I've been reading (again) about the changes in the European world that followed invention of the movable-type printing press. As the technology proliferated, all sorts of previously-hidden information emerged from the crevices of monasteries and universities. Suddenly, "how to make" information hidden in the guilds' apprentice/journeyman/master treadmill was available to anyone. Suddenly, "what to believe" ideas, formerly shrouded in mystery and high-church rituals, were available to anyone. Information quality ranged from Jesus to junk. Suddenly, literacy could change people's lives for the better.
Anyone who could afford a printing press could become a publisher. Gutenberg famously printed the Bible. A few decades later Pope Leo X infamously printed forgiveness-for-cash indulgences. The resulting Protestant reformation changed the world.
Once again, 461 years later, “how to make” information is being freed from its career-track limitations. Once again, “what to believe” ideas are exposed to light and the eyes of “the common man.” Once again, the ideas range from Jesus to junk. And once again, a new technology has made anyone a publisher.
But this time, it’s “free.” (Not quite, but really, really close. Read on.)
As I write this book and develop its website and bog, I’m discovering just how cheap it is to publish. My capital investment/non-recurring costs? Maybe $300.
My cost to print? About $2.50 each, in any quantity.
Your cost to buy via Amazon and other booksellers? Retail about $9. Your cost to download from the misfitchristian website, formatted for all four common eBook readers?
Free.
Whoa. When you look at the gap between production cost and retail price, you see that $6.50 gap, which is the costs of a whole industry devoted to the selling of books. But I’m discovering that when the objective is only to proliferate an idea, not to make money, it can be done really cheaply for everyone.
I don’t think that this little book will launch a Reformation the way that Martin Luther’s 95 Theses did. But it might give you a re-forming, a better way, of how to live a God-filled, joyful life.
