Cambodia, a communist country located between Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, is prime for conversion as freedom of religion was only recently granted in 1993. There are an estimated 500,000 believers, but most of them do not have a copy of the Bible…

Endeavoring to return Cambodia to a rice farming culture, the former Khmer Rouge regime destroyed everything of value during the late 1970s, tearing up all the roads, murdering one of every three citizens, razing schools, hospitals, and burning books. They decimated an entire generation of Cambodians.

The current leader has helped engineer a remarkable turn-around, rebuilding the infrastructure needed for the country to emerge from poverty. Still, 80% of the country is rural agrarian, largely without electricity.

Against this back drop, the Cambodian church is growing rapidly, and is finally experiencing peace. In 1993 only .001% of the population was Christian. Today 4% is Christian with 10,000 new believers being added to that number every month. With only limited quantities of the Bible allowed to be imported, there is a major need.

The good news is that there is no limit on the number of Bibles allowed to be printed within the country. But sadly Cambodia has had no Bible presses…until now…

Partners in Publishing, a ministry of Bethany International composed of Christian publishing professionals who volunteer their time to accelerate indigenous Christian publishing, is at the center of this project, raising funds, purchasing the press, the paper, and training Cambodian partners to print and bind Bibles.

This is a labor of love, fueled by proceeds from the projects authors and publishers print and publish with Bethany Press / BelieversPress, so that we all can see a Bible in the hands of each new Christian in Cambodia.

Here’s a quote from Steve Hyde, Director of Words of Life ministry and key partner in the Cambodia Bible Project:

“For nearly 10 years I have been hunting and searching for a Bible printing solution in Cambodia. The reason is simple: we have tens of thousands of people coming to Christ every year, and only about 20% of Christians can get access to a Bible. There were only 3 places in all of Cambodia that even sold Bibles and you could only buy 2-3 at a time because they were afraid of depleting their stocks before the next annual shipment of a few thousand copies would arrive. As of November 24, 2011, Thanksgiving Day, we are running the first pages of our Bible on our new Bible printing press in Cambodia. We will probably not have any turkey, but we will give thanks to God for his provision and miracles.
It took many people to make the dream of the press possible. Today the press is running and starting to print the first 30,000 Bibles. But this year is also a year of expectations for the coming year. My dream is to print 1 million Bibles in 5 years in Cambodia. We have 20 years of a lack of Bibles to catch up on! I feel confident that in only a few years from now we will be celebrating another Thanksgiving of accomplishing that goal and I know the list of people who made it possible will be significantly longer!”

The Cambodia Bible Project is proof that together we can transform the world for Jesus. Thank you for making this life-changing project a reality!

Steven Andrews

I’m an Internet Marketing Specialist with BelieversPress, specializing in web/social media marketing, lead capture, brand development, and copy-writing.

 

Well, there used to be multiple barriers that made self-publishing less desirable to authors. Some of the largest of those barriers included the following:

1. Affordable industry quality covers and editing

2. Upfront costs for development and production

3. Multi-channel distribution to retailers

4. Effective sales/marketing representation to retailers

In the consumer driven publishing world it’s about being in the right place at the right time, and royalty publishers traditionally gave authors a better chance of seeing this magic moment happen.

In a word, royalty publishers provided “access” for authors through placement on store shelves and through sales/marketing exposure. If readers can’t access an author’s content, then no sale happens. Pretty simple right? But today, readers need to be able to access a book through their preferred provider which is increasingly online and in their preferred format, which is increasingly eBook, or a sale is missed. Unfortunately for self-published authors, this need for broad placement and multi-format access has been the exclusive realm of large publishers from which self-published authors have been excluded.

Until now…

OnDemandplus was created to tear down most of these barriers, and to give Christian self-published authors access to

1. Quality covers and edits through the industry professionals at Believerspress.com

2. Multiple content formats

3. Multi-channel retail opportunities

OnDemandplus Overview

This leaves one last hurdle self-published authors to conquer…effective sales representation to retailers; and I have some ideas….

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Follow @BethanyPress and @BelieversPress on Twitter for the latest OnDemandplus news.

1. Books must be published by a small publisher with annual revenues of $350,000 or less.
2. Nominated books must be Christian in nature and intended for the Christian marketplace.
3. All nominated books must be printed in English and for sale in the United States.
4. Any small publisher can nominate titles for the Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award.
5. Nominated books must be published in 2008 or 2009.

Trade Shows Targeted in Cost Cutting, Along with Catalogs and More Speaking at yesterday’s Making Information Pay conference, Sterling ceo Marcus Leaver declared, “I’m not going to Frankfurt. I’m going to send a very reduced team to Frankfurt. The trade show is over.” Though he enjoyed visiting relatives while in London for the recent book fair, “I’m not sure what I achieved.” Overall he reported that the company has “taken about $1 million out of our trade show, exhibition and sales conference budget” and in turn has “increased our title-by-title marketing spend 33% in a year.” In the preceding speech Sourcebooks ceo Dominique Raccah indicated that she, too, has reduced her trade-show budget by $250,000 and eliminated in-person sales conferences entirely as part of a larger revamping to “create the next iteration of business as usual.” In an earnings interview yesterday, Simon & Schuster ceo Carolyn Reidy expressed similar sentiments, saying that “we have definitely looked at our participation in trade shows” and are “cutting back dramatically our booth and participation at Frankfurt.” She says their presence at this year’s London Book Fair was already curtailed and, though “our booth at BEA was already paid for” this year, participation there is being scrutinized as well. Source: Publishers Lunch Email

• Big trade shows and aren’t working for mainstream publishers anymore, so they are even less likely to work for independent publishers (if they ever really did).
• Paying for placement at a trade show is a an even bigger gamble than it was previously.
• Paper catalogs and Advance Review Copies (ARCs) will start disappearing and will be replaced with digital catalogs and PDF ARCs at a faster rate.

Reinventing the Publishing Process

BelieversPress unveils a New Publishing Option at Christian Book Expo

• Editorial–both basic copy editing and more substantive editing
• Design–custom and template cover designs, typesetting
• Print–direct access to Bethany Press, the same major Christian book printer that produces 30% of the Christian book industry’s best-selling Christian paperback books
• Distribution–access to the services of STL Distribution through a simple book distribution program tailored to the needs of authors, ministries, and publishers
• Marketing & Publicity–connections with marketing and publicity professionals who also serve the mainstream Christian publishing community
• BelieversPress Marketplace–no-cost web page and e-commerce book sales

John DePree is available for interview or comment on this new venture and the changing needs of publishing in today’s economy.

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