Christianity is for Sale

My wife and I live on the New Zealand Superannuation. It is enough for us to survive on, and have the occasional cup of hot chocolate at a cafe.

From time to time, I have attended Church Home Groups, or Small groups, for bible study, or study to advance my theological knowledge etc. Without fail the studies have used a booklet, often called a study guide, written by some one with personal, or deduced knowledge, relating to the subject. Because of copyright restrictions, the study guides and personal study books cannot be photocopied, so each participant must purchase a booklet. Okay, so an average cost seems to be $8 - $10 each. Average small groups vary from six to twenty people. The publisher gets $60 to $200 per group.

Likewise, if you wish to catch up on what your favourite Pastor is writing, then you could be paying anything up to $50 per book. Have you checked out the price of a bible lately?

I can actually remember saying to my wife, prior to publishing anything, that I would write Christian literature because there was a captive market and I could make a fortune. Well that didn't go too well. I could not afford to pay an editor, cover person or spend time searching for a publisher or agent. I went for Smashwords because at the time they were the only people who could take my MS Word document and turn it into an EBook free.

I published Ripples, a book of stories with a Christian and moral theme for children, and Pastors, and a novel: The Begat Legacy. Some copies of Ripples were purchased, mainly, I suspect, by family, although they deny it. At $0.99c, I thought the price was reasonable. The Begat Legacy, an 800,000-word novel, aimed at the secular market, I priced at $2.99c. A few copies sold but not many. 

I got to thinking! Checking out Smashwords and Amazon free EBooks, I found that there are not many Christian Books available. There are a large number of pornographic and general available however. During 'Read an EBook week', I priced Ripples free and The Begat Legacy for $1.99. There were downloads of a couple of copies of Ripples but none for 'Begat'.

I then made both available free. There have been many downloads since then.

So what do I make of all this? From now on, I will make all my Christian EBooks available free. I do not class 'Begat' in that category as it is targeted at people who would not pick up an overtly Christian book. It is R18 and designed to open some minds to the fact that there is such a thing as Christianity. If only one person picks up a bible to check what I have written, I will be satisfied with it.

The big question left is; Why do Christian writers, particularly of study guides, apologetics and doctrine, put their books financially out of the reach of so many? They publish to a captive market, a market eager to purchase books that they can be assured are suitable for their tastes and beliefs. If we are to reach and teach, then should we not be publishing free? Did not Paul work for a living while he served?

Mm, interesting!