In 1896 Charles M. Sheldon wrote In His Steps. It proved very popular and sold millions of copies all over the world. Because of copyright problems he only received royalties on a tiny percentage of them. People thought he was rolling in money, and many wrote to him asking for financial help he was totally unable to provide. Despite the fact that he produced a great deal of written material he wrote very little of a personal nature.

Almost ten years later, in 1905, he published The Heart Of The World. It is the story of Rev. Frederick Stanton, D.D. who writes “The Christian Socialist”, a book eerily similar to In His Steps. Stanton, unlike the married Sheldon, is single when the tale begins, but like Sheldon his life is disrupted by the turmoil that results from the publication of the book once it becomes known he is the author. I enjoyed The Heart of the World for its message of the love and redemption that can come from God and for the possibility that the problems and travails of Stanton from “The Christian Socialist” were a reflection of Sheldon’s own turmoil as a result of “In His Steps”.

The Heart Of The World is available from KincaidBooks.com as a free download in both a mobi version, HeartOfWorld.mobi and an epub version HeartOfWorld.epub. I’d be quite pleased to sell a few of the print version available on Amazon but hope you enjoy The Heart Of The World. as much as I did whether you read it an an ebook or in print.

Ever since the 1970’s “WWJD” and “What Would Jesus Do” have been popping up everywhere – bumper stickers – graffiti – conversations and more. Where did it come from? It came from In His Steps by Charles Monroe Sheldon, a Congregational Pastor who lived in Topeka Kansas at the end of the 19th century. To encourage people to come back on chilly winter days to the Sunday evening service he wrote stories to read a chapter at a time on Sunday nights. The stories were popular and people came out for the second service to find out what was going to happen next. The best known of these stories is In His Steps, read during the winter of 1896-1897.

In His Steps was serialized in a Chicago religious magazine. Nobody wanted to publish it as a book because they didn’t think it would sell. Sheldon convinced the magazine to print a paperback edition. It sold out and the same people who previously had no interest wanted to publish it. It was expensive to file for a copyright in the 1890’s so the weekly magazine In His Steps first appeared in was not copyrighted. This meant that the copyright on the book edition was invalid and anyone could publish it. They did, and it ended up with well over thirty editions and was reputed by Sheldon to have sold many millions of copies. Kincaid Books has a trade paperback edition available on Amazon, and we would be thrilled if you bought a copy. But we also want you to read it, so we are making the ebook available for free download. The ebook is available in two versions, in mobi format for Kindles and in epub format for most everything else