I wrote this to a Christian publishing executive this morning, wondering...
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I worked at a Christian bookstore for a while, and am very familiar with the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) market. Frankly, I'm not real enthused about it, either. These words from Douglas Wilson's Mother Kirk (Canon Press: Moscow, ID) resonate with me: "Christian publishing is no longer driven by the truth. The Christian book industry and most Christian bookstores are market-driven. Because most bookstores simply stock that which the public is currently demanding, a sort of literary Gresham's Law takes over on their shelves - bad books drive out the good.... the literature ministry of the Church should be truthdriven. The people should be reading sound literature, which they need to be reading."
Is there any sense in which your business (a major Christian publisher) is overseen by the Church, instead of the marketplace? Who drives what is produced, and how are those decisions regulated?
I have often wondered how Christians can in good conscience profit from the sale of Bibles. I have a New Geneva Study Bible as my primary Bible, and love it. And I'm a business major, and politically conservative, too, so I know and appreciate the profit argument. Yes, writers and manufacturers and administrators should be paid for their work, but shouldn't Christians writing and selling to Christians be non-profit at least? Shouldn't the whole undertaking be overseen by the Church instead of the Dow (Acts 2:44)?
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