We got a large shipment of books in the other day. Opening a box I noticed it was a book entitled The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning (who is probably most famous for his book The Ragamuffin Gospel.) I asked my supervisor if this was a new book by Manning.
"No, it's an old book. They just put a new cover on it, and the sad thing is that a lot of people will see the new cover, think it's a book of Manning's they haven't read and buy it."
"That sounds a little sneaky for the Christian publishing world," I countered.
She laughed. And she kept laughing. Eventually, she stopped. "So young and so naive," she said.
This is what makes me mad about Christian publishing - they are all a bunch of liars. They claim to be about something bigger than themselves (or as Manning's publisher says, "That's why we're here -- to change lives for the glory of His kingdom."), and yet they are all about the money. They even stoop to re-covering books so the idiot public will buy them a second time.
I'm not saying being in business to make money is wrong. But when you represent yourself as someone working for the glory of God, using underhanded tactics to turn a buck seems highly inappropriate. It's not like they're televangelists.
Saturday, July 17, 2004
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2 comments:
I love this. You MUST keep blogging. It's painfully sad and hysterically funny at the same time, kind of like, well . . . old people doing senile things.
“It disturbs me when I hear a Christian say about something, ‘Oh well. Christ will definitely be back five years from now so it won’t matter.’ Christians have eternal life in God’s kingdom to look forward to. They don’t need television evangelists pumping them up with an artificial excitement that they could be raptured at any moment.
If the television evangelists truly believed their own message, they’d put all of their money into preaching the gospel instead of into their homes and wardrobes. Their books would be sold at a nominal cost instead of at great profit and any book that put forward the idea that Jesus is coming at any moment would be given away from free. What good is the money going to be for the author?”
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