National Catholic Register has a piece by Daria Sockey titled, "Catholic Publishing at the Crossroads"; here is the section about Ignatius Press:
Another major player, Ignatius Press, can only be described as “confident.” With 2010 sales at an all-time high, the San Francisco-based publisher intends to go full-steam ahead with their traditional array of books, music and DVDs — but also to continue an aggressive digitizing project that began one and a half years ago.
“We have a full-time staff person putting virtually all of our new books and many of the old ones into e-book form,” said marketing director Tony Ryan. “When Father Fessio returned to us from Ave Maria University, he realized we had to jump on this. Right now, the vast majority of our sales are still hardcopy, but some e-books are doing pretty well.”
A recently released second edition of The Ignatius Bible has sold about 6,000 e-books versus 27,000 print editions. The next digital challenge facing Ignatius is to produce more MP3 audio books.
“Producing these is a slower process than e-books,” Ryan said. “And there’s the expense of hiring a professional reader. So far, the sales are low, so we’re not sure whether this will catch on or not.”
Ryan also mentioned recent initiatives unrelated to the digital revolution. Ignatius has been working with several mainstream Christian publishers to make products available to the Catholic market. The Ignatius edition of Zondervan’s new Catholic audio Bible is one example. And a special edition of Abby Johnson’s pro-life conversion story, Unplanned, was the result of an unusual collaboration among Ignatius, Protestant publisher Tyndale House, and the evangelical group Focus on the Family. “When we first contacted Tyndale to see if we could do a joint effort, their first reaction was that this was a wild idea. But they thought about it and were soon on board with the idea. It was a way for them to penetrate the Catholic market.” A little more than two months after its release, the Ignatius Unplanned is already in its third printing.
While the joint publications of Unplanned might be unusual, Ignatius Press has been involved in similar co-productions in the past. For example, in 1992 it co-published In Search of a National Morality: A Manifesto for Evangelicals and Catholics (edited by William Bentley Ball) with Baker Book House, a leading Evangelical publisher. And another large Evangelical publishing house was interested for a time in co-publishing a book about The Da Vinci Code a few years ago (negotiations broke off when it was leaked that my favorite Queen album is "Queen II").
Here are the best-selling books for Ignatius Press for the month of April and for 2011 so far:
| Top Ten Books of The Month | Top Ten Books of the Year |
|
1. Jesus of Nazareth, Vol 2 |
1. Jesus of Nazareth, Vol 2 |
I love reading Ignatius Press books on my iPad using the Kinfle app! I also keep intending to buy some audio books from Ignatius. Is there any chance you guys will make them available in the iTunes store? Either way, I'm definitely buying the audio book for "Father Elijah" this weekend from the Ignatius website.
Posted by: Robert L. | Friday, April 15, 2011 at 03:06 PM
I love reading real books but am now reading e-books to save postage to Australia. I read them on the free Amazon for computers Kindle and would like to be able to read Ignatius e-books but when I purchased one it appeared looking like a rough typewritten draft and so I have not purchased another.
Posted by: Sharon | Friday, April 15, 2011 at 05:55 PM
Sharon: What Ignatius Press e-book did you purchase? I have most of them, along with e-books from many other publishers, and I've not seen any that appear as you describe.
Posted by: Carl E. Olson | Friday, April 15, 2011 at 06:26 PM
Amazon sells Ignatius ebooks for less than Ignatius does itself. Still, I prefer to purchase through the Ignatius website as a matter of support. Sort of like purchasing hardcopy books from your local Catholic book store. Although I really love printed books I find I am more likely to buy in e-format because of space constraints. Besides, I can read more books at one time and keep track of my place and not misplace the books...unless I misplace my Kindle. Then I'm in trouble.
I've never had an issue with formatting differences, as Sharon mentioned. There are open source ebook library managers that make managing non Amazon purchases easy.
Posted by: Mary B | Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 01:01 PM
If you check Abby Johnson's website diary, you'll see she is travelling to Australia in late June through to mid July.
This will be a real shot in the arm for the pro life movement in Australia.
We will be pushing hard to market her book here, so hopefully sales will be boosted accordingly.
Posted by: Dr John James | Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 03:45 AM
Sharon,
Are you using the free Kindle reader on a PC or on a Macintosh?
I suspect the problem you are seeing is one involving fonts. I have not so far been able to find a list of the required fonts for either the PC or Macintosh version.
Posted by: Charles E Flynn | Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 10:05 AM
Regarding the RSV2CE: love the translation, but my leather-bound copies are falling apart. Sections of pages are falling out of the binding, and the gold stamping on the cover and spine is flaking away (and started doing so almost immediately upon removing it from its packaging). Because of these flaws, it mostly sits on my shelf. It's a shame, because it's a superior translation.
I'd prefer a genuine leather binding (like the one on my Oxford RSVCE) or a flexible imitation leather (like the ones used by St. Benedict and Fireside).
Posted by: RakowskiDP | Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 12:19 PM
RakowskiDP,
The back side of the title page states where the book was printed. There are at least two possibilities:
See http://catholicbibles.blogspot.com/2010/05/ignatius-rsv-2ce-revisited.html
Posted by: Charles E Flynn | Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 04:17 PM
Another reason to buy ebooks: I have arthritis in my hands, especially bad in the thumbs, so lifting and holding heavy books open can get quite painful, especially if I read for more than a few minutes. I have the RSV2-CE on my Kindle now--what a relief! I hope to have all my library backed up as ebooks one day, though I still like having the 'real' thing around. Very grateful Ignatius is going this route--I'll be making more purchases soon.
Posted by: Honor | Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 05:47 PM