Editor's note: NewSpring Church's Suzanne Swift sent CT this statement in the course of our reporting our article, "Buying Bestsellers."
Perry Noble used ResultSource to help market and promote one book that he authored—Unleash. The contract for that book was actually a contract between NewSpring Church and the publisher, not between Perry and the publisher—meaning the church would receive all the proceeds from the book, regardless of sales. Specifically, as of November 1, 2014, NewSpring Church has earned more than $60,000 from the marketing and sales of Unleash, all of which Perry would reasonably have been personally entitled to, had the book contract been between him and the publisher.
The church paid a consulting and marketing fee of $30,000 to ResultSource to help market the book. Other pastors and authors utilize a variety of methods to promote books, including hiring a book publicist, using a publicist assigned by the publisher, using their own staff to help, taking out magazine ads and so on. Publishers (and even authors sometimes) routinely pay tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing books to promote the message of the book. This is true in religious as well as secular publishing circles. Given that Perry Noble was not going to make any money from the sales of Unleash we believe virtually any (legal) marketing strategies would be appropriate and would avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
If an author believes in the message of his/her book, he or she will want to see the book achieve its widest possible distribution. In the promotion of any book, there are many options available when considering marketing. With this particular book, we choose to use the marketing option that ResultSource provided. This type of marketing is not one we've used since on any additional books Perry has written and would not be one we would choose to use again.
Suzanne Swift is public relations director for NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.
