WATER OF LIFE

So how would I go about publishing my book ‘Where in the World Do I Belong??’? Would I wait for the painful process of traditional publishing again? Would another miracle happen with only one magical query letter, and I land another book contract?

First, I sent a book proposal to the publisher of my book Culture Shock! Hawaii, then I sent a query to the popular book agent Sagalyn. I also sent a query to a new publisher called Quirk Books on the recommendation of a publishing connection through my brother.

My publisher replied to my proposal four months later and politely declined saying, “the title was not quite suitable for their program”. Around that time the book agent Sagalyn replied suggesting I get published in a magazine first. Did he bother to notice that I already had a book published by a major publisher?

As for Quirk Books, I never heard a word back from them after they asked to see my book proposal and I am happy about that fact. Why? Because I discovered Print On Demand through the largest book distributor in the US. Thus, I went about the business of setting up as a publisher. After writing the book, I did all the book setup, layout, proofing and editing with the help of a friend.

I self published and released my second book even before my first traditionally published book was released. Where in the World Do I Belong?? was available from Amazon by mid-January 2006 and customers had already received shipment. Culture Shock! Hawaii was available on Amazon since January of 2006 and still wasn’t shipping.

My publisher said the cause of the delay was their changing American distributors and Culture Shock! Hawaii would be available in the US in the spring. They said it was already released in Asia and the UK, and that it doesn’t show up on Amazon UK or Amazon Japan because foreign Amazons upload their books through the US site (therefore, it must be released in the US first to show up on all Amazons). I checked other online bookstores in the UK and Japan and they were also backordered for Culture Shock! Hawaii. However, to my happy surprise me newest self published book Where in the World Do I Belong?? was available for shipping in USA, UK and other parts of the world!

For the last two years the stocking nightmare has continued with little stock and backorders. Today, Amazon has Culture Shock! Hawaii in stock but I checked Ingram (the largest book distributor) and they don’t have any stock and 46 books are on backorder. Just goes to show you why I turned to self publishing.

Culture Type research

During research for my book, Where in the World Do I Belong??, most people were enthusiastic about telling me about their culture or at least accommodating. Americans were a little resistant to answer my questions or wanted to get into a debate about the logical validity of my research - obviously an extroverted thinking culture.

People in Hawaii didn’t give me a uniform answer about the local culture in Hawaii; some tried to answer for the Hawaiians, others for the area they grew up in. I gave up on trying to determine the culture type for the overall local culture (with all the ethnic groups mixed in) and determined the ethnic Hawaiian culture type to be ESFP. This was verified by the fact that all the pacific islands turned out to be ESFP!

My research breaks free of the corporate centered mindset of MBTI research and cross-culture research. Although I have read Hofstede and love his work on Masculinity and Femininity, I feel corporations don’t represent people and cultures well. However, at the end of Where in the World Do I Belong??, I do make correlations between my Culture Type results and the cultural dimensions Hofstede assigned to those countries.

One thing that I want people get from Where in the World Do I Belong??, is the concept of equal reward for gifts differing (maybe this is my own personal, INFP, utopian vision). Reward meaning monetary but also in other forms. Isabel Briggs Myers, the creator of the Myers-Briggs personality test, took her book title, ‘Gifts Differing‘, from the Bible (Romans 12:6) and believed that each type has different gifts to offer. And type expert Bernie Ostrowski has mentioned a couple times about people needing to have an opportunity to use those gifts. I take it a step farther: we are all created equal and our differing gifts should be rewarded equally.

Finally, I would love to have more input from people from other countries.

Buy Where in the World Do I Belong??: Which country’s culture type fits your Myers Briggs (MBTI) personality type?

Marriage on the Rock is a great Christian marriage series that I highly recommend. Before we started going to church, I tried many things to get my marriage on track. I went to counseling to figure out and resolve my psychological issues that were getting in the way and causing problems, and I studied Japanese culture and language to better understand our cross-cultural differences. My first book Culture Shock! Hawaii evolved out of this search to understand cultural differences. At the same time I studied personality type as a means to better understand our differences as a couple. My second book, Where in the World Do I Belong??, evolved out of this search to understand personality type and cultural differences. Lastly, a marriage counselor recommended the The Five Love Languages book to me, and learned all I could about the love languages.

