferred!).
- Do you buy books from Mormon publishers?
- What authors would you like to read if they published a book?
- What topics would you like to read in book form?
Discuss.
This is a very interesting project. I know I’ve read several posts from folks at BCC lamenting that blogs just aren’t “enough” to address various issues with the care and attention that they deserve, so the BCC Press seems like a very natural and on-brand addition for BCC. Here’s hoping that this project can really take off!
I do occasionally buy books from Mormon publishers (and BCC Press will probably be added to my list of publishers to check out for updates on a regular basis.0
I would love if folks like Tinesha Capri Zandemala or Janan Graham-Russell got long-form exposure both within and without Mormon contexts.
I guess ego-boosting blogging just wasn’t enough anymore.Is blogging is a gateway drug…
Jeff, based on my experience, blogging is as ego-deflating as it is ego-boosting, but if this will get more excellent books by authors I love & respect published, I’m all for it.
i am confused.
Before the computer:
if you had something serious, momentous, or of great depth to share you wrote a book or published in academic journals with citations and peer review and preservation for future generations.
If not you made comments in the foyer, or told stories around the campfire or talked at the quilting bee or shared it in testimony meeting..
Today:
I have noticed that 95% of cell phone calls are only marginally necessary if not ridiculous and could be avoided with a little forethought.
Digital devices have taken the place of the television as the ultimate idiot box.
I always thought the bloggersphere was more like the foyer than the ivory tower. One small step above the cell phone.
With all of these modern labor-shaving digital devices to distract me I don’t have time to read a whole book. Most of the youth I know have never read even one book. Maybe something like One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Nothing more substantial.
Maybe this the first step out of the digital morass for what is being called the dumbest generation-in and out of the church.