Dear Readers,

I've really done it this time. After idly threatening to create my own publishing company for years, I went ahead and did it this Spring. You may be asking yourself, "But Ted, don't you already have enough to do without adding Big Time Publishing Mogul to your already not-unsubstantial plate of responsibilities."

(Places wing-tip-shod feet up on desk, lights expensive cigar.)

My answer to that is "sort of." Here are, in no particular order, the reasons why I decided that April, 2010, was the right time to launch Gut Check Press (a subsidiary of the K-D empire).

1. I wanted to create t-shirts, which are available for purchase here: http://gutcheckpress.spreadshirt.com

2. I finally, officially joined forces with Pastor/Creative Genius Zach Bartels. Zach has literally dozens of readers at his blog, and I have literally dozens of people who buy my books. When two forces of that magnitude collide, good things happen. The first good thing that happened is that Zach designed a killer logo and set up this website: http://www.gutcheckpress.com

3. Zach and I wrote a satirical book together. You can learn more about it here: http://www.gutcheckpress.com/books.html

Typically when you write a book with someone and pitch it to a traditional publishing house, it takes about eighteen months for said house to have committee meetings, conduct feasibility studies, go to conferences, make up minds, change minds, leave you twisting in the wind, and not be there when you call, before finally publishing your book (if you're lucky). By that time, the thing that you're satirizing (in our case, Brian McLaren's book "A New Kind of Christianity") will have already jumped the proverbial shark. Our book will go from idea to finished product in about eight weeks. This accelerated timeframe seemed like fun, and a nice break from the norm.

4. Middle aged women pretty much run Christian Publishing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we thought it would be cool to have a company run by youngish guys (us) that would produce books that our mom's wouldn't like. No offense to our mothers.

So here's what you need to do: Go to www.gutcheckpress.com - make yourself at home, look around, buy a t-shirt, and wait patiently for "Kinda Christianity: A Generous, Fair, Organic, Free-Range Guide to Authentic Realness" to drop in a week or so. The book asks the probing question, "What would Christianity look like if we were all college sophomores." I know, it's deep.

We'll check in again next week when the book drops, and we'll probably ask you to interview us on your blog and/or radio program. No blog and/or radio program is too small, so fire up the hype machine now. Until then, I'll keep busy buying and selling people.

Yours, In Publishing,
Ted A. Kluck
Co-Founder, Secretary of the Interior
Gut Check Press
www.gutcheckpress.com
www.tedkluck.com