Crisis in Income Due Mainly to the Economy; I Need Your Help to Continue This Work Full-Time

Life would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?, if money grew on trees.

Just to let you know what's going on: my income has taken quite a few hits due to the floundering economy, since much of my income is sales-based (book royalties) and my part-time additional income with the Coming Home Network (Internet forum coordinator and moderator) is also dependent on their income as a non--profit organization, which also fluctuates with economic ups and downs.

Free papers offered here, written for the benefit of readers at no charge (1 Corinthians 9:16-18), as part of my apostolate (of which there are over 2500) do not directly generate income. Therefore, since I have to engage in projects that do help accomplish that goal, I have to do relatively less of this free material and devote more time to some other endeavors, too (at the present time, some planned audio projects and several planned new books). There are only so many hours a day and, as they say, money doesn't grow on trees.

I have offered so much free material and haven't worried about income as long as I had enough coming in (believing that God would provide, since I was serving Him first and foremost). But things have been changing and getting worse since the economic collapse occurred in September 2008.

Catholic apologetics is a very small market. The numbers are vastly smaller than what most people think books (novels, etc.) sell. A Biblical Defense of Catholicism has been out since 2001 and has sold about 20,000 copies. And that is considered a "bestseller" in the field -- as are several of my titles, according to the amazon ranks, that show four and five of my books in the Top 100 for Catholic Theology at various times in the last couple years.

I'm doing about as good as I can do. Numbers are similar for The Catholic Verses. These are two of the highest selling books for my publisher, Sophia Institute Press. I only get a 14% cut as an author, anyway. I put many books out on my own on Lulu, but they sell very few copies, without proper advertising (that I have no money to do). My package deal of e-books (15 for $25: the best deal in apologetics today, I believe) brings me a few hundred dollars a month, because that is almost all profit, with no middle man, but it needs to increase to make up for losses elsewhere.

My fairly small but regular non-royalty contracted income was cut by 57% in the summer of 2009, for the same reason (unrelated to my performance at the job). What few donations I receive (and I have consistently refused on principle to "beg and plead" on this blog and put pressure on people and send out Madison Avenue-type solicitation letters to get more of them) have lessened, and a few sub-contracting arrangements have disappeared. The only bright spot in all this economic gloom and doom has been two new books "officially" published in the second half of 2009 and an additional one coming, probably in the fall of 2010. The future looks bright, but there are some rough roads ahead in the near future.

This is the life of a Catholic writer and full-time apologist (and one with four children and a wife who home-schools all of them). By various means we have managed to get by, but we never have an excess at any time. So it may be lean for a while until the economy starts improving, but I know God will provide, as He always does. Meanwhile, my responsibility is to do what I can do to try to bring in a bit more money.

If you frequent this blog, have benefited from it, and/or think that the work I do has some value and ought to be supported, please consider a financial contribution to my apostolate. I have to make a living like anyone else, and I am doing it as a writer / apologist. I do this work for you, and I rarely ask directly for support. Even this notice is a general post, rather than a direct e-mail plea or solicitation.

Please consider purchasing especially my e-books, so I can keep on doing this work full-time, as I have been doing since December 2001. And as always, donations (100% tax-deductible) are welcome and much-needed.

For a generous donation of over $100 (see the link in the previous paragraph about donations), I'll send you any of my paperbacks, at your request (you would have to have read this to know about this offer). Please provide a home mailing address (no post office boxes, please).

Thank you all for reading, and for your support and encouragement and prayers through the years. I do what I do for you and for the nonbelievers out there who need to have the light of Christ and His gospel and the fullness of faith in the Catholic Church communicated to them, by God's grace.