Growing Pains

October 4th, 2018

Please know that we are currently catching up on responding to emails and you will hear back from us hopefully within the next week in response to your previous email requests

Howdy AcceleReaders!

We're here to bring you a long overdue update. Our sincerest apologies! We also apologize for the corny name we've officially given you, dear AcceleReaders :). Let's start this update off by being completely vulnerable: these two months have been a struggle to survive as an organization. After our turbulent launch in August, we wish we could say that things started to get better, but they didn't. Problems continued to arise and at one point, strapped for resources, we prayed about whether or not to simply call it quits. Well, we're writing this email to inform you that by the grace of God we can continue this ministry! We'll try our best to fill in the gaps below:

New Book Brief Design

The first update is that our book briefs have a brand new look! While we're still working hard to perfect it, we've now created our book briefs in an interactive Flipbook Format. We've added a table of contents and a completely new PDF design as well. Now, when you head over to our Library, whenever a book brief is released you'll first click through to an Overview Page where you can quickly grasp what the book is about. From there, you can either download the PDF or click through to open the interactive Flipbook Book Brief. We've also included a Table of Contents as well for easy navigation. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

This Month's Books

The second update is simply to let you know which books we're currently cooking up and preparing as book briefs. The briefs that will be available for your viewing are as follows:

  1. Nine Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever
  2. Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen
  3. Discipling by Mark Dever
  4. How Does Sanctification Work? by David Powlison
  5. The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller
  6. Portraits of a Pastor by Jason K. Allen
  7. The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis
  8. The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer

Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for these this month!

Where are the Audiobooks and Infographics?

While it is our dream and goal to have accompanying infographics and audio for all of our Book Briefs, we recently had to make the difficult decision to postpone any further production. We excitedly announced that each book brief would include all these neat features but severely underestimated both the cost and the time each book brief would take.

Therefore, with Accelerate's long-term sustainability in view, we decided to readjust our budget to focus on producing the best quality book briefs before working on extra features such as audio and infographics. We decided it would be wiser to ensure we were doing the few important things well, rather than many things poorly.

With that said, we've hit the brakes on any further expansion and growth of Accelerate — as exciting as it is to see this ministry grow so quickly! Since then, we're focused on bringing together a world-class team of writers, editors, designers, and publishers; we're also focused on developing systems and processes to ensure everything runs smoothly — everything from ensuring the timely delivery of exceptional book summaries to making sure we communicate with our readers quickly!

While we cannot guarantee an exact date that we will begin recording audiobooks and creating infographics again, we hope to have the process started by January 2019.

And speaking of our new team …

Meet the Team

In our effort to make the consistent delivery of quality book briefs our priority, we've had to cut back on many areas in order to focus on creating the systems and processes that will best serve our readers in the long-term. While these past few tumultuous months have seen team members come and team members go, we're happy to announce our official team that will be serving you as the Accelerate Team:

  1. AK Alexander – Executive Director
  2. Ana Key – Operations Director
  3. Barry Wolfer – Managing Editor
  4. Amy Sylvestre – Copy Editor
  5. Sheryl Bajao – Book Brief Designer
  6. Justin Troi – Content Publisher
  7. Bernadette Brown – Community Manager
  8. Aaron Koo – Web Developer
  9. Ciara de Leon – Administrative Assistant

Finally, to conclude our update, we understand that some users have not been able to access their account. We sincerely apologize for such a frustrating experience! We never intended to make it difficult to update or cancel your subscription and so we ask for your forgiveness for hassle you've experienced. It has come to our attention that there have been some bugs with our subscription software that have blocked some users from either changing their password or cancelling their account. Aaron, our web developer, is working hard to get these sorted out and Bernadette, our community manager, will be in touch with you this week to assist you with cancellations and refunds.

All in all, thank you so much for your patience and continued support! We're working hard to create a tool that will truly serve you well and covet your prayers as we continue to pursue this endeavor for the joy of the God's people and the glory of Christ.

 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to respond to this email!

Yours,

AK Alexander and the Accelerate Team