Featured Writer

Todd Hillard

Snowfall has the privilege of working with many talented, interesting, and engaged people. In this section we will be featuring writers who are part of the Snowfall Press world.

Our inaugural writer is Todd Hillard. Todd visited our printing facility in Phoenix a few months ago and immediately became a fan of Snowfall Press and all that could be done with our innovative hardware and software digital book printing solution.

Here is his story….

I was born at a young age in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and ended up as the middle of five kids in a high energy family. After 12 years of effort, I succeeded in becoming a teenager, and I was pretty dang good at it. It didn’t hurt that my dad was loaded. We had cars and condos and boats and airplanes and snowmobiles and motorcycles—the works.

It didn’t stink. But deep down inside, I knew that all this stuff wasn’t “it”. I didn’t know what “it” was, but the “it” we had wasn’t the “it” it needed to be. During those crazy years, though, I started to find “it” at the end of my pen. Late at night I’d let the trail of ink follow my thoughts, and they led me to important questions and ultimately to the answer—a personal faith in God that helped make some sense of the mess I’d created around myself. Every once in a while someone would read a few of these lines and say “Hey, that’s not too bad. You should do something with this.” (Inwardly, I was elated that they just didn’t throw up.)

Today I have five kids of my own (all girls except for four boys). Lots of things have changed, but the passion for writing remains. Professionally, I’m a “collaborator”; I write books for other people, kind of like a ghost writer, except that I usually get my name on the cover, usually in micro font, but hey, if you get out a magnifying glass you’ll see it right there under the big time name—“with Todd Hillard”. (More importantly, my name usually shows up on a check, which is useful in buying the next round of mac-n-cheez for the herd.) Yeah, my kids are growing up in a much more humble strata of society than I did (understatement), but I also fall asleep at night with some sort of satisfaction: Maybe something I wrote today just might make a difference to someone tomorrow… maybe even help them find “it”.

Over the years I’ve written plenty of books for the main line publishers, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Harvest House… I’ve done stuff for rock stars, big time ministries and ministers, doctors, counselors… you name it. Still, I was down on the industry as a whole—just too slow, expensive and cumbersome. I just didn’t see how we could sustain it. Early attempts at “Print on Demand” were hopeful, but there were still holes in it. That all changed when I got to personally see Snowfall’s equipment in action. When I saw high quality soft-covers being printed one at a time, extremely fast, fully automated and shipped on the spot at a very profitable price with no money up front…  I knew I was seeing the future of books.

I’ve never been more excited about book publishing than I am today. Digital Print on Demand and the Snowfall model have leveled the playing field for all.  They have created a growing niche that makes sense for publishers, distributors, businesses, ministries, and authors of all calibers. That’s awesome news for guys like me who love and make a living from books.