The Shack, Part 3

I promised I'd tell you about Paul Young's amazing journey from warehouse employee to writing a bestseller. Here's the rest of the story: Once he and his associates realized they were getting nowhere with traditional publishers, they created Windblown Media to publish The Shack. Windblown Media is a two-man publishing enterprise, so he wasn't technically self-published (beyond the 15 Kinko's copies).

Young and his three friends pooled all their resources, maxed out credit cards, and in May of 2007 ordered a print run of 10,000 books. The printer sent 11,000 copies, all of which were only available through The Shack website at first. By June 2007 they were sold out, and ordered 20,000 more--and received 22,000! Three months later those were sold, and they ordered 30,000 more. You guessed it, they received 33,000 copies. By June of 2008, Windblown Media had sent out over a million books. To date, over five million copies have been sold worldwide.

At the time he spoke to Oregon Christian Writers in February, The Shack had spent forty weeks at the #1 position on the New York Times bestseller list.

Here are a few of Young's quotes worth remembering:

"Everything about the Father is love, at 100%, all the time."

"When fear shows up it is a gift showing us where we're not trusting God's love."

"A relationship with God is all about trusting Him."

You may think it's easy for him to say, look at the success he's had. But the message I carried away from meeting Paul Young and hearing him speak is that God's love is the message of The Shack. Paul knew that before he wrote the book.

Check out his blog at http://www.windrumors.com/.