equip the Church

If you are reading this and you are a publisher, you are probably like me and you got into publishing because you love books. We love the feeling of them in our hands, the smell of fresh pages, the satisfaction of seeing ideas bound between covers on our shelves. Books captivated us, transformed us, and drew us into this calling. But here’s the uncomfortable truth we must face: not everyone else loves books the way we do.

Most people are not like us. While we see books as treasures, the majority of the world sees them as a burden. This reality demands a fundamental shift in how we understand our work. To be successful Christian Publishers, we must realize that we are not in the book business—we are in the idea business. Books are simply one vehicle for transporting the life-changing truths we steward.

The Sobering Mathematics of Reach

Consider this: even a bestselling book in our context reaches 0% of the total population. Take Truth For Life by Alistair Begg, which recently achieved bestseller status with 100,000 copies sold. Impressive by publishing standards, but in the United States alone, there are an estimated 100 million evangelicals. That bestseller reached only 0.01% of the evangelical population—essentially zero percent.

The numbers in other contexts are equally stark. In Francophone Europe and French-Canada, there are approximately one million evangelicals. To reach just 1% of this population, we would need to sell 10,000 books—a significant achievement that still leaves 99% unengaged with our content.

Yet books remain critically important. They offer deep engagement and sustained interaction with ideas. Perhaps most significantly, people who read books influence others, creating ripple effects that extend far beyond the initial readership.

The Crisis of Awareness

Our biggest problem in publishing is not the quality of our content—it’s that no one knows about the ideas we are promoting. During travels across the United States, I regularly meet committed Christians who have never heard of John Piper, never read Don’t Waste Your Life, and never visited Desiring God’s website. From our perspective, living within publishing circles, this seems impossible. But it is the reality.

This awareness gap reveals the fundamental flaw in our approach. We have become production-focused rather than distribution-focused. We pour our energy into creating excellent content, then sit back passively hoping it will somehow find its way to the people who need it most.

The New Content Landscape

The challenge has intensified dramatically. Content creation has exploded across every medium and language. We are drowning in biblical content, much of it mediocre or harmful. In this saturated environment, quality content without strategic distribution becomes invisible.

Ideas that spread win. If we are going to serve our contexts faithfully, we must ensure that the right ideas are spreading. This requires recognizing a fundamental shift in our industry: content is no longer king—distribution is.

Redefining Christian Publishing

Effective Christian publishing rests on three essential pillars:

• Content Development – Creating biblically faithful, culturally relevant materials
• Distribution Strategy – Developing effective methods for spreading those ideas
• Community Nurturing – Building and maintaining the ecosystem that supports both

Translation is preparation. Printing is production. Publishing is distribution. Until we embrace this reality, we will continue to underserve the very people we seek to reach.

Beyond the Book Format

Here’s a liberating truth: we could stop translating books entirely and still faithfully accomplish our mission. Our mission is to equip the church to make disciples, train leaders, and share the gospel. Books are tools toward that end, not the end itself.

Different people consume content in different ways. Our distribution strategy must account for this diversity:

• Quote boxes that capture attention on social media
• Short articles that provide quick insights
• TikTok-style videos that reach younger audiences
• Five-minute video teachings
• YouVersion reading plans that integrate with daily routines
• Podcasts for commuters and multitaskers
• Booklets for focused study
• Full books for deep engagement
• Structured courses for systematic learning

By sharing content across multiple formats, we accomplish several crucial objectives. We remind people that these important ideas exist. We present those ideas in ways that may be easier for different people to consume. We make it simpler for others to share our content within their networks. Most importantly, we build up the body of Christ by meeting people where they are.

The marketing of our printed books, through sharing and spreading content, fulfills our mission to equip the church. Our marketing accomplishes the mission.

The Long Game Strategy

This multi-format approach requires playing the long game. We plant seeds through various touchpoints, trusting that repeated exposure through different channels will cultivate deeper engagement over time. A person might first encounter an idea through an Instagram quote, later hear it explored in a podcast, and eventually be motivated to engage with the full book.

This strategy demands significantly more work than our traditional publish-and-hope approach. But this expanded effort is precisely what we signed up for when we entered publishing ministry. We cannot complete our calling by simply producing content—we must actively ensure it reaches and transforms lives.

The Distribution Imperative

Developing a comprehensive content distribution playbook is not optional—it is central to our calling. This work is complex, demanding, and never-ending. It requires understanding social media algorithms, building email lists, cultivating partnerships, creating multimedia content, and maintaining consistent engagement across multiple platforms.

Yet this is exactly the work we must embrace. Our mission is not accomplished when we translate a manuscript or when we print books. Our mission is accomplished when lives are changed by the content we steward.

The publishing landscape has fundamentally shifted. Those who recognize that distribution drives impact will effectively serve their communities. Those who remain focused primarily on production will watch their carefully crafted content gather dust while inferior ideas spread widely through superior distribution.

The choice is ours. We can continue loving books in isolation, or we can love the people those books are meant to serve. We can remain comfortable with traditional publishing patterns, or we can embrace the challenging but essential work of ensuring that life-changing ideas actually change lives.

The ideas we steward are too important to leave their distribution to chance. The people we serve deserve our best efforts not just in content creation, but in content distribution. The mission we have been given demands nothing less than our complete commitment to both producing excellence and ensuring it reaches those who need it most.

In the end, the measure of our success is not the quality of our books—it is the transformation of lives through the ideas those books contain. Distribution is not the afterthought of publishing; it is the heart of our calling.