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Jason Czeskleba
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Joined: 30 April 2004
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

As it is generally used, the term "best selling" connotes popularity and implies retail sales success with the general public in the open market.  Certainly no one can argue that Chick tracts meet those criteria... they aren't even sold at the retail level, all their sales are wholesale and then they are given away.  Certainly someone paid for them to be printed somewhere along the line, but that is true of any product that's manufactured in large quantities.  Calling that "best selling" robs the term of any real meaning.  


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 12 August 2020 at 3:15pm
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Rodrigo castellanos
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

He made them (allegedly, the guy's life was pretty mysterious), he sold them. Whatever happened afterwards was not his issue, by capitalism market rules I think he's on the clear. At least technically.

I just checked his web and to my surprise the spanish version popped up. I've never seen a physical Chick Tract in spanish around these parts but also I don't usually hang with the Evangelical crowd (to put it mildly) so they're probably around.

It says in there his tracts were translated to more than 100 languages, the guy was a marketing genius.

He also has a slogan now: "Chick Tracts get read!" And it's true, for some reason you feel compelled to read the whole thing. (Couldn't resist to read the latest one: "VIRTUAL REALITY?", recommended)

The outright strangeness of the material makes me want to wish he was pulling a huge con on these Christian churches or groups but it seems not to be the case.




Edited by Rodrigo castellanos on 12 August 2020 at 4:11pm
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Chick tracts were sold at Christian bookstores, anybody could buy them a pack of 50 (or something) at a time.  (I know at least one chain stopped selling them because too many of them were anti-Catholic.)

Anybody can buy them online.  Last I saw, they cost 12 cents each, but I'm sure there was a minimum order.  That's not wholesale and the people giving them out cannot be called "distributors" (in the business sense) because they are not reselling them at a higher price.  I bought a sample pack many years ago for maybe $10 or $12, and that contained one of each (that were still in print).  Some of them are nice little Bible adaptations (the story of Esther, for example, or Samson, etc.), drawn by a fine artist named Fred Carter.

If you bought ten million copies of the latest issue of BATMAN and then gave them all away, that would still count as "sold."


Edited by Eric Jansen on 12 August 2020 at 4:22pm
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Brian Miller
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I checked out the website earlier. You can read each one of them there.
The Black Tract series is highly recommended. (One features Leroy
Brown and another features a black man named Lamont and his
father’s name is Fred).
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