Bethune Catholic

Was cruising around Amazon yesterday and came across our 'chapel veil' booklet. I say 'came across it' because we don't list it on Amazon. We would-after all it is our best-selling product, believe it or not-but you need to have a ISBN number and barcode to list on Amazon Advantage. At the time The Chapel Veil came out, I was probably only had one or two ISBN numbers left and wanted to save them for something 'bigger', thus no ISBN.

Of course 'marketplace' book sellers are not restricted by Amazon on the ISBN number.

All this is a preface to posting the review it got on Amazon:

Short and to the point!, July 3, 2007

By Shane Schaetzel - This was a great read! It explained the importance of this ancient Christian custom and the deep theological reasons behind it.

Some people have said this booklet is too expensive (both as a single copy and in the quantity discounts.) I would tend to agree, except that any cheaper, it wouldn't be available at all.

You see, most publishers of small booklets print tens of thousands of them for pennies per booklet. But we don't. We are 'cash poor' and to stay in business, we are very conservative in our print runs. I don't have enough cash to be able to have it tied up in inventory which may never sell.

Most of our booklets started as in-house print/bind and trim jobs. (Sweat equity for a start-up business.) I can remember early on with this booklet in particular that it would take several days to print a bulk order. Number one son would sort and inspect each page for defects (after all, this is digital printing) before I would cut and bind on our dining room table. Each order was a blessing, especially the bulk orders as the cash was very welcome. But at the same time, those bulk orders took a physical toll and stop all family activities for a couple days. (Our printing technology is a little better than it was in those early days-but it is still a task.)

After (or should I say if) a booklet starts to do really well, we then get it printed outside-but even then we are conservative: only a couple thousand or so copies.

We had already printed and sold well over a thousand in just a few months of the Chapel Veil before we decided to get it printed outside. So early on, after paper, printing supplies, cover, and royalties due, we came away with very little in cash from these orders-but they were worth it to us. Now we actually don't make much more since our print run was low-and we still have royalties to two authors and an artist on each copy sold.

I am not a market economist, but the final proof that the price is right, is that The Chapel Veil continues to be our best seller and the ONLY marketing I did on this booklet was to send out 15 postcards to stores/catalogs that might be interested, and to include it in our regualr catalog. No bulk mailings, no attempts to get book reviews.

So there you go-an inside view of Requiem Press !

Oremus pro invicem!