In today’s world, we hear a lot about the power and promise of specialization, and that holds true for companies as well. If you look at successful companies, they specialize or ultimately they go under. This is especially important for small businesses where every decision is critical to the success of the company, every expense significant, no matter how small.
So why, when specialization is so important for small businesses, does Josha publish both fiction and nonfiction? Why not stick to one or the other?
The answer is because Josha does specialize, just not by genre.
But how do we do that?
Nonfiction
Nonfiction at Josha includes genres that often fall under a creative nonfiction label: essay anthologies, memoirs, self-help, and expected in 2023, guided healing journals. These are books that are going to allow you a glimpse of someone’s lived experiences, and do so in a way that provides a lasting impact.
For example, resilient by Katherine Turner looks at the first twenty years of the author’s life. Following Katherine’s journey from childhood through young adulthood as she survived myriad traumas, she leads the reader through her experiences and how those impacted her relationship with the well-intended label of being “resilient.” This memoir, as well as her essay collection moments of extraordinary courage that examines what courage means in everyday situations, especially for survivors of complex trauma, are only two of many to come by Katherine.
Similarly, Olivia Castetter’s Me, Too: Voicing My Story guides the reader alongside her as she experienced a variety of trauma, highlighting the ways in which society played a role in that trauma having occurred to begin with as well as the aftermath. She takes complicated issues and presents them with clarity, thereby demonstrating not only the ways society and policy fail survivors, but also how that failure can be corrected for future generations. And this is only the beginning; there are more books to come in her Too Much series.
Fiction
When many people think of the word “fiction”, they imagine stories that are written with the express purpose to provide an escape from real life. This can be accomplished with a variety of genres, but fiction usually has a few universal things in common:
- Characters are generally minimally flawed, either because the flaws are minor or because there are only a few of them.
- After a single critical conflict (maybe two), the characters amend their flaws.
- There’s a “happy ever after” (this doesn’t just apply to romance!).
And all of this is true—for some fiction. But not all fiction needs to be escapist in nature. In fact, there is a tremendous opportunity for exploring real-world issues in an abstract way because you have control over the narrative.
As Katherine Turner spoke about in The Introvert Writer Summit, fiction can be healing to write, because it’s an opportunity to write the story you may wish you’d lived. For example, in Finding Annie, the first book of her Life Imperfect series, Katherine wrote a story where a woman was raped by her high school sweetheart’s brother, and when she tells her friends and ex what happened years later, they believe her. This directly contrasts with what happened in Katherine’s real life: she was raped by her boyfriend’s two brothers as a teenager, and when she told her boyfriend and best friend, they didn’t believe her.
Fiction can also be healing to read. In fact, as Olivia Castetter writes about in Me, Too: Voicing My Story, it was working on Finding Annie that initiated much of Olivia’s own healing journey from a lifetime of sexual trauma.
For that matter, there’s a lot of fiction like that out there already. Many of the books we know as the classics—the books you likely read in high school English Lit class—do this very thing, as well as many of today’s world bestsellers. The Harry Potterseries provided a generation with a fantasy world in which they were able to explore real-life issues, like social order, bullying, and grief, while the Hunger Games trilogy provides a cautionary tale of capitalism and how one person can change the course of a nation.
Josha’s books tend to focus more on social issues such as mental health, trauma, and discrimination, and the numerous impacts those issues have in our lives—the closer-to-home stories, so to speak. We specialize in stories that inspire, encourage, and empower. Stories that are perhaps painful, yet also show the author’s determination and resiliency. Stories that have previously lived in silence. Stories that highlight the human condition as well as the humanity that lives in each and every one of us.
Here at Josha, we believe one book can change a generation… and how much more wonderful, more impactful, multiple books will be.
Josha Publishing, LLC is a woman-founded, woman-owned, and woman-run company that is passionate about books, stories, and the power of words to change lives. Learn more about us here and remember to sign up for our newsletter to find out about new content, new books, and submissions update.
Why Publish Fiction & Nonfiction?
Tweet
Josha Publishing, LLC 