Given what I've heard (White Horse Inn sometimes plays interviews Shane Rosenthal has done at the CBA convention -- it's appalling.) religious publishing could use a good winnowing.
Best Life and Purpose-Driven combined to sell more than 1,274,000 from the beginning of 2005 through week 31 (or this time last year). So far in 2006, the same two titles, which still are the top-selling religious titles, have combined to sell more than 335,000.
Meanwhile, stuff I want to read sells in the thousands of copies, total. [sarcasm]And Kim Riddelbarger is getting rich peddling eschatological sanity on every grocery story book rack, yes-sirree Bob.[/sarcasm]
Murphy's Axiom #43 - "you can only get 80% of what you want."
Given what I've heard (White Horse Inn sometimes plays interviews Shane Rosenthal has done at the CBA convention -- it's appalling.) religious publishing could use a good winnowing.
Ditto for Christian musicians. I've read interviews that exposed several previously-admired artists to be flaming political/social liberals, or flagrantly ignorant in their own faith. It's sad to realise that (sometimes) artists and writers don't actually understand anything deeper than what they've already written.
Meanwhile, stuff I want to read sells in the thousands of copies, total.
Ditto for me - and the scarcity makes it difficult to even locate copies of some. There's one book I'm trying to find that has maybe 2500 copies in print. Meanwhile, every used book store I browse has dozens of copies (literally) of Purpose-Driven Life and Your Best Life Now in the Religion section - so many are being traded in that they can't even be given away. I've considered picking up a copy of each to see what all the excitement was about, since they're so easily had for cheap. I haven't yet, as it appears there's no point - those fads are going out of fashion and no one's soliciting my opinion on them anymore.
I have a love hate relationship with those interviews.
I hate them because I hear how bad things really are out there.
I love them because they validate much of what the GRPL stands for.