I have a natural passion and interest in counseling/therapy and people differences (cultural, personality type, and love languages) and I used these tools to try to get my marriage on the right track, but none of it worked because I got it all backwards—we must have Jesus in our marriage first.

God is a trinity or triune being consisting of God, the son of God (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. God also “created man to be a triune being. Man is composed of a body, a soul, and a spirit. Man was only one of God’s many creations. The atom is a triune object. It is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons” - Doctrine of the Trinity by Ed DeVries.

Jimmy Evans, in his Marriage on the Rock series, explains that God also created marriage as a triune being. Men fulfill the role of Jesus Christ (e.g. the church is the bride of Christ); women fulfill the role of the Holy Spirit. God made woman the helper to man and Jesus called the Holy Spirit a helper (Jesus said He would send a helper in the form of the Holy Spirit). The third part of the triune is God at the center of a marriage (one that has been dedicated to Him).

Jimmy Evans states that God made man in the image of God but marriage is really the closest image of God. “Only God can meet the deepest needs in a marriage…and release the potential of your marriage.” We must have God in our marriage first, then we will reap the fruit of the Holy Spirit. After that, we will see results in Christian marriage counseling and in our efforts to understand differences (cultural, personality type, and love languages).

The birth of the Culture Types idea.

In March of 2002 applied for a Japanese Government graduate research scholarship. I needed a topic for the research proposal for the scholarship application. Well, I had a passion for personality type and read all the books I could get my hands on about it. I also had a passion for other cultures after living in Japan for three years (from ‘94 - ‘97) and traveling around Asia. After living abroad and experiencing culture shock, I learned there was different behaviors rewarded by different cultures. I felt there had to be some way to figure out how a person’s personality type matched different cultures or countries, or even how they fit their own country’s culture.

As I developed the idea for my research proposal, I dug into the MBTI bibliography at CAPT.org, but I found little research on culture. There was a little research on corporate cultures but that wasn’t interesting to me, until I stumbled on Ray Moody’s Psychological Type and Culture conference proceedings. I was particularly impressed with Ray’s research on the ethnic groups in Hawaii. I wanted to do something similar to that with countries, except instead of determining culture from dominant distributions, I wanted to use existing culture research (such as the Culture Shock! series of books) and match or relate it to type.

For the Japan scholarship, I wrote a research proposal for “A cross-cultural comparative study of Asian cultures using psychological type and temperament theories. Using current cultural research on these countries to gather information on traits, traditions, social values and preferences exhibited by these cultures that can be classified under personality type and temperament. Finally, draw conclusions on what type or temperament the culture most closely resembles.”

In 2003, to my surprise, I won the scholarship. It was the equivalent of a Fulbright fellowship, except instead of only one year (like the Fulbright) it was renewable for six years. After months of deliberation, and even to my surprise, I declined the scholarship. Which is a completely different story in itself. In short, my wife was pregnant, and I realized I wanted to become an author more than become an academic.

In 2004, we moved to Hawaii because we felt the ethnic mix fit our multicultural family. The subsequent misadventure, adjustment, and reflections on that choice were the impetus for writing my first book Culture Shock! Hawaii. I queried the British publisher of the Culture Shock! series at their Singapore branch with a proposal for a Culture Shock! Hawaii edition. For months I waited for a reply from the slow machine of traditional publishing.

In 2005, I applied for a National Endowment for the Humanities scholarship. This time I expanded the my culture types research proposal into a book proposal. It was a scholarship for a full year of funding to write the book, but…I didn’t win the scholarship. During this time I received the long anticipated book contract from my Singapore publisher and finished my first book Culture Shock! Hawaii. The fact that I had completed half the book before I had the signed contract was a gamble most writers advise against. The fact that my first and only query returned a book contract is miracle or the equivalent of a sign from God in the business of book publishing.

More in the next post…