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Your experience with people who loved JCS is the exact opposite of what mine has been.

I do hope your experience in that regard is typical and mine has been atypical. JCS could have been a lot worse, though, especially if Webber had been advised by and in agreement with the sort of Bible scholars Burnett is close personal friends with. Given that Brokeback Church is also on the list of places Burnett is drumming his wares in advance I'll be very surprised if this isn't clearly tailored at a market segment as Burnett perceives it rather than at presenting the Truth. What he thinks that market segment mostly agrees with will be what he presents. After all, there are plenty of companies that see the Christian book business, the Christian Rock business, and the Christian products business, as profit centers and don't care what the product contains as long as it sells well.

Burnett strikes me as exactly the same sort of person I met when I knew a good many people in the publishing business years ago. One publisher I know a lot about quietly purchased 75% control of a "Christian" publisher to market into their existing accounts, the burgeoning Jesus Freak movement, and the large crop of new Christian bookstores then popping up. They sold the imprint for a very handsome profit three years later with no one the wiser. They sold because so many of the Christian bookstores were operating on a shoestring that the publisher figured it was a market that wouldn't turn a decent profit for at least another decade. They were absolutely right, too.

Several big publishers lost money in that market that they never recovered from that market, along with about a dozen small publishers going bankrupt with nothing but their somewhat recognizable name to sell for peanuts after investing millions. It's sad, but the fact of the matter is most prominent "Christian" authors I met were far more intrested in maxamizing the money they made than they were in maxamizing the number of people who heard His Word. Christianty was and is their vehicle, not their first love which is why most of the best known authors bought out small publishers or started their own except when they got a piece of a company as part of their upfront deal.

The most sincere folks who never became really big names were just the opposite and I'm glad that over time some of them have been recognized and can make a decent living these days. It's been my experience that most of the really sincere authors got financially mugged and beaten far worse by the big name "Christian" authors who owned an imprint than they ever did by regular publishers who just wanted a few Christian titles on their list every year.

How people in that business deal with one another may have changed dramatically since the mid-eighties, and then again, it may have just become a more attractive profit center. Sales for the business were initially compared to the total dollar volume of sales in the then prosperous Catholic bookstores and quickly doubled that figure, doubled it again, then tripled that total. Right away it was clear that with many non-profit publishers run by religious, Theology or other religious books that have been in print for hundreds of years, new perspectives on unchanging doctrine, school uniforms, Rosaries, and inexpensive Holy cards or medals of Saints as their bread and butter, sales in traditional Catholic bookstores were a poor yardstick.

Now, there was a major effort made to get sales in Catholic bookstores pumped up, but since change and controversy are what sells and doctrine wasn't really changing, what was a publisher to do? Why, pimp controversy wherever and however they could of course. B Dalton's were absolute masters of generating controversy. They could get a protest against a particular author coming to a book signing started before any such signing was ever scheduled. Someone would finally call the publisher, the publisher would instinctively limit their comments to, "we have no such event planned". Free speech crap would start, local news would chatter, and sales would take off in that area. I've never knew whether they figured that approach out at their sometimes wise and oft frozen headquarters, or if managers shared the tactic among themselves.

Those who wanted to turn the Catholic Church into an Episcopal church in all but name had far more access to publishers than any faithful Catholic ever did. Controversy and change sell, Catholic doctrine didn't change, so, they pimped and published whatever was contraversial enough to make Mike Douglas, Donahue, or even Tomorrow. The rate of change in what everyone in the the new Evangelical market was talking about and wanted was driven early on by the 700 club, later by the PTL club. It's repeat sales to people who keep pace with some "authority" other than their church that make for the best rates of sales for publishers, not selling the unchanging Truth. "Christian" Rock Concerts, "Christian" music sales, Samson or Noah playsets, 28 flavors of the Bible in dozens of cool bindings, the new Bible translation someone rants about, and sooner or later, something like 'Precious Moments' Christ and the Apostles figure Collection in a special, limited edition, 'Boat On Stormy Seas Base', that's where the real money is and the Home Shopping Network proved that Jesus sells almost as well as Elvis.

You see, I have close up, personal, experience with the Bible and Christianity being marketed by people who would just as soon be selling Stingers to Al Qaeda if the rate of return was as good as selling to the "Christian market". I recognize the drill when I see it. My opinion is that those who pump and pimp Christianity are far more interested in being as financially wise as serpents than they are in being as harmless as doves with regard to the Truth of Scripture. For that reason I'm extremely suspicious of any heavily pimped new entry into that "market" by anyone with a track record of not caring what they sell as long as it makes them the right profit.

If this series makes good money, I do think several other things will follow. None of them, however, are anything like JCS leading large numbers of "Jesus Freaks" to read the Scripture while they smoke dope rather than watching 'Fritz the Cat' while they smoke dope.

We shall see in a year when profits from this series are clear and I sincerely pray I'm completely wrong in this instance.