Words or groupings of words are things.  Napoleon Hill, in his fascinating motivational book, Think and Grow Rich said, "Thoughts are things."  They are and they are often very valuable things as well.  But ironically some very great thoughts and some very powerful words or very nice grouping of words never rise to be things on their own, things for which there is a value in the monetary world in which we live.  A very great poem, for example, seldom has sufficient "clout" to make it on its own.   Too bad but true.  Even a poem as great as "A Cup of Christmas Tea" in order to sell for $15 per issue needed lovely illustrations (Warren Hanson) and a beautiful hard cover format that could be "brought out" with other holiday decorations during the Christmas season.  And this unfortunate situation is generally speaking true of anyone's works that are potentially worthy of broader distribution.  Potential means latent, of course, and that is a far cry from intrinsic (A piece of gold ore has intrinsic value).  A poem might have latent value but it usually must be brought to a form where it is of intrinsic value.

Now these comments, those contained in the above paragraph will serve as the only realistic (read negative) things that I will be saying about the subject of words (a disclaimer of sorts) for the subject of words is so fascinating and dynamic to me that my enthusiasm can barely be contained.  I am a self admitted "word freak."  I love books of all kinds, I love my dictionary and I love my thesaurus.  So how can an unabashed lover of words bring to the world of publishing, especially personal publishing?

The answer to this, we believe, is revealed by the three entry points to our web page.  Presumably you arrived at this point from a decision tree of images, words and objects.  It is our belief that most any good specimen of any of these three needs a little bit of one or another or even both of the other two to rise it to a level of greatest (or at least greater) value. 

Let's start at the very simplest level with respect to words.  There are certain words that could be consider seminal.  Take the word truth, for example.  This is a word that has by itself has energized countless millions of scientists, philosophers, theologians, mathematicians and just plain people.  And then there are combinations of words that speak of truth.  John Keats said, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that's all ye know in life and all ye need to know." Another of those words is life.  Another is the word why. Here's a word for example that without even having a question mark added is still a question, and it is a word that like truth or life has scrambled the people and the nations of the world in pursuit of meaning.  God of course is one of these words.  And god is an interesting word that when capitalized or not in a sentence causes huge world populations to draw lines in debate or even war.  There are many more of these words.

And there are phrases.  Old phrases or ones attributed to famous people are often called quotes.  Blaise Pascal said, "Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."  Yogi Berra among other things said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."  With quotations it's not individual words that are so profound but it is the meaning that is drawn from how the words are arranged.  Still, can you think of any quotations which can stand on their own in a world of choices where value is attached for the thought itself?  There are some but very few.  Think of the ten commandments, as an example.  In history there has not been any accumulation of words whose scope and impact has been as far reaching yet the image and the object of two stone tablets on which God in His own hand carved the words (that image, object and the words) together remain as the potent vehicle of the words themselves.  It makes sense then doesn't it why religions the world over persist in carrying forward into modern culture the commandments on stone tablets and why people opposed to these religions are so animated against the practice.  

Then there are longer narratives of the words of a story and we call these books, stories, novels, letters, poems, and so on.  Presumably the longer the book the better the author can tell about the subject but that is not always true either.  As Martin Luther said, "The fewer the words, the better the prayer."  Josh Billings said, "There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together."  And do you remember the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words?"  Frequently writers are able to shorten their writing and make their work more readable (and enjoyable) if they have diagrams or illustrations to accompany the words.           

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