Religion and Spirituality
Spirituality, religious feelings, and formal religion have been with humankind for thousands of years and so have books on the subjects. In the latter decades of the twentieth century with the dawn of the new millennium approaching, spirituality became a very popular genre. In recent years, traditional books about religion have constituted a large segment of this category with thousands of new titles published annually dealing with Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam. Books about religious books such as the Bible and the Koran are popular as well.
The thing to keep in mind is that the range of subject matter in this genre is practically limitless. To give you an idea of the scope of subjects you can select, just consider titles of several bestsellers in this genre:
God Gave Us Heaven by Lisa Tawn Bergren
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Where's Your Jesus Now? Examining How Fear Erodes Our Faith by Karen Spears Zacharias
So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore by Jake Colsen
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
As you can gather from some of the preceding titles, books about religion and spirituality do not have to be dry or scholarly. They can be conversational and directed to a mass audience. What is more, you don't have to be a religious scholar or cleric to write a book about spirituality. In fact, spiritual books often find themselves in the “self-help” and “health/mind/ body” sections of the bookstore. Even writing a book dealing with religion does not require credentials unless it fits into the scholarly category. However, the book must be based on research and other acceptable methods of verifying your facts, which you will learn about in Chapter 5. So, if you want to explore the spiritual world, delve into the divine or mystical, or write a traditional book on religion, becoming the author of a book in this category may be for you.
