Resilience as a Response to the Coronavirus

A New Series of Books to Build your Resilience

A group of authors has found a unique way to help others in the pandemic: While some people are stitching masks for health workers, donating to food pantries, or shopping for elderly neighbors, John Hunt Publishing (JHP) decided to marshal the wisdom of their best expert authors and create a series of short books focused on the practical, emotional, and psychological skills people need to survive the pandemic. Not blog-post advice, like how social distance, these books focus on the tough life-skills required to create genuine resilience: how to plan and adapt, how to handle anxiety, how to navigate loss.

As publisher of the JHP imprint Changemakers Books, I jumped at this idea, and volunteered to execute the vision. Our aim was to commission ten experts to each write a 20,000 word book in 20 days. It was an audacious request. But with a decade of publishing experience, I knew the right authors to ask. Most of the ones I approached had 30 years or more expertise, plus several books to their name. To my amazement, they all met the deadline. Books were commissioned late March and finished mid April.

Normally it takes about 11 months to go from finished manuscript to published book on a store shelf. Could we produce finished books in two weeks? A big publisher might bring out…