“Here’s what the publisher of this book does.” The speaker was John Van Diest. The setting was the meeting hall of the Louisiana Baptist Convention in Alexandria, where a roomful of authors and would-be-writers had gathered to sop up the creative drippings from the mind of this “Publisher of the Year,” so named by his peers in that industry. He was speaking of the first book from the pen of one of our most popular Christian pastor-writers.

“He has put out many books since this first one, each a best-seller,” Van Diest said. “But the publisher who has the rights to the first book keeps on reprinting it. Each time he does, he redesigns the cover, re-formats the book, and raises the price.”

“Aha,” I thought. “So that’s why I have multiple copies of the same book by this guy.”

One smart publisher. One dumb reader. One successful author.

Van Diest was speaking of current trends in Christian publishing. “The Christian bookstore is dying. They’re being put out of business by the internet and megastores such as Barnes and Noble.” He called our attention to the cover story in Christianity Today (April 2008) titled, “How to Save the Christian Bookstore.” The subtitle reads “(Hint: Stop making it so religious.)”

Let’s see now. The Christian bookstore is dying. And here we are, meeting for two days trying to figure out how to get our Christian books published. What’s wrong with this picture?

“My books sell for fifteen dollars.” The conference speakers had displayed a sampling of their books, some self-published and thus necessarily self-promoted. The plan, as I understand it, calls for the writer to engage a printer who might charge five dollars per book. The writer, then, makes ten bucks for each one he sells. If he sells them. “It’s up to you,” the author told a class. “You have to get out there and call on libraries and churches, speak to civic organizations and senior adult groups, and promote yourself.”

Readers of this blog have picked up my stories of Rudy and Rose French over the past two years. They came from Canada not long after Katrina and invested the next two years of their lives with us. When they relocated to Paris, Tennessee, some months ago, I encouraged Rudy to “write a book.” He did. It’s being published even as we speak.

We had a little hand in Rudy’s book. I gave him the names of a couple of publishers, he asked me to draw the cover, and I wrote the foreword. Lynn Gehrmann, our office’s administrative assistant, took the photo of Rudy and Rose that appears on the back. And we are determined to help them get the book in circulation. Whe it comes out, I’ll tell our readers how to order one.

Promoting and selling your book is the hardest part, everyone agrees. That’s why so many self-published writers end up with boxes of their creation cluttering the garage. It’s why some such printers are referred to as “vanity” publishers: they’re catering to the ego of someone who would never see his book in print otherwise.

“But there’s another aspect to this,” our speaker noted. Go the traditional route and have a well-known Christian publisher take your book, and two years will elapse before it hits the bookstores. Even then, you might receive 10 percent from the sales. “If you publish it and sell it yourself, all the profits are yours. You could make as much as 10 dollars per copy.” Good thing, because you will have a substantial bill from the printer to come due shortly.

How much is a thing worth? A book to read, a gallon of gas, a bottle of water, a house to live in? These days, the answers are uncertain, ever-changing, eye-popping.

My son Marty directed me to two brief videos of the skyline of Charlotte, North Carolina. The first was made in late 1986 right after our family had moved there, and the other a few days ago. “We thought the skyline was pretty impressive back then,” he laughs. It’s amazing now. He said, “Hey, Dad–did you notice the price of gasoline in the 1986 video?” I had. Sixty cents.

As strange as that seems, what if you were told back then that in twenty years we would be buying bottles of water at service stations for a buck and a half or more?

One crazy world.

In 1984, Arizona State University professor Robert B. Cialdini wrote a book called “Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion.” The flyleaf carries another subtitle: “How and why people agree to things.” I keep it on a shelf with the writings that have influenced me most over the decades. The opening story in the book is one I’ve never been able to get out of my mind.

A friend who owned a store selling Western jewelry called Cialdini with an unusual tale. “I need you to help me make sense of it,” she said. In her establishment, for a long time there sat a tray of Indian turquoise jewelry she had not been able to move. Her staff had tried sales with the prices were marked down, but nothing worked. She stayed after her sales people to push those items, but without success

Then one night, as she was heading out the door for an out-of-town trip, the owner wrote a quick note to her assistant and left it on the tray: “Everything in this display case, price x 1/2.” She was willing to sell the items at a loss, just to get rid of the offending pieces. When she returned two days later, the tray was empty. The assistant had sold everything in it. However….

The assistant had misread her handwriting. Instead of halving the price, she had doubled it. That’s when the owner called Bob Cialdini, the professor of psychology. “What happened here?” she wanted to know.

The explanation was simple, the professor pointed out. In the minds of most people, expensive equals good. Cheap means poor quality. Those with money are willing to pay for quality. So, the tourists who wandered into that jewelry store looked at the tray of turquoise items and automatically figured, “High price? Good stuff.” And bought it.

Thereafter, the store owner adjusted her techniques to accommodate that faulty bit of logic. When she first put a piece of jewelry on display, she gave it a huge price. If it sold, great. If it did not sell, she marked it down to a reasonable price and made the card read, “Reduced from,” naming the higher figure.

“You get what you pay for.” That homespun philosophy guides the thinking of untold millions of Americans. Whether it’s right or not is another thing. (I think it is correct just enough to perpetuate the stereotype.)

“Our generation knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” I forget which preacher first said that–was it Vance Havner? It’s as true as anything we will read today.

“Why do you spend your money on what is not food? And your wages on what does not satisfy?” Good question, Isaiah. You addressed that little dig to your neighbors in Eighth Century B.C. Israel, but it still pertains.

“Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” (Isaiah chapter 55)

Ah, there’s the problem, Mr. Prophet. If it’s without cost, and if we all agree that you get what you pay for, then your offer of salvation and forgiveness and the entire gamut of the grace of God are all worthless.

It wasn’t free to Him, though. “Jesus paid it all. All to Him I owe.”

The prophet Haggai, working several centuries after Isaiah, analyzed his foolish generation in these memorable lines:

“You have planted much but harvested little.

You eat but never have enough to be satisfied.

You drink but never have enough to become drunk.

You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm.

The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it.”

(Hag. 1:6)

What we have pictured here is a culture that has left out the essentials–they had forgotten God and thus everything else in their lives was unraveling–and is hard at work trying to fill the void with things. Nothing works. Never satisfied, they keep buying more, building bigger, worrying more, working harder, each one trying to scramble to the top of the heap over the others, only to discover when they get there it wasn’t worth the effort.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” (Matthew 5:16) Jesus said it.

If anyone knows the human heart and how to satisfy it, He’s the One.