publishing a christian book

thanks to justin taylor for the link to this mini-article in Christianity Today. It is definitely sad, but it explains so much of the Christian bookstore scene of today.

Walk into nearly any bookstore and you'll find between 1 and 20 shelves dedicated to "the classics" or "theology". The rest is full of self-helps and fiction (lots of different headings under those, but they cover nearly everything that is on the shelves). I always frustrates me when I find this state of affairs. the article, though, explains that the reason we have so many of the sub-par self-helps is that the names force publishers to pay...which means that they must sell a bunch of the books to break even. i hope and pray that some of the bigger christian publishing firms would begin to tone down these tactics and mimic places like Crossway and Monergism.

books make me smile only when they're good.

-joe