So LifeSiteNews has a million page views a month, is $150,000 in the hole (!!)– and its readers don’t feel like coughing up $5 each to keep it afloat.
This is typical.
When I worked in Christian publishing, we got letters and calls every day from people who wanted free books and subscriptions because they were nuns/priests/poor/sick/old etc.
Every. Single. Day.
That said, these same Christian publishing businesses didn’t manage their money properly: they were overstaffed by utterly incompetent, nepotistic, lazy and stupid hirelings who were there because they were related to someone.
At the book publishing company, we had a receptionist who didn’t speak English, because she was a poor struggling “refugee” (boo hoo.) The place was staffed by passive aggressive males and neurotic females. They are proud of their ignorance of new technology and their uninformed hatred of popular culture.
And of course, you are expected to live below the poverty line because you’re doing everything for Jesus!
Attempts (by, say, me) to increase overall professionalism and a sense of ownership were greeting with snorts and eyerolling.
People don’t read Canadian Christian books, newspapers and magazines because they are, for the most part, tedious, old fashioned and boring, and read by not-very-bright subscribers with poor reading comphrension skills whose letters to the editor are written in Magic Marker. The kind of people who, when then say “I’ll pray for you”, it sounds more like a threat than a promise.
And they are put out by people who excuse their laziness, incompetence and stupidity with asinine cliches like “God doesn’t ask me to be successful, He only wants me to be faithful…”
I have it on good authority that American Christian publishing is far more professional. Not surprising.
Be they huge corporate car companies or tiny Canadian Christian publishers: if you can’t manage your business, and don’t produce something others are prepared to pay for, then going out of business may very well be the best thing that could happen to you, and to the rest of us.
Maybe it will teach you a lesson.
But having worked in Catholic publishing since the 1980s and watched it stay moribund, unprofessional, backward and obsessed with petty personal politics and grudges rather than making money (and spreading the Gospel), I hold up no hope for this.
